Rolling Stones – "Come On" (1963)

 

All day long I’m walking ’cause I 

Couldn’t get my car started

Charlie Watts first appeared with the Rolling Stones at the Ealing Jazz Club in London on February 2, 1963.  From that date until in death in August, he was the drummer every single time the Stones performed.

Watts had met Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones at that club the previous summer, when the three came to hear Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, the most popular English rhythm and blues band of that era.  

Charlie Watts in 1963

Watts, who had a day job as a graphic designer for a London advertising agency, had been playing in jazz bands prior to joining Blues Incorporated.  It took him some time to figure out how to play rhythm and blues.  “I didn’t know what [rhythm and blues] was,” he told an interviewer in 2012.  “I thought it meant Charlie Parker played slow.”

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The day after the Rolling Stones hired Andrew Loog Oldham as their manager, the nineteen-year-old wunderkind scheduled a recording session for them at Olympic Sound Studios in London.  

Only after reserving the studio for three hours on the evening of May 10 did the Stones decide what to record, choosing Chuck Berry’s “Come On.”

A few days later, the Stones signed with Decca Records – who were still smarting on taking a pass on the Beatles the year before.  “Come On” was released as a single on June 7, and reached #21 on the UK charts thanks largely to Oldham’s efforts.  (Decca did little to promote the record, but the Stones manager gave the band’s fan-club members the names of the record stores that were polled by the compiler of the singles charts, and urged them to go to those shops to buy “Come On.”)

The Stones followed up “Come On” – which they didn’t think much of – with a cover of Lennon and McCartney’s “I Wanna Be Your Man” (which was a #12 hit in the UK), a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” (which made it to #3), and “Tell Me,” a Jagger-Richards original that became their first #1 UK hit about a year after they recorded “Come On.”

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“Come On” is not one of Chuck Berry’s better-known efforts, but it’s as clever and catchy as many of his hit songs.

Click here to listen to the Rolling Stones’ cover of “Come On” – the group’s first recording featuring the late Charlie Watts on drums.

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