THE BOX TOPS AND MY BABY

I realize that it has now been 34 years since I first heard THE LETTER. It was a BOXTOPS song first, I think, written by, I believe, Alex Chilton. Can that be true? Hold on: I’ll find out.



* Short break *



Yes, it was Alex Chilton and THE BOXTOPS. But that’s not how I heard it. I heard it when I listened to
Joe Cocker’s MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN album. Now there’s an album! The band only rehearsed for
NINE DAYS before they toured and subsequently recorded this masterpiece. Is that possible? Nine
days? Hold on. Let me check that out.



* Short break *



4 ten hour rehearsals over eight days. More information discovered: album highlights include: Cocker's mossy brogue meshing provocatively with Leon Russell's Midwestern twang perfectly framing Dylan's love ode, GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY. I agree completely.

So, I guess, technically, we’ll say eight days. Or, I guess, four days of rehearsals.

But as far as THE LETTER goes, it always poses a very key question in my mind. But before we can think about that question, we should review the information that Joe Cocker gives us in his “soulful as Guinness Stout and sweet as fine port voice” (I also heard about this when I found out about the rehearsal schedule: 4 days, 10 hours: WOW.)

Give me a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take no fast train
Lonely days have gone
I’m a comin’ home
My baby she wrote me a letter

It’s strange how when someone uses the right words it makes you like things that you don’t care for. I am thinking of course of Guinness Stout and Sweet Port. I don’t like either. Of course, anyone who ever took a lot of asthma medicine feels this way. How can I ever forget my Mom holding that spoon in front on me, imploring me: “You’ll love it. It’s yummy. It tastes just like Guinness Stout.” She might have been right, but it just wasn’t enough reason for me to like it. How can one ever adequately define love? And then the line about “if you eat all your vegetables, I will give you another sip of the new asthma medicine. You know, the one that tastes just like sweet port.” No, love is feathery, wispy and ephemeral, often wafer-thin and a real enigma, not the above.

It’s surprising in a way that I like love, or, I mean, Joe Cocker at all! I do, though, even though the thought of the Sixties, all that was gained, all that was lost, makes me a little sad.

I don’t care how much I’ve got to spend
I’m going to find my way back home again
Lonely days have gone
I’m a-comin' home cause
My baby she wrote me a letter

Interesting fact: BOXTOPS Bassist Bill Cunningham: son of Sun Records artist Buddy Blake Cunningham and brother of B.B. Cunningham Jr., lead vocalist for 1960s Memphis group The Hombres, of "Let it All Hang Out" Top 40 hit fame. Here’s a song that, if you don’t love it, don’t laugh when you hear it, and don’t think, “Goddamn it, I am loving this song, it’s a sunny day, and my life is pretty darn wonderful!” Well, then you are dead, and not only dead, but dead and buried and that’s why you can’t hear it. And it’s rainy. And where are you buried? Not at Forest Lawn Cemetery, with people like Sal Mineo and Marilyn Monroe. Somewhere where there are no celebrities.

Anyway, my baby she wrote me a letter.

The question I always wonder is: what did she say in that letter? I always love the idea that you can write something down on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, affix a 37¢ stamp, drive to the post office and put it in the mailbox, and then, three to five days later, presto! Someone opens up the letter, reads it, and decides that trains are too slow and that airplanes are much better and faster even though they are more expensive. Of course, in those days, even though planes were relatively expensive, stamps were quite cheap, and an extremely economical and efficient means of communication. Stamps cost, I think, 4¢ and had a purple Abraham Lincoln on them. Or was it 5¢ and they had a grey Dwight D. Eisenhower on them? Hold on one second.



* Short trip to the post office in the rain *



Well, the possibilities are endless. For Alex Chilton reading a letter that his baby wrote me (sic) (1964), his baby could have affixed a Sam Houston, John Muir, William & Charles Mayo, John F. Kennedy, Homemakers Issue, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Centennial Civil War Battle of the Wilderness or Amateur Radio stamp. I am guessing the Mayo Brothers stamp: they look just like Roman Gods!

But if Joe Cocker received a letter from his baby in 1969 before he rehearsed for four days at ten hours a day over eight days, the letter probably had either a Plant for More Beautiful Cities, Plant for More Beautiful Highways, Plant for More Beautiful Streets, Plant for More Beautiful Parks, W.C. Handy, John Wesley Powell, Grandma Moses, California Settlement 200th Anniversary, Professional Baseball 100th Anniversary, the Alabama Sesquicentennial, Apollo 8, Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890-1969 or, probably the kind of stamp that someone who would be writing Joe Cocker to come home: the First Man on the Moon stamp.

Is there anything sad about this? There is always something sad about everything. One thing that really sticks out is that we don’t even know who started all this. We just know that it was someone’s baby. Probably Alex Chilton’s. Although there were a lot of BOXTOPS, and they might have had babies and anyone of them could have come in to play with Alex Chilton one day and said, “Alex, the strangest thing happened. I received a letter from my baby today, and she said she couldn’t live without me no more. The lonely days are gone, Alex, I’m a goin’ (comin’) home” and the next thing you know Alex has to find either a new bass player, a new guitar player, or a new drummer. But, being resourceful as are all rock stars, he made delicious sweet Tupelo honey lemonade out of this lemony/sweet Memphis Tennessee letter and said, “Hmmmm.”

Who could it have been?

Bill Cunningham, bass, is definitely possible. He won a spot on the White House Orchestra, so his baby was probably a little ritzy, a real society type. It would have been easy for him to afford a plane ticket. Although he probably wouldn’t have said “I’m a comin’ home.” He would have said, “I am coming home presently.” John Evans, drums, later worked as a computer network administrator, so I would imagine that he might be too pragmatic to buy an aeroplane ticket like that: it’s just too spontaneous and existential. I don’t mean to be judgmental; just trying to think deductively. Danny Smythe, rhythm guitar, on the other hand, played in Memphis soul and blues band, and then later became an artist. If I were a betting man, I would have to say that it was Danny Smythe. An artist and musician and living in Memphis where it is so hot and muggy? I think he got a letter and the rest is history. It’s so hot, it is almost steamy. Probably a very sweaty letter if he received it in the summer and put it in his pocket in Memphis, “Toujours l’amour de steamy hot America del Sur,”where the BOXTOPS are remembered to this day for serving up sweet, hot heaping bowlfuls of blue-eyed soul.

And to his baby he goes. Which baby? I don’t know which baby. So this letter is dedicated to all the babies I do know.

The Be My Baby baby, the Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby baby, the Coney Island Baby baby, the My Baby Does the Hanky Panky baby, the Baby Talk baby, the Bye Bye Baby baby, the My Baby Cares for Me baby, the Baby Lemonade baby, the Here Comes My Baby baby, the Old Timey Baby baby, the Oh Baby It’s A Wild World baby, the Here I Am Baby Baby, the Baby You Got What It Takes baby, the Bossa Nova Baby baby, the Rose and a Baby Ruth baby, the Baby Let’s Play House baby, the Dream Baby baby, the Baby It’s Cold Outside baby, the Cry Baby Cry baby, the Baby Let Me Follow You Down baby, the My Baby Does Good Sculpture baby, the Walking My Baby Back Home baby, the Baby You’re A Rich Man baby, the Merry Christmas Baby baby, the Good To My Baby baby, the Baby I’m Amazed baby, the You’re Having My Baby baby, the Baby Doncha Do It Baby, and then of course the Bang Bang I Shot My Baby Down baby.

Meanwhile, the Mayo Brothers, Roman Gods of Medicine.Take a look at the stamp. Is it still on the letter? It’s still on the letter, written by my baby.