Text "Marquee '62" (Walter Schäppi)
It's better to light up a small candle, tahn to complain about darkness. (Confucius)
It was 25 years ago that the Rolling Stones had their first legendary gig as The Rollin' Stones at the famous Marquee Club. This concert remained unrecorded, which is confirmed in F. Aeppli's trendsetting book Heart of stone. This album should at least give you an idea of the way the Stones played there.
To the Marquee songs I have added:
- One special song which needs no further explanation.
- The three songs of their first studio session. Those songs, as the following one, have never been released to date.
- As I didn't want to repeat the remarkable joke of leaving the 4th side without music, it includes a wide variety of blues songs which should encourage you to compare them to the covers.
Each album contains an 18 page booklet which I worked at from November 1986 to March 1987. Some parts were rewritten in June 1987; and 33 albums have a numbered tape with 35 more songs! First come, first served!
Why this album? Every song has been officially released, i. e. easy job to dub...
- Out of these 18 Marquee tunes, only four are known in at least one studio version, and recorded with a different line-up. I know from experience that there are a lot of Stones fans who don't know too many of the listed musicians, let alone the songs! I find that it's important for every real fan to be familiar with the roots of the Stones' music, or as Mick said in 1968: "What's the point in listening to us doing I'm a king bee when you can hear Slim Harpo do it?" Maybe you will not like some of these tunes, but then you shouldn't forget that the boys were crazy about them!
- Some of these tunes are by no means easy to obtain, and more easily available blues records are not always part of a collection.
- ...and this album makes more sense than to be forced to listen to the 47th version of "Brown sugar"!
Concerning song titles and composer credits, the existing information was not accurate enough, so I have collected the most important resp. interesting info from books, magazines, record sleeves and other sources, especially by listening to hundreds of records. In any case, it's work that repays the labour well!
Now listen to the songs and put together your own Marquee tape, and try to imagine how they played then. Fantasy is not a question of age...
I want to thank everyone, who, knowingly or unknowingly, helped me realise this project.
Dr. Blues jun. [= Walter Schäppi]
PS: The doctors Rock'n'Roll, Soul, Safe T. First and Country clearly say that they are not thinking of coming up with anything similar to this project!
Marquee International Jazz Club, 12th July 1962: Some personal remarks.
- R&B to the bone! In comparison to the Beatles (Star Club album from 1962!) and further bands from the Merseyside, the Stones were really different, despite Chuck Berry's heavy influence on all of these guys.
- The concert was organised very spontaneously. So they had to choose songs which they were very familiar with. As the group's member's showed different tastes, a variety of songs came together. Yet it's really to simple to say: Mick → Jimmy Reed, Keith → Chuck Berry, Brian → Elmore James and Stu → boogie woogie.
- As ist was a club performance this 18 song set was not too long, though it may be then seen so in retrospect. There was still a long way to the 8 song sets!
- They didn't play any Bo Diddley songs, and not more than two of Chuck Berry. Was there any fear of being considered a R&R band? On the other hand, there were ten songs by Jimmy Reed resp. Eddie Taylor and three by Elmore james! (There was only one Jimmy Reed song on an officially released record, but Jimmy Reed's and Elmore James's strong influences can hardly be overheard in the group later recordings.)
- In Britain the sources of black blues music were very limited. Records weren't easy to obtain, almost nothing could be heard on airwaves, with exception of the AFN and Radio Luxembourg, and the pop papers were stultifying garbage. So how did they come across these songs? Rare record shops which imported authentic blues records, art schools and clubs like Marquee and Ealing became meeting places and made discussions about musicians and songs, jams, rehearsals possible, and sometimes an effort to build up a band. (A remarkable number of black musicians had visited England before 1962. Big Bill Broonzy first, then J. White, Otis Spann, Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry, Brownie M. Gee, Sp. Red, Willie Dixon, Memphis Slim, J. J. Dupree, Jimmy Cotton, Roosevelt Sykes and L. B. Montgomery. But there is no hint, that a Stone saw one of these gigs!)
- What did it sound like? In comparison to Blues Incorporated, the regular Thursday band, the Stones' music was brasher, rawer, less jazzy (no horns!), and probably louder. And it was based on two electric guitars, "supported" by harp, piano, bass guitar and drums, like a blues band from Chicago! So it was totally new for the big part of the audience. With exception of a few notes in Stu's diary, there are no specific hints concerning arrangements. So it's not always clear which version of a song could have influenced them. (Only one record is mentioned: when Mick met Keith after several years of separation, he was carrying Berry's Rockin' at the hops with him - including "Confessin' the blues" and "Down the road apiece".) Generally they must must have been influenced by such a large number of musicians (blues, R&R, C&W) that the result would be a list too long to even begin to reproduce.
- No home game but a nervous debut of a new band. At that point of time there were no "screamies" around. The audience was not influenced by fame but could only be impressed by quality music. The audience's reaction was said to have been very mixed, but at the end of the gig, people felt more for the Stones than against.
Yeah, well, how can I tell you?
You've surely noticed that the sound of the LPs is really different to the description given on the front side: it sounds as if the songs were dubbed from old scratchy 78 rpm records. But most of the recordings are in reality excellent. (There's no doubt that thirty or forty years ago many sound engineers did a great job!)
It isn't my intention, as you may suggest, to force you to buy all the "original" records with their far better sound. (But the idea isn't that bad, could be mine!)
Hard luck that my tape deck ceased to work exactly one day before the deadline. Instead of postponing the project for some months, I recorded the whole lot with another (most probably faulty) deck. Sorry, hi-fi freaks!
Anything else? The "producer" has changed side C and D, and the somewhat strange labels were not my idea. (My agent told me that these people wouldn't think too much about their work. It seems he's right!)
What's that to me? I have a perfect tape (and all the LPs). Stones fans buy everything. OK, where's the problem?
Not that way!! As consolation, you get a tape with those songs I would have put on record in 1987. As you can see below, A41, A43, B11 and C8 would be replaced by the EP tracks on a further edition.
Since the discs have been delayed for about a year, I missed the 25th anniversary for the gig; but on the other hand, the initial 8-page booklet has grown in size, and quite a lot of mistakes have been erased.
I'm happy that I've got the records after all, and I think it's better than nothing.
| Table 3 (part of table 1): The Marquee tape - part one | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Track | Interpreter | Title | |
| A 01 | A 02.3 | Wilbert Harrison | Kansas City |
| A 02 | A 03 | Jimmy Reed | Baby what's wrong |
| A 03 | A 04.2 | Little Walter | Confessin' the blues |
| A 04 | A 05 | Jimmy Reed | Bright lights, big city |
| A 05 | A 06 | Elmore James | Dust my blues |
| A 06 | A 07 | Chuck Berry | Down the road apiece |
| A 07 | B 02 | Jimmy Reed | I'm a love you |
| A 08 | B 03.a | Eddie Taylor | Bad boy |
| A 09 | B 04.1 | Jimmy Reed | I ain't got you |
| A 10 | B 5 | Jimmy Reed | Hush hush |
| A 11 | B 06 | Eddie Taylor | Ride 'em on down |
| A 12 | B 07 | Chuck Berry | Back in the USA |
| A 13 | B 08 | Jimmy Reed | Kind of lonesome |
| A 14 | B 09.2 | Elmore James | Blues before sunrise |
| A 15 | D 01 | Jimmy Reed | Big boss man |
| A 16 | D 02 | Billy Boy Arnold | Don't stay out all night |
| A 17 | D 03 | Jimmy Reed | Tell me you love me |
| A 18 | -- | Sonny Boy Williamson | Down child |
| B 01 | D 04 | Elmore James | Happy home |
| B 02 | A 01.3 | Muddy Waters | Rollin' stone |
| B 03 | D 05.2 | Muddy Waters | Soon forgotten |
| B 04 | D 06 | Bo Diddley | You can't judge a book by its cover |
| B 05 | D 07 | Jimmy Reed | Close together |
| B 06 | E 01 | Bo Diddley | Pretty thing |
| B 07 | E 02 | Coasters | I'm a hog for you |
| B 08 | D 08 | Elmore James | Look on yonder wall |
| B 09 | F 01 | R. Sharpe | Linda Lou |
| B 10 | C 01.2 | Little Walter | Key to the highway |
| B 11 | C 02 | Robert Johnson | Stop breakin' down blues |
| B 12 | C 03 | Slim Harpo | Shake your hips |
| B 13 | B 04.2 | Howlin' Wolf | Going down slow |
| B 14 | C 05.2 | Fred McDowell | You got to move |
| B 15 | C 06 | Jimmy Reed | The sun is shining |
| B 16 | C 07.3 | Elmore James | It hurts me too |
| B 17 | F 02 | Amos Milburn | Chicken shack boogie |
Publication
| ca. 1987 |  liner notes for sampler tape Marquee '62
|
These liner notes were originally written for the sampler album Marquee '62. Author Walter Schäppi sent them to me in 1987 - though I never got hold of this album and I don't even know if it actually exists (Walter had a definite faible for non-existing albums). However these notes show Walter's in-depth interest for the Rolling Stones and their blues roots, so I think it's good lecture still today. When I revised Walter's original writing in 2009, I substituted abbreviations with the complete words; footnotes were directly included to make reading easier.