"Sweet Black Angel" live "stuck out like a sore thumb," Richards said in his 2017 Harper's interview. "It never seemed to really fit into a Stones show."
"We had never met her, but we admired her from afar," Keith Richards said of Angela Davis, talking to Harper's Bazaar writer Brooke Mazurek in 2017.
Richards and Stones singer Mick Jagger wrote the band's 1972 song "Sweet Black Angel" about Davis, the Birmingham native and controversial civil rights activist.
It's a standout track on one of rock's greatest albums, The Stones' 1972 double-LP "Exile on Main St."
A mix of blues, folk and world-music, "Sweet Black Angel" is a rare snuggly tune on the otherwise piratically plastered "Exile."
The Stones' ode to Davis, "Sweet Black Angel." appears on what's casually referred to as the "acoustic side" of "Exile on Main St." It's the next to last track on side two.
"Exile" is known for its swampy cinéma vérité production and decadent recording sessions, much of which took place in Richards' rented South France villa, called Nellcote. The album's most famous song is blues-pop gem "Tumbling Dice," a fixture in Stones concerts to this day.
Basic tracks for "Sweet Black Angel" were cut at Stargroves, Jagger's English country manor using the "Rolling Stones Mobile Studio," according to recording engineer Andy Johns, as told to Bill Janovitz, author of the "Exile" installment of the 33 1/3 book series.
"That was done all of them in a room in a circle at the same time, because there was this one room away from the main hall that had no furniture in it, with a wooden floor, quite high ceilings and plaster walls," Johns said in Janovitz's book. "We wanted to get the sound of the room."
Jagger sings in a Caribbean patois on "Sweet Black Angel." He'd employ a similar vocal tone for later Stones cuts including reggae "Cherry Oh Baby" and tribal rocker "Hey Negrita" on erratic 1976 LP "Black and Blue."
For "Sweet Black Angel," Jagger also laid-down some tasteful harmonica. The flamboyant frontman is a fine, instinctual player of this blues instrument, a point Richards frequently makes in interviews.
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