THE ROLLING STONES
HOW BRITAIN GOT THE BLUES
Remastered Edition

Pitch, phase and level corrected, de-thumped and retracked at Remasters Workshop July 16 & 17, 2010 from the 2000 CD on Bad Wizard BW 6134.

This CD was pirated by an unidentified label and issued as “Beginning Of The English Blues.” It was for sale briefly on Amazon (it’s unavailable now and will probably remain so), where a reviewer left these (edited for coherence) comments:

A great compilation of obscure 1961-1964 recordings. What will pique the interest of the hardcore Stones aficionado the most are the first eight tracks: the very earliest Rolling Stones recordings, which have rarely, if ever surfaced on other CDs. The first four songs are labeled as dating from a tape of Little Boys Blue, a pre-Rolling Stones lineup of the group, recorded (probably at a private rehearsal) in late 1961. Dick Taylor (later of the Pretty Things), guitarist Bob Beckwith, and Allen Etherington (on maracas) were part of Little Boys Blue on this recording. While the track listings are vague as to what actual future members of the Stones also participated, it’s certain that Mick Jagger’s on lead vocals, and possible that Keith Richards and Brian Jones are on the guitars.

Included are unreleased versions of the Jagger-Richards compositions “It Should Be You” and “My Only Girl” (aka “That Girl Belongs To Yesterday”). There’s also “Leave Me Alone,” a Jagger-Richards original not released by anyone! There’s also the unreleased studio effort “Goodbye Girl,” a routine blues-rocker dated as having been recorded in November 1964 and written by Bill Wyman. While these are no doubt fascinating for the Stones fan, as well as historically important, the subsequent 24 BBC session tracks are better music. Those BBC performances include many songs that didn’t appear on the group’s early releases, such as covers like “Roll Over Beethoven” (a different version than a more commonly circulated one also recorded around this time for another BBC session), “Meet Me In The Bottom,” Jimmy Reed’s “Ain’t That Loving You Baby,” “High Heel Sneakers,” and Bo Diddley’s “Crackin’ Up.” The fidelity on these is generally very good, with the performances different enough from the studio versions to make them quite interesting!

Track 1 was in a sorry state in its original incarnation. It’s a mono recording, but the levels on the two tape tracks were wildly varied and would occasionally drop out in one channel or the other. These anomalies were straightened out, gaps filled by cloning and levels fixed so that it sounds as normal as possible. There was also a repeated segment of a couple of lines; I don’t know whether the original CD is that way, or it came that way on the recording I received, but I edited it out. This may be the best version of this track available now.

All the recordings but two were at the wrong speed – some a little bit and some a lot, and all were out of phase. The makers of this CD added stereo reverb to everything (can’t leave a good thing alone), but its effect is negated because after phase correction, the channels were combined to true mono. Levels were all over the place, with volume swells and dips in many places; those are fixed now, too. Occasional thumps that are often heard on tape recordings via microphone from tube radios have been eliminated.

The early studio recordings were very, very dull. They have been brightened here so you can tell what’s going on. No EQ was applied to the other tracks. All work was performed in 32-bit in Adobe Audition 3, and the tracks were split on sector boundaries in CD Wave.

Track listing:

01 Little Queenie
02 Beautiful Delilah
03 Down The Road Apiece
04 I Ain’t Got You
[late 1961 or early 1962, Dartford, home demos – Little Boys Blue]

05 Leave Me Alone
[November 20 & 21, 1963, London, Regent Sound Studios]

06 Goodbye Girl
[November 8, 1964, Chicago, Chess Studios]

07 It Should Be You (take II)
[November 20 & 21, 1963, London, Regent Sound Studios]

08 My Only Girl (aka “That Girl Belongs To Yesterday”)
[November 20, 1963, London, Regent Sound Studios]

09 Ain’t That Loving You Baby
[October 8, 1964, BBC London]

10 Don’t Lie To Me
11 Mona I Need YOu Baby
12 Walking The Dog
13 Bye Bye Johnny
14 I Wanna Be Your Man
[February 3, 1964, BBC Saturday Club]

15 Roll Over Beethoven
[March 8, 1964, BBC Saturday Club]

16 Little By Little
17 I Just Wanna Make Love To You
18 I’m Moving On
[April 10, 1964, BBC Joe Loss Pop Show]

19 Not Fade Away
20 Beautiful Delilah
21 High Heeled Sneakers
[April 13, 1964, BBC Saturday Club]

22 Down In The Bottom
23 You Can Make It If You Try
24 Route 66
25 Confessin’ The Blues
26 Down The Road Apiece
[May 25, 1964, BBC Saturday Club]

27 It’s All Over Now
28 If You Need Me
29 Carol
[July 17, 1964, BBC Joe Loss Pop Show]

30 Around And Around
31 I Can’t Be Satisfied
32 Crackin’ Up
[July 17, 1964, BBC Top Gear]

Artwork is included.

Please preserve the lossless quality of this material.

Enjoy!

Remasters Workshop
RMW 578