{"id":513168,"date":"2026-04-04T21:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/513168\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T21:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:20:11","slug":"the-songs-keith-richards-called-the-purest-in-rock-and-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/513168\/","title":{"rendered":"The songs Keith Richards called the purest in rock and roll"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Keith<\/p>\n

(Credits: Gibson)<\/p>\n

Sat 4 April 2026 19:00, UK <\/p>\n

The entire definition of rock and roll could probably be replaced with a picture of Keith Richards<\/a> with a cigarette in his mouth. <\/p>\n

Although The Rolling Stones never claimed to invent the concept of rock and roll, Richards was always the person who seemed to be in it for the long haul, almost being a missionary of the genre the same way that his favourite blues artists carried on the tradition of three chords and the truth on their greatest records. But even if rock and roll has gone through a lot more changes, Richards didn\u2019t want to lose sight of what made his favourites sound great to begin with.<\/p>\n

Because all good rock and roll comes from people who have a bit more groove behind them. There are more than a few times where people can switch things up, but you need to have a bit more rootsiness in your sound or want to be compared with the greats. And when looking at the record collection that Richards had, they didn\u2019t necessarily call Elvis Presley the \u2018King of Rock and Roll\u2019 by accident.<\/p>\n

Presley was the epitome of what a swaggering frontman was supposed to be, and whenever he shook his ass onstage, people got a much more visceral reaction than the other rock and rollers. He may have been taking a lot of his moves from what he saw in a lot of black artists, but even Chuck Berry could never have made the kind of moves that Presley did when he started singing tunes like \u2018Hound Dog\u2019.<\/p>\n

But Presley was only as good as the band behind him in Richards\u2019s eyes. His entire role in The Rolling Stones was to make sure that Mick Jagger didn\u2019t make an ass out of himself whenever he grabbed the microphone, and when looking at the kind of licks that Scotty Moore threw<\/a> into every single one of those early Sun records, Richards knew that no one could knock what he was doing.<\/p>\n

This was the sound of \u2018The King\u2019 becoming a giant, and a lot of the best moments were in this era when he didn\u2019t have any ambition to become the biggest name in music. He was still figuring things out, and while there are many fans still partial to his time in Vegas and becoming a pinup star, Richards felt that nothing could ever replace the kind of music Presley made when he first walked into the studio, and Sam Phillips heard what he was doing.<\/p>\n

He had heard all the great bluesmen before the age of rock and roll, but Richards felt Presley was just as powerful whenever he stepped onstage, saying<\/a>, \u201cThose Sun tracks, that\u2019s Elvis Presley. What else he does after that is up to him, but that\u2019s the essence. \u2018Mystery Train\u2019 and \u2018Baby Let\u2019s Play House\u2019. The sound and the attitude on those were just so pure, so unforced, in a way, joyous. There was an enthusiasm that came right off the tape, bounced right off the heads, from Elvis and the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s probably why The Stones ended up sounding so spontaneous when they started to really hit their stride. Those early records are still fantastic, but let\u2019s face it: it\u2019s a bunch of kids trying to figure out what the blues actually were. There were the seeds of rock and roll in it, but when looking at the jam that they made on \u2018Midnight Rambler\u2019, they had the same kind of enthusiasm that Richards was talking about when he first listened to Presley back when he was a kid.<\/p>\n

Berry was always going to have a special place in his heart, but Presley was the first thing that rock and roll was going to be something different. He was practically an alien from another planet for most people, and whereas most parents were scared off, the real rock and roll heavyweights had found their calling that went far beyond the same old Frank Sinatra-style records.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Gibson) Sat 4 April 2026 19:00, UK The entire definition of rock and roll could probably be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[18254,96,25721,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-513168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-elvis-presley","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-keith-richards","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}