#The inch worm jazz driver
#The inch worm jazz full

In fact, just six years, eight No.1 singles and eight UK top-five albums later they were being customarily introduced to audiences on their 1969 US tour as ‘The Greatest Rock’N’Roll Band In The World’.

#The inch worm jazz full

On June 7, 1963, the Rolling Stones (freshly trimmed to a quintet following Oldham’s ruthless demotion of Stewart from full band member to piano-playing road manager) released their first single, a perky cover of Chuck Berry’s Come On, and subsequently proved to be quite popular. Mick would go off to college and the three of us would sit there, after waking up at about one in the afternoon, and Brian would play Bright Lights, Big City.”įollowing an eight-month residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, the Rolling Stones were brought to the attention of management team Andrew Loog Oldham (who’d formerly worked as a publicist for both Bob Dylan and The Beatles) and Eric Easton, who secured them a record deal with Decca Records. “We used to sit on this bloody great gramophone thing at Edith Grove. “Brian and Keith taught me about Jimmy Reed.” Charlie told me in 2009. And while Mick Jagger attended the London School of Economics, the rest of the band made a study of Chicago blues. Upon joining the band (a month after the arrival of bass player Bill Wyman) Watts briefly moved in to the Stones’ infamously squalid flat in Edith Grove, Chelsea. Which is where he entered the orbit of four likely lads of no fixed haircut who were in dire need of a drummer. Concurrent to the rigours of yet another straight job (this time with advertising agency Charles, Hobson and Grey), Watts joined Blues Incorporated for their regular Rhythm &Blues Nights at the Ealing Jazz Club. Watts had already committed himself to a design job in Denmark, but on his return to England (in February 1962) he accepted Korner’s offer. Juggling a burgeoning design career with paying gigs that he’d pick up on Soho’s Archer Street alongside fellow drummer and lifelong friend Ginger Baker, Watts’s reputation brought him to the attention of ‘the founding father of British blues’, Alexis Korner, who invited him to join his Blues Incorporated. The following year his parents bought him a drum kit, which he learned to play by practising along with his ever-growing collection of jazz records.Īfter perfecting his chops with a succession of local bands in coffee shops and clubs while attending Harrow Art School, and working in his first job as a graphic designer with Charlie Daniels Studio advertising agency, 17-year-old Charlie joined the Jo Jones AllStars, a step that marked his transition from playing modern jazz to rhythm and blues.

At 13 (having been inspired by Gerry Mulligan’s drummer Chico Hamilton and clandestine visits to the Flamingo Club in London’s Soho), he bought a banjo, took its neck off and used its body as a snare drum.

They’d convene in their bedrooms to study a shared stack of 78rpm 10-inch shellac records (Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong), and forged a lifelong friendship that culminated in the pair working together from 2009 (Green on bass, Watts on drums) with pianists Ben Waters and Axel Zwingenberger in the ABC&D Of Boogie Woogie.Īfter the family moved to Kingsbury, Charlie attended Tylers Croft Secondary Modern School, where he exhibited a flair for art, music, cricket and football. Young Charlie soon became friends with opposite neighbour Dave Green, and the pair soon discovered a common passion for jazz. The Watts family, completed by Charlie’s mother Lillian and younger sister Linda lived in a humble prefabricated house in Pilgrims Way, Wembley, North-West London.

#The inch worm jazz driver

His father Charles Richard Watts had been in the Royal Air Force during the war, before becoming a lorry driver for the London, Midland & Scottish railway. Charles Robert Watts was born in University College Hospital, Bloomsbury on June 2, 1941.