Fans of Big Star and the band’s two chief songwriters, Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, are no strangers to Chris Stamey. Of course, as a solo artist, co-founder of the dB’s, member of the Golden Palominos, and producer of artists ranging from Alejandro Escovedo to Le Tigre, Stamey’s career has gone far beyond Memphis. But his involvement with those two key Memphians predated those subsequent accomplishments. After the North Carolina native graduated from New York University in the mid-’70s, he became immersed in the New York scene. By 1977, he’d founded Car Records, which released Chris Bell’s “I Am the Cosmos” single a year later.
This was also a time when Chilton was testing the waters in New York, and he was a fixture at Stamey’s apartment in 1977. Both frequented CBGB’s and took in the wildly innovative music percolating there. Ultimately, Chilton would produce a single by Stamey, “The Summer Sun” b/w “Where the Fun Is,” for Ork Records. And, when Chilton began playing gigs in the city as Alex Chilton and the Cossacks, Stamey played bass.
By then, Chilton had already recorded “She Might Look My Way,” written with Tommy Hoehn, but when there was an opportunity to submit demos to Elektra Records, he and Stamey included a new recording of the song in the batch (using Patti Smith’s drummer at the time, Jay Dee Daugherty, according to Holly George-Warren’s Chilton bio, A Man Called Destruction). Those demos still have not seen the light of day.
Fast forward to nearly a half-century later, and Stamey’s still tight with Big Star, having become the de facto musical director of the Big Star’s Third tribute concerts since they began after Chilton’s death in 2010. Memphis heard the latest core quintet of that project last December at Crosstown Theater, with Stamey’s singing in the group coming the closest to the subtly sardonic delivery of Chilton on the original recordings, even while avoiding any mimicry. When it comes to the delicate balance of personalities that made Big Star tick, Stamey gets it.
It’s quite in keeping with history, then, that Stamey should revisit “She Might Look My Way” now, still remembered fondly by Stamey from his late ’70s time with Chilton. This time around, it features two world-class fellow producers: Mitch Easter (Let’s Active front man and R.E.M. producer) on drums and Terry Manning (Ardent Studios’ producer/engineer/guitarist who worked with the Staples Singers, Led Zeppelin, and ZZ Top) on bass, guitar embellishments, Mellotron flutes, and harmonies.
The audio track and video go hand in hand with Stamey’s newest album, The Great Escape, the first release in decades on his seminal indie label Car Records.