The Importance Of Charlie Watts

It's strange to find when a musician dies that people begin to remember the good things or songs that made them big.  Charlie Watts' passing is the big death of 2021.  As I continue to remembrance his contributions to rock and roll, I never realized how he influenced me.  He was a great drummer with the basics of drum kits and a sharp timing to the beat to tie the Stones together.   He could make the filler song something to remember. and with a great song, he turns it into a classic.  He never did drums solos, didn't have to.  He did things his own way, even cold cocking Mick Jagger in a 1984 early wake up call that didn't suit Charlie well.  A USA story gives great insight into the world of Charlie Watts, and his thoughts do mirror mine.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/08/24/charlie-watts-rolling-stones-drummer-mick-jagger/5577698001/

So as I'm trying to wake up to greet the world, in the back of my mind I'm trying to figure what would be the best songs to remember Charlie by. On Ronnie Wood's Slide On This, Charlie made Show Me sound like The Stones, With Howling Wolf London Sessions, Charlie took the blues beats of Earl Phillips and Fred Below and made the Wolf sound at home.   

I know there's others out there that have their own fave songs from Charlie's simple but effective drum playing.  But here's a few that showed why Charie ranks with the best, even if he didn't think he was.  But we know better right?

1)   Street Fighting Man-Rumors have it that Charlie played a toy drum set on this song, which came out in 1968.  Their best political number ever.

 

"Street Fighting Man" was recorded on Keith's cassette with a 1930s toy drum kit called a London Jazz Kit Set, which I bought in an antiques shop, and which I've still got at home. It came in a little suitcase, and there were wire brackets you put the drums in; they were like small tambourines with no jangles ... The snare drum was fantastic because it had a really thin skin with a snare right underneath, but only two strands of gut ... Keith loved playing with the early cassette machines because they would overload, and when they overload they sounded fantastic, although you weren't meant to do that. We usually played in one of the bedrooms on tour. Keith would be sitting on a cushion playing a guitar and the tiny kit was a way of getting close to him. The drums were really loud compared to the acoustic guitar and the pitch of them would go right through the sound. You'd always have a great backbeat"  Charlie Watts

2)   Emotional Rescue (1980)  Why the hell would I include a song like this in the top ten best Watts beats? Because Charlie lays down a instant groove with punctual accents on the one count.  In other songs such as Summer Romance and Where The Boys All Go, he actually makes the Stones sound like punk rock. Emotional Rescue might signal the beginning of the Stones period of subpar music but do not blame the drummer.  Anybody less and this would be a one star album.

3)   Get Off My Cloud (1964)  This one is tough to do.  The way that Charlie does the cha cha beat with a drum roll throughout the song is trying to do Neil Peart's complex beats. This song is an exercise in trying to duplicate the song in Watts' style the whole way through.

4)  19th Nervous Breakdown- How can anybody duplicate that thundering tom roll and cymbal crashes and make it look so simple?  

5)  Midnight Rambler.  The dirty Stones at their creative peak?  Could be, but Watts throws four different beat patterns in this song, a shuffle at the beginning and a straight rock beat before the pause and a call n response before speeding up the beat at the end.  

6)  Get Your Ya Yas Out-This is the record that shows the greatness of Charlie.  I always thought the drumming on this version of Sympathy For The Devil is one of the best beats ever.  Charlie had an interesting set up of one high hat on one side and two cymbals on the other side.  He didn't need no double bass and twenty cymbal lineup whatsoever.

7)  Hot Stuff-Black And Blue is an album that you love or hate, same as Dirty Work.  I thought the album was quite lazy, but Charlie lays down a Jamaican funky that makes a forgettable song worth hearing.    Another song to consider is Undercover Of The Night, perhaps the only memorable song off the Undercover album. Hot Stuff needed a edit (which came from the Sucking In the 70s comp) 

8.   What A Woman!-From Howling Wolf's London Sessions, to which Wolf got the elite to play on his album (Clapton, Winwood, Wyman, Watts).  Watts studied the style of the Chicago blues drummer and interpreted in his own way.  Which is why out of all the Chess artists that ventured over the pond to London, Wolf's album is the most remembered.

9)   Bitch (Sticky Fingers)  There's plenty to choose from Sticky Fingers for the ultimate Charlie beats (Moonlight Mile, Sway, Can't You Hear Me Knocking), but I'll go with the B side to Brown Sugar.  As if Charlie trying to play Keith Richard's riff on drums. 

10)   The Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man-It would be just as easy to put down I Can't Get No Satisfaction, but this B side is Watts at his most swinging best.  It fits the mood of Jagger's sarcastic vocals and Richard's Fannie Mae riff.

It's hard to pick the best ten.  The only time Charlie ever did a solo would be the end of Dandelion.  But he was the original drumming machine with songs like Jumping Jack Flash, Satisfaction. Shattered and many many others.   

So long Charlie, we'll be hearing you when we put another Stones record on.

https://www.spin.com/2021/08/charlie-watts-rolling-stones-best-songs/?fbclid=IwAR1ZmGRtL0X0iaDI5RIeMFSUu2DtDiRPhXJFNtjR4UzgGtyTTtvGkpjzjpg