How the Rolling Stones' Blues Covers Like 'Route 66' and 'It's All Over Now' Sold America Back to Britain

Most British kids in the early ’60s didn’t have access to the original Chess, Atlantic, or Sun records that the Rolling Stones were raiding. A kid in London or Manchester couldn’t just walk into a shop and find Howlin’ Wolf or Bobby Womack. But they could buy the Stones’ versions—and that’s exactly how the pipeline worked. When the Stones covered “Route 66” (a Nat King Cole/Bobby Troup tune, but more importantly a Chuck Berry staple) and “It’s All Over Now” (a Bobby Womack song that hadn’t even been a huge hit in the States), they weren’t just paying homage. They were acting as a kind of sonic import service.

The effect was immediate. Fans would hear Jagger’s snarl on “It’s All Over Now” and then go digging for the Womack original, or discover that “Route 66” was also a Berry live staple. This chain reaction fed the whole British blues boom. Bands like the Yardbirds, the Animals, and later Cream and Fleetwood Mac all followed the same road the Stones had mapped: sound like the American bluesmen, sell it back to British teenagers, and then watch the audience start seeking out the originals. By the time the Stones were writing their own songs, they’d already trained a generation of listeners to love that raw, R&B pulse—and that’s why the British blues explosion wasn’t just a revival; it was a discovery.