On June 30, BMG will release the first extensive anthology from the jazz catalog of the late Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts.
Available as a double vinyl and double CD edition, "Anthology" builds on nearly 20 years of his substantial catalog of jazz recordings in various configurations, including quartet, quintet, even larger formations up to the orchestra.
In "Anthology" alongside Watts there are big names starting with his lifelong friend and double bass player Dave Green, saxophonists such as Peter King, Evan Parker and Courtney Pine, trumpeter Gerard Presencer, drummer Jim Keltner and the singer and member of the live band of the Rolling Stones, Bernard Fowler.
Anthology:
01 Stompin’ at the Savoy (Live at Fulham Town Hall, London, 1986)
02 Flying Home (Live at Fulham Town Hall, London, 1986)
03 Practising, Practising, Just Great
04 Bluebird
05 Relaxing at Camarillo
06 Going, Going Going, Gone
07 Blackbird - White Chicks
08 Cool Blues (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, Birmingham, 1991)
09 Lover Man (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, Birmingham, 1991)
10 Perdido (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, Birmingham, 1991)
11 You Go to My Head
12 If I Should Lose You
13 My Ship
14 Long Ago (And Far Away)
15 Good Morning Heartache
16 Never Let Me Go
17 Roy Haynes
18 Airto
19 Elvin Suit
20 Roll ’Em Charlie (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2001)
21 What’s New (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2001)
22 Tin Tin Deo (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2001)
23 Sunset and the Mockingbird (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2001)
24 Take the “A” Train (Live at Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2001)
25 Rockhouse Boogie (Live at Swindon Arts Centre, Swindon, 1978)
26 Ain’t Nobody Minding Your Store (Live at Swindon Arts Centre, Swindon, 1978)
27 Swindon Swing (Live at Swindon Arts Centre, Swindon, Jan 1978)
On book 'Charlie’s Good Tonight' Charlie Watts Blamed Led Zeppelin for Long Stones Shows Charlie Watts believed Led Zeppelin were responsible for the Rolling Stones having to play concerts that lasted two hours or more.
The drummer, who died aged 80 last year, retained a soft spot for the kind of low-key barroom shows he’d played as a young jazz musician. But in an excerpt from the official biography Charlie’s Good Tonight – by Paul Sexton and revealed by Billboard – he said he understood the path his band had followed. (UCR)
“You’d be playing a month in a town to play to 30,000 people,” Watts said. “Where would you play, in a 3,000-seater hall?” The move up to stadium shows was “to accommodate that,” he added. “And that’s what we’ve become. It’s our own fault, or pleasure, or whatever you call it. That’s how we’ve directed what we do. That’s how the world of doing what we do has gone.”
He admitted there were sometimes concerns about filling the stadiums, or in situations where a visit hadn’t sold as many tickets as the previous one. Turning to the performances themselves, Watts said: “I blame Led Zeppelin for the two-hour-long show… we jumped in a few years from doing 20 minutes, all the hits and off – the Apollo Revue, we’ll call it – we went from doing club dates, which are two sets a night, which was great fun… to doing, thanks to Led Zeppelin, this two-hour long show.”
“‘If you’re Jimmy Page, you can do that, and [John] Bonham’s 20-minute drum solo. It wasn’t about that with us; it was a different thing. I don’t like doing drum solos, period. I don’t hear things like that. When Zep… used to do that – what are we, early ‘70s, I suppose – that was hard work physically, because the monitors weren’t so good.
“But now the sound equipment is so sophisticated. The hardest thing with a drummer on those big stages is to be heard. Now, it’s done for you, virtually. The amplification is there, so I just play naturally, at the volume I feel like playing, in this little cage I live in, and they adjust the volume of it.”
‘You haven’t heard the last music of Charlie yet’ (Keith Richrds)
“We watched horse racing on TV and just shot the breeze,” guitarist Ron Wood told the Los Angeles Times of being the last member to visit Watts in the hospital, a few weeks before the drummer’s Aug. 24 death. “I could tell he was pretty tired and fed up with the whole deal. He said, ‘I was really hoping to be out of here by now,’ then after that there was a complication or two and I wasn’t allowed back. No one was.”
“Charlie held the band together for so long, musically,” says Mick Jagger, “because he was the rock the rest of it was built around
Keith Richards had little to say about Watts’ death in his part of the interview: “I’m still trying to put it together in my head. I don’t think I can be very erudite on Charlie at the moment.”
“Charlie had an incredible sense of humor,” he said. “And my joy was I loved to crack him up. If you could hit that spot, he wouldn’t stop, and it was the funniest thing in the world. He had an incredible sense of humor that he kept to himself unless you sparked it. And then it could be painful to laugh.”
“A most vital part of being in this band was that Charlie Watts was my bed,”
