LITMIR.BIZ

       3 ‘He wore a black T-shirt, nobody wore those, and torn jeans’

       Memphis, TN. August 1966 to July 1967

      Mid-1960s America was obsessed with radio and TV talent shows. George Klein’s Talent Party was the local Memphis staple and on a national scale it was The Original Amateur Hour that broadcast to millions on a Sunday afternoon. In August 1966, an eighteen-year-old Memphis drummer, Danny Smythe, filmed his drum solo routine for the show. When it was screened that autumn, he won three weeks in a row. It was an act that typified the times. He played his drums barefoot (having taken off his shoes to warm-up before the show, the camera crew convinced him to play the actual set like that) while smiling and chewing gum. Back in Memphis, Smythe soon became a regular on the circuit and was involved with Alex Chilton’s first real band.

      ‘I got my first set of drums on my fifteenth birthday’ says Smythe. ‘I was raised on rock’n’roll but found that the drums in most songs just kept a beat, so I started listening to big bands from the 1930s and 1940s. That’s where I discovered drum solos. That’s the music that really turns me on. I had no desire in high school to join the marching band, so I formed a three-piece instrumental garage band and as time went by we added three singers, a bass and keyboard.’

      The original band was christened The Devilles. ‘A lot of drummers had crests painted on their drum head,’ explains Smythe. ‘My father had a Cadillac DeVille and I liked the way the crest looked.’ Playing at parties and dances around town, the band soon built up a small but loyal following. ‘The guitarists were Mike Wright and Ron Carnie,’ recalls Smythe. ‘They were best friends and popular at their school, so we had connections for playing parties. Within a few months we acquired Fred Schaefer on bass and Mike Mosley on keyboards.’ The joint lead singers were Steve Joudren and Ronnie Jordan. Within a year, the guitarists were replaced by better musicians: Bill Fargie on lead, Richard Malone on rhythm and Russ Caccamisi on bass.

      With seven members, practice was hectic at best. ‘It was really hard to get everybody to show up at the same time,’ laughs Smythe. ‘Not everybody had a car, so a lot of the time you were depending a ride from a buddy. Once there, it was the most fun thing in my life. Everybody in the neighbourhood gathered to listen. The biggest hurdles back then were conflicting schedules with everybody’s girlfriends. There were always ultimatums to quit the band or break up with your girlfriend. At first it was exciting for them to go to the gigs, but as more school dances and parties were missed because of a gig their resentment grew. We called them the band widows.’

      By 1966 there were at least a hundred bands playing regularly in and around Memphis and the Devilles were one of the most popular. They had also released a string of singles (‘Oh Love!’, ‘Tragedy’, ‘Last Date’ and ‘Cindy’s Carousel’) that had a reasonable amount of local success. ‘In two years, we became one of the better bands in Memphis. We played every weekend. One of the singers sang R’n’B, and the other sang all the British stuff. I leaned toward the R’n’B because those drum beats were the ones that got everybody dancing. Ronnie [Jordan] was cute and had a Beatle haircut, he looked like Peter Noone, and his uncle, Roy Mack, was a top DJ in Memphis.’ Because Mack had Memphis connections to gigs and recording studios, he became the band’s manager. As Ronnie Jordan became the star of the show, Steve Joudren and the other backing singer quit. Mack was friends with local producer Chips Moman, then working at American Studios, so as Mack was happy to play Moman’s records on his radio show, Moman agreed to take the Devilles into the studio. These sessions produced their early singles and when the records were released it was under the new band name of Ronnie and the DeVilles.

      In January 1967 Jordan quit to join a rival band, The Honey Jug, with local producer Jim Dickinson. Most people remember that Jordan could have been a real star if he really wanted to be, but he just wanted to have a good time. He later went on to become a successful DJ. With Jordan gone, the band virtually disintegrated leaving just Smythe, Malone and Caccamisi. ‘Bill [Fargie] had to join the army reserve so he had to quit,’ explains Smythe. ‘Mike’s [Wright] girlfriend made him quit, and Ronnie [Carnie] went off to broadcast school. But we still had some gigs on the books.’ Reinforcements arrived in the shape of eighteen-year-old keyboardist John Evans from another local band, The In Crowd. All they needed now was a singer. Everyone asked around and Evans mentioned to his friend Jimmy Newman that the band was looking for a white boy who sang as if he was black. Newman told Evans about a kid he’d seen at a Central High School talent show singing Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny’, Alex Chilton – the same boy that had declined to join the Jynx almost a year earlier.

      William Alexander Chilton was fifteen and in the tenth grade at Central Memphis High School. He’d been born on 28 December 1950, which made him a Capricorn, a fact that would be important to Chilton in later life. He was born the youngest of four children (Reid, Cecelia and Howard Jr were the others) to Howard Sidney Chilton and Mary Evelyn Reid. Howard, known to everyone simply as Sid, was a graduate of the University of Mississippi who had spent time in the 1930s working as a travelling musician. He played saxophone and piano in various Big Bands before the Second World War. Chilton married native Mississippian Mary Reid in 1937. They started a family in 1941 and while the children were growing up Sid set up a stage lighting company, supplying lighting to schools and theatre groups.

      It was Alex’s older brother Reid who inadvertently introduced his youngest brother Alex to rock’n’roll. ‘I remember the first record that I really became aware of was “Youngblood” by the Coasters, with “Searchin”’ on the other side,’ says Alex Chilton. ‘My oldest brother had a copy of that, and I remember him hanging around the house with his girlfriend at night one time while my parents were out, playing that record over and over again. I was maybe six years old digging that record. I remember that really well and then my dad was a big jazz fan and player and I became a fan of his Glenn Miller records first, and then I went on to Ray Charles and Mingus, Dave Brubeck. I became a big fan of Chet Baker and that was when I first really wanted to sing. He first inspired me to sing.’

      The happy family was devastated in 1958 when Reid had a seizure, banged his head and drowned in the bath, at just seventeen. Alex, who had idolized his brother, was hit hard and never really came to terms with the loss. The family moved as swiftly as they could from the scene of the tragedy but the experience permanently marked seven-year-old Alex.

      The Chiltons had been living out in the suburbs but their new home was a large house at 145 North Montgomery Street in Midtown. And as the pressures of rearing children lessened, Mary Reid Chilton opened an art gallery on the ground floor while Sid ran the lighting business from his office in the back. The opening of the gallery in November 1962 made the local paper. ‘Dozens of men and women were coming out of the Mary Chilton Galleries at 145 N. Montgomery carrying large paintings, pottery, statues and other art objects,’ reported the Memphis Press-Scimitar. ‘A passing police car stopped in case a robbery was in progress as seventy people attended the opening of the ‘Own-Your-Own-Art’ show.’ It reported that business was brisk and potential bargains included a Picasso woodcut for $18.50 or an original Cézanne etching for just $26.

      It was an unusually liberal and open-minded family atmosphere and Alex grew up surrounded by art, music and social gatherings. Family friend Bob Boelte recalled the Chiltons’ holiday festivities: ‘Every New Year’s Eve a group of musicians would gather at the Chiltons’ home for a jam session. The musicians were doctors, businessmen and others who loved jazz. It was always a large, convivial crowd, and we all probably drank too much in those days. Those were the do-your-thing times.’

      ‘When I got to be eleven or twelve, I started listening to the radio a little bit and things like “Johnny Angel”,’ says Alex Chilton. ‘The Ronettes I remember pretty well. Then there are other things from that time that I didn’t really get caught up in. The rock scene, and of course Elvis and Jerry Lee back in the mid and late

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