The 1959 song Keith Richards called the greatest in blues history: “You don’t get any bluer than that”
Anything that Keith Richards ever did was defined by the blues in some capacity.
Even though The Rolling Stones were the epitome of what rock and roll was supposed to be throughout their glory years, there isn’t a single moment throughout their career where they wouldn’t pay lip service to people like BB King and Muddy Waters to help them gain a foothold in the industry. Some of their teachers were like legends of folklore for them, but sometimes the best blues isn’t something that has to have the best playing on it.
There are thousands of people that got turned on to the genre thanks to people like Eric Clapton sharing it with the rest of the world, but Richards knew there was more to it than a bunch of guitar licks. He could copy as many licks from the Buddy Guy playbook as he could, but when he listened to Robert Johnson he wasn’t hearing someone sing a song. He was hearing someone’s perspective on life, and he was going to do everything in his power to make songs that sounded like that.
It didn’t always work out and oftentimes the Stones would take things in a more aggressive direction, but it’s not like they ever forgot that kind of emotion. Their version of Johnson’s ‘Love in Vain’ is still one of their finest ballads, and even when they were taking a page out of the country playbook on some of their songs, they were well on their way to making tunes that had a lot more bite to them.
But even when they turned those classics inside out, it was still no match for the original sounds they were hearing. Even when they made the most hard-edged riffs that they could, people like Little Walter were able to sing the blues because he had truly lived every single minute of what he was singing about.
It’s easy to discount the genre as the kind of thing that you hear in a guitar store when people are trying to fumble their way through soloing, but the genre means so much more when listening to Walter’s recordings. All he needed was his voice and harmonica to sing about the problems with the world, and as far as Richards could tell, his take on the song ‘Blue and Lonesome’ is still one of the most emotional pieces to come out of the pre-rock and roll days.
The recording isn’t exactly clean by any stretch, but it’s the simplicity that Richards heard that he knew would be around forever, saying, “You don’t get any bluer than that. Man, that’s bad stuff. The power of the blues was a mindblower. Anybody who could make a song like that is alright with me. For me, [the] music is like the centre of everything. It’s what binds people together through centuries, through millennia. And no one’s going to have the answer to it, but it’s great fun exploring.”
And even when The Stones tried their hand at the same thing when they made their blues covers album, they were still reverent towards what artists like Walter created. These were the giants that were singing their hearts out, and there wasn’t a soul left on the planet that seemed to know the importance of them better than Richards and Mick Jagger when they kicked off those tunes.
But it’s safe to say that Richards doesn’t have to keep going back to those old standards to feel cool by any stretch. The student had become the master in many respects, and even when looking back on those classic songs, it was only a case of Richards reminding himself of what he had signed up for when he first heard the power of those recordings as a kid in London.
