The best rhythm section Charlie Watts ever heard: “There was one”
As far as incredible rhythm sections go, there aren’t many who were quite as in tune with one another as the duo that The Rolling Stones had at their core for 30 years.
You could argue that there’s nothing flashy about what Charlie Watts did as a drummer, especially compared to what some of the great players of the same era did, but alongside bassist Bill Wyman from 1963 until his official departure in 1993, the two were a perfect match for one another, and brilliantly complemented the bombast of what the rest of The Stones were delivering throughout the period.
As a rhythm section, you’ve got to have great chemistry, and they were oozing with it around 1969, when they were just entering a period of activity that would go on to be regarded as their creative peak. Around the same time, while they were in Los Angeles rehearsing for an upcoming tour, biographer Stanley Booth documented many of the conversations between members in the studio, ranging from the inane to the intriguing.
Within the eventually published book, The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones, is a revealing conversation between Watts and Wyman that took place as they were listening to the music of 1930s big band, the Kansas City Six, and commenting on how good the rhythm section, particularly their bassist, Walter Paige.
“Walter Paige, really good,” Watts commented, recognising how important the bass is to him as a drummer, and how the two members have to always be in sync. Wyman followed up with an assessment of his own, presumably through a thick dope cloud.
“Never get a sound like that with an electric bass,” he interjected, with Booth noting how Wyman’s hands were famously too small to be able to properly play an acoustic bass.
However, Booth’s subsequent assessment that the electric bass is an overall more flexible instrument prompted Wyman and Watts to shriek in disagreement, pointing out how Paige’s bass seemed to effortlessly blend with the brushed drums of Joe Jones and the rhythm guitar of Freddie Green. They collectively asserted that this wouldn’t be possible with electric instrumentation, and that the feel the three musicians had together was unlike anything else.
It’s understandable that Watts, who was raised on big band, swing and trad jazz prior to turning his attention towards rock and roll with The Stones, would be such a fan of the Kansas City Six, an offshoot of various members of the Count Basie Orchestra, and while he was clearly still singing their praises around the time the band were gearing up to release Let It Bleed, this also stuck with him for many more years.
When asked again in a 1998 interview who the greatest rhythm section ever were, Watts acknowledged that while there were plenty of outstanding options for him to pick from, only one stood up to him. “Dream rhythm section, there was one,” he stated. “Walter Paige, Freddie Green, and Joe Jones.”
While there are only smatterings of Watts’ jazz upbringing present in what he offered to the band, it clearly provided a robust enough foundation for him to go on and be just as solid in one of the foremost rock bands of all time. Clearly, the synergy felt between the rhythm section of the Kansas City Six, in particular, as simple as it was, was something that helped him and Wyman bond and discover how to perfectly complement each other’s style.
