well since my baby left me

1959.  England.

{excerpt, Keith Richards, Life}--------------- Everything was available in Sidcup [Art School] -- it reflected that incredible explosion of music, of music as style, of love of Americana.  I would raid the public library for books about America.  There were people who liked folk music, modern jazz, trad jazz, people who liked bluesy stuff, so you're hearing prototype soul.

All those influences were there.  And there were the seminal sounds -- the tablets of stone, heard for the first time.  There was Muddy. 

There was Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightnin'"....And there was a record called Rhythm & Blues Vol. I.  It had a Little Walter track.  I didn't know Chuck Berry was black for two years after I first heard his music, and this obviously long before I saw the film that drove a thousand musicians -- Jazz on a Summer's Day, in which he played "Sweet Little Sixteen." 

And for ages I didn't know Jerry Lee Lewis was white.  You didn't see their pictures if they had something in the top ten in America.  The only faces I knew were Elvis, Buddy Holly and Fats Domino.  It was hardly important.  It was the sound that was important. 

And when I first heard "Heartbreak Hotel," it wasn't that I suddenly wanted to be Elvis Presley.  I had no idea who he was at the time.  It was just the sound, the use of a different way of recording.  The recording, as I discovered, of that visionary Sam Phillips of Sun Records. 

The use of echo.  No extraneous additions.  You felt you were in the room with them, that you were just listening to exactly what went down in the studio, no frills....That was hugely influential for me.

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{Life.  Keith Richards autobiography.  Copyright 2010, Back Bay Books}

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