“A wonderful player”: The one person who made Charlie Watts love Elvis Presley
Everything that rock and roll stands for can be traced back to Elvis Presley. Even if some of the greatest rock bands in the world were taking their cues from Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Presley was the one person who made everyone stand up and realise that the genre was more than a niche, especially when he arrived on television and gyrated for anyone who was watching. For someone as experienced in music as Charlie Watts, it was going to take more than a few dance moves to win him over.
Because looking at all of Watts’s influences, he was always a child of the biggest jazz artists of the time. He certainly knew how to make The Rolling Stones leap out of the speakers, but half the reason why he worked so well was his knowledge of a good groove, usually sitting in the back and making sure to lock in with Keith Richards before anything else whenever he played tunes like ‘Satisfaction’.
And for all of the great moments in Presley’s catalogue, there aren’t many pieces that are indebted to jazz. The entire basis of rock and roll was based on blues, and since everything sticks to the same verse-chorus structure, there was no way that anyone was going to hear Presley scat-singing like Louis Armstrong or listen to Scotty Moore bust out the Django Reinhart chops in the middle of ‘That’s All Right Mama’.
There were still pieces of common ground, though, and that all traced back to rhythm. If there’s one thing that jazz and rock and roll both know too well, it’s how to define a great groove, and listening to some of Presley’s biggest hits is all the more enjoyable when listening to what DJ Fontana is doing behind him.
Even though every drummer’s job tends to be sitting in the back and waiting for the rest of the band to build everything out behind him, Fontana was never afraid to toy with what a song could sound like. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ definitely had something a bit more downtempo, but compare that to ‘Jailhouse Rock’, and it’s like night and day, almost like they took the same kind of shuffle rhythm you’d see in a jazz club and put a bit more attitude behind it.
Watts may have still been on the fence about whether he was in love with rock and roll, but when Richards showed him what Fontana could do, he understood why everyone was drawn to it, saying, “(Keith and Brian) also taught me to enjoy Elvis Presley, through D. J. Fontana, who I think is a wonderful player. Before that, there was only one record I ever liked of Elvis’.”
And it’s not like Watts hadn’t picked up his fair share of chops from listening to Fontana. Most percussionists might still swear by what artists like Buddy Rich did, but the biggest challenge is being able to work like Fontana did, always serving the song rather than trying to fly off the handle whenever things get a little bit boring.
Once Watts joined The Stones, he took that lesson to heart as well, always having the potential to play something chaotic but keeping everything loose and grooving, whether that was the raw power behind ‘Paint It Black’ or the laid-back groove that drives ‘Honky Tonk Women.’ Anyone can try their hand at becoming the strongest drummer to ever live, but only the true musicians of the world can listen to a song and play exactly what it needs.
