(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)
The Box Tops - "The Letter"
Hit Number 1: September 23, 1967
Stay at Number 1: 4 Weeks
Ah, the times before cell phones were a thing. Being born in 1997, I vaguely remember when cell phones were just starting to become popular, but for the most part, cell phones were always a part of life to me. Back in 1967 though, if you would have brought up the idea of cell phones to someone, they would've thought of them as some magical device that could only have been invented a few centuries from then. Of course back then, there were telephones, but they were only used for calling someone. Texting was still far from being a thing. So if someone was far away, and you wanted to write something to them, you had to write a letter. There was no e-mail either. That's really all the Box Tops' "The Letter" is about. It's not "The Cell Phone, "The Text", or "The E-mail". Instead, it's a song that's about a girl far away from her boyfriend, and writes him a letter because she wants to see him. Pretty simple stuff.
"The Letter" first got roots when songwriter, Wayne Carson, wrote it after his father suggested the opening line "Give me a ticket for an aeroplane". Carson made a demo tape with the song on it, and gave it to Chips Moman, the owner of American Sound Studio in Memphis. A studio associate named Dan Penn was looking for more songs to produce, and Moman suggested a group called the DeVilles, who would later become the Box Tops, to record the song. The group was fronted by Alex Chilton who, at the time, was only 16 years old. But you would not know that at all by the song. That's part of what was so amazing to people about "The Letter" then, as well as today. That gruff, growl of a voice was being performed by someone who was just getting their Driving License.
All we know about the context of the song is that two lovers are far away from each other, and the girl writes the guy a letter. The bulk of the song is the guy trying to get on an airplane to go back and see her. The song never specifies this, so this is only a theory, but you could say that the song is about a soldier over in Vietnam, who has to go back to see his girlfriend upon getting a letter from her. It certainly fits the time that the song came out, and the urgency the narrator shows supports that. But however you want to interpret the meaning of the song, the song in and of itself is a banger. Chilton's gruff and needy vocals are the best feature, but there's some cool organ riffs that were apparently inspired by the Monkees' "I'm a Believer". The bass swiftly glides and does it's own thing. There's also an airplane sound effect at the end of the song that was taken from a special effects record checked out from the library. It all just seemed to work. And what makes that even more amazing is that there was hardly any rehearsing that went into the song. Everything went as well as it possibly could. "The Letter" is a sound of a group who was coming together, and produced a great song.
The Box Tops were not a group that stuck around though, and Chilton left to become the new front man of a group called Big Star, which he remained with until his death in 2010. Big Star never crossed into the pop-mainstream music charts, but they were a group who, to their credit, have continued to grind in the music industry. Though Chilton is no longer with us, his impressive vocal performance in "The Letter" is one that will remain with us until the end of time.
GRADE: 8/10
JUST MISSED:
The Association made a strong bid for their 3rd #1 hit, but instead their song "Never My Love" stalled out at #2 behind "The Letter". It's a neat little song, but it's nothing more than that. It's a 6.
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