Nice post Leif. Particularly regarding your selection of “Hitch Hike”, from the Rolling Stones album “Out Of Our Heads”, which was their first number one album in the United States. There are many other great blues covers on that album, including “Hitch Hike”, which as you state, the Stones made theirs.
The album was recorded over six months between studios in Chicago (Chess Studios), Los Angeles and London. Six out of 12 for the US version were their own material.
Out of Our Heads became the group’s first number one on the American Billboard 200 album chart; in the UK it charted at number two. The album’s US release largely had mid-1960s soul covers and “classic rock singles” written by the band, including “The Last Time”, “Play with Fire”, and “Satisfaction”, still drew on the band’s R&B and blues roots, but were updated to “a more guitar-based, thoroughly contemporary context.”
Among the soul covers were Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike”, Solomon Burke’s “Cry to Me”, and Sam Cooke’s “Good Times”. “I’m All Right” (based on a Bo Diddley sound) showed their 1965 sound at its rawest, and there are a couple of fun, though derivative, bluesy originals in “The Spider and the Fly” and “The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man.”
It was the Rolling Stones’ last UK album to rely upon rhythm and blues covers; the forthcoming “Aftermath” was entirely composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
A little known point of interest, Ringo Starr is credited with percussion, piano (on “Satisfaction”), organ (on “Cry to Me”), and harpsichord (on “Play with Fire”).
As for the Bay City Riollers, well it would be nice to see how Mona and Lisa handle Dusty Springfield’s huge hit from the sixties, “I Only Want to Be With You”.