"The Letter" was written by Wayne Carson, credited as Wayne Carson Thompson, and was first recorded by the American rock band The Box Tops in July and November 1967 at American Sound Studio in Memphis. Produced by Chips Moman, with an arrangement by Mike Leech and an airplane sound effect added by Dan Penn, the record features the lead vocal of Alex Chilton, then sixteen, in a blue-eyed soul style. Released by Mala Records, a Bell Records subsidiary, as a single with "Happy Times" on the B-side, and taken from the group's debut album The Letter / Neon Rainbow (1967), it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks from 23 September 1967, and also topped the charts in Canada, Norway and Belgium. It sold more than a million copies, earned RIAA gold certification, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2011. Joe Cocker's 1970 cover became his first US top ten single, and later versions by Robert Knight, Lou Rawls, Classics IV, Al Green, Brenda Lee and Dionne Warwick followed. The song is categorised as pop rock and blue-eyed soul, and it is included in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs.
