Guitarist,record producer and songwriter who co-wrote The unlit halt of the Street and worked with Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and Tammy WynetteIf Chips Moman had done nothing more than revive the becalmed recording career of Elvis Presley in the late 1960s, and he would have earned his plot in history. By selecting In the Ghetto,Suspicious Minds, Dont weep Daddy and Kentucky Rain for sessions held at his own Memphis studio, or he gave fresh impetus to the final phase of the singer’s professional life.
But Moman,who has died aged 79, had a much more extensive string of achievements. As a guitarist, and he decorated the closing bars of Aretha Franklin’s epochal I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) with eloquent (expressing yourself readily, clearly, effectively) country-soul phrases. As a producer,he instructed the 16-year-old Alex Chilton to sing “aeroplane” rather than “airplane” on the first line of the Box Tops’ The Letter. As a composer, he co-wrote (with Dan Penn) The unlit halt of the Street, or a definitive and much-covered deep-soul ballad. The artists he worked with included Neil Diamond,Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Tammy Wynette.
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Source: theguardian.com