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Chris Bell was a singer, songwriter and guitarist born on January 25, 1951 in Memphis, Tennessee. Along with Alex Chilton, he led the power pop band Big Star, who recorded during the early 1970s. Chris Bell left the group after their first album, #1 Record, but contributed some music and lyrics to their second LP, 1974's Radio City. He recorded as a solo artist in the 1970s; these recordings, including "I Am the Cosmos," "I Got Kinda Lost" and "You and Your Sister" (the last a duet with Chilton) remained unreleased until 1992's I Am the Cosmos. He died on December 27, 1978, in an automobile accident in Memphis.
Big Star was originally the brainchild of Bell, who started the group with friends Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens, at first using the names "Icewater" and "Rock City" and eventually settling on the name "Big Star." Chilton was asked to join several months after the group had started performing. Bell and Chilton wrote most of the band's tunes, with occasional contributions from Hummel and Stephens. Bell was even more of a musical Anglophile than Chilton, whose subsequent career has seen him turn toward soul music, country, punk rock (producing The Cramps), R&B, and European pop.
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