He was only 59 years old. I say "only" because he was very, very young when he sang his hit records. He was like Peter Noone or Steve Winwood; he was barely out of diapers when he became famous.
Alex Chilton, who burst out of Memphis in the late 1960s with the Box Tops, singing “The Letter” in the smoke-gravel voice of a grizzled R&B veteran even though he was just teenager at the time, has died in New Orleans. He was 59.
Chilton's longtime friend John Fry told the Associated Press that Chilton died Wednesday at a hospital after experiencing what appeared to be heart problems.
“It was just a sudden and unexpected event,” said Fry, the owner of Memphis-based Ardent Studios. He said he spoke to Chilton’s wife and that she was very distressed.
With the Box Tops, but even more with Big Star, the band he started in the ‘70s after the Box Tops disbanded, Chilton helped lay the foundation for the movement known as “indie rock,” defined by groups that still honor the fundamental power of the guitar-bass-drums band lineup and that make music for the sheer joy and artistic exploration rather than chiefly for commercial success.
He was later in a group called Big Star.
Chilton is seen here at a mere 17 years old lip-synching the megahit "The Letter":
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Another television icon from my childhood has died: Actor Fess Parker, 85, of complications of old age.
He achieved fame first by playing Davy Crockett in a three-part Walt Disney miniseries, and then went on to star in the sixties program Daniel Boone for several seasons. He retired from acting and later became a hotel developer and ran a winery.
"Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter," the first of the initial three Crockett adventures, aired on "Disneyland" on Dec. 15, 1954, and unexpectedly turned Parker into an overnight sensation.
TV's "King of the Wild Frontier" also touched off a merchandising frenzy: 10-million coonskin caps were sold, along with toy "Old Betsy" rifles, buckskin shirts, T-shirts, coloring books, guitars, bath towels, bedspreads, wallets -- anything with the Crockett name attached.
Viewers also fell in love with the show's catchy theme song. Bill Hayes' version of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" soared to No. 1 on the hit parade and remained there for 13 weeks. And there were a couple of dozen other recordings of the song, including those by Tennessee Ernie Ford, Burl Ives, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians and Parker himself.
"It was an explosion beyond anyone's comprehension," Parker recalled decades later. "The power of television, which was still new, was demonstrated for the first time."
Even Disney was taken by surprise.
"We had no idea what was going to happen to 'Crockett,' " he later said. "Why, by the time the first show finally got on the air, we were already shooting the third one and calmly killing Davy off at the Alamo. It became one of the biggest overnight hits in TV history, and there we were with just three films and a dead hero."
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