Groove in Peace, Charlie Watts

Among the many sayings and stories attributed to seminal swing-to-bop tenor man Lester Young -- it's a jazz thing to have a storehouse of possibly apocryphal episodes that portray the spirit of the music; myths, if you will -- is his admonition to drummers: "No bombs, baby, just give me that boom-tiddy-boom, tiddy-boom," mimicking the sound of a simple drum and cymbal pattern. He didn't want the drummer back there exploding with wild, counter-intuitive accents. He wanted a steady, subtle beat that would create a foundation for the interplay of the other instruments to create that thing called swing. With that steady groove, little accents here and there from the rhythm section can goose things up real nice. Call it the Count Basie Philosophy.

Well, Charlie Watts was always the first one to tell you that in his heart he was a jazz man, and though he would say that his dream was to have occupied the drum seat behind Charlie Parker, I'm guessing he would have liked sitting behind Lester Young, and Lester would have liked him back there laying it down, too. (Certainly, in this particular dream scenario it wouldn't be Keith Moon.) The thing is, of all the original classic rock bands, the Stones were the ones that were the truest groove band. They came straight out of Chuck Berry, who, as we saw here a couple weeks ago, would groove and swing like a motherfucker. This requires a strict adherence to time joined with the ability to let things stretch or fluctuate a bit, to breathe, as needed. Whatever Charlie was doing back there it worked for the songs, because Stones songs at their best always had that forward momentum and greasy effervescence that can only happen when the drummer is "in the pocket."

This live performance of the Temptations' "Just My Imagination" is, for my money, the Stones at their Stonesiest, with Charlie laying it down crisp and sweet, the Richards-Woods guitar interweave at its rolling and tumbling peak, and Mick going full Jagger without lapsing into parody. This is from 1978, the Some Girls tour I think, when they really had it goin' on, when all those thousands of hours of gigs had coalesced not into boredom but into supremely relaxed musical mastery. 

So anyway, the thing about the groove is, it never stops. It's always going somewhere, and Charlie is now grooving in that sector of the next world where they like this kind of thing. I mean, he's in rock and roll heaven, we know that, but in the wing where feel is everything.