Many of Alex Chilton's records are time capsules: by the time we heard them, he had moved on to something else. The 1970 sessions weren't released until 1995. Big Star's Third was recorded in 1974 and released in 1978. Songs from the 1975 recording sessions with Jon Tiven came out on Ork Records in 1977, then as Bach's Bottom in 1980 -- the year of the first Panther Burns record.
I mention this because Alex Chilton's Jukebox isn't arranged in the order that the cover versions were released (unlike Songs Barrence Taught Us), and it isn't separated by genre, like the Tav Falco compilations. Instead, it follows the original songs' year of release (like Songs Redd Kross Taught Us). This makes for some interesting contrasts.
There are songs from Alex's solo career, as well as songs covered by Big Star and the Box Tops. Today's set (the first of three) begins in the 1930's and ends at the dawn of the British Invasion.
Alex Chilton's Jukebox, volume 1:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/ylxfx5zaidqmhwd/LX+JKBX+v1.zip/file
No More The Moon Shines on Lorena - The Carter Family (1931)
ReplyDeleteYou’se A Viper - Stuff Smith And His Onyx Street Boys (1936)
Footprints In The Snow - Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys (1946)
Funny (But I Still Love You) - Ray Charles And His Orchestra (1953)
Trouble Don’t Last - Guitar Slim And His Band (1954)
You Don’t Have To Go - Jimmy Reed And His Trio (1954)
Hide And Seek - Joe Turner (1956)
Goodnight My Love - Jessie Belvin (1956)
Train Kept A-Rollin - Johnny Burnette Trio (1956)
Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll - Billy Lee Riley And The Little Green Men (1957)
Sick And Tired - Chris Kenner (1957)
Mona - Bo Diddley (1957)
Raunchy - Bill Justis (1957)
Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran
Dateless Night - Allen Page (1958)
I’ve Had It - The Bell Notes (1958)
The Way I Walk - Jack Scott (1959)
Trip To Bandstand - B.B. Cunningham (1959)
Il Ribelle - Adriano Celentano (1959)
Lonely Weekends - Charlie Rich (1959)
Margie - Fats Domino (1959)
I Will Turn Your Money Green - Furry Lewis (1959)
Volare - Bobby Rydell
A Lot Of Livin’ To Do - Marty Wilde and Sylvia Tysick (1961)
Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta - Ernie K-Doe (1961)
Girl After Girl - Troy Shondell (1961)
Alligator Man - Jimmy C. Newman (1961)
Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette) - Benny Spellman (1962)
Let Me Get Close To You - Skeeter Davis (1964)
Waltz Across Texas - Ernest Tubb (1965)
Great comp. If you ever do a vol. 2, Mrs Lennon by Yoko Ono bears a striking resemblance to Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I have two more volumes lined up. And thanks for the tip about "Mrs. Lennon"! Listening to it now -- the piano part is nearly identical, right down to the tempo. And the lyrics are equally devastating. It makes you think that Alex must have heard Yoko's 1971 album "Fly" or saw the film "Imagine"...
Delete"Mrs. Lennon": https://youtu.be/9wZGwXFP7RY
Alex was listening to a lot of different things while making Sister Lovers aka Big Star's Third. The band covered "Baby Strange" by T.Rex, Todd Rundgren's "Slut", Loudon Wainwright's "Motel Blues", Gram Parson's "Hot Burrito #2" (plus "That's All It Took" which was on the album GP), the Kinks' "Til The End Of The Day", and of course the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale" (and "After Hours").
Parsons' (not Parson's)
DeleteI bow down dear sir....as much as I know--I don't know. Maybe I'm over the hump though. I checked all yer links and saved all the text as a txt file. You and Nate got my back...I was just trying to preserve vinyl and didn't write much at all--too busy. Cheers Mates!
ReplyDeleteThanks, my friend. I may post "liner notes" to cross-reference the albums by Alex, Big Star and Box Tops where his versions appear. Nathan Nothin' is my main man. I enjoy the background research, but the vinyl ripping and cleanup is hard for me, so bloggers like you are my heroes!
Delete"I enjoy the background research, but the vinyl ripping and cleanup is hard for me"
DeleteThe part that I find the worst is removing the barcodes from the album back or jewelcase rear for the included artwork.
"Main man"...(blush)
I'm hopeless at Photoshop, and not much better at Audacity.
DeleteWhen you say Nathan Nothin, you're really sayin Somethin. He ain't never been a Nowhere Man nohow.
Jonder, I always consider you to be royalty when it comes to blogspots but this Alex comp takes the cake and makes July 4 come early. Alex Chilton is so revered but not revered enough IMO. Saw him with Tav, solo, Box Tops reunion and wept the day he died. True genius, a real original. Thank you for this. Jeremy
ReplyDeleteWow, Jeremy. I'm flattered! I wish I had seen Alex with Panther Burns and the Box Tops reunion. The album "Box Tops Take Off" is a lot of fun. I did get to see Alex in three different cities during the 80's when he had his trio with René Coman and Doug Garrison. The day Alex died was very sad for me too, and I still find it tragic that he didn't have to die (if America provided health insurance to all its citizens), but I won't get into that debate here. I learned a lot from Alex and Tav about Memphis and New Orleans music.
DeleteJonder, total compliment, your comps always complete my collections of many fave artists incl Alex, one of my all time heroes. One more share, some pals and I travelled to this total dive bar in Niagara Falls NY to see Alex and he was writing lyrics with a pencil as he sang, pure genius. His show with Tav is still one of my best live experiences, a fabulous disaster of artistry!! Thanks for all your hard work, means the world.
DeleteI keep getting this message upon attempting to download: Secure Connection Failed
ReplyDelete"An error occurred during a connection to download2275.mediafire.com. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem."
Anyone else having this problem? Not something I'm getting from any other download source. Thanks.
And thanks for this. Looks amazing.
--Muzak McMusics
It's had 90 downloads, but I will be glad to upload it to another site. Do you like Zippy, Kraken, Mega, Google Drive?
DeleteI was a neighbor of Alex's when he passed. Really great guy who never once let on as to who he was (simply said he was Alex, although I knew better). Criminally underappreciated musical genius.
ReplyDeleteGood to see you, pmac! That's cool that you respected his privacy. Wiki tells me that Alex had a wife and son.
DeleteI talked to Alex twice after shows in the 80's. I don't blame him for being less than enthusiastic toward fans with dumb questions. I wanted him to know that I had recently run into Bryan Gregory (who worked at a porn shop in the mid 80's on Tamiami Trail in Florida). Bryan Gregory wasn't too excited either about meeting eager college kids, but his boss found the situation amusing.
Thx, Jonder. Alex was doing his best urban/suburban dad impression at the time. The area we lived in then was in city limits, but had sort of a suburban feel to it, also. But, living in NO then was damn tough with Katrina issues still dominating daily life. From best I recall, his wife and kid left NO about a year after his death. Poor guy was mowing his lawn and just died on the spot. Great jukebox list. For a guy who thankfully is still with us, and somewhat in the same vein as Chilton, look up Alex McMurray. Alex has several albums out under his own name, and also is in The Tin Men and used to have a band called Royal Fingerbowl, all of which also have albums.
DeletePmac, thanks for the recommendations. I was checking credits on Discogs and happened to notice a Nawlins band called The Iguanas, with Alex's old rhythm section of Doug Garrison and René Coman. I will check them out and Alex McMurray too. Hope you and mrs. pmac are well.
DeleteMaestro McMusics, here's another link to LX Chitlin's Jookbox, volume the first:
https://krakenfiles.com/view/othXALBjqn/file.html
The Iguanas are fantastic! They are still alive and kickin' and have about 8 lps to their credit. Latin fused indie rock is sort of their foray. When they first started they were noted for a double baritone sax attack, but several years later dropped to just one reed player. All is well on our end - hopefully the same for you and yours.
DeletePS to pmac: Rene Coman cohosts a podcast called Troubled Men. There's an episode with Alex McMurray, some road stories from The Iguanas, and this episode with Rene and Doug Garrison reminiscing about Alex:
Deletehttps://troubledmenpodcast.castos.com/podcasts/27871/episodes/tmp-38-alex-chilton-was-born-today-36edf6c9c83680
I listen to it regularly! The last one is a real headscratcher. Jimmy Horn had one of the best bands going in NO - King james and the Special Men. Was starting to get gigs in NYC, too. Then, he just quit and now makes "perfume." Guy just lost it. I know that the club where they used to regularly perform has offered him 3x the going rate to return and he just won't do it.
DeleteGreat comp, Jon! I listened to the Troubled Men podcast and was reminded that I unknowingly went to see the "bootleg" Box Tops put together by the guy who owned the band's name. The lead singer was a heavy guy who was a very average singer. I also got burned by The Platters in the early 80's. There was one original member in his sixties who hired a younger band to be his other Platters who were in their 20's. There were lots of those situations--where each group member toured with "their version" of the group. The kings of this practice were probably The Drifters. - Stinky
ReplyDeleteYeah, a lot of Drifters drifting around. Glad you enjoyed the music and the podcast! In reading about Alex Chilton's live albums, I was actually reminded of Chuck Berry's practice of traveling solo and recruiting local musicians who were expected to know how to play "Chuck Berry music" without rehearsal.
DeleteAlex Chilton's "Live In London" album included Knox (from the Vibrators) on guitar, and the rhythm section from the Soft Boys. Alex played a mid-90's gig in Glasgow with Francis Macdonald (Teenage Fanclub) that was recorded for the Shoeshine Chartbusters compilation. On the 2004 album Live In Anvers, Alex is backed by Belgian musicians, including guitarist Mauro Pawlowski from dEUS. And on the album Boogie Shoes: Live On Beale Street, Alex was backed by the famous Hi Records rhythm section at a 1999 benefit concert in Memphis.
I'm not saying that Alex didn't rehearse, just that he traveled light. On the Anvers record (a favorite of mine), the band seems to gradually get tighter. By the closing song ("Too Late To Turn Back Now"), they're really in the groove, and Alex is clearly enjoying himself: https://youtu.be/DKZaIfDhf_I
DeleteHiya, I'd kinda got out of the habit of checking blogs as regularly as I did. Today discovered your Chilton/ Tav Falcon juke boxes which I am greedily downloading as we speak.
ReplyDeleteWow.
This is a rare treat and one that is greatly appreciated by me. Thank you so much.
I've discovered some great stuff on this blog and really appreciate your work.
Very kind of you to say so, Nick! Makes it all worthwhile for Stinky & me when somebody lets us know that they enjoy what we do. It seems like Google is making it harder to find music blogs, and more music bloggers are dropping out of the hobby (I guess you can call it that). So it's always cool when someone somehow discovers our little hangout in the blogosphere!
DeleteIf you haven't found them already, check out these comps. Stinky put together the amazing musical history of Peter Greenberg (DMZ, Customs, Lyres, Barrence Whitfield & The Savages), and I did a Savages jukebox. https://jonderblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Peter%20Greenberg