It often comes a bit of a surprise to fans of Alex Chilton when they hear the Box Tops and Big Star singer cited Chet Baker as the biggest influence on him. When Chilton was only seven years old he immersed himself in the Chet Baker Sings album. Baker was a trumpet player and the vocal album was a controversial but popular album when it was released in 1954. Alex’s father Sidney Chilton was a jazz trumpeter and piano player and he had a large record library that the young Chilton would explore.
Alex heard the Chet Baker Sings album in 1957 when the family was living in a post war Memphis suburb on a street called Robin Hood Lane. Tragedy struck the Chilton family that year when his older brother Reid tragically died in a freak drowning accident. Baker’s haunting delivery gave some cold comfort to a kid who was suddenly adrift without the older brother he revered. In an effort to get beyond the tragedy, the family moved away from Robin Hood Lane into a large Victorian in Midtown Memphis an area that had fallen on hard times as the suburbs prospered. Sid and Mary remade themselves into patrons of the arts, turning their home into a gallery/salon where musicians came to play, potters and painters displayed their wares in the first floor hall and left of center political views were discussed. The photographer William Eggelston set up a darkroom in a backyard building. Sydney began playing music again and there was no looking back to the traditional suburban lifestyle of Sherwood Forest and Robinhood Lane.
In the last 15 years of his life Alex Chilton re-visited a lot of the songs he heard in the 1950s, especially doing his own versions of standards, much like his father had played and shared with him. Songs From Robin Hood Lane, which is being released February 8 by Bar/None, collects four previously un-released performances as well as rare tracks and recordings long out of print. This title is being released with From Memphis To New Orleans, the best of Chilton’s 80s recordings for labels like Big Time and New Rose – raw and slyly subversive.
Today Glide is excited to premiere “Save Your Love For Me,” a previously unreleased recording that will be featured on the release of the Songs From Robin Hood Lane collection. True to the story upbringing it, the song seems to find Chilton getting playfully nostalgic for the music of the 50s. The song may be a standard, but Chilton puts his own delightfully offbeat touch on it with his own vocal cadence and a jazzy, lounge-like soundtrack that showcases saxophone and piano for a short and sweet little number. Ultimately the song is a candid and fascinating look at a musician whose body of work has been pored over by music nerds and power pop obsessives for decades.
LISTEN:
Photo credit: Anna Lee Van Kleef & Arpels
