Cadil­lac Records—a 2008 biopic about the rise and fall of Chicago’s Chess Records—won acclaim for bravu­ra per­for­mances, gar­nered Bey­once a White House per­for­mance and threats of vio­lence from Etta James, and took it on the chin for its deeply mud­dled his­to­ry. But nobody goes to the movies for a his­to­ry les­son, right? What stuck with me was its drama­ti­za­tion of that moment (okay, decade) when R&B and “race records” got rebrand­ed by Alan Freed as “Rock n’ Roll” and crossed over the col­or line. Hun­dreds of bands hijacked Chuck Berry’s licks (as he saw it), and then Jag­ger crashed the par­ty with his Mud­dy Waters impres­sion while his band took their name from one of his blues songs.

The Stones may not have been the first British band to make Amer­i­can elec­tric blues their own, but they were arguably the most pop­u­lar. In an excerpt (below) from a longer inter­view from 1973, Kei­th Richards namechecks both Waters and Berry, as well as usu­al sus­pects Lit­tle Richard, Bo Did­dley, Jim­my Reed, Slim Har­po, and the much ear­li­er Robert John­son and Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son. The host push­es Kei­th on his roots influ­ences and the part of black music in the Stones’ sound, ask­ing if their lack of sen­ti­men­tal­ism came from the blues. Kei­th replies,“I don’t get sen­ti­men­tal about things because… it doesn’t lead to clar­i­ty of thought.” And when I think clar­i­ty, I think Kei­th Richards. But seri­ous­ly, it’s a gem of an inter­view.

Asked about how black musi­cians react­ed to his blues appro­pri­a­tion, Richards gets philo­soph­i­cal: “Prob­a­bly as many dif­fer­ent reac­tions from them as any­body else.” We know how Chuck Berry felt—robbed—but Kei­th tells us Waters took it in stride, “grate­ful” for the intro­duc­tion to the white col­lege cir­cuit which put more bread in his pock­et. Maybe so, but Waters’ crossover before white audi­ences pre­dat­ed the Stones. Before the British invaded—two years before the Stones formed—Muddy hit England’s shores in 1958 (one year after Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe brought her elec­tric blues across the pond). While the usu­al belief that Waters’ blues shocked the Brits may be a mis­con­cep­tion, he won a new audi­ence on the folk cir­cuit, return­ing to Eng­land in ‘64. After lay­ing low for a while, Waters saw a career revival late in life, per­form­ing into his final years with The Stones, Eric Clap­ton, John­ny Win­ters, and his own band. In the video above, see a full per­for­mance of Waters with the Stones from 1981, two years before Waters’ death from heart fail­ure. He’s 66 at this gig, three years younger than Richards is now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Revis­it The Life & Music of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: ‘The God­moth­er of Rock and Roll’

Mud­dy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

There’s not much left to say about Jimi Hendrix’s last days. The end­less stream of com­men­tary sur­round­ing his life and death threat­ens to bury the man and his music in music-press fetishiza­tion, urban leg­end, and fawn­ing mythol­o­gy. When I’m able to total­ly tune out the hype, Hendrix’s pol­ished work stands the time-test, and some of the more raw releases—the bootlegs and demos that appear every few years—at least doc­u­ment musi­cal roads not tak­en and pre­serve moments of stun­ning genius, if not ful­ly-real­ized com­po­si­tions.

And Hendrix’s intrigu­ing persona—revealed in casu­al inter­views and conversations—still cap­ti­vates, with his off­hand lyri­cism and frac­tal imag­i­na­tion, qual­i­ties on full dis­play in his final press inter­view, to NME’s Kei­th Altham, on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970, just sev­en days before the artist’s death. (Lis­ten to the YouTube audio above, or Sound­cloud below.) Hen­drix is breezy, con­tem­pla­tive, a lit­tle eva­sive, reveal­ing his own sense of being between things, not sure where he’s head­ed next. As all those late-Hen­drix bootlegs and demos tes­ti­fy, he could have done any­thing and made it work with the right band and a bit more time…

But enough what-ifs. Nobody’s bet­ter on Hen­drix than Hen­drix, so lis­ten to the inter­view. You can find a full tran­script and much more Hen­drix-on-Hen­drix and music-press chat­ter in a recent (and quite inex­pen­sive) Kin­dle pub­li­ca­tion called Jimi Hen­drix: Inter­views and Reviews 1967–71. Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock calls the final inter­view the “most inter­est­ing thing about the book from a his­tor­i­cal stand­point,” and this may be true.

Final­ly, if you don’t make it all the way to the end of the audio, Hen­drix leaves on this vivid and quite fun­ny note:

ALTHAM: Do you feel per­son­al­ly that you have enough mon­ey to live com­fort­ably with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly mak­ing more as a sort of pro­fes­sion­al enter­tain­er?

HENDRIX: Ah, I don’t think so, not the way I’d like to live, because like I want to get up in the morn­ing and just roll over in my bed into an indoor swim­ming pool and then swim to the break­fast table, come up for air and get maybe a drink of orange juice or some­thing like that. Then just flop over from the chair into the swim­ming pool, swim into the bath­room and go on and shave and what­ev­er.

ALTHAM: You don’t want to live just com­fort­ably, you wan­na live lux­u­ri­ous­ly?

HENDRIX: No! Is that lux­u­ri­ous? I was think­ing about a tent, maybe, [laughs] over­hang­ing … over­hang­ing this … a moun­tain stream! [laugh­ter].

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appear­ance, and His Last as a Back­ing Musi­cian (1965)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness.