THE ROLLING STONES – "Little Red Rooster"

And unlike It’s All Over Now this one is a blues and much more authentic than Herman’s Hermits. Willie Dixon wrote it, of course, and Howling Wolf first recorded it, and compared to that primeval recording Jagger sounds like a Kent surburbanite, which of course he is and it’s never really gone away despite the legend.

But ten-year-old me knew little or nothing about the blues and this was a big departure from what the Stones had been doing hitherto and I hated it. For all of a week, and then I loved it to bits. That’s how all the best things in life go.

This December would be when an enlightened Junior School teacher, Mrs Nicholson, introduced ten-year-old me and the rest of the class to a serious dose of TS Eliot. She’d been reading us Old Possum, and then zapped us with Journey of the Magi

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Redmond O’Hanlon-Explorer, writer(1997).

So surprised that this made #1 for the Stones, seemed more like an album track to me. At the same time, they broke into the US Top 10 for the first time with the superior “Time Is On My Side.”

No, I’ve had this since 1966 or thereabouts, and the b-side is “Off the hook”

the Blues purists in the Stones get the upper hand with this hit although Jagger’s studiedly indifferent delivery ensure that it avoids a deathly authenticity. Charlie Watts’ drumming is outstandingly understated, propelling the song forward while the two guitarists dream of being bluesmen.

8/10 for Mick and the boys. I like the brooding nature of this.