Davy Crockett, The Box Tops

Alex Chilton and Fess Parker resigned from life this week, and it's a little sad that there are a lot of younger people with no idea regarding who Chilton and Parker were. In their day, though, they were big.

During my childhood, my family was too late owning television for me to experience the Davy Crockett fad in its full sweep. Fess Parker played the role of Crockett in the Walt Disney TV show, which was very, very loosely based on actual history and emphasized the legendary aspects of his life. The craze was broad enough that the Fess Parker portrayal spilled into movies, which is where I received my introduction. Later I saw the classic 1957 Disney film Old Yeller, probably the definitive 20th century a-boy-and-his-dog story. Fess Parker played the role of the dad, a character appearing at the beginning of the movie and again near the end. After the Davy Crockett thing faded, as all American crazes eventually do, Fess Parker's film career dwindled as well.

Moving on a few years in time, from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s. A group called the Box Tops has a few hit singles on AM radio, the biggest of which, "The Letter," can still be heard today. I'm past grade school, in college; my particular favorite Box Tops single is "Cry Like a Baby." I love that song so much I spend a dollar to buy the 45 rpm version. Somewhere around here, I think I still have a box containing the 45s that I accumulated between 1966 and 1970, and "Cry Like a Baby" would be among those cultural artifacts. Alex Chilton was the lead singer for the group, and despite the band's burst of success, there were people even then who didn't know his name --- I was one of them. Chilton stayed with music, forming a group called Big Star that was a cult favorite in the early 70s, and had an extended career as a solo artist. Once I reached the "Serious CD Collector" stage, I added Box Tops, Big Star, and Chilton solo CDs to the inventory. I consider the Chilton song "Stroke It Noel" from the third Big Star LP to be as lovely as any song from that era in rock music.

The score for the week, unfortunately, is 2-0.