[4] A local band recruited the teenaged Chilton in 1966 to be their lead singer after learning of the popularity of his vocal performance at a talent show at Memphis's Central High School.

After deciding against enrolling as a student at Memphis State University,[citation needed] Chilton began performing as a solo artist, maintaining a working relationship with Penn for demos.

Chilton and Bell co-wrote "In the Street" for Big Star's first album #1 Record, a track later covered by Cheap Trick and used as the theme song of the sitcom That '70s Show.

After moving back to Memphis in April 1978,[4] Chilton produced music by the Cramps that appeared on the group's Gravest Hits EP and Songs the Lord Taught Us LP.

Beginning in 1979 Chilton also co-founded, played guitar with, and produced some albums for Tav Falco's Panther Burns, which began as an offbeat rock-and-roll group deconstructing blues, country, and rockabilly music.

Chilton spent most of 1980 and 1981 living in Memphis and staying off the road,[4] except for a trip to London in May 1980 to play two shows with bassist Matthew Seligman and drummer Morris Windsor of the Soft Boys, and guitarist Knox of the Vibrators.

His new association with New Orleans jazz musicians (including bassist René Coman) marked a period in which he began playing guitar in a less raucous style and moved toward a cooler, more restrained approach, as heard in Panther Burns's 1984 Sugar Ditch Revisited album, produced by Jim Dickinson.

[4] After the cover-band job ended, Chilton contacted a booking agent recommended to him by the dB's drummer Will Rigby, and soon had a handful of club gigs lined up in New York, New Jersey, and Boston for the fall of 1984.

[4] He ended the album with a cover of "Raunchy", his instrumental salute to Sun Records guitarist Sid Manker, a friend of his father from whom he'd once taken a guitar lesson; this song was also a standard in his early Panther Burns repertoire.

While his solo career was continuing to pick up momentum, Chilton was also singing Box Tops songs during 1987 with a package tour of 1960s artists including Peter Noone, Ronnie Spector, and ?

Black List continued to display his eclecticism, containing covers of Ronny & the Daytonas' "Little GTO", Furry Lewis's "I Will Turn Your Money Green", and Charlie Rich's country-pop arrangement of Frank Sinatra's "Nice and Easy".

Touring and recording as a solo artist from the late 1980s through the 1990s with bassists Mike Maffei,[9] John McClure,[10] and Ron Easley, and with drummers Doug Garrison and, from 1993 on, Richard Dworkin (who also played for many years with the jazz group the Microscopic Septet), Chilton gained a reputation for his eclectic taste in song covers, guitar work, and laconic stage presence.

"[9] In 1990 and 1991, Chilton took time off from touring and recording to live during the warm months in a tent on his land in rural Tennessee[11] and work on clearing trees and framing his planned house, a project he was never to complete.

[12] Chilton's final two studio albums featured his band and continued his pattern of mixing together songs from pop, soul, blues, gospel, R&B, swing, and country music.

A Man Called Destruction (1995), like High Priest, featured a mix of covers and originals and an expanded band that included horns, keyboards, and occasional backup singers, and was released in the U.S. on the relaunched Ardent Records label.

Chilton released one more album as a solo artist during his lifetime, the 2004 CD Live in Anvers, which featured him playing a show in Belgium with a pick-up band of European musicians.

Chilton reformed Big Star in 1993 with a lineup that included original drummer Jody Stephens[13] and two members of the Posies: Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow.

In 1998, the Alex Chilton/Chris Bell song "In the Street" (from the first Big Star album) was chosen as the theme music for the U.S. television series That '70s Show at the suggestion of Chilton's friend and occasional touring partner Ben Vaughn.

In 1995, Chilton purchased a 19th-century center-hall cottage in the Tremé neighborhood for $13,000, and he enjoyed working on his house and practicing Scott Joplin rags on his piano (an instrument he later lost in Hurricane Katrina).

[23][24] He had been scheduled to play a concert with Big Star at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, on March 20; the show instead took place as a tribute to Chilton, with guests Curt Kirkwood, Chris Stamey, M. Ward, Mike Mills, John Doe, Sondre Lerche, Chuck Prophet, Evan Dando, the Watson Twins, and original member Andy Hummel (who died four months later) joining the other members of Big Star.

[25] Chilton was honored with a star on the outside mural of the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue,[26] recognizing performers that have played sold-out shows or have otherwise demonstrated a major contribution to the culture at the iconic venue.