Los Angeles acoustic guitarist Jim McAuley died this week at 75. No one else approached the combination of delicacy, imagination, invention and harmonic understanding he brought to his often alternatively fretted instruments, and no one else could have approached it. He was a true improviser, equally able to create his own paths in the moment and to meld with the thoughts of his collaborators, who included Nels Cline, Rod Poole and Scot Ray. He established his own standards of beauty. Watch McAuley & Ray on KXLU's "Trilogy" here.
Charlie Watts added the subliminal elements of jazz drumming and musical creativity that elevated the Rolling Stones from R&B copycats to artistic magicians. To everyone else's list of favorite moments, I add two from 1971's "Sticky Fingers": the Sisyphean slog that founded "Sway," and the behind-the-beat bump of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking." Much of the Stones' mediocrity from the '80s onward can be attributed to assigning Watts the simple role of metronome -- easy to follow but lacking the X factor that drew a listener back, wondering, "What the hell was that?" What it was, was Charlie.
JOURNALIST AND DRUMMER JOHN PAYNE COMMENTS: The Stones' later mediocrity owes, I've always thought, to Bill Wyman's absence. He played that on-beat, strict-time way (like Chuck Berry) that gave the band their good feel -- in combo w Charlie and Keith's understanding of it. It comes from ragtime, I think, so Charlie sort of syncopated around the straight time of Bill n Keith.