Charlie Watts

Rolling Stones: Hackney Diamonds (2CD)

by Doug Collette
March 2, 2024

The Rolling Stones have taken some risks of greater and lesser proportion over the course of their sixty-plus- year career, but perhaps no gamble is so great as the decision by the surviving members of the band to continue on after the passing of drummer Charlie Watts. With the blessing of their co-founder in place for the presence of musician/producer Steve Jordan at the kit, the self-appointed 'greatest rock and roll band in the world' carried on with ...

Charlie Watts: Jazz Anthology

by Pedro Keul
August 30, 2023

Charlie Watts left this world in 2021, at age 80, and many only know him as the legendary Rolling Stones drummer of six decades. Lesser known was his passion for jazz--that he expressed every chance he could--recording ten albums as a leader. This extensive retrospective released in 2023 presents 27 themes recorded in a 20 year span, starting in 1986, in several jazz formats (big band, quartet, quintet and tentet), alongside musicians including double-bassist Dave Green, drummer Jim Keltner, and ...

Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts

by Doug Collette
October 8, 2022

Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts Paul Sexton 368 Pages ISBN: # 978-0063276581 Harper Collins 2022 The infectious sing-song quality of Paul Sexton's prose for the biography of the late Charlie Watts may well surprise those music lovers who've read his rather bland liner notes for Rolling Stones archive titles like Voodoo Lounge Uncut (Eagle Vision, 2018) and A Bigger Bang: Live ...

The Rolling Stones: El Mocambo 1977

by Doug Collette
June 4, 2022

The die-cut design of the double-CD cover for the Rolling Stones' El Mocambo 1977 mitigates at least to some degree the borderline amateurish cover art. But reversing the pink and blue covers of the twenty-page booklet inside the dual-fold package achieves a greater end than simply altering the simplistic cosmetics; its extraction also reveals a Paul Sexton essay with information more than a little pertinent to the music as well as photos of the Toronto appearance that might better have ...

Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters

by Doug Collette
November 2, 2019

Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters Mike Edison 264 pages ISBN: #978-1493047734 Backbeat Books 2019 Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters is a schizophrenic piece of work. But, as befits a book wherein the main title and subtitle could be transposed with no loss of meaning, the schism in is worth enduring because this work of Mike Edison's is ultimately so edifying. At a glance and upon ...

Charlie Watts Meets the Danish Radio Big Band

by Nenad Georgievski
April 3, 2017

A film director once said that you can't make a great film with a weak script. The same goes for bands of any kind be it jazz or rock or any kind. You can't have a great band without a great drummer. A band can get by with an average bassist or guitarist, but not with an average drummer. It's the heartbeat of any band. One of the things that has made the band Rolling Stones what they are is ...

Charlie Watts (1941-2021)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
August 27, 2021

In most photos of the Rolling Stones, Charlie Watts always looked like the band's accountant. Unlike Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Bill Wyman, he didn't seem to fit in nor did it appear in photos that he wanted to. And in many ways he didn't. Watts, at the tail end of the 1950s, was on his way to a jazz career, or so he hoped. It didn't take long to realize that jazz was drying up around him. ...
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Charlie Watts talks jazz, Stones plans

Source: Michael Ricci
July 9, 2012

Even though he's played in the same rock 'n' roll band for nearly 50 years, Charlie Watts still prefers playing jazz. The Rolling Stones drummer learned how to play it by imitating his favorite jazz players as a teenager. So during his breaks with the Stones, Watts has played jazz, not rock, and that legacy continues with his latest venture, The A, B, C, and D of Boogie Woogie. The quartet recently released “Live in Paris" from one of their ...
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They Got the Short End of the (Drum) Stick

Source: All About Jazz
July 8, 2009

Rock has a history of selling drummers short. Four others overlooked:

Charlie Watts

One of the greatest “feel" drummers in rock, grounded The Rolling Stones with a world-class backbeat and swung with a jazz-informed groove. Get Off of My Cloud, Honky Tonk Women and Satisfaction succeed, in large part, thanks to signature beats conjured by Watts.

Hal Blaine

Blaine laid the foundation for the soundtrack of the '60s in Los Angeles studios with The Beach Boys, the Mamas and the ...
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