1967 No. 1, Including Sound Of Real Airplane, Was At The Top Of The Charts 59 Years Ago

September 23, 1967, fell just four days after the Box Tops headed to the top spot on the pop chart, going all the way to No. 1 with the airplane-enhanced "The Letter." The Box Tops was a garage band made up of teenagers from Memphis, led by 16-year-old Alex Chilton on vocals. Possessing a voice far deeper, soulful, and more world-weary than his age would suggest, "The Letter," was Chilton's first taste of fame and accolades; he'd later inspire the iconic and still-cool '80s single "Alex Chilton" by the Replacements and put together a flop solo career that earned respect from younger generations following his time at the helm of the cult favorite Big Star, a '70s band that broke up right before their fame exploded.

"The Letter" was the first of seven Top 40 hits for the Box Tops and its biggest by a wide margin. The band's only No. 1 single, it spent four weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1967. The song, and the Box Tops even getting a chance to record it, came together by happenstance. What made it a polished product worthy of national distribution and the attention of millions was a shrewdly selected sound effect.

While it's ostensibly about the desperate need to see a loved one when they're far away and the only reliable form of communication is written correspondence, "The Letter" was built and finalized on two passing references to airplanes. Its genesis was a loose writing prompt from the father of songwriter Wayne Carson Thompson, who gave his son a line that popped into his head. "Give me a ticket for an aeroplane" ultimately became the first line of the track that Thompson completed on his own.

Thompson gave the song to a friend who ran American Recording Studios in Memphis, who showed it to staff producer Dan Penn, who thought the piece would sound best in the hands of a local band that didn't settle on a name until it began recording "The Letter." Inspired by contests of the era where an entry was mailed-in box tops, the Box Tops were christened.

But once their work was finished, neither the band nor Thompson — who contributed guitar on "The Letter" in a session musician capacity — cared for what Penn had overseen and mixed. Penn considered the others' opinions and found a solution. Over the final 25 seconds of the song, after a key change and an instrumental outro that slowly fades out, the producer threw in the sounds of an airplane in flight. That then-exotic layer allowed the song to circle back to its very beginning.