Gibson Hummingbird

Rolling Stones fans, which of their hundreds of songs have they performed the most over the years?

The answer (I don't like suspense) is "Jumpin' Jack Flash," the great single from 1968 (it wasn't on an album until it was included on various compilation discs later) that marked the band's return to good old blues-based rock after they wasted a couple of years making silly records like "Between The Buttons" and "Their Satanic Majesties Request" in 1967. Brian Jones, the lead guitarist before his death in 1969, described "Jumpin' Jack Flash" this way: "getting back to...the funky, essential essence" after the psychedelic sound "Their Satanic Majesties Request."

If you weren't there for the 60's, you really missed a lot! It was fun. Just the word "psychedelic" connotes so much.

You can listen to the song here if you're of a mind to.

All I know about playing the guitar is that I cannot, but Keith Richards, who co-wrote the song with Mick Jagger, will give you verse and chapter about what guitar he did what with, and he explains "Jack" this way: "I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing – same intervals – but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones's band in San Antonio in 1964."

So there is a country connection between one of the best country singers of all time and one of the best rock bands of all time.

And the maracas on the record were played by the late Kwasi "Rocky" Dzidzornu 1935 – 1993) who was also known as Rocky Dijon. Now that's a name with some mustard on it!

So who is this Jack and what are they talking about?

“‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ comes from this guy, Jack Dyer, who was my gardener – an old English yokel,” Keith said. “Mick and I were in my house down in the south of England. We’d been up all night; the sky was just beginning to go grey. It was pissing down raining if I remember rightly.”

And then Mick was startled by the heavy sound of the gardener's muck boots.  “Mick and I were sitting there, and suddenly Mick starts up,” Richards recalled. “He hears these great footsteps, these great rubber boots – slosh, slosh, slosh – going by the window. He said ‘What’s that?’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s Jack. That’s jumpin’ Jack.’”

So, as great artists will, Richards took that nugget and turned it into gold. 

“We had my guitar in open tuning, and I started to fool around with that.  ‘Jumpin’ Jack…’ and Mick says, ‘Flash.’ He’d just woken up. And suddenly we had this wonderful alliterative phrase. So he woke up and we knocked it together.”

1968.  What a year!

The song opens with the line "I was born in a crossfire hurricane", Richards's homage to his birth in Dartford, England, in 1943, as German bombs rained down and air raid sirens wailed.

I wasn't there for the 40s and I feel like I missed a lot. Just the word "air raid sirens" says so much.