- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The New Rolling Stone Record Guide called The Rolling Stones “the greatest white rhythm and blues album of all time. That isn’t an opinion; it’s a fact.”
The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones (1964): The Rolling Stones have been called the “Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band in the World” for decades, and it is hard to argue the point. During the British Invasion, there was the Great Debate between Beatles fans and Stones fans as to which was better; for myself, I just loved them both. From the standpoint of sheer output, there is no contest: The Rolling Stones have endured more than fifty years after the Beatles’ famously acrimonious split. Mick Jagger (lead vocals) and Keith Richards (guitar) had known each other as young children and met by chance at a later date; after discovering that they were both diehard fans of American R&B music, they joined a rock band that Brian Jones (multi-instrumentalist) was putting together that took the name the Rollin’ Stones.
The name was taken from the Muddy Waters song “Rollin’ Stone”; Rolling Stone magazine was also named for this song, as was Bob Dylan’s signature song “Like a Rolling Stone”. After their original bassist Dick Taylor dropped out and helped form the Pretty Things – that band is also still around – Bill Wyman (bass guitar) was selected as his replacement. The final bandmember to join the classic line-up of the Rolling Stones, in very early 1963, was Charlie Watts (drums). After issuing a few singles, the Rolling Stones released their first album in the spring of 1964, composed mostly of covers of R&B and blues classics with a few original songs. Titled simply The Rolling Stones, with a front cover showing the unsmiling bandmembers and nothing else, the American version came out six weeks later, emblazoned with “England’s Newest Hit Makers”. Most discographies take this to be the title of the album, although the record label only says “The Rolling Stones”. Several of the songs were familiar to American audiences: “Route 66”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, “Can I Get a Witness”, and “Walking the Dog”. Two other songs, “Now I’ve Got a Witness” and “Little by Little” are shown as being written by Nanker Phelge, a strange pseudonym used for songs that the Rolling Stones wrote as a group; “Little by Little” has a co-writing credit of legendary record producer Phil Spector. Just one song, “Tell Me” is credited to the Rolling Stones songwriting team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Once, I was listening to the radio, and I heard a terrific Rolling Stones song that turned out to be “Tell Me”. As I remember, I was so captivated that I immediately got on my bicycle and pedaled down to our local record store, Reznick’s (“It’s been Reznick’s for Records, for Years”) and searched around the 45’s until I found the song. I don’t think that I even played the record myself before rushing over to my two best friends among the neighborhood kids, Billy Dalton and Waltie Baker. “Wait till you hear this”, I exclaimed – but they didn’t like “Tell Me” much at all and started laughing at me about midway through. It usually doesn’t take more than just the one time for me to clam up after something like that. The thing is, “Tell Me” didn’t sound as great to me either while I was playing it; I puzzled about it for years. I picked up the song years later on The Rolling Stones; as far as I could tell, the album had the same version as the single. Then, in the mid-2010’s, I finally found out what was going on when I read the discussion by Richie Unterberger in Allmusic about the differences between the American and the English releases of the first Stones album: “[T]he main difference lies in the version of ‘Tell Me’ included here, which sounds about two generations hotter than any edition of the song ever released in the U.S.” Apparently, the DJ had gotten his hands on a copy of the British version of “Tell Me”, and I was fortunate enough to hear it that one time at an impressionable age. “Not Fade Away” opens the album – the song is omitted from the British edition of The Rolling Stones – and is a Buddy Holly song with an even more overt Bo Diddley groove than Holly himself used on the song; “Not Fade Away” was the Rolling Stones’ first Top 5 hit in the U.K., and that song is my very favorite Rolling Stones cover song. The Rolling Stones is one of the greatest debut albums of all time, already showing the band at the height of their powers even at this early date. I will never forget the review of this album given in the New Rolling Stone Record Guide, calling The Rolling Stones “the greatest white rhythm and blues album of all time. That isn’t an opinion; it’s a fact.” I will also never forget flipping through a rack of records at the semi-annual Record Convention in Hillsborough, NC and seeing a monaural copy of The Rolling Stones for sale for only $2. Couldn’t turn that down!