Composers: Mick
Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date:
May & October-November 1969
Recording locations: Olympic
Sound Studios, London, England; Sunset Sound & Elektra Studios, Los Angeles, USA
Producer: Jimmy
Miller
Chief engineer: Glyn
Johns
Never performed onstage
Line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Acoustic guitar: Keith
Richards
Slide Selmer acoustic guitar: Mick
Taylor
Lead vocal: Mick
Jagger
Background vocals: Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards & Nanette
Newman
Violin: Byron
Berline
TrackTalk
On Let It Bleed, we put that other version of Honky Tonk Women on because that's how the song was originally written, as a real Hank Williams/Jimmie Rodgers, '30s country song. And it got turned around to this other song by Mick Taylor, who got into a completely different feel, throwing it off the wall completely.
Country Honk was the original way Mick
and I wrote Honky Tonk Women and sang it. That was the song as far
as we were concerned. Then we said, Ah, that's great, it should be a
single. So we cut it with the band and made it sort of funky, drums,
organized it for the band. But we were still interested in doing it the
way that we originally thought of it - a sort of Hank Williams, Jimmie
Rodgers, early pre-Nashville sound. I always loved Merle Haggard.
It was a process of writing Country Honk
and "this sounds like Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams - how would it be
played now?". And so we then projected it forward but at the same time
it's a damn good old country song. And a damn good country song quite
often is a damn good rock & roll song.
My part on Country Honk wasn't on a regular guitar; it was on one of those cheap little Selmer Hawaiian guitars, which I played on my lap in regular tuning.