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The Rolling Stones had already spent years proving they could handle the blues, but Blues With a Feeling shows what happened when they dug even deeper into the source material. Recorded in 1978 during the Some Girls sessions, this unreleased take on Little Walter feels less like a polished studio exercise and more like the Stones reconnecting with the music that helped shape them in the first place. Mick Jagger gets to indulge his bluesman side on vocals and harmonica, while Keith Richards and Ian Stewart help give the performance its earthy character. Naturally, the Stones recorded it—and then left it sitting in the vault.
Written by: Jacobs Recorded: RCA Studios, Hollywood, USA, Aug. 26-Sept. 6 1978
From Martin Elliott’s book The Rolling Stones Complete Recording Sessions 1962-2012: Little Walter (Marion Walter Jacobs) has toured with the Stones in Britain during 1964. He wrote and recorded in his own right was also was famous for his harp playing in the Muddy Watersband. This has Jagger conservatively emulating his hero on a short harp solo, his role being more auspicious on vocals.Ian Stewart and Keith Richards play with feeling recording authentic blues unlike anything they had done for many years.
Blues with a Rolling Stones Feeling
Somewhere in the Rolling Stones’ vaults sits a blues performance that seems almost too obvious for a band obsessed with the genre to have left unreleased. Blues With a Feeling, recorded in Hollywood in 1978, finds Mick Jagger returning to the harmonica and vocals while Keith Richards andIan Stewart help create a loose, earthy sound that feels far removed from the polished machinery of a major rock production. The song was written by Little Walter, the legendary blues harmonica player whose work had already influenced Jagger and the Stones deeply. Jagger had encountered his music long before this recording, so this wasn’t exactly an experimental detour. It was the Stones going back to their roots—and, apparently, deciding that the roots could stay in the vault. Because releasing everything they recorded would have been far too straightforward.
A return to the blues
By 1978, the Rolling Stones hardly needed to prove their credentials as blues enthusiasts. The genre had been woven into their musical identity from the beginning, but Blues With a Feeling offered a particularly direct connection to one of Jagger’s heroes: Little Walter, born Marion Walter Jacobs. Walter had worked with Muddy Waters and became one of the defining figures in electric blues, particularly through his expressive harmonica playing.
That connection makes Jagger’s presence on the track especially interesting. Rather than turning the song into a showcase for flashy technique, he approaches the harmonica relatively conservatively, allowing the instrument to color the performance without overwhelming it. His stronger role is on vocals, where he sounds entirely at home in the blues setting. No surprise there—the Stones had been absorbing this music since their earliest days.
Keith Richards and Ian Stewart dig in
The real attraction of this unreleased Rolling Stones recording is the way Keith Richards and Ian Stewart settle into the material. Their playing gives Blues With a Feeling an earthy authenticity, emphasizing feel rather than unnecessary studio decoration.
For Stewart, whose deep knowledge of American blues and rhythm and blues was fundamental to the Stones’ sound, this kind of session was hardly unfamiliar territory. Richards, meanwhile, sounds perfectly comfortable returning to the musical language that had helped define his guitar playing.
According to Martin Elliott’s book The Rolling Stones Complete Recording Sessions 1962-2012, the recording took place at RCA Studios in Hollywood between August 26 and September 6, 1978. That places it squarely right after the Some Girls period, when the band was moving between rock, blues, country, funk and disco with remarkable ease.
A blues track left in the vault
There is something almost amusing about the Stones recording such an authentic blues performance and then simply leaving it unreleased. Blues With a Feeling wasn’t some random studio experiment disconnected from the band’s musical history. It brought together Little Walter’s songwriting, Jagger’s harmonica and vocals, Richards’ blues instincts, and Stewart’s unmistakable understanding of the genre.
Yet despite all those ingredients, the track remained an unreleased Rolling Stones recording. For fans, that’s precisely what makes it fascinating. It offers a glimpse of the band stepping away from the big-stage expectations of the late 1970s and simply playing the blues they loved. And sometimes, apparently, even the Rolling Stones’ vault has its own sense of humor.
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