By As we have seen, Wayne Carson’s songwriting career was originally unsuccessful after his move from Colorado to Nashville, Tennessee. Things changed, however, in 1966 when Eddie Arnold recorded “Somebody Like Me” and it became a No. 1 hit on Billboard Magazine’s country music charts.

Several more successes followed in 1967, the greatest of which came from that one sentence Wayne’s father had written for his son years earlier. What he wrote was: “Give me a ticket for an airplane.”

Wayne took that line and created “The Letter,” which became his biggest hit as a solo writer. He pitched it to a producer he knew in Tennessee’s second musical city, Memphis.

The song’s simple story is that the narrator has just received a letter from his ex-girlfriend back home. She wants him back, and he has to get to her as fast as he can! Therefore, he needs an airplane ticket.

The producer recruited a local band to record the song. The story behind the record they produced has become legendary in the music industry. For starters, the band had never recorded a song before. The lead singer was a high school student with a deep, gravelly voice.

The musicians had unknowingly been using a name that another band had recorded under so they had to call themselves something else. One band member suggested in jest that they conduct a contest and have people send in box tops along with proposed names. The producer promptly dubbed the band “The Box Tops.”

The producer then went to a local library, checked out a video with the sound of an airplane taking off, and added that sound to the end of the record.

Wayne Carson didn’t like The Box Tops’ recording of “The Letter” at all! For one thing, “airplane” had become “aero-plane.” He thought the singer’s voice was too raspy, and he hated the airplane sound effects. But the producer held firm and released the song.

And within a few weeks Wayne had changed his mind – as we will see next week.