Mrs. Chilton's Potato Salad

Big Star began in February 1971, when Alex Chilton and Chris Bell bumped into each other at Ardent Studios and collaborated on an impromptu recording of “Watch the Sunrise.” The band’s original lineup coalesced around Chilton (guitar, vocals), Bell (guitar, vocals), Andy Hummel (bass), and Jody Stephens (drums). Chilton’s parents ran an art gallery out of the ground floor of the family home at 145 N. Montgomery, in Midtown Memphis. In spring 1971, the new band started practicing in a vacant room in the big Victorian house.

The room had sofas and a grand piano. Track lighting was installed on the ceiling to illuminate the selection of contemporary and modern paintings that adorned the walls. Chilton wore tight-fitting Christmas sweaters from Grandma. These were rock’n’rollers who still ate supper with their families. That is, unless Mrs. Chilton was cooking, in which case the boys might stay over. “Mrs. Chilton used to make the world’s best potato salad,” Andy Hummel remembers, in Rob Jovanovic's book. “Her beef brisket was legendary!”

The freewheeling Chilton had only recently returned to Memphis after enjoying a lucrative, globetrotting adolescence as leader of the million-selling teen group The Box Tops. Bell and Hummel, on the other hand, were still living every kid's nightmare: rooming with their parents and attending The University of Memphis. The above footage was shot on borrowed equipment by Bell and Hummel, who were looking for easy points on a project for their college cinematography class.

What is shown here is only sections of what was originally planned as a 15-minute promotional film that would document the making of the band’s debut, #1 Record. Certain images were intended to be synchronized with songs from the album’s first side. For example, shots of young couples flirting after school would coincide with “Thirteen,” while a mini-drama about Chilton’s troubles with the local draft board would coincide with him fleeing the selective service office to the tune of “The Ballad of El Goodo”: “And there ain’t no one going to turn me round…”

This trailer is drawn from the DVD that came with Oxford American’s annual “Best of the South" issue. For unknown reasons, the footage is paired with “Thank You Friends,” a song recorded long after the living room practice space was vacated and Bell and Hummel left the band. Maybe it’s just as well. “Thank You Friends” is out of place on the skewed, desolate plain of Sisters Lovers. Its compact pop craftsmanship and cracking guitar solo belong to the band that played on N. Montgomery. The song’s sincere refrain is directed at no one specifically but in it one can read a fond farewell from Chilton to Bell, whose descent into drugs and madness culminated with the motorcycle accident that took his life on December 27th, 1978, just a few months after the release of Sisters Lovers.