My Birthday Choice: Jumpin' Jack Flash!

Today is the first day of my holidays, and it's also my birthday (hooray!).

I happen to share my birthday with one Michael Jagger, who is considerably older than me today. Other things I don't share in common with Mick Jagger are being born in London, attending the London School of Economics, and getting a first-class honours degree. And writing hundreds of classic r&b numbers. But I can dance like a chicken impersonating James Brown (or Joe Tex, or Rufus Thomas, according to preference) just as badly! It is slowly dawning on me why my younger self never had much success with the ladies at discos...

Now, rather than pick a random Rolling Stones song from Aftermath or Let It Bleed, which I would enjoy but is not really the point of the blog (its been really hard not to let some of the Soul Britannia posts I've been writing grow into a history of mod bands, which I imagine would not really interest most of you out there!), I had a think about a song that would have a birthday theme and would highlight the r&b basis of the Stones music. There was only one choice to make, and it will get you up and leaping about, like I will be!


The singer today is Thelma Houston. This track is one of the covers featured on album Sunshower, produced by Jimmy Webb (of By The Time I Get To Phoenix fame), who wrote many of the other tracks. I think I may feature some more over the summer!

I have heard a number of unusual comments about this song in the past - that it refers to voodoo; that it refers to Sympathy For The Devil; that it 'isn't' r&b at all. Of these, let's tackle the last first. The argument, amongst mostly white 'rock' fans, is that the chords utilised in the song presage 'rock' music. Keith Richards has commented on the song and agreed that the structure of the song was more ambitious than their earlier r&b covers and compositions, but equally he found it a relief to 'return' to r&b feeling and iconography after their brief psychedelic experiments, and felt it showed growing maturity in their writing and playing. I get the feeling that the Stones themselves would be embarrassed by these 'birth of rock' advocates, who clearly quite misunderstand the r&b group the Stones were always trying to be.

Equally, the 'voodoo' statements seem laboured. Mick and Keith were writing lyrics with the much more common theme of the hard life in mind. What is interesting is how they transform a hard life blues into a story where the obstacles are overcome. More likely is that it simply speaks about the traumas and trials of any troubled childhood, from men who were all fortunate to grow up in caring homes in post-war Britain. The song was written around the time that the tv documentary Cathy Come Home was shown in Britain, showing the appalling treatment that unmarried mothers and their children were forced to put up with at that time, and the scandals of childrens' homes. It caused a prolonged national debate about such matters and child welfare.

Whereas the Stones had played it lacksadaisically and Jagger had sung it with a front of bravado, mimicing the attitude of people who internalise such events, when Thelma sings the song, she brings added power to the song that almost knocks you over, and a heart-rending sense of pain into her voice, making you almost believe that this is personal. Thelma, born Thelma Jackson, would have been able to draw on her memories of her early life in Leland, Mississippi, loved but poor, when her mother supported them by picking cotton, before they made a new life for themselves in Long Beach, California.

To make it clear, I was probably not born in a crossfire hurricane...

Thelma Houston - Jumpin' Jack Flash (from Dunhill/Motown album 'Sunshower' 1969)

Information about Thelma Houston found in All Music Guide by Ed Hogan. Information about Mick Jagger from White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook.

Soul Britannia: It's All Over Now...

It was their most intimidating audience to date.

As they entered the Co-Op Ballroom in Nuneaton, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Ian Stewart did not know what to expect. Tension was high. They set up, were introduced, and began to play their brand of rhythm and blues...

The audience, mostly children from the age of 4 to 10, were not impressed, and proceeded to pummel the Rolling Stones continuously with cream cakes until they left the stage.

"They did not appreciate r&b", said Bill Wyman sadly, looking back on that ordeal.

For the fledgeling r&b band, success and recognition was not coming easy. It was all very well to play at The Marquee on the nights when Blues Incorporated were unavailable, but other venues and appreciative audiences were still very thin on the ground.

But, in 1963, while the Stones searched for gigs and practiced being jammy dodgers, the r&b scene that had grown around the clubs of London was now spreading. The Ealing Club grew from 100 members the first week to 200 memebers the next, to over 800 by the end of 1962, some having wandered to its doors in search of the blues from as far away as Scotland. By 1964, most of the clubs of Wardour Street and West London had gone over to featuring r&b over modern jazz. The Stones finally found a home away from the Marquee, this time in Richmond, at the Crawdaddy Club. Richmond could boast a number of other venues turning to r&b, such as the Eel Pie Hotel, The Station Hotel, The Imperial, and L’Auberge. Approximately 10,000 people were likely to enter the doors of these London clubs alone in a typical week to pick up the r&b sounds.

And the trend had spread outside the capital. By late 1963, rhythm & blues clubs were forming all over: from St Andrew's Hall in Norwich, the Olympia in Reading, the R&B Club in Andover, the Rhythm & Blues Club at the Maritime Hotel in Belfast, and the Downbeat Club and Club A-G0-Go in Newcastle, to the Starlight Rooms in Brighton. It must be said, however, that while now these clubs were bringing r&b closer to British youth, they are all situated in ports, near American bases or close to London.

Rhythm and blues was going to be the new musical wave, then, after all. It had not been inevitable, or even likely. But for a number of reasons, r&b now appealed. It is often suggested that this was simply because Britain was still haunted by the spectre of World War II, and had a yearning for the trappings of America. Yet as my dad told me recently, there had been a number of reasons why rock and roll had become adulterated and tamed in its British version by the early 60s:

"You have to remember, for a lot of people, even young people, rock and roll had been connected with the Teds. Many ordinary people thought they were violent, dangerous thugs. They were outcasts, troublemakers from the working class [so people assumed]... So a lot of people wanted nothing to do with anything these troublemakers enjoyed. In any given week, at least half of the Hit parade would be filled up with ballads and popular tunes by people like Alma Cogan. That's what most people wanted to hear, right up to the mid Sixties."

In fact, Britain benefitted from a veneer of prosperity and more spending power in people's pocket, largely due to the removal of rationing and a series of canny devaluations by the MacMillan government during the late 50s. More and more young people were growing up into a comfortable suburban life that had cultural, educational and creative advantages. There was more money for instruments, more opportunity to enjoy the nightlife, the chance for free university education and growing enrollment at art schools. Here, a relatively small number of young people were introduced to jazz and then the blues, and had a chance to play and experiment. So affluence, leisure time and money in pockets was making it possible to adopt new American trends, after a fashion, in a way that had never truly happened in Britain before.

Some have said that in fact it was easier for British youth to take up r&b than it was for their contemporary white Americans. This is perhaps an oversimplification, as it ignores the way southern soul in particular was formed interracially in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, to name but two examples. However, naively obsessed with all things American, with access to far fewer media accounts of the realities of American society, British youth were far happier than white Americans to simply accept that jazz, blues and r&b was at the heart of 'American' music. The main objection to r&b in Britain was its noisiness, young people's unprofessional musicianship and the length and cleanliness of the bands' hair.

Was the music that they made r&b? It was certainly different to the rhythm & blues Americans were used to, They couldn't play as well, they couldn't sing at all American, and they had nobody to refer to except for the twenty or so records they had in their bedroom. They had grown up with very different influences to their black American heroes, from skiffle, to old folk ballads, to music hall songs, and these influences naturally permeated the songs that they began to write for themselves. So ultimately, British r&b changed into something unlike its beginnings, and took a course far removed from the course of black American music in the late 60s and 70s. But it was inspired by and dedicated to the seven-inch pieces of vinyl they had listened to note for note in those early years...

SO, who was playing this r&b hybrid? Time for some more music posts!

Information quoted from the chapter 'Enter The Stones' in 'White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixtes' by Dominic Sandbrook, and 'Mod: A Very British Phenomenon' by Terry Rawlings. Blue Eyed Handsome Dad helped with some memories also!

NOTE TO READERS: Tomorrow I am starting to move house. So I have to wait for a few days to get my internet reconnected in the new flat. So I apologise in advance if there is a delay in posting more stuff next week. Of course, since I usually get sidetracked and delayed anyway, you may not notice any difference to the usual poor service ! :)

Soul Britannia: Stoned!

The early recordings of the Stones are going to be somewhat humourous to American soul afficionados. But they have their charms. And each song gives some indication of the influences of early British r&b and how a British r&b enthusiast perceived themselves in the early years.

With Come On, the guys attempt to do Chuck Berry for the first time. Clearly terrified of this strange music, the Decca producers constrict the band into a sanitised and clean arrangement that still resembles other tunes by British rock and roll stars of the time. Interestingly, it was not a hit with the r&b crowd, who were disappointed that it did not sound 'authentic', and it only reached No.29. What it does show is that rock and roll was a much bigger element in the influences of British r&b. The b-side, I Want To Be Loved, the Willie Dixon hit popularised by Muddy Waters, is a better track, kept tight by the professional drumming of the jazz musician Charlie Watts, who used to play in Blues Incorporated before joining the younger band. It's blues rather than rhythm and blues, and it's little wonder that early on, British r&b developed a heavy reliance on noisy guitar riffing, and on the power of the harmonica, due to the cheapness of the instrument in comparison with trying to organise a horn section, and the reverence in which blues artists were held by Chris Barber and Alexis Korner and other leaders of the scene.

Next, the Stones turned to songwriters that they idolised, Lennon and McCartney, who gave them I Wanna Be Your Man. Clearly unnerved by the poor response to their first single, both band and Decca Records looked for a sure-fire Beatleesque hit, the only r&b British record companies understood was saleable. The completely unexpected way in which the Beatles had suddenly reached No.1 on the US charts in January 1964 (not 1963 as I previously wrote in a hurry...) stunned everybody, not least themselves, and it had radically changed the way in which young r&b enthusiasts, starting up their own bands, saw their potential. Perhaps they could write their own songs as well as play their favourites.

On the b-side, Stoned shows that there was more to the Rolling Stones than so far meets the eye. It bears the unmistakeable influence of the 1962 hit Last Night by the Mar-Keys, although harmonica takes the place of horns. The British r&b fan was not just a classicist, trying to imitate a revered 'folk' music, however over-earnest some of its proponents sometimes acted (stand up Slowhand...). They were young people excited by an up to the minute sound. This is also a song with a lyric that hardly needs commenting was rather different for British music. The next year, of course, the Rolling Stones would return to the Stax stable to record Rufus Thomas' Walking The Dog for their first album.

The Rolling Stones first self-titled EP, recorded in late 1963, and their second recorded in Chicago in 1964, begin to reveal their true appreciation for some of the masters of r&b, and more closely resemble how they played live...

The Rolling Stones - Come On (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - I Want To Be Loved (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - I Wanna Be Your Man (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - Stoned (Decca 1963)

Soul Britannia: The Modernists, The Marquee and The Music

1956. Back to Soho. Home of the jazz clubs and the skiffle clubs. Above The Roadhouse pub on Wardour Street, tired of skiffle and trad jazz, Cyril Davies and Alex Korner are setting up a club night, playing the blues. The night is called the Blues & Barrel House Club. The band is called Blues Incorporated. Who knows if anyone will come?

They come. Big Bill Broonzy and Otis Spann even come down to hear and play, and stay at their houses while they are in town.

They've come down from the Cold War US airforce bases around London, where they've been playing for the servicemen - the only place up to then you could hear the blues in Britain. Like many GIs, they come into Soho, looking for entertainment. First to clubs like the Americana for jazz; then on to Wardour Street to the Barrel House and finally down to the basement club The Flamingo for modern jazz and latest r&b singles from Ray Charles and Lee Dorsey. Mixing with student trad jazz fans, being beatnik in old jumpers and scruffy trousers, the GIs cut a style in suits and ties. Some of the skifflers and jazz musicians are interested: Zoot Money, Georgie Fame And The Blue Flames, Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds, are listening and learning.

They interest the younger kids too. From all over London they come to hang out in Soho, young mostly working-class boys who are fascinated by everything American, but can't find it in austerity Britain, can't dress like that, but they try and put on an attitude. They are not going into National Service like their older brothers, the Teds, and coming out aged and conformist. Thanks to the self-same GIs and thanks to mutually assured destruction, the country doesn't need their services. These boys are able to go to work, earn their money, buy clothes, go out, and spend it how they want. They aren't as rich as they make out - you can do a lot on the HP. They want a new kind of life all the same.

At the Flamingo, they can meet real Americans. The GIs can sell you buttoned Levi's for a fiver.
Where do you get those suits, those shirts? They just don't exist in the high street. So you need to find a way to alter things yourself. First, find something you like at Marks & Sparks, or C&A. Round the corner from The Roaring Twenties Club, where blue beat mixes with r&b from 1961, the tailor at Newmans on North End Road will make you a suit with the 'Billy Eckstine collar', or help you get the perfect 'Italian' drop to your trouser. Go to the cinema, and there are new ideas every week. La Dolce Vita with Marcello Mastroianni, Shoot The Pianist with Charles Aznavour, Rocco And his Brothers with Alain Delon, the New Wave. Always new, different, modern, changing. Think of a style, and take it to John Stevens in Fulham, Bilgorri in Bishopsgate. Now show it off at the clubs...

It's not just about the clothes anymore. It's about the music. The GIs have records to sell as well. Better than trad jazz, or skiffle, or Cliff Richard's tame rock and roll. Its a handy extra income, and a way to offload belongings before returning to the States.

March 17th 1962.

The Barasque Club, opposite Ealing Tube Station. Art Wood, singer with Blues Incorporated, asks if the owner wants a new resident band, a blues band. He agrees. Davies and Corner open a new club night, and the faces start to appear from other pockets of London, young, fashion-conscious, a little arrogant, interested in the new sounds. Soon, another club offers them a residency - The Marquee Club, at that time on Oxford Street.

Clubs in 1962 mean live music, and there are a small but growing coterie of young people who have absorbed the r&b records they have bought, and are starting to play. You'd find Brian Jones in the audience at the Marquee, Mick Jagger taking a turn as a singer with Blues Incorporated, Eric Clapton and other Yardbirds not far behind, Chris Farlowe and especially Georgie Fame and his Blue Flames turning from jazz and skiffle towards r&b at The Flamingo.

A local phenomenon amongst young men and women in London, looking for whatever the latest styles and trends are, trying to make their own identity, has encountered a club life suited to the tastes of GIs and Caribbean-Britons, and heard a music that intrigues them. Something similar is happening in some other places, in Liverpool, and in East Anglia, in smaller towns near other airforce bases. People visiting the London nightlife are bringing back the news and the new sounds to towns across the south. The rest of the country hardly know anything about it, but soon it will become a national youth culture...

Here are some tunes from Blues Incorporated in the early years. The first is taken from an LP recorded live at The Marquee Club in its first few months back in 1962, and released on Ace Of Clubs. The second is the b-side of Blues Incorporated's first single, released in 1963, many years after the formation of the group. I think this reflects the assumptions in Britain at the time that the priority for a band was playing live, and perhaps also that for many British blues musicians, they did not fully consider the idea that they could make records like their own idols. This was about to change dramatically as the recording industry, soon to be bowled over by the public fervour for The Beatles, awoke to the potential of British beat.

Alexis Korner & His Blues Incorporated - Rain Is Such A Lonesome Sound (LP 'R&B From The Marquee Club' ACL1130) 1962
Alexis Korner's & His Blues Incorporated - Please, Please, Please (B-side of Parlophone R 5206) 1963

Information gathered from The Georgie Fame site, The Marquee Club website, The British Beat Boom website (very good index of many bands), and from Mod: A Very British Phenomenon by Terry Rawlings.