“Little Red Rooster” by The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones cut "Little Red Rooster" in 1964 and took a straight Chicago blues all the way to number one in Britain; it's still the only blues song ever to top the chart there. It later turned up on The Rolling Stones, Now! in 1965.

Howlin' Wolf had cut the Willie Dixon song first, in 1961. By then Dixon and Wolf had toured Britain with the American Folk Blues Festival, turning local rockers on to the Chicago sound, and the Stones were among the first British groups to record electric blues. Where Sam Cooke had sped it up, they kept nearer to Wolf's arrangement. Brian Jones is the key man on the record, sharing guitar duty with Keith Richards, while Mick Jagger sings and blows harmonica over Bill Wyman's bass and Charlie Watts's drums. Andrew Loog Oldham produced, and the band played it often on TV and onstage.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.