Song 314: This week the playlist is a good place to find The Letter by The Box Tops, written by Wayne Carson Thompson. In the summer before my junior year at HS, 49 years ago, I got up early one Saturday morning to go on a hiking trip with other members of my church youth group, and though our parents were still trying to convince us that the rock and roll we listened to was the devil’s music, we always wanted to hear it whenever we could, so even though one of the parents was driving the car I rode in, we youngsters made sure the radio was tuned to the rock station. Somewhere along the road trip going through the Catskills, this song, which was then rising on the charts, came out of the speaker. As good as the single had already sounded to me, it sounded even better at that moment, moving along the two-lane blacktop through beautiful country on a perfect sunny summer day. I also liked the fact that, at a point where my own 16th birthday was only a few weeks away, the lead singer on this top hit record was 16 at the time, which encouraged the idea in my mind that my own band could likewise achieve the kind of fame that The Box Tops had, with young age not being an impediment to success. The Initials never did take off the way The Box Tops did, but then, we didn’t start out by demanding a ticket for an aer-o-plane, and perhaps we should have.
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