Charlie Watts sits in with the Danish Radio Big Band on this live performance from 2010, rehearsed over four days and presented on the fifth. Just listen to him do bossa nova drumming on I Should Care and marvel at the restraint and subtlety.
Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts worked at some kind of day job in Copenhagen in the 1960s while immersing himself in the city’s thriving blues and jazz scene. The connection was re-established when he linked up with the Danish Radio Big band, following an invitation from his long-time accomplice, arranger Gerard Presencer. Watt sat in on this session recorded at Danish Radio Concert Hall in the Danish capital. `Sat in' is accurate, by the way - he doesn’t believe in sitting on a high drum riser at the rear and prefers to be on the level with the other players.
I didn’t really know what to expect. Would it be a hell of a lot of hard bop tooting? Charlie, low-key and Zen as ever, playing along with a slightly more animated face than the one he wears in those Rolling Stone gigs?
It is perhaps a more chilled album than one might expect but it does break into a sweat now and then. The charming long-tailed opening two-part sequence, Elvin Suite, composed by Watts and Jim Keltner, begins slow and languorous but picks up speed somewhere along the line.
Listen to Charlie’s expert - you could even use the epithet `familiar’ - playing on the bossa nova-tinged I Should Care, eight minutes of bliss. Or gently rock to a version of Jagger/Richards’ Satisfaction, featuring the aforementioned Presencer - what an incredibly fortunate name for a jazz arranger - on flugelhorn. You Can’t Always Get What you Want – also of course from the Jagger/Richards stable – is turned into a passable bluesy swing.
Another early Rolling Stones classic, Paint it Black features guitarist Per Gade allowing himself just a little Eric Clapton-does-TV score indulgence. Not sure it was the best choice from the vast array of Stones gems that could have been selected - Waiting on a Friend, now that could have been nice. We are certainly in Jools Holland big band territory on the last track, Joe Newman’s Molassess, a Woody Herman shuffle that kicks out the jams. Or something. Endearing stuff.
Paddy Kehoe
