The No. 1 Song On August 31, 1969 Sounds Even Wilder Today

The Rolling Stones of the late 1960s and '70s were experts at imbuing their rowdy, rollicking, and sleazy blues rock with a palpable party atmosphere, and they perfected the formula on their 1969 single "Honky Tonk Women." On August 31, 1969, the song was just starting its second week of a month-long period as the No. 1 song in the United States. There will never be another rock star like Mick Jagger, and on "Honky Tonk Women," he brashly delivers suggestive and romanticized lyrics about the unforgettable and enchanting individuals encountered in his travels, some in watering holes of ill repute. 

Many groups were incorporating country into their sound in 1969, changing rock forever, and the Rolling Stones were among them. However, about the only thing connecting "Honky Tonk Women" to country music is the repeated use of the bar or roadhouse synonym "honky tonk." That's a remnant of the origins of "Honky Tonk Women" as an actual country song, well before it was reworked into the kind of thing that could be a No. 1 record in 1969.

The Rolling Stones recorded "Honky Tonk Women" around the same time that they worked on the album "Let It Bleed." The hit single was left off that LP — but included on the 1969 collection "Through the Past Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2)" — in favor of "Country Honk." That was an attempt at authentic-sounding, old-fashioned, all-American country music that predated and was the precursor of "Honky Tonk Women."

Back in late 1968, the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards embarked on a South American vacation with their romantic partners and at one point stayed on a cattle ranch. That's where the two rock stars tried on the personas of a couple of Texas cowboys, and, setting out to write a song on an acoustic guitar that paid tribute to foundational country icons Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, they co-composed "Country Honk." When they decided to remake "Country Honk" as the rock-forward "Honky Tonk Women," they altered the instrumentation a lot and the lyrics just a little, changing the location in one section from Jackson, Mississippi, to Memphis.

"Honky Tonk Women" hit stores the same week of the funeral commemorating the tragic death of Brian Jones, the just-exited Rolling Stones guitarist who played on some early drafts of the song. Five weeks after it debuted in the Hot 100, it was the chart's No. 1 single, the fifth career standard-bearer for the Rolling Stones.