"Loving Cup" (The Rolling Stones)

"Loving Cup" off the decadent, sprawling masterpiece Exile on Main St. (1972) is the sound of The Rolling Stones at its creative peak.  Pretty much every album since then has been a long, agonizing slide into mediocrity and a case study in the power of brand equity.  (In other words, even though 90% of what they've released in the past 40 years has been dreck, people keep shelling out money for their merchandise and concert tickets because that tongue-n'-lips still somehow embodies their former badass-ness.)
Anyway, the sessions for Exile are the stuff of rock legend.  Story goes, the band went to southern France to record in April 1971 to escape the British taxman.  For the better part of a year, members of the band--along with producer Jimmy Miller, various wives/girlfriends, random acquaintances, and assorted heroin dealers--lived in Villa Nellcôte, a sprawling mansion that Keith Richards rented for £1000 a week.  When the group was sober-ish, they'd record in the mansion's basement, using a mobile recording studio to capture the feverish riffs that Richards and fellow axe slinger Mick Taylor were tossing out effortlessly.  By March 1972, however, the French police had tired of the narcotics-fueled rowdiness at Nellcôte.  Likewise, Mick Jagger had grown annoyed with his writing partner's heroin use and the scene in southern France, and he decided to move the recording sessions to Los Angeles to finish the album, which was quickly developing into a double set.
"Loving Cup" was one of the tracks created during the LA sessions.
Keyboardist Billy Preston had convinced Jagger to go with him to a Pentecostal church in LA near the recording studio, and Jagger had a sort of religious experience hearing the church's gospel choir.  So much so that he began writing and arranging the remaining songs for the album with a more soulful, gospel feel.
Although Preston plays on other tracks, session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins is featured playing the Southern Gospel-tinged piano intro to "Loving Cup."  
At times, the song feels vaguely like Memphis soul, what with the blazing horn and rhythm sections.  But then it just as easily slips into the realm of honky tonk--like a Hank Williams song written with a nose full of coke instead of a liver full of Jack.  Whatever genre it falls into, Jagger sounds like he's having fun, which is something that couldn't be said again until 1978's Some Girls.