Big Star ‘Best Of’ Collection Out in June

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Stax Records has announced the June 16 release of The Best of Big Star, a new 16-track compilation spanning all three of the influential band’s LPs (1972’s #1 Record, 1974’s Radio City and Third, released after the group disbanded, in the late ’70s). The collection features rare edits of some of the Memphis band’s most popular songs. Liner notes from Grammy-winning writer and director Robert Gordon, plus an introduction by the sole surviving Big Star member, drummer Jody Stephens, round out the package. The Best of Big Star will be available as a 2-LP, 45 rpm album housed in a gatefold jacket, with lacquers cut at Ardent Studios and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Memphis Record Pressing. The title will also be available digitally and on CD.

The Best of Big Star is being released by Stax via Concord Music Group and its catalog division, Craft Recordings. The release is part of the ongoing, year-long initiative celebrating Stax Records’ 60th anniversary celebration. The cross-label collaboration between Concord Music Group and Rhino Entertainment will highlight the hits, deep cuts and rare tracks from the Memphis label’s heyday of the ’60s and ’70s.

Formed in 1971 by singer/songwriters Alex Chilton (1950-2010) and Chris Bell (1951-1978), drummer Jody Stephens (b. 1952) and bassist Andy Hummel (1951-2010), the group, according to a press release, “is now considered to be one of the most influential bands in modern music, having inspired some of the biggest alt-rock artists of the ’80s, ’90s and beyond. An underground core of fanatical enthusiasts kept the fire burning. The Replacements famously released ‘Alex Chilton,’ a song that paid tribute to Big Star’s songwriting genius. R.E.M.’s Peter Buck said, ‘Big Star served as a Rosetta Stone for a whole generation of musicians.’”