The first musician to change Keith Richards’ life: “I really have to thank my mum”
Music tastes frequently change with the seasons, and a simple alteration to the sun can affect our collective listening habits. Meanwhile, it’s natural to seek out more sombre tones during the never-ending dark winter months for accompaniment. However, as Keith Richards knows, certain listening habits are embedded in childhood and never depart us.
As much as our tastes collectively evolve and musical awakenings to new sounds are a dopamine rush of the highest order, certain artists’ catalogues remain constant since preadolescence. Despite hearing these songs ever since we were at the kitchen table while still draped in nappies, there’s an emotional connection that doesn’t get old, even if we might.
Richards’ intense love of the blues is as commonly known as his love of cigarettes as a younger man. His mother, Doris, is the person to thank for his indoctrination to the genre. Just like her son, Doris had an obsession with music, and she ensured that Richards was raised in a household that appreciated the gift of song.
Due to his mother’s infatuation with records, Billie Holiday was the first artist he fell in love with through her accidental blues brainwashing exercise. If it weren’t for his mother being such a devout music lover, perhaps Richards would have never rekindled his childhood friendship with Mick Jagger after they bonded over blues records at a chance encounter at a train station. A world without The Rolling Stones does not bear thinking about, quite frankly.
He grew up in a musical household, which forged him into the person and rock god he is today. Richards’ grandfather is to thank for his first guitar, he promised Keith that if he could reach it from up high in his home, he could have it, providing the first chapter in a lifelong love affair. Speaking to The Guardian in 2009 about his indoctrination with the blues, he revealed: “It’s very difficult to say – when did I identify the blues as a particular form of music? My mum was playing me jazz – a lot of Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan.”
Adding: “I mean, it’s not your country blues but, as I went on, I realised that I was brought up on a broad basis of blues music without even knowing it, so, in a way, I’m a result of what my mum played. I had a natural affinity for it, I think, so it wasn’t like a conscious thing or anything like that.”
Even though he was barely able to walk when he first started growing a fondness for Billie Holiday, that “natural affinity” which Richards mentioned has only grown as his life has continued. When Q Magazine asked the guitarist to pick a selection of his favourite records, he, unsurprisingly, used the occasion to discuss his love of Holiday and selected 1954’s Lady Day, a compilation of hits rather than a studio album. “I really have to thank my mum,” he recalled. “She was playing Billie on the radio whenever possible, which was not a lot because the BBC were not that hip.”
On another occasion, Richards elaborated on the impact of his mother’s record collection on his impressionable musical palette, stating, “It was all good stuff. In other words, if you’re growing up at four years old and you can sing Billie Holiday songs, you realise that ‘ya, brought up on the blues without even knowing it.”
While Doris Richards turned Keith into the person he is today in many ways, passing on her love of music to her son is undoubtedly among her greatest gifts. Thanks to Richards Sr, the blues were simply in his blood. As a result, Billie Holiday’s work has been with Richards through every step of his life and will continue to do so until he draws his final breath.
