It might sound like a crime against nature, or a crime against common sense and moral order, but there are indeed white singers who have technically awful voices who have managed to fashion vocal styles that are instantly distinct, unique, recognizable. (Wayne Cochran, a blue eyed soul guy pictured above, is not one of those. He is energetic and high spirited, but never gets far beyond the minstrel aspect of what he does. He simply cannot sing anything well.)Mick Jagger is a vocalist who learned to work brilliantly with the little singing ability God designed to give him: knowing that he didn’t have the basic equipment to even come close to simulating Muddy Waters or Wilson Pickett, he did something else instead in trying to sing black and black informed music — talk-singing, the whiny, mewling purr, the bull moose grunt, the roar, the grunts and groans, the slurs and little noises , all of which he could orchestrate into amazing, memorable performances.
One Plus One(Sympathy for the Devil) French New Wave director Jean Luc Godard’s film of the Stones writing, rehearsing and finally recording the song of the title, is especially good because it captures the irresolute tedium of studio existence (in between Godard’s didactic absurdist sketches attempting to address the conundrum of leftist media figures being used by invisible powers to squelch true revolutionary change).
More than that, we see Jagger piecing together his vocal, his mewling reading of the lyrics from the lyric sheet; his voice is awful, in its natural state. But we do witness Jagger getting bolder as the song progresses through the endless stoned jamming, a grunt added here, a raised syllable here, a wavering croon there. Finally, we are at the last take, and Jagger is seen with headphones on, isolated from the others, screaming his head off into a microphone while the instrumental playback pours forth, in what is presumably the final take.
Jagger, all irony and self-awareness, created something riveting and for all time with the marginal instrument he was born with, and is part of what I think is a grand tradition of white performers who haven’t a prayer of sounding actually black who none the less molded a style of black-nuanced singing that’s perfectly credible: Mose Allison, Van Morrison, Felix Cavallari (Rascals), Eric Burdon (early Animals), Peter Wolf, late of the under appreciated J.Geils Band.We cannot underestimate Keith Richard’s contribution to Jagger’s success as a vocalist. Someone had to know how to write tunes Jagger could handle, and Keith was just the man to do it. Richard’s guitar work, as well, riffs and attacks and staggers in ways that match Jagger’s strutting and mincing. Writing is everything, as always.
Originally published at https://www.ted-burke.com.
