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ON THIS DATE (58 YEARS AGO)
May 30, 1964 – The Rolling Stones: England's Newest Hit Makers is released.
# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5
# Allmusic 4.5/5 stars
The Rolling Stones, subtitled England's Newest Hit Makers, is the American debut album by The Rolling Stones, released on May 30, 1964. It reached #11 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart.
The album was recorded over five days at Regent Sound Studios in London, through January and February of 1964. It was produced by the managers at the time, Eric Easton and Andrew Loog Oldham.
With the British invasion of America in full swing the band were announced as England’s Newest Hit Makers. Released to coincide with the Stones’ arrival in New York City on 1st June 1964, where they began their first US tour. The band played to very small audiences in the eight cities.
In 1964 The Rolling Stones were essentially a cover band, with very little of their own material. Their sound was already unique and cuts like the thumping 'Route 66', their rocking take on 'I Just Wanna Make Love To You' and what was to become the Marvin Gaye classic, 'Can I Get A Witness', marked them out as an act in the ascendant.
The first full-length Rolling Stones album is a raw document of their early sound, which at this point was still Early British Tinny, even on this pristine re-issue. However, the band's growing confidence throughout the course of The Rolling Stones is almost palpable.
Their take on Willie Dixon's "I Just Want to Make Love to You" is steeped in Chicago blues filtered through a West London sensibility, while the insistent harp on their hit cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" is an early example of the band's technique of using blues riffs as pop hooks. "Tell Me" is a fairly embryonic attempt at Tin Pan Alley songwriting (they're far more at home with the raw R&B of "Little By Little") and it's obvious that at this early stage the band was most comfortable performing R&B covers, such as Rufus Thomas's classic "Walking the Dog," and particularly Chuck Berry's "Carol," which remained a staple of the band's live shows for some years.
Perhaps most notable as a sign of great things to come is 'Tell Me', the first ever recording of a Jagger and Richards composition. Richards claims the only way manager Andrew Loog Oldham could persuade the duo to start writing was by locking them in a room until 'Tell Me' was born.
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Regent Sounds – The Most Historic Shop on Denmark Street
In early 1964, The Rolling Stones recorded their hugely successful first album at Regent Sound Studio. Keith Richards said in an interview “We did our early records on a 2-track Revox in a room insulated with egg cartons at Regent Sound. It was like a little demo in Tin Pan Alley, as it used to be called. Denmark Street in Soho. It was all done on a 2-track Revox that he had on the wall. We used to think, oh, this is a recording studio, huh? This is what they’re like? A tiny little backroom. Under those primitive conditions it was easy to make the kind of sound we got on our first album and the early singles, but hard to make a much better one.” The album stayed at #1 in the UK for 12 weeks, with the band returning to record most of their second album 12 X 5 at Regent Sound Studio.
The studio was so small that there was hardly any definition between the instruments, so the band couldn’t avoid putting down on tape an approximation of their live sound of the time. In their bid to get away from the major record company studios with their strait-laced tie-wearing producers, the band loved the sound of the primitive and cramped studio.
Producer/Manager Andrew Oldham said of their time recording “We did the first album in about 10 days. We’d decide to do a tune, but Mick wouldn’t know the words, so Mick would run around Denmark Street to Carlin Music to pick up the words to something like Can I Get a Witness? He’d come back 25 minutes later and we’d start.”
The Rolling Stones weren’t the only band to make use of Regent Sound Studio. Through the 60s and 70s it played host to many other bands and artists including The Who, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Mott the Hoople, Donovan and Black Sabbath – who recorded their hugely successful song and album Paranoid at the studio.
~ Regents Sounds (http://regentsounds.com/history)
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"I like the way it sounds. I don’t think my contribution is all that fantastic, but the LP has got our sound."
~ Charlie
“The Rolling Stones are not a band, they are a way of life.”
~ Andrew Loog Oldham, The Rolling Stones’ manager, in the cover notes.
"We're about halfway through the first album and we're trying to finish it in the next couple of months. But what with touring and everything else, we can't say when it will be done. Carol, Mona and Route 66 are on it, and we plan to include some numbers that people wouldn't associate with us."
~ Mick Jagger, February 1964
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The Rollin' Stones: Genuine R&B!
Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 11 May 1963
AS THE TRAD scene gradually subsides, promoters of all kinds of teen-beat entertainment heave a long sigh of relief that they have found something to take its place. It's Rhythm and Blues, of course – the number of R&B clubs that have sprung up is nothing short of fantastic.
One of the best-known – and one of the most successful to date – is at the Station Hotel, Kew Road, in Richmond, just on the outskirts of London. There, on Sunday evenings, the hip kids throw themselves about to the new "jungle music" like they never did in the more stinted days of trad.
And the combo they writhe and twist to is called the Rollin' Stones. Maybe you've never heard of them – if you live far away from London the odds are you haven't.
But by gad you will! The Rollin' Stones are probably destined to be the biggest group in the R&B scene if it continues to flourish. And by the looks of the Station Hotel, Richmond, flourish is merely an understatement considering that three months ago only fifty people turned up to see the group. Now club promoter, bearded Giorgio Gomelsky, has to close the doors at an early hour – over four hundred R&B fans crowd the hall.
GENUINE
And the fans who do come quickly lose all their inhibitions and proceed to contort themselves to the truly exciting music of the boys – who put heart and soul into their performances.
The fact is that, unlike all the other R&B groups worthy of the name, the Rollin' Stones have a definite visual appeal. They aren't the Jazzmen who were doing Trad eighteen months back and who have converted their act to keep up with the times. They are genuine R&B fanatics themselves, and they sing and play in a way that one would expect more from a coloured U.S. R&B team than a bunch of wild, exciting white boys who have the fans screaming – and listening – to them.
Line-up of the group is Mick Jagger, lead vocal and harmonica and student at the London School of Economics. The fierce backing is supplied by Brian Jones, guitar and harmonica, and also spokesman and leader of the group. He's an architect, while Keith Richards, guitar, is an art student. The other three members of the group are Bill Wyman, bass guitar, Ian Stewart, piano and maracas, and drummer Charles Watts.
Record-wise, everything is in the air, but a disc will be forthcoming. It will probably be the group's own adaptation of the Chuck Berry number 'Come On' (featured on Chuck's new Pye LP). The number goes down extremely well in the club session on Sundays – other Chuck Berry numbers that are in the group's repertoire are 'Down The Road Apiece' and 'Bye Bye Johnny' – which is one of the highlights of the act.
DISC/FILM
Even though the boys haven't dead-certain plans for a disc, they do have dead-certain plans for a film. For club promoter Giorgio is best known as a film producer and has made several imaginative films dealing with the music scene. But for the Rollin' Stones film, there are some truly great shots of the team in action, singing and performing 'Pretty Thing', the Bo Diddley number. The film itself lasts for twenty minutes and will be distributed with a main feature film.
The group are actually mad about Bo Diddley, although pianist Ian Stuart is the odd man out. Diddley numbers they perform are 'Crawdad', 'Nursery Rhyme', 'Road Runner', 'Mona' and, of course, 'Bo Diddley'.
They can get the sound that Bo gets too – no mean achievement. The group themselves are all red-hot when it comes to U.S. beat discs. They know their R&B numbers inside out and have a repertoire of about eighty songs, most of them are the numbers which every R&B fan in the country knows and loves.
The boys are confident that, if they make a disc, it should do well. They are also confident about their own playing, although on Sundays at the end of the session they are dead-beat. That's because on Sunday afternoons they also play the R&B session at the Ken Colyer club.
SUPERFICIAL
But despite fact that their R&B has a superficial resemblance to rock'n'roll, fans of the hit parade music would not find any familiar material performed by the Rollin' Stones. And the boys do not use original material. "After all," they say, "can you imagine a British-composed R&B number – it just wouldn't make it."
One group that thinks a lot of the Rollin' Stones are The Beatles. When they came down to London the other week, they were knocked out by the group's singing. They stayed all the evening at the Station Hotel listening to the group pound away. And now they spread the word around so much in Liverpool that bookings for the group have been flooding in –including several the famed Cavern.
All this can't be bad for the R&B group who have achieved the American sound better than any other group over here. And the group that in all likelihood will soon be the leading R&B performers in the country...
© Norman Jopling, 1963
TRACKS:
Side one
1. "Not Fade Away" (Charles Hardin/Norman Petty) - 1:48
2. "Route 66" (Bobby Troup) - 2:20
3. "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (Willie Dixon) - 2:17
4. "Honest I Do" (Jimmy Reed) - 3:54
5. "Now I've Got a Witness" (Nanker Phelge) - 2:29
6. "Little by Little" (Phelge/Phil Spector) - 2:39
Side two
1. "I'm a King Bee" (Slim Harpo) - 2:35
2. "Carol" (Chuck Berry) - 2:33
3. "Tell Me" (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards) - 4:05
4. "Can I Get a Witness" (Holland/Dozier/Holland) - 2:55
5. "You Can Make It If You Try" (Ted Jarrett) - 2:01
6. "Walking the Dog" (Rufus Thomas) - 3:10
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