Songfacts®:

• This was originally recorded by Bluesman Slim Harpo. It was Mick Jagger's idea to record it for the album - he is a big fan of Harpo. The Stones recorded Harpo's "I'm A King Bee" on their first album.
• Slim Harpo was born and lived in Louisiana and in the 1950s and the 1960s helped create a style known as Electric Louisiana Blues. A guitarist, vocalist and harmonica player who played songs in the deceptively simple way of Jimmy Reed, Harpo played a style, along with his Louisiana contemporaries Lazy Lester, Lonesome Sundown and Lightnin' Slim, that has also been called swamp blues. The music was definitely laid back in the style of Jimmy Reed, often featuring reverberating guitars and a slower rhythm and mood that gave it the name swamp blues, which also mixed in elements of other Louisiana music (calypso, gospel, R&B and soul). Harpo was an early influence on The Rolling Stones. Jagger and Richards were the first to discover him and were already into his music during the pre-Stones era. When they met Brian Jones, they turned him on to Harpo in the same way that they turned him on to Chuck Berry. The Stones covered Harpo's "I'm a King Bee" on their first album. Their title for the live album Got Live If You Want It! is a reworking of a Harpo song called "Got Love If You Want It." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France
• The song is also known as "Hip Shake."
• The Stones recorded this in London, but reworked it at Keith Richards' villa in the South of France, where the band was staying on their "exile." It was recorded to sound like a '50s record.