Listen: Time Is On My Side / Irma Thomas IrmaTime.mp3
Believe it or not, things moved fast in ’65. Technology being what it was, it’s amazing that records were made in days, while presently, with FTPs galore, they take months – sometimes years.
The English groups were good at finding the latest RnB hits, and non-hits, from The US. In a blink, they’d release their own version introducing an insatiable white youth culture to music that was literally down the aisle from them at the local record shop. ‘Time Is On My Side’, with all due respects, was a great call on The Rolling Stones’ part. It was hidden on the B side of Irma Thomas’ ‘Anyone Who Knows What Love is (Will Understand)’, which peaked at #54 in the Billboard Top 100 on July 4. 1964.
Listen: Time Is On My Side / The Rolling Stones StonesTime.mp3
By October of that year, The Rolling Stones’ word for word, inflection for inflection, rendition (I’ve posted the actual single version above, which starts with organ instead of the guitar) was climbing to an eventual #6, their first US Top 10. Some say they stole her hit. I don’t agree. It was never going to get heard by a white teenage audience, or even liked by them most probably. To begin with, it was a B side. Still, as with Bessie Banks’ original of ‘Go Now’, the raw soul of it is hard not to love.
Tags: Irma Thomas, Liberty, London Records, The Rolling Stones