Charlie Watts has passed

bluesypicky

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It's kinda scary to read the age of these guys we "grew up" with... he was 80!
I actually was shocked last week as I was reading about my idol Beck, to realize he is now 77....
Guess even fame doesn't let you be 30 forever.
RIP Charlie, you had a nice run!
 
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Boneman

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Hard to believe they all lasted this long, especially Keith! Micks almost 80 too, where does the time go?
 

Westerly Wood

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I always appreciated Watts and Wyman, how they did so much with so little. Their approach was super basic and fundamental, but the sound result was huge.
 

Westerly Wood

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Jagger and Richards soon formed their own group, the Rolling Stones, with Watts joining in 1963. “ It was another band to join, I was in about three of them,” Watts later said; he began living informally with the group. “We’d rehearse a lot. They – Brian and Keith – never went to work, so we played records all day, in that rather bohemian life. Mick was at university. But he paid the rent.”

“I don’t like drum solos,” he once said. “I admire some people that do them, but generally I prefer drummers playing with the band. The challenge with rock’n’roll is the regularity of it. My thing is to make it a dance sound – it should swing and bounce.”
 

walrus

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“I don’t like drum solos,” he once said. “I admire some people that do them, but generally I prefer drummers playing with the band. The challenge with rock’n’roll is the regularity of it. My thing is to make it a dance sound – it should swing and bounce.”

Ringo Starr had a very similar attitude. Can't argue with it. Both of them are/were old school drummers who could really swing.

walrus
 

Canard

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I am very sad. I am not devastated,though; Charlie was elderly, and he had had good life, and he seems to have been truly loved by all who knew him. He was a good man, one genuinely mourned by his many friends.

:cry: and :) - It's just life.

Charlie and Keith were the heart and soul of the Stones, working together with such eccentric and elastic simplicity that the work wasn't all that simple. Charlie once said that Keith was the time keeper in the band and that he followed Keith. He was such a great drummer that he could keep a tight groove, a pulse, going in a sea of eccentric looseness. And simple? To play simply and well is very, very hard. There is nowhere to hide. Busyness can be a distraction hiding a fundamental lack of technique and musicality. Miles Davis was a simple trumpet player.

Shake Your Hips off of Exile on Main Street is the best example I can come up with of Charlie's brilliant minimalism:




In an interview Keith once said that Charlie, who had declined an invitation to join in the formation of the X-Pensive Winos, hand picked Steve Jordan as the drummer for that group. Charlie is gone, but Jordan, now his touring replacement in the Stones, has had the Charlie blessing and seal of approval.

A collection of links, some of which have been already posted above.








 
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Canard

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With Rocket 88, a kind of Swing/Boogie-Woogie band.

Membership in the second clip below:
  • Jack Bruce - Vocals & Bass
  • Alexis Korner - Guitar
  • Hal "Cornbread" Singer & Don Weller - Tenor Saxes
  • Colin Smith - Trumpet
  • John Picard - Trombone (no, not Jean Luc)
  • George Green & Bob Hall - Pianos
  • Charlie Watts - Drums
  • Includes Ian Stewart on piano in the first clip




 
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