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Jazz Articles about Charlie Watts
Rolling Stones: Hackney Diamonds (2CD)
by Doug Collette
The Rolling Stones have taken some risks of greater and lesser proportion over the course of their sixty-plus- year career, but perhaps no gamble is so great as the decision by the surviving members of the band to continue on after the passing of drummer Charlie Watts. With the blessing of their co-founder in place for the presence of musician/producer Steve Jordan at the kit, the self-appointed 'greatest rock and roll band in the world' carried on with ...
read moreCharlie Watts: Jazz Anthology
by Pedro Keul
Charlie Watts left this world in 2021, at age 80, and many only know him as the legendary Rolling Stones drummer of six decades. Lesser known was his passion for jazz--that he expressed every chance he could--recording ten albums as a leader. This extensive retrospective released in 2023 presents 27 themes recorded in a 20 year span, starting in 1986, in several jazz formats (big band, quartet, quintet and tentet), alongside musicians including double-bassist Dave Green, drummer Jim Keltner, and ...
read moreCharlie’s Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts
by Doug Collette
Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts Paul Sexton 368 Pages ISBN: # 978-0063276581 Harper Collins 2022 The infectious sing-song quality of Paul Sexton's prose for the biography of the late Charlie Watts may well surprise those music lovers who've read his rather bland liner notes for Rolling Stones archive titles like Voodoo Lounge Uncut (Eagle Vision, 2018) and A Bigger Bang: Live ...
read moreThe Rolling Stones: El Mocambo 1977
by Doug Collette
The die-cut design of the double-CD cover for the Rolling Stones' El Mocambo 1977 mitigates at least to some degree the borderline amateurish cover art. But reversing the pink and blue covers of the twenty-page booklet inside the dual-fold package achieves a greater end than simply altering the simplistic cosmetics; its extraction also reveals a Paul Sexton essay with information more than a little pertinent to the music as well as photos of the Toronto appearance that might better have ...
read moreSympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters
by Doug Collette
Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters Mike Edison 264 pages ISBN: #978-1493047734 Backbeat Books 2019 Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters is a schizophrenic piece of work. But, as befits a book wherein the main title and subtitle could be transposed with no loss of meaning, the schism in is worth enduring because this work of Mike Edison's is ultimately so edifying. At a glance and upon ...
read moreCharlie Watts Meets the Danish Radio Big Band
by Nenad Georgievski
A film director once said that you can't make a great film with a weak script. The same goes for bands of any kind be it jazz or rock or any kind. You can't have a great band without a great drummer. A band can get by with an average bassist or guitarist, but not with an average drummer. It's the heartbeat of any band. One of the things that has made the band Rolling Stones what they are is ...
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