Charlie Watts does boogiewoogie

By Clive Davis

The Soho basement where his boogiewoogie band will hold court next weekend has room for little more than 100 punters. But Charlie Watts seems more excited about playing there than he ever did about joining Sir Mick, Keef and Co at Wembley or Madison Square Garden. While he may be rock’n’roll’s most revered drummer, the Rolling Stones veteran has never made any secret of the fact that jazz remains his first love.

In years gone by he has put together volcanic big bands and nimble small groups dedicated to the music of Charlie Parker. Never one to hide his disdain for what he once called the “silly teenage world” of pop stardom, Watts has been wandering off the beaten track once again, this time in the company of two virtuoso pianists, Britain’s Ben Waters and the German showman Axel Zwingenberger. Lila Ammons — grand-daughter of the American boogie-woogie legend Albert Ammons — provides guest vocals, and with Watts’s childhood friend, Dave Green — one of Britain’s most experienced jazz bassists — keeping the beat flowing, the London shows promise a feast of exuberant swing and blues.

The group first came together about two years ago. After gigging in Waters’ native Dorset, the musicians put on a show at the Bull’s Head in Barnes, whose music room has played host to many of the world’s best jazz musicians. Watts, modest as ever, doubted they would sell out. In the event the place was overflowing.

“We don’t have a set list, and we’ve only ever rehearsed once. It’s all about the fun of it,” he explains as he settles into his seat in a private dining room at Claridge’s. “We’re playing simple, happy sequences. There’s no treacherous bebop stuff. It’s more about the swing and the feel than how clever we are. It’s not cutting-edge music.

“Boogie-woogie is a bit like the blues — it’s very narrow and exacting, and if you don’t like it, the biggest thing against it is that it’s all the same. I quite agree. But if you get behind it, it’s like a steam train. To stand near Axel when he’s playing is unbelievable.”

Dapper as ever in a grey suit and blue shirt with no tie, his grey hair neatly trimmed, he looks in excellent shape for a man who has just celebrated his 70th birthday and who survived a throat cancer scare a few years ago. As we all know, he is notorious for his taciturn manner and his deadpan expression. (“I give the impression of being bored,” he once said, “but I’m not really. I’ve just got an incredibly boring face.”) Yet when the subject is the music he loves most, he becomes positively garrulous, cantering through lists of the musicians who have meant the most to him.

The names Chico Hamilton and Phil Seamen may not mean much to the average Stones fan. To Watts, they have something close to saintly status. To hear him recall how excited he was to speak to Hamilton, after the grand old man came to hear Watts and his bebop band in a New York club, is like listening to a starry-eyed teenybopper describing bumping into John Lennon at the Cavern.

The record that first turned him on to jazz was the saxophonist Earl Bostic’s raucous, R&B-style cover of the Ellington band’s hit 'Flamingo'. “That was my uncle’s record,” he recalls. “I just loved the sound of the saxophone. I was 13 when I heard it — no, younger, because I was 13 when I heard Gerry Mulligan play 'Walking Shoes'. Chico Hamilton is on that. His brushes were so amazing I went out and bought myself a pair of wire brushes and played on the skin of a banjo I had.

“I’ve known Dave Green since I was four —he lived next door. We learnt about jazz together, when we were 15 or 16, by listening to records. We had everyone —Johnny Dodds, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk”.

Whenever he talks about drummers he admires, he launches into a catalogue of greats, from Davy Tough to Elvin Jones and the New Orleans master Vernel Fournier, who lays down the classic laid-back beat on the pianist Ahmad Jamal’s version of Poinciana, a huge crossover hit in the late 1950s, and still one of the sexiest jazz recordings made. “The drumming on that is amazing,” Watts says. “I could never work out how to do it, but thankfully a friend eventually took me to see Ahmad Jamal in Paris. Idris Muhammad was on drums by then, and I saw how it was done. So now I do it all the time.”

In a sense, the new project re-connects Watts with the Stones’ early days, since the gigs coincide with the release of Waters’ new album, Boogie 4 Stu, a tribute to Ian Stewart, the pianist the Stones dropped in 1963 — partly because his image did not fit the PR mould. A fine boogie-woogie player in his own right, Stewart died of a heart attack in 1985, aged 47.

When Watts heard of Waters’ plans for a record, he was eager to take part. Jagger, Richards, Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood all made guest appearances as well. So too did PJ Harvey, Waters’ cousin. Jools Holland, another boogie enthusiast, offered the use of his recording studio and joined the session. Just to round things off, the artist and Stones fan Peter Blake provided the portrait of Stewart that adorns the album cover.

None of this would cut much ice with fans of Lady Gaga, perhaps. Boogie 4 Stu is the unpretentious sound of old friends gathering for a jam session. But it is clear that Watts feels at home in this deliciously earthy music. It is, you could say, a reminder of the start of his career. The son of a lorry driver, he played in Alexis Korner’s blues band before he came to the attention of the Stones, whom he joined about six months after the band had played its first gig at the Marquee.

One of Keith Richards’s early diary entries reads: “Charlie swings very nicely but can’t rock. Fabulous guy though.” The bond between them soon deepened. As Richards puts it in his autobiography, Life: “There’s tremendous personality and subtlety in his playing. If you look at the size of his kit, it’s ludicrous compared with what most drummers use these days. They’ve got a fort with them ... Charlie’s quintessentially a jazz drummer, which means that the rest of the band is a jazz band in a way.”

Watts’s passion for bop and swing is beyond dispute and when I mention that the great French composer Michel Legrand played a sterling set at Ronnie Scott’s a week or so ago, he reveals that one of his most prized possessions is the contract drawn up when Miles Davis guested on Legrand’s 1950s album Legrand Jazz.

Charlie Parker is a touchstone, and Watts tries to keep in touch with new trends by listening to late-night sessions on BBC Radio 3. At the same time he is happy to admit to enjoying more mellow sounds. And he is surely right when he complains that contemporary jazz lacks a certain, well, glamour: sometimes it feels as if we are eavesdropping on a practice session in a conservatory. The jazz cognoscenti, he argues, are so busy lauding the latest John Coltrane acolyte that they neglect the more elegant and romantic playing of Lester Young or Johnny Hodges, the great Ellington altoist. “I love Coltrane, but he took a lot of tone out of the saxophone. It’s one of the things you notice when you listen to the radio at night. There’s nothing wrong with it — for a drummer it’s beautiful. But when you sit back and listen, you think, ‘God I’d sooner put Lester Young on’.”

The conversation takes another unexpected leap — to top hats and tails. Watts was preparing for his visit to Royal Ascot. He and Shirley, his wife of 46 years, live in bucolic isolation in Devon, a long way from the remnants of Swinging London. “We’ll be in the Queen’s Enclosure, which means you have to wear a top hat,” he says. “Now I’ve bought one. I’m determined to go every year till I drop because it’s a waste of bloody money otherwise.”

As for the Stones, they have been off-limits for most of the interview, but before we finish I cannot resist asking him what he thought of Keith Richards’ book. Everyone in the music business seems to have read it. But not Charlie Watts, apparently: “What did I think? I ain’t read it,” he says, with a shrug of the shoulders. “People who have seem to like it. I never read Ronnie’s or Bill’s books either. I don’t need to.”

The ABC and D of Boogie-Woogie, Pizza Express Jazz Club, W1, Fri, June 24, Sat June 25 www.pizzaexpresslive.com (0845 6027017). Ben Waters’ album Boogie 4 Stu is released on Eagle Records

The Times

The irrepressible wit and immeasurable wisdom of Charles Robert Watts...it don't get no better.

great article. thanks for posting it.

I cannot resist asking him what he thought of Keith Richards’ book. Everyone in the music business seems to have read it. But not Charlie Watts, apparently: “What did I think? I ain’t read it,” he says, with a shrug of the shoulders. “People who have seem to like it. I never read Ronnie’s or Bill’s books either. I don’t need to.”
Smart man, Charlie! He doesnt need to read the books, he lived it!