The Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers”

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#397 in the Series) is The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers

Before I go into a quick recap on The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers, let me take a moment to once again discuss what Whale Wednesdays are all about.

As you most likely know, we here at Cool Album of the Day like to showcase many albums from different genres. Since most of you are real audiophiles, most of the time you’ll be seeing titles that you know, but not always. I’m sure most of you specialize in one area or another.  Hopefully you’re seeing some names that you may not be familiar with at all, or most likely, you’ll see names that you’ve heard of, but you only know the band by name, yesterday’s China Crisis feature for instance.

We hope that you read many of the features, please do not just look at the albums that you know already. Check out the ones you don’t know any listen to some of the tunes on the video playlist. Learn something new.

Having said that, we feel that once a week, we’d still look into a big album every Wednesday,a Whale if the will. Why, for one, all these albums we feature on Wednesday, we feel they are still ‘Cool,’ Heck, an album can sell a ton and be cool, correct?  So why should we ignore them? No, this site would be no fun if we gave you those seven days a week, but once a week we feel is fine. Have no worries, you’ll still see things like The Clocks, Split Enz, Gram Parsons, Jeff Buckley, Roy Buchanan, Starcastle, Eva Cassidy, etc.  There’s some nice variety there for sure.  So if you feel we toss up an obvious one on Wednesdays, now you know why.

OK, NOW, The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers.

This was released on 1971 and was the Stones 11^th studio album. Don’t call these cats slackers! I know many people that consider this the best thing that they ever did. I loved the heavy brass infusion on tracks like “Bitch” and specifically Bobby Keys sax on songs like “Brown Sugar”, “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin.’”

There was also come cool country rock tunes like the Gram Parsons’ inspired “Wild Horses” and of course, “Dead Flowers.”

When I started putting this together I was surprised to learn the number of cool musicians that played on “Sticky Fingers.”   Pete Townshend sang a little, Ian Stewart played piano and Ry Cooder played his great slide guitar and Ronnie Lane played as well.  It wasn’t a surprise to see names like Nicky Hopkins and Billy Preston.

Make sure you check out the video playlist below. I added the oldest live version I could find of each track. Some go back to 1971, some are a little more current, it’s a great way to check out the album.  The only song I couldn’t find live was “Moonlight Mile.”

— Larry Carta

Track listing

Side one

1. “Brown Sugar” 3:48
2. “Sway” 3:50
3. “Wild Horses” 5:42
4. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” 7:14
5. “You Gotta Move” (Fred McDowell/Gary Davis) 2:32

Side two

1. “Bitch” 3:38
2. “I Got the Blues” 3:54
3. “Sister Morphine” (Jagger/Richards/Marianne Faithfull) 5:31
4. “Dead Flowers” 4:03
5. “Moonlight Mile” 5:56

Personnel

The Rolling Stones

• Mick Jagger – lead vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, percussion
• Keith Richards – electric guitar, six & twelve string acoustic guitar, backing vocals
• Mick Taylor – electric, acoustic and slide guitar
• Charlie Watts – drums
• Bill Wyman – bass guitar, electric piano

Additional musicians

• Paul Buckmaster – string arrangement
• Ry Cooder – slide guitar
• Jim Dickinson – piano
• Rocky Dijon – congas
• Nicky Hopkins – piano
• Bobby Keys – saxophone
• Ronnie Lane – vocals
• Jimmy Miller – percussion
• Billy Nicholls – vocals
• Jack Nitzsche – piano
• Billy Preston – organ
• Jim Price – trumpet, piano
• Ian Stewart – piano
• Pete Townshend – vocals

Links

• Listen to Sticky Fingers to via the Cool Album My Space Page
• See more features from 1971
• See more features representing works by Rock and Roll Hall of Famers

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