AL GREEN

“People Get Ready”

THE BOX TOPS

“Cry Like a Baby”

1960s

Alex Chilton was never really cut out to be a pop star.

SOUL STIRRERS

“Lord, Remember Me”

1970s

AL GREEN

“Jesus is Waiting”

1970s

DIXIE HUMMINGBIRDS

“Christian Automobile”

Newport 1966

TAV FALCO - PANTHER BURNS

“Money Talks” & “Tina the Go-Go Queen”

Sugar Ditch Revisited EP

(Memphis 1985)

Tav Falco hopelessly blurs the line between conceptual artist and authentic bluesman. I honestly believes he doesn’t know the difference between “real” and “fake.”

Panther Burns was best known in the early ’80s as the band where Alex Chilton was hiding. Depending on your point of view, 1981’s Behind the Magnolia Curtain was either a brilliant deconstruction or completely disorganized. “LX” was a tiny, blurry photo on the album sleeve and, by 1984, he was rumored to be limiting personal appearances to a job either sweeping floors or doing the dishes at Jimmy’s in New Orleans.

Someone (read “me”) got the idea to invite Panther Burns to play the WHRB college radio benefit at the Rat in early 1984. Tav assured us that Alex was on board and would make the trip north for the show. This was to be Alex Chilton’s first Boston live appearance since….well, maybe since the Box Tops.

Tav arrives day of show with Jimmy Ripp in tow. This should have been an impressive addition to the Panther Burns. Jimmy was a world-class guitarist who was playing with Tom Verlaine and later earned some notoriety in Mick Jagger’s solo band. In fact, it was a disaster since the show had been advertised as “Tav Falco’s Panther Burns with ALEX CHILTON” with Alex’s name in enormous type in the Boston Phoenix.

Word got around and maybe a dozen people showed up for the gig. Crass, who booked the Rat, cut the guarantee in half and there was certainly no benefit cash for the radio station.

Tav was completely unfazed by all of this. I’ve always thought of him as the kind of nineteenth-century charlatan who would have performed miracles for the crowned heads of Europe. Everything he said would be a complete fabrication, but it wouldn’t matter as long as Tav convinced himself of whatever story he was selling that week.

We took Tav & Jimmy back to our dorms because they didn’t really have a place to stay. Through it all, Tav seemed to focus on the fact that he’d been booked by “Harvard,” as if that was institutional validation of his art project. If the average college radio station has only a marginal relationship with its school, multiply that by a million to understand how little WHRB had to do with Harvard University.

We did get a story about how Tav and Jim Dickinson broke into a Memphis studio (American?) and liberated sacred, unreleased Sir Mack Rice demos. Mack once had a hit with “Mustang Sally” but tales of his unreliability dwarfed anything Alex had yet inspired.

Tav promised that the songs were so great that they’d change the course of history.

The songs surfaced a year later on the Sugar Ditch Revisited EP, produced by James Luther Dickinson and featuring both Alex Chilton and the Memphis Horns.

Tav’s got only a passing acquaintance with the pocket and the amazing thing here is how the musicians adapt to his curious phrasing. It’s the Na-Na’s in “Tina the Go-Go Queen” that best explain it; Tav’s all over the place and his clumsiness manages to convey all the sweat and grease and diminished expectations that show up in all the best Memphis music.

It’s not very professional, but it’s very, very deep.

Mack Rice eventually recorded “Money Talks” on 2000’s This is What I Do, produced by Jon Tiven in a thoroughly polished and incredibly boring fashion.

• Download: “Money Talks”
• Download: “Tina the Go-Go Queen”

(New Rose Records ROSE 73)

POPS STAPLES

“Nobody’s Fault But Mine”

1970s

JAMES CARR

“You Got My Mind Messed Up”

Late 1980s Live Performance

I have no idea where this was filmed but I would guess it’s a late 80s performance, based on the outstanding yellow ensemble worn by guitarist Teenie Hodges (who also played on all the Hi Records Al Green sessions and Cat Power’s The Greatest album). And that’s definitely the Memphis Horns back there.

James Carr never had the hits, suffered from mental illness throughout the 70s & 80s and didn’t live long enough to get recognized as the greatest Southern soul singer.

But he is.

THE SOUL STIRRERS

“Listen to the Angels Sing”

1963

BILLIE DAVIS

“Whatcha Gonna Do”

(Pop Gear - 1965)

Everything I know about Billie Davis: she was injured in a car accident alongside Jet Harris of The Shadows in 1962. He was married, she was 17 and the British press freaked out enough to ruin both their careers.

This clip from the Pop Gear film must be an attempted comeback single.

She’s fierce and we’ve been deprived. I don’t think she ever had a record released in the U.S.