"The Letter" is a song written by Wayne Carson Thompson
which was a #1 hit in 1967 for the Box Tops.
The track was recorded at American Sound Studio in Memphis
in a session produced by Dan Penn. Previously a musician and
engineer at FAME Studios, Penn had been hired as production
assistant to American Sound's owner Chips Moman, who Penn felt
was shutting him out as a collaborator. Penn recalls: "Finally,
I just told [Moman]...'Look, we can't produce together...I
think I can produce records [alone]...But I do need somebody to
cut. Give me the worst one you got'." Moman suggested Penn
record a local five man outfit who had been pitched to him by
disc jockey Ray Banks (Penn - "Chips was just graspin'. He'd
never heard [the group]") and also passed on to Penn a demo
tape of songs cut by his friend Wayne Carson Thompson which
included "The Letter". Thompson's father dabbled in songwriting
and would suggest ideas to his son, who had written "The
Letter" after his father had suggested: "Give me a ticket for
an aeroplane" as a potential opening line for a song. Penn met
with some of the members of the group - who were eventually
dubbed the Box Tops - "and told them to pick anything they
wanted from this tape [by Thompson], but make sure that we do
'The Letter'" which Penn considered the one outstanding
song.
The session for "The Letter" began at 10 o'clock on a
Saturday morning and took over thirty takes wrapping at either
three or five o'clock that afternoon. Penn met Box Tops'
vocalist Alex Chilton for the first time at the session: "I
coached him a little...told him to say 'aer-o-plane", told him
to get a little gruff, and I didn't have to say anything else
to him". (Composer Thompson, who says he played guitar at the
session, was thrown by Chilton's vocal, having imagined the
song being sung in a higher key.) Penn - "[Chilton] picked it
up exactly as I had in mind, maybe even better. I hadn't even
paid any attention to how good he sang because I was busy
trying to put the band together...I had a bunch of greenhorns
who'd never cut a record, including me...I borrowed everything
form Wayne Thompson's original demo - drums, bass, guitar. I
added an organ with an 'I'm a Believer' lick." Penn added the
sound of an airplane take-off to the track by recording off of
a special effects record played in an office adjacent to the
recording studio. When the track was previewed for Chips Moman
he suggested the take-off sounds be excised, to which Penn
responded: "Give me that razor blade right there...[and] I'll
cut this damn tape up! The airplane stays on it, or we don't
have a record."
Augmented with strings and horns (arranged by Mike Leach),
the track was picked up by Larry Uttal of Bell Records who
released it on the subsidiary Mala label in July 1967 to reach
#1 that September. Retaining the #1 position for a total of
four weeks, "The Letter" was ranked as the #1 hit of 1967. The
track also gave the Box Tops an international hit charting in
Australia (#4 for six weeks), Austria (#9), Belgium (Flemish
Region) (#2), Chile (#1), Denmark (#7)France (#2), Germany
(#5), Greece (#2 Foreign Release), Ireland (#11), Israel (#1),
Malaysia (#4), New Zealand (#4), the Netherlands (#3) Norway
(#1), Poland (#1),South Africa (#4), Spain (#9) and Sweden
(#2). The Box Tops also reached #5 in the UK, besting a cover
by the Mindbenders which reached #42.
In November 1968 the Arbors recorded an easy listening style
version of "The Letter" in a session at Record Plant Studios in
New York City produced by Roy Cicala and Lori Burton; the
session was arranged and conducted by Joe Scott. Released on
CBS Records Date label, the track reached #20 in the spring of
1969, also ranking at #26 on the Easy Listening charts and #24
in Canada.
"The Letter" returned to the U.S. Top Ten in June of 1970
via a single release of Joe Cocker's blues-rock reinvention of
the song as featured on the
Mad Dogs and Englishmenlive album recorded that March at
the Fillmore East. Cocker's revival was also a chart item in
Australia (#27), Canada (#7), France (#48), the Netherlands
(#27) and the UK (#39).
In 1978 "The Letter" became a disco hit for Deborah
Washington reaching #13 on the dance chart in tandem with
Washington's remakes of "Standing in the Shadows of Love" and
"Fire" - all three tracks were taken from Washington's
Any Way You Want Italbum. Amii Stewart also recorded a
disco version of "The Letter" which was released on a single
with "Paradise Bird" to become a double sided chart entry in
the UK at #39 in 1980. Stewart's "The Letter" also reached #31
in France, becoming the fourth version of the song to appear on
the French charts, following the Box Tops and Joe Cocker
versions and also a translated version by Herbert Léonard
entitled "Une Lettre" which charted December 1967 - January
1968 with a #82 peak.
Ranked by
Rolling Stoneat #363 on the magazine's list of the 500
Greatest Songs of All Time, "The Letter" was reported in July
1979 to have been recorded in over 200 different versions.
Among the artists who have recorded the song are Bachman-Turner
Overdrive, the Beach Boys, Eva Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy, Classics
IV, Bobby Darin, John Davidson, Don Fardon, Al Green, Ellie
Greenwich, Sonny James, Robert Knight, Brenda Lee, Trini Lopez,
Barbara Mandrell, Bob Marley and the Wailers did a cover
re-named "give me a ticket" on the album "Selassie is the
Chapel" Melanie, the Moments, Lou Rawls, Johnny Rivers and
Dionne Warwick. In 1987 David Kolin as "Dr. Dave" had a 12-inch
single release of "Vanna Pick Me a Letter" which remade "The
Letter" substituting new lyrics by Kolin which made the
narrator a contestant on
Wheel of Fortune.