How Ernie Watts' Sax on 'Black and Blue' Differed from Bobby Keys – Key Tracks

For the Rolling Stones’ 1976 album Black and Blue, saxophonist Ernie Watts (no relation to Charlie) was brought in to replace the band’s longtime foil Bobby Keys, who was unavailable due to his own touring commitments. Where Keys played with a raucous, honking R&B attack—think of the party-horn blast on “Brown Sugar”—Watts brought a smoother, jazz-influenced precision. A seasoned session player (he’d later anchor the Tonight Show band), Watts had a more restrained, melodic touch that slotted perfectly into the album’s funkier, more rhythm-section-driven sound.

The difference is most obvious on three tracks. “Hand of Fate” features Watts’ crisp, staccato fills that punctuate the verses like an extra rhythm instrument, whereas Keys would have likely stretched out into a longer, bluesy solo. On “Fool to Cry,” Watts provides a breathy, almost melancholy obbligato behind Jagger’s falsetto—a texture Keys rarely explored. And on the extended jam “Melody,” Watts gets a full solo that floats over the groove with a cool, linear fluidity, a world away from the barrelhouse squall Keys would have brought.