Oh Bobby, Won’t You Let It Rock: Bobby Keys, Pt. 1

 

Every night’s a Saturday night
And every day’s a Sunday
I know I’ve been wrong before
But I’m gonna try it one more time!
–Epigraph to Bobby Keys‘ autobiography, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012

When The Rolling Stones‘ longtime saxophonist, Bobby Keys, died last month due to cirrhosis of the liver, it marked the end of an era. Keys was the longest-serving link to the Stones’ late ’60s/early ’70s heyday who wasn’t an actual founding member of the band. His contribution to their legacy is incalculable, mostly as a live performer, but a few of his studio moments are critical touchstones in their catalog. Bobby also spent a decent chunk of his career as a highly-sought-after session player and with his death, I wonder how much juice is left in the rock ‘n’ roll saxophone tank. It’s a much-maligned element of rock music — oftentimes deservedly so — but Bobby Keys was a profoundly swinging badass and the entire history of rock ‘n’ roll came out of his horn.

There is no way I could do justice to the entirety of Keys’ career in one post — not to mention, it would take me 6 months to finish and I’d rather not go through another divorce. So, what I’ve done is loosely cover his first 25-26 years on planet Earth, before he made a name for himself as a sideman, and then address several highlights from his initial burst of high-profile recording and performing (1969-72). For obvious reasons, I focus on songs with a sax solo, so no “Bitch” or “Rocks Off,” but you get a wide range of the Bobby Keys experience. I’ll address the latter phases of his career in a future post (or two), but I stop at 1972 because according to Keys, the Exile On Main St. tour that year was the highlight of his career, so why not stop at a high point … so to speak.

I’ve incorporated quotes wherever possible, many from Bobby’s hilarious and informative autobiography, Every Night’s A Saturday Night. He discusses a lot of things about which I had no idea, like his spell in LA in the mid-to-late ’60s. I like musicians with a sense of humor, especially the ability to laugh at themselves, even if they know they’re hot shit on a stick. I tried to cover his work chronologically — by recording date whenever possible — because I wanted to see how Keys got from Bobby Vee to “Sweet Virginia” in 8 years? In Bobby’s case, how did he get from being a so-called clodhopper from West Texas to Keith Richards‘ partner in crime and artistic foil? Let’s find out.

 

1961: LUBBOCK OR LEAVE IT

It’s clear to me now, in retrospect, that I didn’t choose rock ‘n’ roll so much as it chose me. It said, “Here I am,” and I said, “I’m comin’!” When I first heard Buddy Holly playing the electric guitar and heard that bass fiddle thumpin’ up there and the drums and cymbals, I mean, I knew right then. I was like a kid following the Pied Piper, man. I wanna go where that music is. Who’s making that music and how do they do that?
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 10

Keys was born on December 18, 1943, in Slaton, Texas, a speed bump of a town 15 miles southeast of Lubbock. When he was 10 years old he saw Buddy Holly and his band (way pre-Crickets) playing on the back of a flatbed pickup and that was it, he was hooked on rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Chuck Berry, in addition to west Texas boys like Holly and Roy Orbison. These were the first generation rock ‘n’ rollers who piped into west Texas on clear channel Mexican radio stations, the ones Dave Alvin immortalized in “Border Radio.” “50,000 watts out of Mexico,” son.

Keys started playing baritone saxophone in the high school band and was good enough to finagle his way into a few Holly band practices, which included once and future Crickets like Jerry “JI” Allison (drums), Joe Mauldin (bass), and Sonny Curtis (guitar, vocals). In a ridiculously lucky turn of events — a recurring theme in Bobby’s life — Keys met his musical hero because of his relationship with Buddy and the Crickets.

At some point on tour they’d met this fella named King Curtis, who was a saxophone player. He’d played on all the early Coasters stuff. “Yakety Yak” and “Charlie Brown,” just an endless list. He was my saxophone hero. Well, in October of 1958 I got a call one day from J.I because he knew I had a car, a ’51 Chevrolet. I was a sophomore in high school, but you could get your driver’s license as early as age 13 in Texas in those days. They’d come back from New York and gone to Norman Petty‘s studio in Clovis, New Mexico, about a 100 miles west of Lubbock.

The Buddy Holly tune which features King Curtis on tenor sax. Recorded September 10, 1958.

 

Anyway, they’d hired King Curtis to come to Clovis to play on a couple of Buddy’s tracks, but there was no passenger service into Clovis. You flew into Amarillo. Well, I forsook my high school basketball game — didn’t tell anyone I wasn’t gonna show up — and went and picked up King Curtis. Drove him to Clovis, drilling him for tips, insights, and advice the whole way. When word got around that I wasn’t deathly ill and that I had in fact gone to pick up a black cat at the airport, well, that sorta ground my social life in Slaton to a halt. But it didn’t matter. Basketball? Pfff. Saxophone, music, chicks, rock ‘n’ roll? YEAH! I didn’t care what anyone in Slaton thought.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 21-22

After Buddy Holly died in February 1959, Bobby spent most of his time in Lubbock and even formed a band, The Hollyhawks, with Mauldin. In the fall of 1961, Keys received an offer that he couldn’t (and wouldn’t) refuse. Buddy Knox, who hailed from Happy, Texas, just north of Lubbock, and who hit big with “Party Doll” in the spring of 1957, needed a sax player for a tour of the midwest and Canada. Keys accepted Knox’s offer, a heady proposition for an 18-year-old kid with only minor road experience, but he dove in head first and never looked back. He did a pair of 16-week tours in 1961-62, and somewhere in the middle of all this road work he lucked into a recording session with Dion, who was riding high at that exact moment with the biggest hit of his career, “Runaround Sue.” As fate would have it, Dion was about to record the second biggest hit of his career and Bobby was lucky enough to not only be on hand, but laid down his first recorded saxophone solo.

RELEASED: NOVEMBER 1961
Dion – The Wanderer
Clip from Twist Around The Clock, 1961
Keys solo: 1:38-2:03 (though it’s not Keys in the video)
https://youtu.be/IkoidwsLXCg

Of course, it’s a little complicated because it might not actually be Keys on the final recording. Umm … say what? Let Bobby explain:

Rolling Stone: In your book you write about playing on “The Wanderer.” You really just wandered [womp womp] into that session?

Bobby: Yeah, as a matter fact I did. I really didn’t know if it was me on the record until about 6 months ago. Another horn player I know talked to Dion about it. He said he remembered me there, but I was a little out of tune and they had another guy come in the next day and play the exact same part that I did. But I can’t tell the difference. I think it’s me [laughs]. I know how I sound. But that was the first time I ever heard myself on the radio on a hit record.
–Bobby Keys to Rolling Stone, “The Lost Rolling Stone Interview,” December 2, 2012

So, we know Keys played on “The Wanderer” session, we’re just not 100% certain he made the final cut. Fuck it. Him taking his first official solo is a better story and this is rock ‘n’ roll, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Interesting piece of trivia regarding “The Wanderer.” It was actually the B-side to “The Majestic,” but disc jockeys (wisely) liked “The Wanderer” better and started playing it. It entered the Billboard pop charts in December 1961 and peaked at #1 in early 1962.

 

JUNE 1964: MEETING THE STONES

In 1964, Keys received another offer that would alter the course of his life and career. Through Buddy Knox’s booking agent, he hooked up with Myron Lee and The Caddies, a rock ‘n’ roll band with a decent following in the midwest, especially their native South Dakota. Lee was part of Dick Clark‘s Caravan Of Stars tour, a 1950s-style revue that featured 6 or 7 rock ‘n’ roll acts each playing a 15-20 minute set. The Caddies played their own short set, then essentially served as the house band for the various singers, who included Little Anthony And The Imperials, The Shangri-Las, Major Lance, Freddy Cannon, and Bobby Vee, the man for whom Keys was really working.

On June 6, 1964, the Caravan pulled into San Antonio, Texas, for the San Antonio Teen Fair, where Vee was scheduled to perform on the 6th and 7th. By chance, The Rolling Stones were also scheduled to play those 2 dates, only their 2nd and 3rd shows ever in America! (By the way, it’s definitely worth noting that another act who also played on the 6th and 7th was a country singer by the name of George Jones.) As Bobby tells it:

It was the Stones’ first trip over here, real early in their career. The single they had out at the time was “Not Fade Away,” which was a Buddy Holly song. It was their first single that got any play over here in the States.

All the acts that were performing were staying together at this motor inn in San Antonio (the Ramada Inn). Keith and Brian were in the room next door to the room I was staying in with the drummer from our band (Stu Perry). It was summertime, so everyone was out on their balconies, looking at chicks in the pool.

I started talking to Brian and he found out that I was from Lubbock, and asked if I knew Buddy Holly. I said, “Yeah, I knew Buddy Holly.” So he called Charlie, Mick, and Keith over to meet me. That was the common thread that connected us. That was my introduction to the Stones. Then, Keith and I find out that coincidentally we were born on the same day, same month, same year (December 18, 1943).
–Bobby Keys to Christopher J. Oglesby, Fire In The Water, Earth In The Air: Legends Of West Texas Music, 2006

While Vee is about as rock ‘n’ roll as capri pants, he has a few bullet points on his resume worth mentioning. When Buddy Holly’s airplane went down with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959, the organizers of the Winter Dance Party made the inexplicable decision to continue the tour with other acts. (Ironically, the one headliner who didn’t make that fateful plane trip and kept touring was Dion.) So, for the next night’s show in Fargo, North Dakota — literally less than 24 hours after the 3 headliners were killed — their slots were filled by local acts who played instrumentals and covers. One of those acts was Bobby Vee & The Shadows.

A few months later, the Shadows hired a local pianist who went by the name, Elston Gunn. He was a fabulous song and dance man, but only played in one key and didn’t own his own piano. This was a problem. So, after a few gigs, he and the band parted ways, and Gunn enrolled at the University of Minnesota. However, he eventually dropped out of school and moved to New York City, where he took up folk music and changed his name to Bob Dylan. You may have heard of him.

Finally, while Bobby Keys hooking up with Bobby Vee doesn’t make any on paper sense, there is a direct connection between the two men. In 1962, Vee released the album, Bobby Vee Meets The Crickets, his collaboration with Holly’s former backing band. One of the songs that Vee and The Crickets covered was Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It,” which we’ll hear in a different context below. They also tackled Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie,” which the Stones later covered on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out (1970).

1965-69: LOS ANGELES TRAINING GROUND

California opened up a whole new chapter for me. I didn’t think about it at the time — I’m a musician, I didn’t think about much except where my next gig was gonna be — but if I hadn’t moved to LA in 1965, I wouldn’t be here today. The Buddy Knox and Bobby Vee tours opened me up to what’s out there in the rest of the country, but it was California and the people I met and played with there that opened me up to the rest of the world.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 58

The next phase of Bobby Keys’ career is largely off the grid, but it was critical to his artistic development. If his touring stints with Buddy Knox and Bobby Vee were apprenticeships in how to be a working musician, it was his time in LA where he really found his voice. There were lots of clubs, lots of live music, and a tight-knit group of like-minded musicians, many of whom were transplanted Okies. Granted, few people were making money, but if you wanted to hone your craft there were gigs to be had. You may be surprised to learn that one of the most important musicians to Bobby’s musical growth in LA was Levon Helm.

Levon Helm showed me a lot of stuff when we were living together out in California in the ’60s. We had a little band together for a while: Jesse Ed Davis, Jimmy Markham, Levon, and myself. (JJ) Cale played in it for some time.
–Bobby Keys to Nashville Cream, “The Cream Interview,” March 2, 2012

Of course, if you’ve read Helm’s autobiography, This Wheel’s On Fire, you might remember this passage, which references many of those same names. This is 1966-67, that fallow period after Levon quit the Dylan tour, but before he headed up to Big Pink in Woodstock, NY.

I borrowed some money from Paul (Berry) — whom I’d known for years and whom all of us in The Hawks knew we could on anytime — and hopped another drive-away car for California and hung out with saxophonist Bobby Keys for awhile. I knew Leon Russell out there, and Johnnie (JJ) Cale, Roger Tillotson, Jesse Ed Davis, and Jimmy Markham — all musicians from the Tulsa area.
–Levon Helm, This Wheel’s On Fire, 1993, p. 144

How was Levon specifically important to Bobby? He explains:

I learned a lot from Levon. He turned me onto Little Walter, a harmonica player, and that was crucial. He’s the one who suggested that, instead of playing like a saxophone player in a big band, maybe I should play like a harmonica player. And I took him at his word. A good piece of advice there. Thank you, Levon.

Little Walter

 

From that point on, I started taking a lot of my solos and a lot of my phrasing and approaches to playing the saxophone from blues harmonica players. I’d taken my rock ‘n’ roll influence from King Curtis, but actually all I was doing, really, was mimicking King Curtis. Which wasn’t a bad thing, but not particularly original. I’d developed some licks: double-tonguing, triple-tonguing, and just some sorta standard King Curtis-type licks.

If you want to think of what I do as having a style, it was fashioned from King Curtis and from Little Walter and harmonica solos, and kind of fusing that all together. I don’t play a lot of notes. You don’t see me running a lot of scales and stuff like that. It’s pretty much straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 66-67

 

Aside from their mutual love of R&B and early rock ‘n’ roll, as well as extracurriculars like pot, LSD, and fine women, Keys and Helm also authored autobiographies that are essential reading. Naturally, both books address touchstone rock bands, but they put those bands — and the musicians involved — in an engaging social and historical context. Best of all, both books sound EXACTLY like Levon and Bobby. They perfectly capture the tone of both men’s voices, so you feel like you’re in a bar hearing funny, charming dudes tell classic war stories. And let’s face it. If you had to be in a bar listening to a couple dudes talking about the old days, you could do A LOT worse than Levon Helm and Bobby Keys. You may not be able to walk out of that bar without assistance, but you damn well sure would’ve gotten your money’s worth.

As for the aforementioned social context, here’s Bobby talking about his version of LA in the mid-to-late ’60s:

Mostly we were playing blues clubs. That type of music — blues, R&B — it centered what I was doing back then. I wasn’t a schooled musician. I didn’t read, I didn’t depend on arrangements or a section to play with. So, being the only horn player, I started playing rhythm. It was kind of a wide-open field because nobody’d ever really done it that way. I mean, there were songs that had saxophone solos in ’em, but unfortunately the songs of Buddy Knox never had a single saxophone solo in ’em, so all I did was rhythm stuff. With (Jimmy) Markham, it was pretty much all harmonicas and shuffles, which was right up my alley — that was my meat and potatoes, man. I loved that stuff.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 61-62

There was a lot of stuff going on out in LA in the ’60s. All-afternoon and all-day events started taking place out at places like Topanga Canyon at somebody’s ranch, or at a park sometimes, although the police didn’t like assemblages in large numbers without a permit. There were places like the Topanga Corral, where Taj Mahal used to go and play, lots of people played there. I’d play out there with Markham, Gram Parsons played out there in the International Submarine Band. And I played with them, too.

It seemed like you could play all the time back then if you wanted to. You could always find somebody to jam with. With Markham and Levon, we played lots of weekends and lots of Sunday afternoons. And those were always fun because we’d go and we’d just listen to Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy (Waters) and all the guys and then be able to go out and play that kind of music. We weren’t really playing rock ‘n’ roll, we were playing blues boogie tempered with a little Chuck Berry here and there. We’d play Snoopy’s Opera House in north Hollywood, we’d play a couple places down in the Valley, and then a lot of those gatherings.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 62-64

As 1968 turned into 1969, Keys’ career finally took shape. He became an integral part of the Delaney & Bonnie backing band, the so-called “Friends,” and it was there that he first hooked up with his partner in brass, trumpet player Jim Price. According to Bobby, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends were the only band in LA making original southern music, very much inspired by Stax and Muscle Shoals. It helped that Delaney Bramlett was a bona fide Mississippi boy and a gifted singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The group recorded their debut in the first few months of 1969, and though it didn’t sell many records, The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends — also known as Accept No Substitute — proved to be surprisingly influential.

RECORDED: SPRING 1969
Delaney & Bonnie – When The Battle Is Over
Released on Accept No Substitute aka The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends,
July 1969

Musicians who played on the album, though not necessarily on this song:
Delaney Bramlett – lead and background vocals, electric guitar
Bonnie Bramlett – lead and background vocals
Leon Russell – piano, electric guitar
Jerry McGee – electric guitar
Bobby Whitlock – organ, background vocals
Bobby Keys – saxophone
Jim Price – trumpet, trombone
Carl Radle – bass
Jim Keltner – drums
Rita Coolidge – backing vocals

This is the only footage of Delaney & Bonnie from early 1969. And while I wish this song featured horns, given the rarity of the video I can’t complain too much. We first see Bobby at 1:26, to Bonnie’s right, though he’s not playing saxophone. In fact, I’m not sure what the hell Bobby’s doing. There’s an extended sequence, from 2:23-2:31, where he’s grooving and either playing a drum that’s just below the frame or waving some sort of percussion instrument — though I’ve never seen a percussion instrument that looks like a conductor’s baton (see pic below). Whatever the case, “Battle” is a good jam and a textbook example of Delaney & Bonnie’s chicken fried southern soul. Written by Dr. John and Jessie Hill (“Ooh Poo Pah Doo”), it’s a funky combo of blues, R&B, gospel, country, and trad rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s easy to hear why the band has maintained a steadfast cult following.

 

If Delaney & Bonnie’s debut was a commercial disappointment — at least relative to expectations — the recording process yielded collateral success. By pure chance, Bobby reacquainted himself with the Stones during the D&B sessions and it was that association which would ultimately cement his legacy in rock ‘n’ roll history.

The first (Stones) record I played on was Let It Bleed. I was in the studio with Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. We had Leon Russell and Jim Keltner in the band, Rita Coolidge, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle, Jim Price and me. We were in Elektra Studios recording, beginning work on the first Delaney & Bonnie album, Accept No Substitute, and I just walked out of the studio, was walking down the hall, and ran into Jagger.

I hadn’t seen Mick in a long time. I met them originally when they came to the States on their first tour. I was playing with a guy named Bobby Vee. But anyway, I ran into Mick and he said, “Hey, is that you?” and I said, “Yeah, I believe it is, and it looks like you’re probably you, too.” He said, “Well, what are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m in the studio. We’re doing some recording.” He said, “You got your horn?” I said, “Well, yeah,” and he said, “Well, if you got a minute, come on down to our studio. We’re working on some tracks, and there’s a song we were talking about (putting) a horn solo on.”

The guy that was producing (the Stones) album also produced Delaney & Bonnie On Tour With Eric Clapton. Jimmy Miller was his name. Jimmy knew me and Jim (Price). Mick said, “What do you think?” and Jimmy said, “Oh great. Yeah, bring him on down!” I walked in and listened to the track, and Jimmy said, “You play here, and you stop playing here.” So, we went through it one time just to get a level and then recorded it. That was the first track I played with them.
–Bobby Keys to Nashville Cream, “The Cream Interview,” March 2, 2012

REC: MAY 24, 1969
Rolling Stones – Live With Me
Released on Let It Bleed, December 5, 1969
Keys solo: 1:36-2:22
http://youtu.be/Vy9bicKwDBU

Mick Jagger – lead vocal
Keith Richards – electric guitar, bass, background vocal
Mick Taylor – electric guitar
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Nicky Hopkins – piano
Leon Russell – piano, horn arrangement
Charlie Watts – drums

When he cut “Live With Me,” his first record with us, I immediately thought of great players like Plas Johnson or Lee Allen, who played for Little Richard and Fats Domino. He had that same Southern feel on the way he played. I guess that’s not too astounding, since he does come from Texas [laughs]. He never let anybody forget he was from Texas.
–Keith Richards, Rolling Stone, December 4, 2014

Both the horns AND Mick Taylor made their debut on the same album on the same track. At the time a lot of people overlooked the fact that it wasn’t just Mick (Taylor) joining the band, that was the whole period where the horns joined too. And they all left at the same time.
–Bobby Keys

 

Keys’ first solo of note was a honking tower of power. And while he may have been influenced by blues harmonica players like Little Walter, here he definitely betrays that primary King Curtis influence.

With the benefit of backstory, it’s interesting to note that not only did Bobby come over from the Delaney & Bonnie session, but so did Leon Russell, who at the time was one of the Friends. Hell, given his talent, he was probably the most important Friend, and it was Leon who arranged the sax solo as much as Bobby. People forget this now, but for awhile there Leon Russell was THE MAN. He’d been getting regular studio work since the mid-60s (with The Wrecking Crew, no less), had written hit singles, worked on TV shows like Shindig! (where he brought in Delaney Bramlett), and was totally comfortable in the role of producer, arranger, and bandleader. If nothing else, he was a set of ears you could totally trust, and you can bet Mick, Keith, and Jimmy Miller were aware of the rep that preceded him. As Keys succinctly puts it in his autobio, “Leon was what all the other Okies and Texans were aspiring to be: He had a black Cadillac, he had his own house in the hills, he had a studio in his house, and he had chicks up there day and night” (p. 60).

1969-70: FROM DELANEY & BONNIE TO ERIC & GEORGE

As great as playing on a Stones record undoubtedly was, it must’ve felt like a lucky one-off for Bobby. Right place, right time, that sorta thing. After all, in 1969 he was still part of Delaney & Bonnie, with whom he toured first in America, and then, much more famously, in Europe.

REC: DECEMBER 12, 1969
Delaney & Bonnie & Friends – Little Richard Medley
Falkoner Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark
Keys solo: 40:11-40:57

Delaney Bramlett – lead vocal, electric guitar (George Harrison‘s 1968 Rosewood Fender Telecaster to be precise)
Bonnie Bramlett – vocals
George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Dave Mason – electric guitar
Bobby Whitlock – keyboards, vocals
Billy Preston – keyboards
Carl Radle – bass
Jim Gordon – drums
Bobby Keys – tenor sax, tambourine
Jim Price – trumpet
Tex Johnson – percussion
Rita Coolidge – vocals

How about this for a fun little gem? Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, with a few additional Friends of some renown. George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Dave Mason of Traffic were “just the guitar players,” while Billy Preston was the second organist. Not too shabby. Here they are cutting up a Little Richard medley consisting of “Tutti Frutti,” “The Girl Can’t Help It,” “Long Tall Sally,” and “Jenny Jenny.” While the mix could probably be better — and the camera operation is occasionally WTF — it’s pretty awesome to see Keys pay homage to Lee Allen’s epochal solos from those Little Richard singles. As I’ve said before, Keys and Allen are the two greatest saxophonists in rock ‘n’ roll history — with the aforementioned King Curtis right there with ’em — and nothing I see here dissuades me from that opinion. For what it’s worth, a variation of this performance is captured on Delaney & Bonnie’s 1970 LP, On Tour With Eric Clapton. That album was actually recorded just 5 days previous to this Copenhagen show, on December 7, 1969, at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, England.

Since the Keys/Price horn section wasn’t featured on “Battle,” but is featured here, now’s a good time to learn about their creative process. Here’s Bobby discussing how the pair came up with their respective parts:

I was playing the tenor saxophone exclusively at the time. What we started doing — because there was just the two of us, which meant we couldn’t do your traditional horn-section-type parts and two-part harmony is not very effective — is we concentrated on playing unison parts in octaves, and finding something in the song that wasn’t necessarily a traditional horn part. I’ve got to credit Delaney with this. We didn’t play traditional horn stuff so much. We took our horn parts out of the song and Delaney would help with that.

Traditionally, three horns was the minimum, but bands like Chicago had four or five horns: a trumpet or two trumpets, two saxes, and a trombone. And Al Kooper‘s band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, they had four or five horns. A two-horn section had never been done before. When we first started playing, we did a lot of Stax-influenced blues stuff, and those Stax records all had horns in ’em, The Memphis Horns. Jim and I decided that we could make it sound like more than two horns if we augmented it with, for instance, the keyboard player playing the same lines, like in thirds. And then it evolved from that into Jim and I playing in unison and picking out a part from the guitar or keyboard and augmenting that. And it just produced a different sound. We had to look at it from a different perspective, take a different approach.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 77-78

REC: NOV 1969/JAN 1970
Eric Clapton – Slunky
Released on Eric Clapton, August 1970
Keys solo: :01-1:29

Eric Clapton, Stephen Stills – electric guitar
Delaney Bramlett – electric rhythm guitar
Leon Russell, John Simon – piano
Bobby Whitlock – organ
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet
Carl Radle – bass
Jim Gordon – drums

“Slunky” is the funky opening track to Clapton’s solo debut and essentially picks up where the Delaney & Bonnie tour left off, both in terms of core musicians and having hotshot cameos. Clapton trades guitar leads with Stephen Stills and Leon Russell shares piano duties with John Simon, producer, arranger, and secret weapon of The Band‘s Music From Big Pink and Brown Album. Meanwhile, Bobby trades sax leads with himself as he gets into a jazzier groove than we’re used to hearing. As for the remainder of personnel, Eric Clapton was recorded at the tail end of the European D&B tour, in which EC was part of the backup band, so it made sense that those guys were enlisted here. Unfortunately, once that tour ended, the Friends portion of D & B & Friends imploded in a whirlwind of ego and false promises. Whitlock, Radle, and Jim Gordon joined Joe Cocker‘s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour at the behest of Leon Russell, but Clapton was lurking in the background. We’ll get to that in a bit.

A couple factoids about Eric Clapton. While they don’t appear on “Slunky,” Jerry Allison and Sonny Curtis of The Crickets provide backup vocals throughout the album, the first time Keys appeared on record with his former mentors. Also, the biggest hit from the album was “After Midnight,” which was written by Johnnie “JJ” Cale, another Okie transplant living in LA and one of the original members of Delaney & Bonnie & Friends.

REC: MARCH 27-28, 1970
Joe Cocker – Let’s Go Get Stoned
Fillmore East, NYC
Released on Mad Dogs & Englishmen, August 1970
Keys solo: 3:11-3:43
http://youtu.be/E6YhSDQ8zgU

Joe Cocker – lead vocal
Leon Russell – electric lead guitar, arrangement
Don Preston – electric rhythm guitar
Chris Stainton – piano
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet
Carl Radle – bass
Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, Chuck Blackwell, Sandy Konikoff – drums, percussion
Bobby Torres – congas
Plus the Space Choir, which included Rita Coolidge

“This is a request from Bobby Keys.”
–Joe Cocker

Joe Cocker was alive when I started writing this post and now he’s not. Sigh … rest in peace, Joe. I was so excited to unearth this priceless chunk of americana and now I feel like it’s a sad wake for two dead men. Oh well, on with the show. “Let’s Go Get Stoned” was an R&B #1 in 1966 for Ray Charles, who was Cocker’s primary vocal inspiration. Bobby’s solo is restrained, yet swings behind the beat with the spirit-feel of David “Fathead” Newman, Brother Ray’s longtime saxophonist and a musician for whom Keys and Cocker had much respect. (I’ll address this relationship more in the next Bobby post.) The backing band for the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour — and subsequent album — was largely organized by Leon Russell, who tears it up on guitar here. Remember, the tour took place just as Delaney & Bonnie & Friends self-destructed, so it made sense for Leon to bring along guys he trusted. They could play the material and flat laid the wood as a rhythm section.

 

Leon Russell was the “Mad Dogs” bandleader, but each of the musicians could offer suggestions and contribute as he saw fit. Perhaps the most unique feature of the musical backdrop was Keltner and Gordon on double drums, which was one of the earliest examples of that setup in a rock context*.

I don’t remember anyone doing that before us, using the two-drummer format. Keltner would really hit the snare hard while Gordon would do the faster stuff. It really set up this incredible rhythm. It was like a train coming. And then Leon and Bobby and Jim Price: I mean, it didn’t even strike me when they came on board as a horn section how good they were. Nowadays when I work with brass you have to give ’em some time to put their act together, but it seemed like Bobby and Jim, at that time, it was just instant arrangements. It was fascinating stuff.
–Joe Cocker, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 96

* Frank Zappa used 2 drummers in the ’60s, but you could argue that his music was closer in spirit to jazz and even classical than rock, which Zappa hated because he hated everything that might lead you to believe he wasn’t a total genius.

REC: MAY-OCTOBER 1970
George Harrison – What Is Life?
Released on All Things Must Pass, November 27, 1970 [US]
Released as single February 15, 1971 [US]

George Harrison – vocals, electric guitar, slide guitar, backing vocals
+Eric Clapton – electric guitar
^Pete Ham, ^Tom Evans, ^Joey Molland – acoustic rhythm guitar
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet, horn arrangement
+Bobby Whitlock – organ
+Carl Radle – bass
+Jim Gordon – drums
^Mike Gibbins – tambourine
John Barham – string arrangement

+ Member of Derek And The Dominos
^ Member of Badfinger

The night before, George had played for us some of the tracks he wanted us to play on — including “What Is Life?” — so when we got to the studio it was just a matter of he and Jim getting together on the whens and whats, as in when we came in and what we played. Jim was a lot better at voicing the horn parts — he had an actual education, a diploma (from the University of North Texas in Denton). That was his gig and he did a damn good job at it.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 103

The interesting thing about All Things Must Pass from Bobby’s perspective is that in his mind he was just playing on the record as a stopgap until Derek And The Dominos worked out. While touring with Delaney & Bonnie, it was made pretty clear to he and Jim that Clapton wanted horns on his new record, which was to include ex-Friends like Whitlock, Radle, and Gordon (though Gordon only toured with D&B, Keltner was officially their former drummer). In fact, when Keys and Price flew into London, they did so thinking they were going to Clapton’s house to work out arrangements for the new project.

However, when famed Beatles righthand man, Mal Evans, picked them up from Heathrow and took them to George’s house, that’s when they learned that All Things Must Pass was on and that Derek And The Dominos was on hold. Of course, “on hold” really meant “not happening,” which is too bad because while I’m mostly indifferent to Eric Clapton, I’ll ALWAYS make time for Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. Granted, I mainly love the album because of the tight rhythm section and Duane Allman, but can you imagine Keys and Price sweetening a handful of those tracks? Come on, a pocket horn section on the Chuck Willis cover, “It’s Too Late???” Lawdy, a great album would be even greater. Oh well, all that is water on the bridge now. As Bobby said with charming accuracy, “What the hell, here we were at a Beatle‘s house and we’re gonna play on a Beatle’s record, so shit, how bad can it be?”

Fun fact about the recording of “What Is Life?” If you review the list of musicians, you’ll see that aside from Keys and Price, George was essentially backed by Derek And The Dominos and Badfinger. In November 1970, Harrison released All Things Must Pass, the Dereks released Layla, and Badfinger released their classic, No Dice. Yeah, I’d say that was a pretty good month.

1970-71: MORE HORNS!

By the way, don’t feel too bad for Bobby and Jim. Though the Dominos gig fell through, session work was plentiful for the two men, partly because of their impressive credentials, and partly because Bobby Keys was Bobby Keys.

We were hot. I remember doing this thing with Jim Horn, another sax player and a good friend, where we’d pull into any damn studio, any of the bigger ones that I’d worked in, and I’d say to Jim, “Let’s get our horns and see how many sessions we can weasel our way into today.” We’d walk into a place like Olympic Studios and somebody like Pete Townshend would be in there, and he’d say something like, “Hey Bobby, listen to this shit, whaddya think of that?” and I’d say, “Needs horns.” And it worked! “Not bad, but it’s missing something: horns.” “Oh, really? Do you have one with you?” “Yeah, and so does my pal Jim.” Jim and I did a lot of sessions that year in London.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 128-29

One night, George was in the studio wrapping things up and I’d gone down to a club, The Speakeasy, and I ran into Mick Jagger. He asked me what I was doing there and I told him what I was in town for, doing George’s thing. He asked, “Well, how long are you gonna be here?” I said, “I don’t know, I’m probably gonna be going back pretty soon ’cause there’s nothing else to do.” And that led to Mick saying, “Well, we’re doing this album at Olympic Studios, would you and Jim be interested in coming by?”

 

One thing led to another, and throughout the course of the conversation, Mick said, “You’re welcome to stay at my place for awhile and you can go to the studio with me.” And I said, “Yeah Mick, sounds great to me,” because I really wasn’t in the mood to leave England.

At some point while I was living with Mick, I got tapes of the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour. This was before the album was released. I’d play him those tapes, all the time campaigning, “Hey man, you just can’t do it without me! Listen to what I did, I’m Bobby Wonderful! I’m gonna change your life! You put some horns in the band and you’ll have something!” (That’s still my rallying cry: “MORE HORNS!”)
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 107-09

Keys and Price came over to England to play some sessions with Clapton and George Harrison, and Mick bumped into them in a nightclub. So it was get ’em while they’re here. They were a hot section and Mick felt that we needed a horn section and it was all right with me. The Texas Bulldog gave me a look. “We’ve played before,” he Texaned. “We have? Where?” “San Antonio Teen Fair.” “Oh, you were there?” “Damn fucking right.” Then and there I said, screw it, and let’s rock. A huge warm grin, a handshake to crush a rock. You’re a motherfucker! Bobby Keys!
–Keith Richards, Life, 2012, p. 284

REC: MARCH-MAY 1970
Rolling Stones – I Got The Blues
Released on Sticky Fingers, April 23, 1971

Mick Jagger – lead vocal, maracas, castanets
Keith Richards – electric guitar, harmony vocal
Mick Taylor – electric guitar
Billy Preston – organ
Bill Wyman – bass
Charlie Watts – drums
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet

“I Got The Blues” is one of my favorite songs from arguably my favorite Stones album. I’m always flip-flopping between this one and Exile On Main St., but right now, Sticky Fingers has a close lead. Clearly based on Otis Redding, “Blues” is one of Mick’s finest vocal performances and Billy Preston’s gospel organ solo from 2:13-2:37 is a thing of beauty. Speaking of Preston, most people don’t realize that he was the Stones touring keyboardist from 1973-76, and appeared on every album between Sticky Fingers and Black And Blue (1976). I’d also like to mention that Preston was Ray Charles’ organist on the aforementioned hit, “Let’s Go Get Stoned.” “Blues” is one of the few songs in this post to not feature a Keys solo — actually, this and “What Is Life?” — but the way the horns play off the rest of the band definitely makes it worth showcasing.

Sticky Fingers was the first time we added horns — that was the influence of people like Otis Redding and James Brown, and also Delaney & Bonnie, who Bobby Keys and Jim Price played with. It was to add a different dimension, a different color, not to make the band any different. I’ve always liked horns, although there is a danger that it can make everything sound like a show band. But, coming from the love of jazz that I have, I love having them all around me.
–Charlie Watts, According To The Rolling Stones, 2003, p. 135-36

Another song Jim and I worked on was “I Got The Blues,” where we played primarily a Stax-format-type horn thing. Mick was very much into Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and The Memphis Horns. And here he had his own Texas Horns. I remember telling him, “Hey man, we’re the Longhorns!”

I think the main thing when Jim and I were playing together that stimulated interest in the horns was a big transition from go-go music — Johnny Rivers and Trini Lopez and that shit — to soul brothers like, primarily, Sam And Dave, Wilson Picket, and Otis Redding, who had horns all over the place. And that’s where Mick wanted to go. In fact, I know he wanted to go in that direction.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 113-14

REC: JUNE 9-16, 1970
B.B. King – Caldonia
Released on B.B. King In London, October 11, 1971 [US]
Keys solo: 1:10-1:45

B.B. King – lead vocal, electric guitar
Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac) – electric guitar
Rick Wright (NOT the Pink Floyd guy) – electric piano
Gary Wright (Spooky Tooth) – organ
Jim Price, Ollie Mitchell, Chuck Findley – trumpet
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Bill Perkins – baritone sax, clarinet
Duster Bennett – harmonica
Klaus Voorman – electric bass
Jim Gordon – drums

When you’re doing a lotta sessions, sometimes they all sorta blend together. But, there were a few memorable ones during this period. I recorded with B.B. King on his In London album, for instance. That was back when sessions were fun. I played a solo on a song called “Caldonia,” the first song on the album, and then Jim and I put horns on a song called “Ain’t Nobody Home,” which was the last song on the album. We opened it and closed it. If I remember right, I did the solo on “Caldonia” in one take, and when I went in to listen to it, B.B. smiled and said, “That’s just fine, son. That’s just fine.”

(B.B. was) one of those people who made you feel thankful that you could play with him and, because of that, I sorta reached down that extra inch to make sure I was getting everything I could muster up ’cause this was B.B. King, man!”
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 129-30

If you’re unfamiliar with the original “Caldonia,” you best do your homework, son. It was a smash hit in 1945 for the incomparable and indefatigable Louis Jordan, the jump blues singer who helped invent R&B and was probably the most popular crossover artist of his era. He was hugely popular with blacks AND whites during World War II and the first few years following the war. In my opinion, Jordan was the single most important forefather to rock ‘n’ roll, and his fingerprints are all over the work of rock-era pioneers like James Brown, Ray Charles, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley, Little Richard, and yes, B.B. King.

REC: JUNE-JULY 1970
Rolling Stones – Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
Released on Sticky Fingers, April 23, 1971
Keys solos: 3:00-4:30, 6:34-6:58
https://youtu.be/IEquib8VmQo?t=2m49s

Mick Jagger – lead and background vocal
Keith Richards – electric guitar, background vocal
Mick Taylor – electric guitar (including badass solo)
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Billy Preston – organ
Bill Wyman – bass
Charlie Watts – drums
Rocky Dijon – congas
Jimmy Miller – maracas

Bobby Keys had a long, distinguished career and you could probably name a half-dozen solos as his best. But, pound for pound, I gotta go with his solo on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” The irony is that Mick Taylor’s solo just after Bobby’s might be HIS greatest effort as a Rolling Stone. Ironic because, as we learned earlier, the first Stones recording for both Keys and Taylor was the same song: “Live With Me.” I agree with Song Mango, who perceptively note that the biggest influence on “Knocking” is Traffic, particularly songs like “Feelin’ Alright,” “Shanghai Noodle Factory,” and “Glad.” Keep in mind that Jimmy Miller produced Traffic’s first 3 albums — Mr. Fantasy (1967), Traffic (1968), and Last Exit (1969) — prior to (and slightly overlapping) his association with the Stones, so their possible influence isn’t that far-fetched. You can certainly hear echoes of Chris Wood‘s tenor sax lines in Bobby’s badass “Knocking” solo. And while much has been made of Taylor’s majestic guitar sounding like Carlos Santana, the real story is the way Keys flutters underneath Mick’s crunchy, yet fluid Gibson lead in the last minute of the song. As good as the Stones ever got.

As far as the Stones go, the song that I felt was really where I crossed over from being just an added musician, an overdub musician, to actually playing with the band was when we did “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” But it couldn’t have been less planned. Originally, in the studio, the song wasn’t designed to go into that long end part.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 112

Originally, “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” was going to be just the front piece of the song, and then for some reason, everybody kept playing and we got that wonderful extension by Bobby. So we decided to let the track roll.
–Keith Richards, Rolling Stone, December 4, 2014

 

There was this percussionist, Rocky Dijon, a really good percussionist, who the Stones wanted on the record. The song was already worked up and there wasn’t really any part for horns on it. So, they play through the song and Rocky and Mick Taylor just kept playing, and Mick came in with that line that introduces the second half of the song. My ears perked up because I knew this was just a jam — it sounded like a situation where anybody who wanted to can jump in, so I grabbed my horn and I started playing. I came in something like 8 bars after that section started and I had no idea what I was gonna play. I just stuck my horn in my face and started to blow. I mean, I knew what note I was gonna start on, but that little trill thing, I didn’t decide to do that until it just kinda happened. And I thought, Well, that sounds good. As it turns out that became a real defining sound for me.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 112-13

I carried on for a while, then Mick Taylor took over and played for a little while, and I came back in and played for a little bit, then we ended the song. I thought, “Wow, that was really fun. That’s cool.” Then I believe Mick said, “Well that’s cool, but it’s not going to be on the record.” “Oh God. Once again, I’m shot down.”
–Bobby Keys to Nashville Cream, “The Cream Interview,” March 2, 2012

The final decision came down to Keith and Mick, whoever the last man standing was. I don’t really know how it came about. I wasn’t around when they were deciding what the final version should be. Anyway, they did end up using it, which worked out well for me.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 113

REC: SEPT-OCT 1970
Faces – Had Me A Real Good Time
Single released October 21, 1970 [US]
Released on Long Player, February 1971 [US]
Keys solo: 4:32-outro

Rod Stewart – lead vocal
Ronnie Wood – electric guitars (left channel), vocals
Ian McLagan – piano (right channel)
Ronnie Lane – bass, vocals
Kenney Jones – drums, cowbell
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Harry Beckett – trumpet

Obviously there’s a sad bit of synchronicity here, much like with the Joe Cocker track. While Bobby passed away on December 2nd from complications due to being Bobby Keys, Ian McLagan suddenly and shockingly passed away on December 3rd following a severe stroke. Those were rough, back-to-back days and their deaths were uniquely connected by more than just proximity. Bobby and Mac were longtime friends, bandmates in The New Barbarians, toured together with the Stones in 1981, and collaborated on ONE Faces track, this rousing barnstormer from Long Player. Similar to “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” Keys doesn’t show up until halfway through “Good Time,” but his presence steps the song up to another level.

I started it, then (Ronnie Lane) came in with this great Fats Waller thing.” According to (Ian) McLagan, Lane was in love with Waller’s bawdy-house jazz classic, “Your Feet’s Too Big.” “Ronnie’s dad used to play it for him when he was a kid. The chorus line and horn lick in ‘Real Good Time’ — they’re both from that Fats Waller song.”
–From the liner notes to the Faces box set, Five Guys Walk Into A Bar…, pp. 22-23

During that time I was doing a lot of sessions. After establishing myself in England a little bit, and knowing where the studios were and getting a sort of basic feel for how things worked, I got to know Pete Townshend and Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart and Jimmy Page through Glyn Johns, who was producing the Rolling Stones, but also some of these other guys. So, they would be recording and Glyn Johns would say, “Oh, I can get Bobby Keys for that.” It was just word of mouth, networking, and the fact that I’d already been there with Delaney & Bonnie, too — we’d created somewhat of a stir with Eric Clapton and George Harrison playing with us. So, I had some A-list credentials in my hip pocket, which I didn’t mind pulling out — “Hey, I’m Wonderful Bob! What do you mean, who am I? Who the fuck are you?” Haha.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 112

REC: 1970-71
Graham Nash – There’s Only One
Released on Songs For Beginners, May 28, 1971
Keys solo: 2:02-2:29, 3:13-outro

Graham Nash – lead vocals, acoustic guitar, organ
Rita Coolidge – piano, vocals
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Chris Ethridge – bass
Johnny Barbata – drums
Clydie King, Dorothy Morrison, Sherlie Matthews, Venetta Fields – backing vocals

Here’s the thing. I hate Crosby, Stills, and Nash with an irrational passion. Those pussy, whitebread, choral harmonies make me fucking stabby. To be fair, 80-90% of my hate is directed toward David Crosby, but Graham Nash is guilty by association. I do like a few Hollies songs, but at no point have I said to myself, “Boy, that Hollies song was great. I should investigate this Nash guy a little more.” At best, I’m indifferent. This single song may have changed the calculus. It’s undeniably beautiful, with a slow, building harmonic complexity that sounds like Plastic Ono Band by way of, I don’t know, Pink Floyd maybe? Keys’ saxophone lead is a nice, unexpectedly light touch. He doesn’t overplay or go all rock ‘n’ roll because that’s not what the song required. Impressive on all fronts. Incidentally, about a year after this session, background singers Clydie King and Venetta Fields would provide their unique, gospel-flavored backup vox to several Exile On Main St. songs: “Tumbling Dice,” “I Just Want To See His Face,” “Let It Loose,” and “Shine A Light.”

Not long after (the Sticky Fingers) sessions, Mick asked Jim and me if we wanted to do some gigs with the Stones, to which we said, of course, yes. There were some English dates first, so we did those, and they worked out well. And then the band went across the English Channel. I think probably the first couple of dates were strictly an audition to see how some of the material that they were doing with horns would translate onstage, and apparently it translated well — thank you, Jesus!
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 112

Charlie Watts always loved horns. He loved the Memphis style, and that’s what Jim Price and I brought — that Southern style. But we changed it up a little bit because we weren’t a horn section in the traditional manner. We adapted what we played. And I guess Mick heard this when we played with Delaney & Bonnie. We’d take an element, generally a vocal line or a guitar line, and use that to put our two cents in. We could sound like the Memphis Horns if we wanted to — I was very much into R&B. And Jim, although he wasn’t into Otis and Wilson and all that, he had the chops.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 115

GOT NO TACTICS, GOT NO TIME ON HAND

We were forced onto our back by the whole tax thing. In England, we were stymied and we suddenly felt the whole weight of this dead empire coming down on us.
–Keith Richards, According To The Rolling Stones, 2003, p. 137

 

Within weeks of that Marquee Club gig, the Stones fled England for well-chronicled tax reasons. They settled in the south of France, and because Nice and Cannes didn’t have an adequate studio, recording became centered in the basement of Nellcôte, the villa on the Riviera where Keith was habitating. With the band’s mobile recording unit in tow, Miller and engineer Andy Johns — Glyn’s younger brother — lived 5-10 minutes away, so they rolled tape whenever Keith rolled out of bed. Hours and hours of makeshift sessions followed, which featured a handful of actual songs and a number of unfinished grooves. The experience was decadent and unorthdox and yielded one of rock ‘n’ roll’s sacred texts, Exile On Main St.

In my mind, Exile has always been part of the same universe occupied by Velvet Underground And Nico (1967), The White Album (1968), The Stooges‘ Raw Power (1973), Big Star‘s Third/Sister Lovers (1978), and Neil Young‘s Tonight’s The Night (1975). Dark, intensely personal records from roughly the same era that are bleakly visionary AND deceptively nostalgic.* Not a happy bunch of records, that lot. You play them at night after you’ve had a few drinks and you might start digging in the couches for oxycontin pills. Be strong! These records are intoxicating on multiple levels.

* The genius of The Kinks is that they were bleakly nostalgic and deceptively visionary, the only reason none of their albums from 1966-71 is part of that universe. They’re adjacent to that universe, just not from the universe proper.

REC: JULY 1971, OCT-NOV 1971, JAN-MAR 1972
Rolling Stones – Casino Boogie
Released on Exile On Main St., May 12, 1972
Keys solo: 1:22-1:46
http://youtu.be/YBnl9wf9Ltw

Mick Jagger – lead vocal, percussion
Keith Richards – electric rhythm guitars, electric slide guitar, bass, harmony vocal
Mick Taylor – electric lead guitar
Nicky Hopkins – electric piano
Charlie Watts – drums
Bobby Keys – tenor sax

This one’s similar to “Live With Me” in that Keef is on bass and the song features contributions from Taylor, Keys, and Nicky Hopkins. Kind of a textbook Exile track, “Casino Boogie” is straight Chicago blues, almost pre-rock in its construction. This arrangement could easily be from Elmore James or Muddy Waters, with Bobby Keys in the J.T. Brown (James) or Marcus Johnson (Waters) role. This, I think, was one of Bobby’s biggest contributions to the Stones. He wasn’t just a living link to the first and second waves of rock music, he was totally comfortable playing the blues and R&B songs that informed those first and second waves. Keys made songs sound lived in, gave them depth, and there’s something magical about that. According to Keys, this song revealed how the songs were developed and arranged.

There were a few songs where I would be in there playing along with them, like “Casino Boogie.” I was in there when they were laying that down. And I started to play the solo, but for purposes of song separation, they said, “Hold on ’til we get it down and then you can do your thing.” Which is what Jim and I did.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 150

Lyrically speaking, “Casino” was also a throwback to the ’50s, though not the ’50s you might expect. So sayeth Keith:

“Casino Boogie” came out of when Mick and I had just about run ourselves ragged. And it came to my mind, the old Bill Burroughs cut-up method. Let’s rip headlines out of newspapers and pages out of a book, throw ’em on the floor, and see what comes up. Hey, we’re obviously in no mood to write a song in the usual fashion, so let’s use somebody else’s method. And it worked on “Casino Boogie.” I’m surprised we haven’t used it since, quite honestly. But at the time it was desperation. One phrase bounces off another, and suddenly it makes sense even though they’re totally disconnected. But, they have the same feel about them, which is a fair definition of writing a rock or pop lyric anyway:

Dietrich movies, close up boogies
Kissing cunt in Cannes
Grotesque music, million dollar sad
I got no tactics
Got no time on hand
–Keith Richards, Life, 2010, p. 306

REC: JULY 1971, OCT-NOV 1971, JAN-MAR 1972
Rolling Stones – Ventilator Blues
Released on Exile On Main St., May 12, 1972

Mick Jagger – lead and background vocals
Keith Richards – electric rhythm guitars (inc. slide), acoustic guitar
Mick Taylor – electric lead guitar
Nicky Hopkins – piano
Bill Wyman – bass
Charlie Watts – drums
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet

If I never read Charlie Watts’ story about Bobby’s contribution to “Ventilator Blues” (see below), I doubt I would’ve included it. Not that the song or the horn section is subpar or unmemorable, but the song is here because of Keys’ clapping. Frankly, if anyone stars on “Ventilator” it’s the incomparable Nicky Hopkins on piano. Without him, the song would probably fall apart, and that is probably true of more than a few Stones songs from this era. I promise to address Hopkins in greater detail next time. Anyway, “Ventilator” is probably not a track you think of when you think of Bobby Keys and Exile, but he was actually critical to its creation.

We always rehearse “Ventilator Blues.” It’s a great track, but we never play it as well as the original. Something will not be quite right. Either Keith will play it a bit differently or I’ll do it wrong. It’s a fabulous number, but a bit of a tricky one. Bobby Keys wrote the rhythm part, which is the clever part of the song. Bobby said, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ and I said, ‘I can’t play that.’ So, Bobby stood next to me clapping the thing and I just followed his timing. In the world of “Take Five,” it’s nothing, but it threw me completely and Bobby just stood there and clapped while we were doing the track — and we’ve never quite got it together as well as that.”
–Charlie Watts, According To The Rolling Stones, 2003, p. 141

 

“Ventilator” is also a specific reference to Nellcôte, so it adds that level of importance.

“The basement in Nellcôte was big enough, but it was divided into a series of bunkers (see above). Not a great deal of ventilation — hence ‘Ventilator Blues.’ The weirdest thing was trying to find out where you’d left the saxophone player. Bobby Keys and Jim Price moved around to where they could get their sound right — mostly standing with their backs to the wall at the end of a narrow corridor, where Dominique Tarlé took one of his pictures of them with microphone cables snaking away around the corner. Eventually we ended up painting the microphone cable to the horn section yellow. If you wanted to talk to the horns, you followed the yellow cable until you found them. You wouldn’t know where the hell you were. It was an enormous house.”
–Keith Richards, Life, 2010, p. 299

Not to denigrate the Exile mythos, but there’s one myth about the album that needs to be addressed. It wasn’t all recorded in France in a den of iniquity. A LOT of recording and overdubbing was done at Sunset Sound in Hollywood in late 1971/early 1972 with Mick more or less in charge because Keith was deep in the throes of heroin addiction. Andy Johns actually has a great Bobby Keys story from the LA portion of Exile.

Overdubs were not a problem. Any kind of overdub activity, except for “Happy,” where Jim Price was in charge of horn arrangements. That was his responsibility. And Bobby Keys, who has a mathematical mind, would beat you at chess in three moves. That kind of cracker white trash persona that he puts on is just a front.

We were doing overdubs and the Musicians Union guy came by to try to bust us. The Union said if you were foreign musicians you had to give 1% of the record to the Union. They warned me at the front desk, “He’s here again!” So, we’d scrabble around and put everything away and then he’d walk in. I’d pretend I’m just mixing. And in those days, I mean, NOBODY took 4 or 5 months to mix a record (laughs). You did it in a week. So, he was very suspicious.

I remember we (went) over to Wally Heider Studios down the street and he came in to try to bust us again. And Bobby Keys was actually playing tenor saxophone. He knew what this guy was and he comes running out of the studio into the control room and the door on that control room opened right onto the street in Hollywood. And Bobby has his sax over his head and he’s gonna smash (this union guy’s) brains in. And the guy is running up towards Hollywood Blvd with Bobby shouting and screaming at him with the sax still raised above his head. I saw them go round the corner and I didn’t see Bobby again for a couple of weeks (laughs). I think he went to a bar and just forgot what we were there for (laughs). But, we never saw that guy again. Bobby put the fear of Texas into him.
–Andy Johns to Goldmine, “Engineer Andy Johns discusses the making of The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street,” May 8, 2010

Another myth about Exile is that the band all lived with Keith at Nellcôte. In fact, Charlie’s house was on the other side of the country, Mick had just gotten married to Bianca, so he was jet-setting and spending time in Paris, and Bill hated being around junkies. The upside to the shifting Stones lineup was that Keith (or Mick Taylor) could replace Bill on bass, Jimmy Miller could sit in on drums, and songs, riffs, and grooves could be worked on, refashioned, and repurposed. Even Bobby says, “I remember that whole recording process as a series of partial sessions. ‘Well, Bill and Charlie are here, and Mick’s here and Keith’s here — OK, turn the machine on.’ Or even if Keith was just there on his own” (p. 151). Such was the case one day when Keith inexplicably woke up early with no other Stones present and proceeded to take candy from strangers.

REC: JULY 1971, OCT-NOV 1971, JAN-MAR 1972
Rolling Stones – Happy
Released on Exile On Main St., May 12, 1972

Mick Jagger – lead and background vocals
Keith Richards – lead and background vocals, electric guitars (inc. slide), bass
Mick Taylor – electric lead guitar
Nicky Hopkins – electric piano
Jimmy Miller – drums
Bobby Keys – baritone sax, maracas
Jim Price – trumpet, trombone

One sublime example of a song winging in from the ether is “Happy.” We did that in an afternoon, in only 4 hours, cut and done. At noon it had never existed. At 4:00 it was on tape. It was no Rolling Stones record. It’s got the name on it, but it was actually Jimmy Miller on drums, Bobby Keys on baritone, and that was basically it. And then I overdubbed bass and guitar. We were just waiting for everybody to turn up for the real sessions for the rest of the night and we thought, we’re here; let’s see if we can come up with something. I’d written it that day. We got something going, we were rocking, everything was set up and so we said, well, let’s start to work it down and then we’ll probably hit it with the guys later. I decided to go on the 5-string with the slide and suddenly there it was. Just like that. By the time they got there, we had it. Once you have something, you just let it fly.
–Keith Richards, Life, 2012, p. 308

 

One time when I’d just gotten my brand new Selmer baritone saxophone — because most of our instruments had been stolen at one point — I was down in the basement just blowin’ on it, and Keith comes down and starts playing a chord progression. It was “Happy.” I wanted to hear what the low note on my baritone saxophone was, so when Keith got to the part that goes, “I need a love to keep me happy,” man, I got to nail that bottom note, and Keith’s eyes lit up. It was a big sound, it was like all of a sudden a foghorn had just come into the room. Made my socks roll up and down and sorta curled his nose hairs. And so he said, “Hey man, that’s a great sound! What else can you do with it?”

I always thought I helped Keith write that song. That’s pretty much what he says in print, but you couldn’t tell it from the royalty statements, which I never got. But then again, I didn’t really do anything. We were just jamming. He wrote the song, he wrote the lyrics. I just always like to goad him about it: “Hey man, I was there!” To which he says, “Yeah man, you were there — you shoulda written something! You shoulda said something creative!”
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 145-46

In between the recording, mixing, and mastering of Exile and the American tour, Bobby squeezed in a bit of session work, including this classic slice of acerbicana from the Schmilssonian Institution.

REC: MARCH-APRIL 1972
Harry Nilsson – You’re Breaking My Heart
Released on Son Of Schmilsson, July 10, 1972
Keys baritone sax solo (I think): 1:44-1:57

Harry Nilsson – lead vocal, electric piano
Peter Frampton – electric guitar
George Harrison – electric slide guitar
Nicky Hopkins – piano
Klaus Voorman – bass, tenor sax
Barry Morgan – drums
Jim Price – trumpet
Bobby Keys – baritone sax

“You’re breaking my heart
You’re tearing it apart
So fuck you!”

I’m not 100% sure if Bobby rocks the bari sax again, but it sure sounds like it. Bobby is also part of the video’s horn section, though what you see is not what you get audio-wise. Then again, Harry Nilsson rarely gave you what you thought you’d get.

There was more to Harry than met the eye. When I first met him, I’d already kinda pigeonholed him — he was a non-rocker, got lucky once (“Everybody’s Talkin'”). OK, I’ll make some money off of this session and move on. But Harry was a unique person. He liked rock ‘n’ roll, he had a really good voice, and his songs were clever. His play on words and his lyrics were clever. We kinda got to this stage where anytime we got together we were liable to not show up back home for a couple days. I can’t really explain it, just sometimes you have a connection with someone. Harry had a lotta mischief in him. He kinda took the place of Keith in my life as far as a boozin’ partner, a raisin’ hell partner.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 200

1971-72: AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A STONES TOURING PARTY ‘CAUSE A STONES TOURING PARTY DON’T STOP!

Andy Johns finally finished mixing Exile in one appropriately epic, 12-hour session on March 24-25, 1972. The album was released on May 12 and the Stones toured North America throughout June and July. It was at this particular moment that the Stones were at their apex. It was just before the cracks in the glimmery facade manifested and Mick and Keef evolved into a purely business relationship. A corporate pirate ship, if you will. Not that the band itself got any worse in 1973. If you’ve heard boots from either the Australia-New Zealand tour in February or the European tour in September-October — I’m looking at you Brussels Affair — you’d know the Stones were still bringing the heavy ordnance on stage. But, with the release of Goats Head Soup in August 1973, it’s clear that the songwriting well had started drying up.

That’s why I’m concluding this post in the summer of ’72. The Rolling Stones AND Bobby Keys were experiencing their creative peak TOGETHER and it isn’t important because of sex, drugs, and throwing TVs out of hotel windows. It’s important because both Exile On Main St. and the subsequent tour marked the end of 4 consecutive years of staggeringly brilliant songwriting and great live performances. Maybe there’s a song here or there you don’t need to hear again, but pretty much everything the Stones released between “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” in May 1968 and Exile On Main St. in May 1972 is top shelf. Their Satanic Majesties Request, released in December 1967, was the last quasi-turd in the punchbowl, and even that’s a secretly good album. Not great, but way better than the legend would have you believe. Still, after 4 years in the zone, maybe it was inevitable that the Stones — and Bobby Keys — slowed their roll. They earned the right to hit a wall. But, before running into that wall, life was good.

I was a lucky motherfucker. That’s the simple truth of it. It was 1972 and I had a yard of hard, a bucket of balls, and a billfold full of hundred dollar bills. I knew Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and could call ’em up. Not to mention John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. I was shittin’ in tall cotton, pal. It was just a wonderful time to be on this planet for Bobby Keys.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 185

REC: JUNE 24-25, 1972
Rolling Stones – Rip This Joint
Fort Worth (6/24) or Houston (6/25), TX
Keys solos: :58-1:23, 1:33-1:42, 1:51-2:13

Mick Jagger – lead vocal
Keith Richards – electric guitar, harmony vocal
Mick Taylor – electric guitar
Bill Wyman – bass
Charlie Watts – drums
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet

One of my favorite Exile songs is a blisteringly hot 1950s-style R&B jam that’s probably too fast for its own good, but I think this sense of riding off the rails is the appeal. I don’t even mind there’s a few clams in this live version from Ladies And Gentleman: The Rolling Stones. The Stones weren’t great because they were precise technicians, they were great because “Flip flop, fit to drop/Come on, Bobby, won’t you let it rock” makes you wanna shake your ass. Here’s what I wrote in LAMF: A Study in Rock ‘n’ Roll DNA a few years ago:

“Joint” features one of Mick Jagger‘s greatest vocal performances, perfect Keith harmony, stinging Richards/Mick Taylor guitar (I know, shocking), Nicky Hopkins paying homage to Johnnie Johnson, some guy named Bill Plummer on standup bass, Jim Price on trumpet and trombone, and a furious Bobby Keys sax solo that would’ve fit on many a Specialty session from the late ’50s. Pure gold.

Made sense then, continues to make sense now. And by the way, there’s a reason I placed “Rip This Joint” in between the New York Dolls‘ “Personality Crisis” and Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” in that Adios Lounge post (which you should probably read after this). The performance is closer to the Dolls, but the irreverence was passed down from Little Richard and Chuck Berry to the Stones, who passed it on to the Dolls, who passed it on to The Ramones … and so on and so forth.

REC: JUNE 24-25, 1972
Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar
Fort Worth (6/24) or Houston (6/25), TX
Keys solo: 1:35-1:49

Mick Jagger – lead vocal
Keith Richards – electric guitar, harmony vocal
Mick Taylor – electric lead guitar
Bill Wyman – bass
Charlie Watts – drums
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet

“Brown Sugar” has long been one of those Stones songs I don’t need to hear anymore. And if Bobby Keys hadn’t died I probably wouldn’t have listened to it a couple dozen times in the last month. And while I’ll soon go back to letting classic rock radio run this old dog into the ground, it bears mentioning that it flat-out fucking rocks. It would be an AMAZING deep cut. The strangest factoid about “Brown Sugar” is that it was Mick who came up with that iconic riff. Jagger, that is, not Taylor. And not Keith Richards, the Pimp Daddy of Riff Mountain. True story.

Rolling Stone: Can you talk about how the “Brown Sugar” solo came together?

That came together at Keith and my birthday party in England (December 18, 1970). Originally “Brown Sugar” had a guitar solo, Mick Taylor put a guitar solo on it. In fact, some of the very early pressings came out with the guitar solo on it. But there was a birthday party with me, Keith, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Ringo, Keith Moon, a whole bunch of other people. And we started to have a jam session. I don’t remember exactly what the process was now, but we ended up playing “Brown Sugar.” And I just played that solo on it. Mick and Jimmy Miller, who was there that night, said, “Can you do that again?” I said, “Hell, I don’t know what I did then, but if I did it once I can do it again.” I think we made a date –- we didn’t do it the night of the party, but I came back in and did the solo. It was the first take.
–Bobby Keys to Rolling Stone, “The Lost Rolling Stone Interview,” December 2, 2012

When we first started playing “Brown Sugar” on the road, I played a different solo every night. Eventually Mick came to me and said, “Hey Bobby, if you play something similar to what’s on the record, people will love it,” and he was right. I’d never thought about it before, but I realized that people would want to hear what they hear on the radio. And I thought about how I felt, too, like the one time I went to see The Coasters and the fella didn’t play the saxophone solo the same way. Course, it wasn’t King Curtis, but still. I remember thinking, “Well, that’s a gyp. So, I kinda took that studio solo out on the road with me.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 117

Keys then unknowingly addresses my “Brown Sugar” fatigue, but from the perspective of his solo. Where I’ve grown tired of the song after hundreds of listens, is that true for Bobby having to play the same sax solo over and over? Nah.

It’s funny, but as many times as I’ve played the solo on “Brown Sugar” — which has been thousands and thousands of times, not only with the Stones, but with other bands, too — I’ve never really grown tired of playing it. It’s never become wooden to me. I could play a whole bunch of different stuff, but it wouldn’t fit the song. It’s a simple solo. There’s no saxophonic virtuosity there. It just seems to fit.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, p. 117

THE SUM OF THE PARTS, NOT JUST SOME OF THE PARTS

And therein lies the magic of the Stones. As I said above, you don’t go to them for technical virtuosity. This isn’t prog rock, it’s rock ‘n’ roll. It needs to be from the heart, it needs to fucking swing, and if you can lay down a sweet riff along the way, mo bettah. You don’t need charts or oddball time signatures or a bunch of showoffy solos — though solos that serve the song are essential. If you’re lucky, this simplicity can take on a life of its own so that the sum of the parts becomes greater than just some of the parts. The Stones reached this precipice where the ideas not only flowed at a high level, but they flowed within the specific framework of THAT band. They could play an R&B barnburner driven by tempo, a hard rock song driven by a huge riff, or slow it down and twang it up … and it all worked. Maybe other bands were faster, had heavier riffs, or were more “authentically” country, but nobody combined all of those elements into as powerful (and credible) a rock ‘n’ roll vehicle as the Rolling Stones in 1972.

REC: JUNE 24-25, 1972
Rolling Stones – Sweet Virginia
Fort Worth (6/24) or Houston (6/25), TX
Keys solo: 2:31-3:05, 3:37-4:09

Mick Jagger – lead vocal
Keith Richards – acoustic guitar, harmony vocal
Mick Taylor – acoustic guitar
Bill Wyman – bass
Charlie Watts – drums
Bobby Keys – tenor sax
Jim Price – trumpet

Where “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is probably Keys’ artistic apex, his tenor solo here is my favorite Bobby moment of all-time. Of course, it helps that “Sweet Virginia” is my 2nd or 3rd favorite Stones number. The genius here is that Mick and Keef basically took a Sam Cooke song, arranged it so that it sounded country, and then added lyrics about smuggling drugs and scraping shit right off your shoes. What’s not to like? It’s not country because country tunes don’t have saxophone solos. That’s an R&B thing. Just imagine Sam or Otis singing “Sweet Virginia” and, trust me, it’ll make sense. The Stones lived in that unincorporated wilderness where the blues and R&B butted up into country, after rock ‘n’ roll split from gospel to make soul, and all of this music reacted to (and against) the pop charts. This is the rich soil from whence the best rock ‘n’ roll matriculates.

On a personal level, I love that in “Sweet Virginia” Bobby is first heard just after Mick sings, “Thank you for your wine, California.” It was in LA that Keys first gained a larger sense of who he was and how he fit into an ensemble, learning from guys like Levon Helm and Leon Russell, and best illustrated through his stint in Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. Ultimately, Bobby’s compatibility with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards gave him the opportunity to help shape some of the Stones’ best work, and these relationships no doubt allowed him to evolve into a highly-in-demand session musician. I’ve only skimmed the surface here, so as I promised earlier, the next Keys post will continue through the ’70s, covering his exile [womp womp] from the Stones, more session work, his friendships with John Lennon and Joe Cocker, and the emergence of The New Barbarians.

 

But that’s still to come. For now, let’s let Bobby walk us out on top, with a glowing description of that ’72 US tour.

It was better than anything I’d ever done before. We were playing hit records, hit songs. I mean, in the past, playing with Bobby Vee and playing rock ‘n’ roll concerts, the kids would appreciate it. They’d clap and they’d holler every now and then, but it was NOTHING like what they did with the Stones. I mean, the fans just lost it. It was so damn exciting. We were all in our twenties then, except for Charlie and Bill. At that point, I’d been playing saxophone for about 15 years. My graduating class was 1961, which I didn’t make, but that’s what it would’ve been, and in 1972, 11 years later, I was playing with the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the goddamn solar system.
–Bobby Keys, Every Night’s A Saturday Night, 2012, pp. 164-65

GIMME THE KEYS, I’LL DRIVE

BOOK: Bobby Keys’ autobiography, Every Night’s A Saturday Night [Amazon]

VIDEOS: Bobby Keys, Pt. 1 [YouTube playlist featuring all the videos in this post]

MUSIC: Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers [Amazon] [Discogs]

MUSIC: Rolling Stones – Exile On Main St. [Amazon] [Discogs]

MUSIC: I may add a Spotify playlist in a week or so, check back later. Of course, if anyone would like to put one together featuring songs from this post, I’ll link to it and give you full credit.