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i saw your previous ask about keith's solo work and now i'm curious about your opinions on charlie's solo work! also, do you have any recommendations for charlie, i've only listened to from one charlie
If you discount session work (because Ronnie did a ton both before and after he joined the Stones), Charlie actually has the most extensive solo/non-Stones catalogue. It’s very diverse and I think the vast majority of it is very high quality.
So in terms of his session work, far and away his best contribution (that we know of - this isn’t even listed on his Wiki) was as the drummer for The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions. He, Bill, Stu, Steve Winwood, and Eric Clapton acted as the backing band for Howlin’ Wolf on a Chess Records-Rolling Stones Records collaboration covering some of his most famous songs in 1971. For my money it’s one of Wolf’s best albums and showcases beautifully what a talented blues drummer Charlie was. He could have gone toe to toe with the old Chess guys like Fred Below if he wanted to.
It was only for one song, not an entire album, but he, Keith, and Ronnie were the backing band for Marianne Faithfull’s cover of “Ghost Dance” by Patti Smith in 1993:
Charlie was in a few non-Stones bands. Probably the most famous, although it’s really not terribly well known, is Rocket 88. The founding line-upwas Stu, Charlie, Alexis Korner, and Dick Morrissey and membership fluctuated during different projects and concerts during its active period (1978-1981). You can find a couple videos of their performances on YouTube, but their one released album, from a live concert in 1981, is really fantastic. Jack Bruce does bass and vocals on it and he and Charlie make an absolutely amazing rhythm section. 20x times better than anything he ever did with Wyman.
He was also associated with another boogie woogie band, The ABC&D of Boogie Woogie, which he didn’t co-found, but which he got into through Dave Green (his childhood best friend and the bass player for most of his solo work). That band also unfortunately only has one album, but there’s a lot more available on YouTube to enjoy because they were around in the early 2010s. This is my favorite song they covered:
It’s never been entirely explained how it came about, except that it was initially facilitated through one of his friends, the trumpeter Gerald Presencer, but Charlie did an album with the Danish Radio Big Band in 2010 that was released in 2017. The 7 tracks include 2 original compositions and 5 re-arranged Stones songs. Whoever did the arrangements and composition did a wonderful job and it’s great highlight of Charlie’s flexibility and originality as a drummer.
In the late 1980s, he and Keith did a cover of Charles Mingus’ “Don’t Let Them Drop That Bomb on Me”, it’s worth it just for the little documentary clips of the two of them, never mind the song itself, which is also well done:
That’s not everything Charlie ever did which wasn’t explicitly his own project, but it’s the highlights.
As far as his own bands/albums go, unfortunately his first album, Live At Fulham Town Hall (1986) isn’t available to stream, but you can find the tracks on YouTube and a neat little documentary/live performance clip:
(This would also be a good time to mention that there’s a beautiful, very high quality segment of Charlie playing a Duke Ellington composition on BBC4 in 2019 along with Dave and some American jazz musicians, as well as a cute little interview with the two of them after):
Everything that follows that album, with one exception, is a variation on The Charlie Watts Quintet, the group which appears on 1990’s From One Charlie to Another:
The biggest difference between his jazz albums, other than the number of players (it tended to range between a quartet, a quintet, and a tenet), is whether or not they have a vocalist. The last one, Watts at Scott’s (2004) is the one which does not and it’s a mixture of original compositions (generally written by his pianist Brian Lemon) and covers of jazz standards, including Ellington’s “A Train”:
1991’s A Tribute to Charlie Parker with Strings is a really neat, original project. It has Bernard Fowler narrating the story of Parker’s life through Charlie’s book about him from the ‘60s and covers songs which were on Parker’s own With Strings album as well as original compositions like “Terra de Pajaro.” There is one song “Lover Man”, which has vocals provided by Bernard, the rest is purely instrumental. Pete King was the saxophonist for all of Charlie’s jazz projects and he absolutely kills it on this album.
The two albums which really showcase his collaboration with Bernard and his skills as an accompanist to a vocalist, Warm & Tender (1993) and Long Ago & Far Away (1996), are lovely collections of jazz standards and standouts from the Great American Songbook. I love them both, I think which one you want to listen to just depends on your mood. The second album is definitely more melancholy:
It also has Charlie’s only solo music video, for “I’ve Got a Crush on You”, which is gorgeous and good humored:
The weirdest album in Charlie’s oeuvre, to put it bluntly, is the Charlie Watts/Jim Keltner Project (1999). It’s very avant garde, probably the most purely creative but also least accessible thing he ever did. The album was made at the same time the Stones were recording Bridges to Babylon, so Mick and Keith pop up on two different tracks (separately), but the bulk is Charlie, Jim Keltner, and a few other percussionists who contributed bits and pieces. It’s a world music-jazz-techno-beats melange of original pieces, some of which were inspired by the work of certain jazz drummers and some of which are more entirely abstract. To be honest it’s not really something you can describe, you sort of just have to listen and see if it’s your thing.
EPISODE 11, SOUNDTRACK GUIDE 🎶
Not gonna lie, I was literally humming along the tunes when it was played.. Been listening to the album for quite some time now and it’s really something worth listening to.. 🙌🧡
Bilderbuch
“I am a player and I can't losePlay a
good boy no moreOne train one lung “
Craft Spells
“Every night's the same All my friends are here to celebrate I don't look for love, that's enough Don't want to start this party talk”
The Drums
“And our days go by And I never needed you”
The Symposium
“i lost my mind on a sunny day word on the street that there's something really happening you sit around your home all alone”
