Although Brown Sugar might be one of the most overplayed songs in Rock history, one never tires of Jagger’s antics. I saw the Stones live in Stockholm a couple of years ago and Jagger was amazing, it really felt like you were seeing the world’s greatest front man and I would have sworn he was in his thirties as he cavorted about the stage, granted I didn’t see him close up.
Brown Sugar was a smash, catchy controversial Rock And Roll from one of The Stones’ best albums, 1971’s Sticky Fingers. It flew to the No.1 spot in the USA but despite captivating the youth in America and Canada, in the UK they simply could not overthrow Tony Orlando and Dawn’s Knock Three Times. The middle of the road stubbornly refused to move as it did throughout the seventies and the eighties despite Punk wiping out other more interesting genres, they poisoned the wrong crop, leaving the real villains to flourish, both sixties and seventies rebels ultimately unable to penetrate the establishments music tastes until they became the establishment themselves.
Both Marsha Hunt and Claudia Lennear have claimed that they were inspiration for Brown Sugar, the first release on The Rolling Stones’ own label with the famous tongue logo. The album sleeve was controversial too, the famous Andy Warhol zip cover outraging Franco’s fascist moral committees, a glimpse of what was acceptable in the minds of these poor confused and dangerous people is the featured image on this post. Thanks To Juan Lafuente Perez for gifting me a Spanish copy of the album for the archive.
Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in the market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he’s doin’ all right
Hear him whip the women just around midnight
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should
Drums beatin’ cold, English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin’ when it’s gonna stop
House boy knows that he’s doin’ all right
You should have heard him just around midnight
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should
Brown Sugar, how come you dance so good
Brown Sugar, just like a black girl should
I bet your mama was a Cajun Queen,
And all her boyfriends were sweet sixteen
I’m no school boy but I know what I like
You should have heard them just around midnight
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a black girl should
I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, wooo
How come you, how come you dance so good
Yeah, yeah, yeah, wooo
Just like a, just like a black girl should
Yeah, yeah, yeah, wooo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Sugar_(The_Rolling_Stones_song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Lennear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_Hunt_(singer_and_novelist)
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