Alex Chilton dead at 59

Image via Wikipedia

What is there to say about Alex Chilton, the guy who inspired so many other musicians, and elicited so much praise from writers, journalists and fans? Truly, he was the biggest American music star who never quite made it big.

Today, he is said to have died of a heart attack in New Orleans, days before his old group was set to perform at SXSW.

The leader of the acclaimed group Big Star, whose early 70s seminal albums went nowhere fast and earned them cult status among those in the know, Chilton was as quirky a songwriter as ever was in rock and roll.

Liner note essays spoke of Big Star’s desire to sound like an English group. Maybe so, but Chilton, the Memphis native, like so many English musicians, also understood the value of American blues.

He had a hit with the Box-Tops (“The Letter“) before hooking up with his Big Star band mates Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel. Once that line-up was in place, the foursome went on to produce some of the most compelling albums out there.

In New York, I played trumpet with a group called Champale who covered Big Star’s “Stroke it Noel” for a tribute album. And here in California, like so many other bands, my new group The Marshmallows does a version of Chilton’s classic “13.” For musicians of my generation, there’s simply no escaping Chilton’s impact.

“Uncompromising” is what people say about people whose music, despite years of toil,  never finds a mainstream audience, but I never got the idea that Chilton was doing anything that felt other than completely natural to him. Strange that it took “That 70s Show,” with its cheesy retro shtick, to get people to see that Big Star never really required any special lens to appreciate its music.

Here then are a couple of the tunes that defined the Big Star legacy, but the whole damn catalog is worth a listen: