The legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins dipped his toe in the waters of rock’n’roll when he agreed to record with The Rolling Stones.

Sonny Rollins once recalled a time he was in the supermarket in New York that was playing ork that was playing chart music to the shoppers.  “I heard this song and thought: ‘Who’s that guy?’ His playing struck a chord in me. Then I said: ‘Wait a minute – that’s me!'”

This was the song in question – maybe the only time the legendary jazz saxophonist ventured into rock’n’roll. 

After being invited to play on it by Mick Jagger – and persuaded by his wife to agree  the jazz sax legend added his solo in early 19801 to a song the Stones had recorded almost a decade earlier. 

The original backing track was recorded in Kingston, Jamaica, at the end of 1972 for Goats Head Soup but the band abandoned it as an unfinished instrumental.

Almost a decade later, when the band repurposed a collection of old unreleased material from their vaults for a “new” album – Tattoo You – Jagger wrote some lyrics and belatedly put down his vocals in New York in early 1981.

That’s when he came up with the idea of asking Sonny Rollins to play on the album. I had a lot of tripidation,” he said later. Jazz fan Charlie Watts told him he would never want to play with the Stones but Jagger was sure he’d get his man.

“I said, ‘Yes he is going to want to.’ And he did and he was wonderful. I said, ‘Would you like me to stay out there in the studio?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you tell me where you want me to play and DANCE the part out.’ So I did that.

“And that’s very important: communication in hand, dance, whatever. You don’t have to do a whole ballet, but sometimes that movement of the shoulder tells the guy to kick in on the beat.”

I think it’s fair to say that Jagger’s lyrical preoccupations had mellowed in the intervening decade since the song was first recorded; singing about setting aside women and vices and appreciating the true friendships he found in the Stones.

“Don’t need a whore, I don’t need no booze, don’t need a virgin priest,” he sings. “But I need someone I can cry to, I need someone to protect.”

The laid-back tune, featuring delicate interplay between guitarist Mick Taylor and pianist Nicky Hopkins, was the second single from Tattoo You – and a stylistic departure from the opening single Start Me Up.

Rollins was invited to tour with the Stones after playing on this track and two others  – Slave and Neighbours – but turned them down explaining: “I didn’t relate to them because I thought they were just derivative of black blues.”

Ironically, I suspect Richards, if not Jagger too, would have delighted to hear that and heartily agreed with his verdict.