'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy

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Posted by Jinnistan
9/25/2022 1:43 pm
#41

Settling into the Ladyland sessions, April would see the Experience relieved by a lax touring schedule, freeing up their time to focus on the studio.  One more audience tape, in Cleveland on March 30, which is otherwise unremarkable, a brief vacation and then back to work.

By May 3rd, they'd have the record 3/4s complete.  Going in, they already had "Crosstown Traffic" in the can, and most of "All Along the Watchtower", which Hendrix would continue to adorn with added guitar overdubs right up to the final mixing.  (As I previously mentioned, there is available a "Watchtower" mixdown tape, which is about as monotonous as that seems, but does feature for the sharp-eared listener a number of glimpses, snippets and fragments of unused guitar parts as Hendrix tries to find that perfect blend.)  Neither "My Friend" nor "Somewhere" would be seriously considered, and so the first songs recorded in New York - "Little Miss Strange" and "Long Hot Summer NIght" were dispatched with fairly quickly, and it shows as neither of them are particularly complicated recordings, in fact sounding quite dated by the rest of the album's technicolor standard, seemingly devoid of the phasing and panning effects so noticeable throughout.  Hendrix would bring Eddie Kramer over from London to work on the recordings, but I'm not exactly sure when he arrived and, frankly, neither of these songs sound like his engineering work.



The real matter at hand was clearly "1983", which Hendrix put a lot of time and effort into getting just right.  The demo, just Jimi and guitar, already shows that its structure had been well-defined, leaving Hendirx to focus on the palette and textures.  Quite conscious that this was to be a centerpiece (one of about three, it turned out) for the new album, and accordingly employed every technique he had so far learned with tape manipulation - varispeed, backwards, phasing and panning.  There's a few available outtakes of this that are fascinating from the perspective of this process.  The Ladyland deluxe set's outtake CD includes two, one oddly titled "Angel Caterina", covering the initial section of the piece, while the second lasts 10 minutes.  There's also a couple of mixing outtakes, again fascinating in some rather radical differences to the released version despite coming off of the same tape.  This illustrates the prime importance of mixing at a time when it necessarily had to be done manually in real time.  Even by the 70s, mxing boards had advanced to having programmable pre-sets, allowing the needed changes to be locked in, freeing the mixer to handle other duties.  But in 1968, every fade, phase, pan, transistion had to be carefully, painstakingly massaged by hand, played as much like an instrument as the musicians.  And for such a lengthy piece, any slight mistake would require starting fresh from scratch.  So, naturally, there were some experimental hiccups which, thankfully, survive for our scrutiny.

"Gypsy Eyes" and "House Burning Down" were finished a bit more quickly, but both of them also would involve some sophisticated manual and kinetic mixing.  Some outtakes of "Gypsy Eyes" are available (just Jimi and Mitch, as Noel Redding was already prone to missing sessions out of frustration with Hendrix's perfectionism, and maybe the fop thought "Strange" was just that much of a mic drop).  Although no outtakes, "House" does have some interesting early mixes, with some slight variations in guitar overdubs and some unused backing vocals.

The next three tracks all went unreleased, but they provide a valuable sidestory to the album, two of which are significant pieces, and the other happened to result in a pivotal fall-out which would mark a crucial and unfortunate turn in Jimi's fortune.  That more tragic piece is also ironically one of the most superficially inconsequential, and almost certainly the weakest, studio recordings of his career, "Three Little Bears".  For whatever reason, though probably because the era was still awash in psychedelic juvenalia, Jimi's manager Chas Chandler was convinced that this was the perfect next single for The Experience.  It was a Hendrix original, and one that he had some playful, if disposable, fun with as a goof.  So Chas, who also was beginning to share Noel's feelings regarding the amount of time Jimi was spending in the studio focused on perfecting his work (or in other words not listening to Chas), set out to get Hendrix to get down to business and produce that next hit single.  But Hendrix, in the midst of perhaps his most creatively productive couple of weeks, had no interest or patience.  He half-heartedly put down the rhythm track with Mitch, but when it came time to record the vocal, Jimi couldn't manage to muster the strength.  "Man, I don't feel like going through with this, this is really silly."  And it is very silly.  By the end, Jimi's just mumbling the words in a bored slur.  And due to this, Chandler walked out, not only from the studio but out of Hendrix's managment contract.  Hendrix might have brushed this off at the time, certainly he'd proven his worth for any prospective management offers, but eventually he would realize that now he was stuck in a contract with the more predatory Mike Jeffery, and without Chas to act as a buffer zone - a duty Hendrix would quickly learn to appreciate in hindsight.  But this isn't a biography of Hendrix's extramusical activities, so suffice it to say it would be another year before he would get kidnapped by mobsters.  So for the time being, when "Bears" was finally released, on 1972's War Heroes, it was carefully edited to minimize Jimi's apathy.  Some foreign releases, however, not only left in his protests, but also a bit of "Oh, fuck me!" thrown in to boot.  It's currently only available on the Estate's seasonal Merry Christmas and Happy New Year EP (the edited version, of course).

On bootleg, you can find the complete unedited tape, which is more interesting in that the rhythm guitar track immediately segues into the second of these unreleased tracks, "South Saturn Delta", and, I assure you, this guitar/drum rendition of this track is quite impressive on its own, and may show where his priorities on that day were truly at.  And after the nastiness with Chas blew over, Hendrix then turned his attention to this, finishing a suitable backing track with Mitch.  The song would be finished a month later with a horn arrangement, making it his most adventurous foray into funk-jazz arrangements.  It inexplicably remained unreleased for nearly thirty years before becoming the title tune of the South Saturn Delta collection, the initial Estate release, as if they couldn't wait to correct its omission from the record.





The last of these unreleased  numbers is another potentially major work, and the last of Hendrix's important unreleased tracks to finally get a commercial release (2018's Both Sides of the Sky), is "Cherokee Mist", another ambient instrumental track, this time with sitar and droning throbs of whining guitar similar to "I Don't Live Today" (which also shares a somewhat "powwow" primal beat), all running approximately seven or eight minutes, depending on the mix or edit.  These last two instrumental numbers, recorded on back to back days, showcases how insatiable Jimi's appetite for creative exploration had gotten, and how effortless his ability to realize it, and equally how confidently he could brush them aside, perhaps assuming this wellspring of inspiration would flow freely forever.  After the progression of the last year and a half, how could he not?

And he wasn't through.  The final order of business during this series of sessions was what would become the next of the "centerpieces" of his new album, "Voodoo Chile", miraculously recorded overnight after finishing those last two stellar recordings and before going back in the very next day to wrap up the "Slight Return" version in a matter of hours.  As most know, the slow blues version of "Chile" included a number of friends who'd dropped by the studio, Steve Winwood and Jack Cassidy on organ and bass.  They jammed through a few takes of the number until they hit on the released take (recorded live), which also happens to be one of the finest examples of 60s blues-rock ever captured on record (suck it, Cream).  The outtakes are interesting for fans, and an edited version appears on the :Blues CD as a solid example.  There's a mix which has the "party atmosphere" overdub up high to make it more legible, and it's fun to listen to, as is an aborted outtake of this "party" overdub which is also amusing.

Finally, with Noel in tow, the trio got down to ripping through a more-or-less live (barring some of the guitar effects) "Slight Return" the next day, running through about a dozen takes (all of them extant), which can be repetitive, but with Hendrix as such a dynamic never-quite-the-same-way-twice type of player, there's always exciting stuff to hear.

After this extremely fertile period, the band would take another break from the studio while they do various things like tour Italy for the first time and swing through Britain for the first time in six months.

But at this point I will add a pertinent thought because it involves some of the material covered here.  As much as I love Ladyland as Hendrix's supreme masterpiece, I've always felt that side 2 was, well, kinda like the album's rumble seat, a place to stash some extraneous surplus.  Unlike the other three sides, it doesn't have a coherent flow from one track to the next, but sounds like a random assembly.  "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" is unquestionably the finest song here, but it still has that feel that belongs more to the Axis era (perhaps replacing that album's weakest track, "Ain't No Telling"?).  I'm sure there must have been some pressure to stick "Little Miss Strange" somewhere to placate the already itchy Redding, with that warty-fanny of his.  But, possibly shamelessly, it's the part of the album I've always imagined a better version, so if you'll indulge me, mine would look like so:

Cherokee Mist
South Saturn Delta
Somewhere
Tax Free
Gypsy Eyes

Save "Long Hot Summer Night" and "Come On" for single B-sides, and let "Little Miss Strange" go to, I dunno, Fat Mattress or somebody.

(And I'll throw in this, since there are so few studio clips of Hendrix on youtube)


 

Last edited by Jinnistan (9/25/2022 1:58 pm)


 
Posted by Jinnistan
9/28/2022 6:04 pm
#42

At some unspecified point during the past sessions, Hendrix also found the time to record, and play some guitar on, a single for Eire Apparent, a group in the Chandler/Jeffery stable that Hendrix had taken under his wing.  The group is fairly mediocre psyche-rock, but they would open for The JH Experience and The Soft Machine during the late-summer American tour.




The Experience would play a few more shows in May 1968, with two American gigs standing out for posterity.  The first of these is an audience recording taken on May 10th at the Fillmore East.  The tape sounds good enough that it's frequently been passed off as a "soundboard" (such as on the It's Only a Paper Moon bootleg), but it was also a special show in that Hendrix had as his opening act none other than Sly & the Family Stone, who had just released their classic Dance To The Music LP.  Unfortunately, no tape exists of Sly's set, but since this is the only non-festival appearance of the two groups together, one can't help but wonder at their mutual appreciation.  For Jimi's set, it marks the earliest live appearance of their cover of "Sunshine of Your Love", which they would play throughout the rest of the year.  This show is also on record as featuring the longest version of "Red House", at nearly 16 minutes.












On May 18th, Hendrix played at the Miami Pop Festival (officially called the Pop & Underground Festival), a set that was recorded and filmed professionally, with the footage later finally being included as part of the 2013 Hear My Train A-Coming documentary.  The festival is also noteworthy because it was rained out much of the time, leading to Jimi to hang out backstage with Zappa and the Mothers and come up with the inspiration for "Rainy Day Dream Away".









From The Experience's tour of Italy, two audience tapes of shows from Rome (25th,) and Bologna (26th) are available.  The former Rome show has a complete 2nd set, and fragment of the 1st.  The Bologna has 3 different tape sources of one show.  There's also some silent footage from their Zurich show on the 30th.





Stopping off in Britain, before flying back to New York, The Experience had one of their oddest TV spots on June 8th, with Dusty Springfield on her It Must Be Dusty TV show.  Jimi played "Stone Free" and debuted the first public peformance of "Voodoo Chile", a strangely momentous gesture for such a gratuitous appearance.  Jimi also played along with Dusty for a version of her hit "Mockingbird".  There's really awful looking versions of the latter on Yutube, but the audio by itself of the entire performance is in much better condition.




 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
9/29/2022 4:45 pm
#43



Back in New York in early June, Hendrix was set to run the final lap of recording sessions for Ladyland.

First up on the agenda was the newly written "Rainy Day Dream Away".  The entire session tape is available on bootleg, with Jimi sitting in with all session players - Freddie Smith on sax, Mike Finnigan on organ, Buddy Miles on drums and Larry Faucette on congas.  (Wait!  Is no one on bass?)  The session starts with a snappy warm-up referred to as "Rainy Day Shuffle", a jazzy 12-bar that sounds reminiscent of the Blue Note organ style of Jimmy Smith or Jimmy McGriff.  Then there are a few runthroughs, and finally the full length "Rainy Day" that segues directly into "Still Raining Still Dreaming".





Although the horn players remain unknown, the arrangement by Larry Fallon is overdubbed onto the "South Saturn Delta" backing track, with some additional guitar flourishes.

Another (temporarily) abandoned idea is "Inside Out", an instrumental which, like the previous "Dance", would become another building block for what would eventually become "Ezy Ryder", but not for another year and a half or so.

"(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland" was tackled over a couple of sessions.  The basic guitar part, with a lovely Curtis Mayfield inspired flutter, was put down first.  A 90 second outtake of this was first issued on the posthumous Loose Ends LP (and a definite highlight on a record which otherwise seems to scrape the barrel), and was later included on the purple JHE box.  Other takes, some with drum accompaniment, are out there.  It's generally accepted that Mitch plays drums on the final version, but one experimental take has an overdub of noticeably slowed down drums, giving them a slightly richer texture, and I'm of the understanding that this is played by Jimi and the inner sleeve pictures of him at the drum set on the album are from this recording.  Either way, it was never used.  Jimi also overdubs bass, presumably because Noel was being a prick, and double tracks the lead and harmony vocals.  He put a lot of work into the latter, hiding behind his buffer screen, hating to be seen while singing, and finished he rushed out beaming "I can sing!"  Indeed, these are his most supreme vocals committed to tape.

The final session of June was to craft his chef's kiss, the introductory sound collage "And the Gods Made Love...", consisting of several takes of extremely slowed down ambient noices and vocals.  Fans with record players that still had a 78 setting were able to make out some of them, and there's some alternate mixes, played at various speeds, which also provide a helpful deconstruction.








Somehow, The Experience found themselves under obligation to play a festival in Britain, at Woburn, Bedfordshire, on July 6th.  Taking a break from mixing sessions, they flew out to perform.  This is one of those discoveries that was exclusive to The Estate, who released this tape, from a two-track soundboard, on their Dagger Records imprint.  It's not a bad show, and has the first proper live performance of "Voodoo Chile", but the overall festival turned out to be a small disaster, disorganized with lots of cancellations.  After this, perhaps as an inducement to go at all, the band was treated to a vacation in Majorca, the island off the south of Spain, where they could indulge in unlimited Moroccan hashish.  (Mike Jeffery would establish a night club on the island, with Jimi's money of course, that would serve as a helpful drug trafficking hub.)

Silent footage of the Woburn show.


 
Posted by Jinnistan
10/06/2022 10:30 pm
#44



Hendrix had moved into the upper eschelon of 1968-era rock stardom by this point, and his August-September US tour was not only his largest to date, in that he was now commanding high-capacity venues - sports stadiums, ampitheaters, fairgrounds - but also one of the largest yet undertaken with venues that very few of his peers could command.  The Experience would be the highest-grossing live rock act in both 1968 and 1969 based on upscaling to bigger audiences, outdrawing the likes of Cream, The Who and in '69 Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

Part of this success was not just Hendrix's growing audience demand but in the parallel growth of what was still an infant rock concert industry.  The Beatles famously retired from live performances, in a large part due to the incapability of the then-modern PA technology to accommodate the kind of venues they need to satisfy their ticket sales.  Just three years prior, they had to use the Shea Stadium's in-field PA (the same system used for the announcements and organ music) when they made the unprecedented leap into playing these kinds of large venues.  By '68, pioneers in sound equipment manufacturing had been answering the call by making, first, more powerful amplifiers, and then solving issues with PA systems to fix synching issues (due to the Doppler effect) and adding stage monitors so the band can actually hear themselves properly.  And yet despite being the state of the art set-ups at the time, these shows were frequently riddled with a variety of technical snafus for a perfectionist artist to contend with.  It wouldn't really be until the early 70s, when rock shows were a combined billion-dollar industry, when the stage technology would be expected to perform consistently and reliably, and, by that time, many of the top groups were luggin around their own PAs and paid engineers to ensure that.  But The Experience was still just a small operation with the band and a handful of roadies and go-fers.

Audience recordings of concerts were also slowly proliferating.  The number of these tapes grew exponentially between 1967 to 1968, and this was long before the emergence of the bootleg industry, when the number of tapers were only limited by the added security to tamp it out (which didn't prove to be very effective).  The technology of these tapers is still very crude, some had reel-to-reel with a hand-held microphone plugged in while others had the newer cassette technology.  As bootleggers would soon learn from experience, the ultimate goal was a quality mic and an advantageous position to avoid most of the unwanted crowd noises.  This, however, would still be years in the future.

Because of the relative boom in these audience tapes, I can't lay claim to all of the ones in circulation.  The earliest tape that I'm aware of would be from Dallas (now playing "The Colosseum") from August 3rd.




Chicago Auditorium on the 10th, Davenport on the 11th




And one of the better sounding audience tapes from this period was from an Aug. 23rd show, part of "The New York Rock and Roll Festival" at the SInger Bowl in Queens, NY, here synched to some footage taken at the show.





At this point, Hendrix was opening all of his shows with "Are You Experienced" and was playing "Star Spangled Banner" as the go-to intro into his closing number.  "Red House" was the standard blues "breather", and the rest was a mix of the regular repertoire.

At this point, on August 27th, Hendrix went back into the studio to add a filler track to his new album, "Come On (pt.1)", a cover of the Earl King blues number.  What motivated this last minute addition is unclear, but the performance is solid enough, but lacking in the visionary flavor as the rest of the record.

Into September, I have tapes from Phoenix (4th), Vancouver (7th), Spokane (8th, only partial with four tracks) and Portland (9th).  These tend to suffer from the typical problem of the band sounding about a mile away from the microphone.

[img]https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4ab547_0bf048b18fb24d13865f1299ed1c0106~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_6,y_8,w_592,h_584/fill/w_298,h_298,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/4ab547_0bf048b18fb24d13865f1299ed1c0106~mv2.jpg[/img]

My very first Hendrix bootleg was the above double-LP.  Certainly looks exciting, doesn't it?  This is the audience recording from the Hollywood Bowl show on Sept. 14.  Unfortunately, it's one of the worst audience recordings that I've heard, and it definitely curbed my enthusiasm for these kinds of live boots for some time.  Even with my virgin ears, there's no excusing the taper constantly turning on-and-off his machine, eliminating whole chunks of "Are You Experience", "Voodoo Chile" and "Red House", and, of course, there's the notorious issue with the "splashing" (as the crowd had invaded the Bowl's pool which separates the stage from the front row - not even Beatles fans did that!) which presented a very real possibility of electrocution.  A disappointed purchase for my high school allowance, so I taped a copy (because , who knows?) and promptly returned the record in exchange for, I don't remember, probably a couple of import Who albums or something, and I stuck for the time-being buying proper Hendrix records that I didn't already have, like Concerts (with similar cover), the Film About Jimi Hendrix soundtrack and Live at Winterland.

So it was quite a pleasant surprise when the 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Electric Ladyland included a full-length properly recorded soundboard of this Hollywood Bowl show that had neither ever been bootlegged before nor had ever even been rumored to exist.  The performance still has to wrestle with the splashers, and Hendrix still has to restart "Little Wing" because of a wildly out of tune string, but it's otherwise an incalculable improvement to that trash boot above.






Speaking of Winterland, on October 10th, 11th and 12th, The Experience played a classic run at the venue.  The Jimi Hendrix Concerts, a decent grab-bag of unreleased live performances released in 1982, was the first place to include some numbers from these shows, but by the end of the decade, Rykodisc had released a proper Live At Winterland CD, which, at the time, represented some of the best and most exciting new live performances Hendrix fans could hope for.  The release still has its issues.  Guest organist, Herbie Rich from The Electric Flag, is mixed out of a couple of tunes, and a couple of others are edited down to a more manageable length, but it's still a fantastic listen (but long out of print).  A few years later, a special limited edition would include a free T-shirt and an extra CD, with massive versions of "Are You Experienced" and "Like a Rolling Stone" (both well over 10 minutes).  I had this edition, but the T-shirt only lasted a couple of wears before the seams stripped.

The Winterland box set released by the Estate in 2010 is probably enough for mere mortals.  At 4 CDs (or 5 if you got a promo copy) it'll have what you want in terms of highlights and curiosities, plus it was remixed by Eddie Kramer for optimal sound.  However, I need more, and have the full-length 6 CD bootleg consisting of every recorded minute from the multi-tracks, but in sub-Eddie Kramer sound quality.

These shows are extremely informal.  Some have a very intimate feel, with smaller audiences, almost like a private party with the San Francisco scene regulars and musician friends (many of whom would sit in at various points).  Hendrix pays his special thanks to Stanley Owsley before launching into one rendition of the "Banner", and many of the numbers seem unlimited in allowed duration.  And occasionally, the laid-back vibe leads to a looseness that borders on sloppiness but, understandably, Jimi is effortlessly confident in his skills, right at the eve of the public release of his finished masterpiece.  He's earned the right to let his hair uncurl a little.
 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
10/11/2022 11:00 pm
#45




After the release of Ladyland, Hendrix had earned some time off, and chose to spend it in L.A., renting a house in the Hollywood Hills, buying (and then promptly crashing) a new Corvette, which was the only car he ever owned.  He attended the final American performance of Cream at the Hollywood Bowl, accompanied by George Harrison, newly arrived from London with fresh acetates of the just-finished White Album under his arm.  And because he still had a creative itch to stay busy, he rented out the local TTG Studios, a new independent recording facility, for a solid two week block.  As with his prior two records, again he felt the post-release urge to indulge in a spurt of new material.

The main order of business was actually recording the full debut album by Eire Apparent, the psych-rock band that Hendrix had taken under his wing as their producer, and also adding some guitar here and there.  The group had been their opening act during the last tour, along with The Soft Machine.  The drummer for the latter, Robert Wyatt, had stuck around, staying in a room at the rented Hollywood Hills house.  Hendrix invited Wyatt to use studio time to self-record a set of demos that would make up much of the second Soft Machine LP (including the lyric "Thank you Noel and Mitch, thank you Jim for our exposure to the crowd."), with Jimi supplying bass guitar on a tune called "Slow Walking Talk".  These demos were later released as '68.







Unfortunately, many of these sessions were marred by the amount of groupies and hangers-on.  Hendrix tried his best to keep them huddled in the control room while he ran back and forth from the studio floor to make adjustments and hear playbacks and tune everyone else out.  One welcome presence was the writer Sharon Lawrence, who had begun to be one of his close confidants during this stay, most likely because it was a platonic friendship and it was clear that, unlike the other girls, she didn't want any 'cred' by being with him.

"I've got a whole lot of so-called friends these days." 

So-called friends.  What an interesting phrase, I thought.  "Why don't you tell them to buzz off?" is what I said. 

"Hard to do," Jimi said.  He sighed.

"Who are they?" I asked.

Jimi shrugged and didn't want to talk about it.  I waited him out.  Finally he offered a verbal list.  "Producers.  Would-be producers.  Musicians.  Guys that want to be musicians or work for the band.  Girls that want to be singers.  Dope addicts.  Drug dealers.  About a hundred million chicks that like to be around the scene.  Designers.  Models.  A lot of guys who want or need money.  A few theives...."  I wondered how I'd feel in his position and knew I couldn't imagine screaming, Get the hell out!  Movie stars had secretaries or chauffeurs or occasional bodyguards to deal with extraneous people so they could keep their glossy images.  It seemed odd to me that his manager hadn't hired a bodyguard for Jimi.

And it's worth noting that at this time, in autumn 1968, was exactly the same time when you had Charles Manson and his crew doing a lot of hanging out around the Hollywood Hills homes of various music business people - like Dennis Wilson, Terry Melcher, Neil Young.  Although there's no record of Hendrix and Manson ever crossing paths, given the number and relative anonymity of the hangers-on, it's not unlikely that Manson could have been one of the many of people loitering around Jimi's vicinity.  He was vulnerable, and due to his modesty he was unable to say "no" to most people.

Given the nature of this party atmosphere, it would be reasonable to assume that a lot of these TTG sessions amounted to dead-end jamming.  Certainly there was some of that.  There's about an hour available of jamming with Jack Bruce and Buddy Miles, for example.  And there are a number of tracks with names on the tape boxes like "Untitled Instrumental Jam", which are only distingushed by using the tape box serial numbers as identifiers.  But not all of these are useless, in fact one of these is the very earliest take of what would eventually be called "Izabella".  Another new song that will be more fully developed the following year was "Bleeding Heart".  At the end of the sessions, when Jimi compiled a list of material worth future consideration, the list would include handwritten titles like "Jam #4" and "Jam Session #6".  (These last two included Buddy Miles and organist Lee Michaels.)

But in addition to the free-wheeling takes, these sessions proved very productive for more structured and realized material, much of it at the quality that it could easily have been released on a future LP.  The closest to official release was "Look Over Yonder", which appeared on the 1971 Rainbow Bridge LP.  This, and a version of "Here He Comes (Lover Man)" are now available on South Saturn Delta.  Perhaps as part of Alan Douglas' contemptuous attempt to prove that there was nothing left in the Hendrix vault by the late 70s, he released the execrable cover of "Gloria" as a bonus for the Essential Jimi Hendrix Vol. 2, which is a rough and unserious runthrough whose sole saving grace is in introducing us to the phrase "breath that smells like wolf pussy".  Jimi would have burned the session tape.  A much better tune, a blazing blues-rock instrumental called "Peace In Mississippi" was issued on Douglas' Crash Landing collection, but with everyone but Jimi overdubbed by later 70s musicians.

I'll have to go into the disgraced legacy of Alan Douglas, who controlled the Hendrix catalogue for 20 years from 1975 to 1995, in a future post to really give him the detailed infamy that he deserves, but after his horrible abominations of the mid-70s, involving these "reconstructions" with new musicians added, were rightly reviled and disregarded by fans and critics alike, Douglas sulked by claiming that there really wasn't anything else worth releasing, and proceeded to release a number of lame collections seemingly to make the point.  After the Hendrix Estate was established in the early 90s to take control of the catalogue, Douglas must have realized that that he was very soon to be found out as a fraud and attempted a last minute redemption by releasing maybe the two best sets of his tenure, Jimi Hendrix: Blues and Voodoo Soup.  The latter is mostly late-era Cry of Love remixes, but it does include one revelatory number from these TTG sessions: "The New Rising Sun".  This was a instrumental montage, recorded entirely by Hendrix himself, showcasing another display of multi-layered sonic brilliance, and proving once and for all that this dipshit was sitting on the real shit the whole fucking time.  Soup is long out of print, but this number is now available on the WCSB box, and at over twice the length (but still slightly edited from the full 9 minute version).




The WCSB box also includes two other more-or-less complete numbers from these sessions, "Messenger" and "Calling All Devil's Children" - the latter also is available in an instrumental as well as the finished version with Hendrix sermonizing a voice-over with a cadre of partiers helping out - and a longer jam that turns into something quite impressive, called "Hear My Freedom", edited to about 5 minutes, but available elsewhere in considerably longer form.  Another long-form jam that works is something called "Electric Church", which was a potential LP working title for a period, but this hasn't been commercially released in any form.  There is a similarly titled "Electric Church Red House", a cover of Hendrix's signature blues, with Buddy Miles and Lee Michaels among others, and this is available (although edited, and out of print) on the :Blues CD.

All in all, a pretty fascinating group of sessions, and arguably a missed opportunity for a possible LP, as I think the best of what's here would make a fine collection when slimmed down to 45 minutes.  Obviously, Jimi felt otherwise, though this could just as well be due to his stress, noted by Sharon Lawrence, throughout the recordings.  Eventually, he would start with a fresh set of recordings in the new year of 1969, and choose to use none of the above.


 
Posted by Jinnistan
10/20/2022 11:47 pm
#46

This thread has had exactly one view since I last posted :[

SO I'll just wrap up the rest of 1968.  After the stint in L.A., the band resumed playing a few more shows in November.  I have some audience recordings from Minneapolis (2nd), NY, at The Philharmonic Hall (28th) and Chicago (Dec. 1st).  There are also shows that I don't have from Boston, Providence and Detroit during this run.  All of these are audience recordings, with one show in particular being of special interest, which is the Philharmonic show.



This show was a special occasion for a few reasons.  Billed as "An Electric Thanksgiving", it was a holiday appearance.  It was the day after Jimi's 26th birthday.  And this was the very first appearance by a rock act in the prestigious venue, a landmark of New York City culture, and Hendrix, who had his own pet classical aspirations, was certainly appreciative of the auspicious opportunity.  Mitch Mitchell would sit in as a percussionist for the opening New York Brass Ensemble, playing pieces by Bach and Mozart.  An accountof the show can be read here.

I disagree with the criticism that Jimi was "sluggish and uninspired", but I have an unfortunately limited window from which to judge.  No professional recording has emerged of the show, which seems odd considering its prestige, and I almost wonder if it didn't also fall victim to Jimi's perfectionist standards and simply hasn't seen the light of day.  Or rather that's what I wish, as this would be quite a nice surprise if the Estate were to drop another previously unrumored-to-exist tape that they've been sitting on.  But instead, I have to go by what's available.  There are three separate audience recordings of the first show (none from the second appear to have been made).  I have a "matrix" of all three combined, as well as a copy of each in their raw form in case I ever decide to want to mix my own matrix (given if I learn the software, skills and patience to do so).  The better sounding tape is sadly also the shortest, and has a number of glitches.  This tape was the first to come out as a vinyl boot in the 70s.  The most complete recording of the show is also the poorest.

[img]https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4ab547_9ca3dbbc62034411b078faaab4096d8c~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_6,y_5,w_588,h_590/fill/w_583,h_587,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/4ab547_9ca3dbbc62034411b078faaab4096d8c~mv2.jpg[/img]
[img]https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4ab547_5f499802bc97467c9287a88928d5b948~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_9,y_11,w_740,h_733/fill/w_298,h_298,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/4ab547_5f499802bc97467c9287a88928d5b948~mv2.jpg[/img]
[img]https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4ab547_b777e8af63234fe1a8fab1e4d56811bc~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_4,y_7,w_1045,h_1030/fill/w_290,h_286,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/4ab547_b777e8af63234fe1a8fab1e4d56811bc~mv2.jpg[/img]


So from what I can gather with my untrained ears through the filter of acoustic tape hiss, I don't think the show is bad at all, maybe not excellent or worthy of commercial release, but for at least one number, "I Don't Live Today", I think Hendrix is shooting fireworks.





By the end of the year, Hendrix was back in London for Christmas and the next couple of months.  He arrived a bit too late to partake the invitation to the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus, but Mitch happened to sit in behind John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards in the ad-hoc Dirty Mac.

Here's an interview with the band at Jimi's "flat".  There are a number of clips from this interview that have been used in a number of documentaries, but unfortunately this grainy VHS dub is the only thing closest to the full thing.




 


 
Posted by Rampop II
10/24/2022 7:57 pm
#47

"House Burning Down" is one of my all–time favorite Hendrix tunes and a contender for my #1 slot (it's always in fierce competition with the song "Axis: Bold as Love"). Those fx on "House Burning Down" I've always found very special... he actually made his guitar sound like a house burning down. You can even hear the moment when its roasted frame finally gives out, collapsing in a spectacular burst of sonic embers. Fantastic vocals and lyrics grace this song, too, with Jimi copping voices for different characters in a kind of narrative dialogue fueled by a little social consciousness, a lot of emotion, and a giant boat from space taking all the dead away. 

I could go with that alternative B–side. The B–side as it stands is fine, especially with "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," and I do have a weird fondness for "Long Hot Summer Nights." But I remember often finding myself half–waiting through side B; it felt kind of like an intermission. A trip to the lobby for some light refreshments before the curtain is raised on the epic voyage that is to follow. 


.

Last edited by Rampop II (10/24/2022 8:16 pm)

 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/05/2022 4:06 pm
#48

Hendrix kicked off the new year of 1969 by getting thrown off of BBC TV.  Appearing on A Happening For Lulu, a pop star who isn't too dissimilar from Dusty Springfield, there was a similar expectation of The Experience playing a couple of songs and giving a duet with the host, which here was supposed to be "Hey Joe".  And famously, after a raucus run through "Voodoo Chile", Jimi played a few bars of "Joe" while Lulu made her way to the stage, eager mic in hand, only to cut off "this rubbish" and launch into "Sunshine of Your Love" as a tribute to the recently deceased Cream, leaving Lulu and the TV crew stunned and confused.  I don't believe Hendrix would ever make another appearance on BBC after this, at least not in a performing capacity.  Unfortunately, however legendary this clip is, used on multiple documentaries, Youtube doesn't currently have the full clip available.









For many fans, the next two tours - the January European tour and the Spring American tour - represent The Jimi Hendrix Experience at the peak of their live powers.  This European tour is well regarded among collectors both due to the overall quality of the performances but also the overall quality of the available audience recordings, some of them nearly good enough to sound professional.  Also helpful are the number of recordings, documenting a huge chunk of the tour and sometimes available in various bootleg box sets.  Among these shows - Gothenburg (8th), Stockholm (9th, 2 shows), Copenhagen (10th, 2 shows), Hamburg (11th), Cologne (13th), Munster (14th), Nuremberg (16th), Frankfurt (17th), Stuttgart (19th), Vienna (22nd, 2 shows) and Berlin (23rd).

The clear standout of these are the two Stockholm shows, being the only two actual professionally recorded shows from the tour.  The first show was videotaped for Swedish TV, while the second was recorded on multitrack tape.  The video has its moments, but Jimi is in a rotten mood, seems bored and at one point, while apologizing for the sound problems, huffed "You wouldn't know the difference anyway".  The second show was more successful, and was noted by biographers Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek as perhaps the finest show ever performed by The Experience.  Meanwhile archivist Steven Roby notes that Copenhagen has "some of the best recorded versions of 'Tax Free', 'I Don't Live Today' and 'Purple Haze'", while Frankfurt has "some of the most inspirational versions of 'Red House' and 'Little Wing' that collectors have heard so far".  So far, the only commercial release has been a Dagger Records edition of Live In Cologne.




(Stockholm, 1st show)



(Stockholm, 2nd show, audio)



 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/06/2022 4:56 am
#49

At the end of February 1969, Hendrix was to play two shows at the Royal Albert Hall, his first and only time playing the venue, and which was to be taped and filmed in 35mm for a potential theatrical concert release.  It was a prestigious event and Jimi didn't take the pressure lightly.  For the couple of weeks leading up to the shows, Hendrix took to the studio where he recorded prodigiously, by my count about three hours worth of material that's only become available.  These recordings roughly fall into three categories: jams with friends like the Buddy Miles Express and Traffic, demos of his current works-in-progress, and live-in-studio rehearsals for the RAH shows.  Despite any clear direction or ambition at making a releasable album at this time, the performances are uniformly top-notch and several of these recordings would have made an acceptable LP for the summer's release, in lieu of the actual release, the place-holding Smash Hits compilation.

The earliest recording is the blandly named "12 Bar With Horns", recorded with members of Traffic, but the 12 minute track is a lot more dynamic and jazzy than what a "12 Bar" would suggest.  This track was either unbooted or booted under an obscure name created by a bootlegger that I haven't tracked down.  It's been released as the B-side to a remix of "Love and Confusion" for a 12" from Dagger Records to promote the West Coast Seattle Boy box set in 2010.



Hendrix made a quick flight to New York for a few days to help produce the new Buddy Miles Express record, Electric Church (a name obviously borrowed from Hendrix's jam session from October).  Like a lot of Jimi's NY recordings from 1969, there's been a lot of confusion from the general lack of proper record keeping, misplaced tapes and other issues.  From this February session with BME, Hendrix recorded three additional numbers.  In particular, the identity of the organ player has been wildly speculated, everyone from Herbie Rich and Larry Young (both of whom Hendrix had indeed recorded with), but it appears to have been confirmed as Duane Hitchings.  "World Traveller" is a tough funk-soul riff that deserves release, but "Hitchings Jam" is just more of the same shufflling jazz that we heard on the "Rainy Day Shuffle".  The highlight though is "It's Too Bad", a slow, smokey blues-rock that isn't too far removed from the slow "Voodoo Chile" vibe.  The JHE box set was the first to issue an 8 minute cut of the track in excellent quality, although a longer 11 minute mix from acetate also exists.

Back in London, at Olympic with The Experience, the band recorded several blistering blues-rock jams which are a lot more exciting than their titles ("Slow Version", "Blues Jam at Olympic") would imply.  Instead, they're closer to the fearsome bombast of the earlier "Peace in Mississippi".  A longer 10 minute jam is titled "Ezy Ryder/Star Spangled Banner", although the name 'Ezy Ryder' had not been adopted yet.  Still, it is a run through another embryonic version of the unformed piece which, yes, eventually features a bit of the anthem.

I'll take the opportunity at this point to highlight the Dagger Records release, Hear My Music, a 2004 CD (reissued on vinyl) that focuses on many of these sessions from February, March and April 1969 that's aimed more at the deep fans than the more mainstream Estate releases.  It's still an excellent set in my god damn opinion.




Among the "rehearsal" takes, many of them are sharp but unremarkable.  The best was issued on the JHE box, "Spanish Castle Magic" and "Hear My Train A-Coming".  The latter is of the most interest as, even though this tune had been a central staple in Hendrix's live repertoire for the past year, there had not been any previous attempt at a studio recording.  This one is more than adequete, definitive even.  The Valleys of Neptune release (from 2011) adds a couple more of these: "Red House", "Fire", "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Lover Man".  Out of these, only the latter has significant interest, in that this take is taken considerably slower than normal, with a chunky, choppy rhythm.  The WCSB box also adds a couple more: "Room Full of Mirrors", "Shame Shame Shame" and "Hound Dog Blues".  The latter one is pretty self-explanatory, although it's still impressive how Jimi can make hay out of even that basic a framework.  The others are more like demos in their own right, as neither of these tunes are completely realized yet, but were clearly being considered for debuting at the RAH shows.  This studio take of "Mirrors" also has percussionist Rocky Dzidzornu who would later join The Experience on stage for the number.

The other young compositions that Jimi put down during these sessions: "Midnight Lightning", in a solo guitar take; "Message To Love", a run through the main riff structure; "Crying Blue Rain", an instrumental blues-soul ballad; "Gypsy Blood", another instrumental ballad; and "Valleys of Neptune", two demos - one with guitar, one on piano.  All of these are pretty spare, but show promise.  "Rain" and "Blood" would apparently be abandoned, but the other three, Hendrix would continue to tinker with through out the year.  "Crying Blue Rain" would eventually be released on the Valleys of Neptune CD.


 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/06/2022 9:08 am
#50

"Gee, J, you seem to be posting more rapidly in the thread lately."

I'm trying to catch up before the release next week of the new Estate set:


 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/06/2022 10:56 am
#51




As I mentioned elsewhere, Hendrix's Royal Albert Hall concert is a long lost concert film which remains one of the only major remaining items left in his catalogue to be released.  The legal history over the film's rights is a saga in itself, ultimately rendering the audio tapes of the show in a quasi-legal limbo, leading to a long stream of cheap-label variations popping up in drug stores and gas stations.  It's the most famous legal bootleg in Hendrix's canon.

The film (16mm, not 35mm, sorry) was originally a joint venture between Hendrix's management and the production team of Jerry Goldstein and Steve Gold, then known for managing/producing acts like Eric Burden and Sly Stone.  Somehow or another, the rights of the film and the negative wound up in the possession of one of Goldstein/Gold's business partners, a Bernie Solomon, whose widow still held the rights as of the 00s.  There's been long-running negotiations with the Estate to secure a release, but so far there's only been a brief presentation prior to the pandemic, shown at the Royal Albert Hall for a one-time viewing on October 21, 2019.  This lets us know, at least, that a newly remastered and restored version of the film has been completed, but still no word on when it will become more widely available.  (Probably after they can no longer get people to pay $30 tickets for single-viewings.)

There were two shows, on the 18th and 24th of February, but only the latter was filmed.  It's unknown if the 18th was professionally taped, but a complete audience recording is in "very good" quality.  The set list is pretty typical of what they'd been playing in late '68 and the previous European tour.  The only hint of his recent creativity in the studio was a brief interlude during "Spanish Castle Magic" when Hendrix takes a detour into his new "Message To Love" riffs.  There's been a lot of talk about the show being a disaster, which I dunno, suppose it's relative.  There's the story about how Jimi, allegedly legless from cocaine, needed to be assisted onto the stage, but I honestly don't hear anything showing sloppiness or incoherence.

There's a soundboard tape of the 24th's afternoon soundcheck, which has Hendrix playing at least three takes of "Hound Dog".  It must have been his jam that month.  Also, there's extra "backstage" footage intended for the film which was actually shot at Jimi's London apartment where he's doing another "Hound Dog" on his acoustic guitar for his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham and friends.

There are two primary bootleg versions of the 24th film.  The first looks vintage, runs about 100 minutes, has some poor edits and synching in spots, and a really annoying recurring sparkler effect superimposed over certain sequences.  The newer version uses equally ugly digital effects to try to fix the poor edits and sequencing.  So basically, we're due for an upgrade.  Also, every version of the film, thus far, omits the performance of "Stone Free" from the show.

The release of the concert recordings was a mess.  Trying to capitalize on Hendrix's death, the LP Experience was the quickly released on the budget label Ember (before being duped on even cheaper labels like Bulldog, Pickwick, etc) with what sounds like a total indifference to sound mixing.  The record only runs barely 30 minutes.  Just a rip-off in every sense.  Musically, it has its moments, given that the concert was pretty good after all, and this initial release was wise to focus on material not then-currently available on disc, like their version of "Sunshine of Your Love".  Among the two new songs (there's only four songs on the record), "Room Full of Mirrors" works better on film, as Hendrix is joined by guests like Rocky Dzidzornu (who's uncredited, strangely) and members of Traffic.  Dzidzornu (best known for his percussion work on "Sympathy For The Devil") contributes a lot more excitement to the jam than Traffic, but at this stage, "Mirrors" simply wasn't very well defined yet, a couple of verses and an open groove.  But it does provide a usefully unique and spontaneous performance.  The other new song, "Bleeding Heart", is the same previously called "Shame Shame Shame" (aka "People People People"), an Elmore James slow blues, perhaps intended as a new live blues showcase to replace "Red House".  And this makes it also a unique performance, as when Hendrix would take the song up later in the year, he would add a faster, more strutty gallup.  And that leaves "Smashing of the Amps" which isn't really a song but exactly what it sounds like.

There was one outstanding posthumous live Hendrix album released in 1972, Hendrix in the West, ostensibly a collection of the up-coming Spring American tour where several shows were professionally recorded.  But, for some reason, the decision was made to launder "Little Wing" and "Voodoo Chile" from the RAH 24th show and deceptively label them as being from a San Diego show instead.  Well, they got caught.  Just because the bastards who control the rights to the RAH show are cheap doesn't mean they ain't litigious.  (Important lesson how these two qualities correspond.)  So, almost in contempt, they spit out another Ember label LP More Experience which includes these "Little Wing" and "Voodoo Chile" performances (and, indeed, they are highlights), but somehow manages to make the record even shorter, recycling poor edits of "Room Full of Mirrors" and "Bleeding Heart" that you already bought months ago!

That version of "Stone Free" that's omitted from the film did finally see the light of day in 1982, as part of the relatively strong selection on The Jimi Hendrix Concerts, and it's a pretty epic version, running over 10 minutes of fierce and creative improvisation.




 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/11/2022 7:30 pm
#52

I'm going to go ahead and post this here now because I think there's a very good chance that this will be removed before I get to the summer of 1970.  Grab it while you can.  The Maui "Rainbow Bridge" concert.



 


 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/12/2022 7:56 pm
#53




Going into the Spring, I may need to split this into a couple of posts due to the sheer amount of activity.  Hendrix would continue to record continuously, more and more often with musicians other than Mitch and Noel, hitting whatever available studios in New York City - Record Plant, Hit Factory, Olmstead.  This continued while the Experience performed a gruelling tour schedule, which, as we all may know, ended with the demise of the group, all within a relatively compact amount of time of just over three months.

First, I'll try to tackle the recording sessions during this period, which is not such a simple task.  Because of the disparate use of multiple studios, the record-keeping of the tapes has not been ideal.  Hendrix most likely did not have a firm grasp on the location of many of the tapes after he had moved on to another studio.  There are still a few sessions where participants are not always clear.  Many bootleggers through the years have used some creative methods for determining the titles of individual songs which makes the process of sifting and parsing the various titles (usually in equally various edits and mixes) a bit of a chore, even more so when dealing with the less distinctive instrumentals or outtakes with slight variations.  And, by now, Hendrix was more inclined to let the tapes roll throughout the sessions, meaning that some more mundane material would be preserved, and some more redundant jams could fill up entire half-hour tapes.  Finally, to add to the difficulty, Hendrix would lose his primary collaborator in Eddie Kramer, not necessarily through creative differences or personal friction, but due to Kramer's reluctance to increasingly deal with Jimi's NYC lifestyle.  The drugs and groupies were one thing, annoying and unproductive.  But specifically, Kramer got tired of seeing pistols in the control room being brandished by the coke dealers.

It was during this time that Hendrix began working with another engineer, Alan Douglas.  I've given Douglas a lot of shit, because he did an objectively shitty job as curator of the Hendrix catalogue, but Douglas had the kind of credentials that make Hendrix's alignment with him make much more sense.  Douglas had worked with Muddy Waters, Ritchie Havens and produced the first Last Poets album, and published spoken records by Malcom X and Lenny Bruce.  Douglas would only seriously begin working with Hendrix in the fall, but posthumously, he retained control of the tapes from these spring sessions.  Many of the re-dubbed tracks from Douglas' ill-fated 70s experiments, Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning, come from here.  There was a pretty massive boom in quality Hendrix bootleg vinyl and CDs that started around 1987-89, expensive (for bootlegs) glossy covers with professional artwork and seemingly miles of unheard, previously unbooted, studio recordings in sound that suggested they came directly off of the master reels.  There was a simple explanation for this that would be learned after Douglas had resigned control over to the newly established Experience Hendrix LLC (which I've been calling "The Estate").  Alan Douglas had left these tapes, these original multitrack masters, in storage and failed to pay the back fees, so they fell into the hands of some lucky entrepreneurs.  (The Estate has since secured these tapes.)

So, with all of that chaos in mind, let's try to look at the settled product.  Since the American tour would not kick off until April 11, Hendrix had about a month from landing in New York in early March to play around somewhat informally.  First duty was to complete production on the Buddy Miles Express Electric Church LP, which, on the 16th, provided another opportunity for Jimi to jam with the band, this time including a full horn section.  The result is the terrific "Blue Window Jam", a nearly 20 minute pot of boiling blues-soul that never seems to get repetitious.  There are multiple mixes and edits from this, some sounding better than others (the clip below not being one of the best), and for some reason it has frequently been mistitled as "Crying Blue Rain", even though it has no resemblance to that previous number.  A 12 minute cut of "Blue Window" was released on the CD Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: Jimi Hendrix, one of the many companion CDs to Scorsese's The Blues PBS documentary series.  In the log of imaginary would-be great Hendrix LPs, a fairly simple collection of these jams with BME could be compiled (A: World Traveller; It's Too Bad - B: Blue Window Jam) that would make for a fine funk-soul instrumental record.









In this unofficial inauguration of Band of Gypsies, Billy Cox and Buddy Miles join Hendrix in recording his first demo for "Gypsy Boy", the embryonic seed that would become "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) the eventual centerpiece of his unfinished final album.  This performance was one of the ones used for Douglas' Midnight Lightning, adding additional musicians.  The unmolested take has been released on People Hell & Angels.  They trio also recorded a take of the slow version of "Bleeding Heart", which has solely been issued on :Blues.





Hendrix would record his studio version of "The Star Spangled Banner" at this same session.  Quite unlike his live rendition, this was a multitrack, varispeed tapestry that has a stronger electronic component.  This was first released on Rainbow Bridge in 1971, no doubt to capitalize on his already legendary Woodstock finale, although this also led to some disappointed fans who were expecting something quite different.  A superior mix was included on the JHE box.  There appears to be some controversy over the possible accompaniment by the 60s electronic duo, SIlver Apples.  There is no documentation of attribution showing this collaboration, and it's been long considered a Hendrix solo recording.  Silver Apples member, Simeon Coxe, has seemingly only recently claimed this, and you can judge his statements for yourself.  One problem with Coxe's telling is that he claims doing a version of the Star Spangled Banner was a brand new idea for Hendrix, despite Hendrix having already made the "Banner" part of his live show for well over a year by this point.  But on the other hand, Jimi's interest in Silver Apples would be understandable, a highly experimental psychedelic group who had just released their second LP, Contact, at this time, and it would explain the more electronic texture of this recording which isn't very evident on other Hendrix recordings.  I'll consider this unresolved.

Hendrix next did a session with an old saxophonist friend, Lonnie Youngblood, whom Hendrix had played some sessions with back in 1966.  Here, Hendrix provided lead guitar to Youngblood's "Georgia Blues".  This track was also released on Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: Jimi Hendrix, but unfortunately giving Hendrix composition credit leading to a lawsuit from Youngblood.  A previously unknown outtake from this session, "Let Me Move You", was issued on People Hell & Angels.





March 25th had the potential for being a momentous occasion.  Hendrix had put out the word that he was very interested in playing more with jazz musicians, and this spring would have him play with several of the hot ones at that time.  Coming off of recently finishing In A Silent Way, the Miles-anointed John McLaughlin was the hottest jazz guitarist around, and so was a natural for a potential showdown.  Dave Holland, Miles' current touring bassist, also attended while Buddy Miles played drums.  The result is extremely underwhelming.  The least of the problems was certainly not McLaughlin's malfunctioning pick-up on his hollow-body guitar, which provides a near-constant shrill hiss.  McLaughlin and Holland are not in their element in the "Driving South" R&B template, and Buddy Miles is clearly out of his in a jazz one.  As if the dynamic between Hendrix and McLaughlin isn't enough, there's also a third guitarist in Jim McCarty which turns any collaboration into competition and commotion.  And on top of everything, it keeps going and going for a solid half-hour, literally until the tape ran out.  The recording's biggest critic is McLaughlin who has refused every offer to sign off on its commercial release.  I honestly doubt that Hendrix would have ever seriously considered it either.  In fact the only rationale to release it is due to the profiles of each talent's name.  For fans of either, it's an impossible and irresistible lure.  It's a humbling reminder that some moments are less golden than others, and even the greats have their off nights, or can be paralyzed into tepidity by great expectations.

Thankfully, from this same session, a superior jam was also recorded, although with no involvement from McLaughlin or Holland and with Mitch Mitchell on drums.  The theme of this jam isn't 12-bar but a haunting, heavy minor-blues refrain, and its 17 minutes are far more forgiving on the listener's patience with several stellar passages.  Its title is deceptively generic, "Jimi/Jimmy Jam", named for Hendrix and McCarty.  It's currently available in full on Hear My Music.

After Alan Douglas' foibles with his mid-70s necromancy, he set out to try and set the record straight and issue an LP that would, once and for all, show Hendrix as a serious musician, rather than a flashy cock rocker, by featuring some of these forays into jazz collaboration and more abstract and challenging instrumental music.  Of course, the main selling point was supposed to be a version of the Hendrix/McLaughlin jam, but when McLaughlin said "nah", then the silver lining became the edited release of the superior "Jimi/Jimmy Jam", despite that dumbass name.  For the record, the eventual Nine To The Universe LP, showing this more jazz-fusion side of Jimi, is a bit of a lost classic.  Although pretty much everything on it is now available in better sound and complete form, it was still one of the better posthumous Hendrix LPs.  But it sold poorly, had those unwelcoming generic song titles and soon fell into budget bins.  I'd say most people who own a copy bought it because it was the cheapest Hendrix album available for awhile.  That cheapness also has a way of distorting the perception of its value though.



 

Last edited by Jinnistan (11/12/2022 8:53 pm)


 
Posted by crumbsroom
11/12/2022 8:52 pm
#54

Man, do you just have all this info stored in your brain? I literally don't know this much about anything, including my own life

 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/12/2022 9:02 pm
#55

crumbsroom wrote:

Man, do you just have all this info stored in your brain? I literally don't know this much about anything, including my own life

I'm a fan!

But no, when I went through my Hendrix files on my hard drive, I put a lot of that info in a notebook, I have several books but am leaning heavily on three for reference, and I run a quick fact check using wiki and a couple of specific sites while posting.

Actually, during all of this, I did come across a book that makes this work all redundant, an "illustrated encyclopedia of live concerts and sessions", but I hadn't found it before.  I need to get a copy, but then, that's almost cheating now.  They even used the same opening image as this thread.  Oh well.  At least they got paid.


[img]https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Y9mDEOtQL._SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_FMwebp_.jpg[/img]


 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/16/2022 1:52 am
#56

In the days before the start of the new American tour, the full Experience convened in the studio for some quick sessions that would be Redding's last with the band.  Maybe because the song had not been released in the States at this point and maybe because the original's more primitive production, the band decided to try a revamp of "Stone Free", with extra percussion, backing vocals and several new overlaid guitar tracks.  It remained unreleased until it showed on the JHE box set.  Eventually, Hendrix would have Billy Cox put a new bass over Noel's, and this version, with a number of other mix variations, was released on Valleys of Neptune.

The one track which got released fairly early on was "Midnight", another heavy rock stomper instrumental, released on War Heroes in 1972, and now available on South Saturn Delta.  A similar riff was used for a tune called "Trash Man", in fact it may simply have been a new name for the same song.  "Trash Man" is on Hear My Music and added as a bonus on Valleys of Neptune.  Another run at what was still a rough draft of "Ezy Ryder", now being called "Lullabye For The Summer" and also released on Valleys of Neptune, and additional attempts at "Bleeding Heart" and "Hear My Train A-Coming", still looking for that perfect take.  Several of these items were mined by Alan Douglas - "Stone Free" for Crash Landing; "Trash Man", "Hear My Train" for Midnight Lightning.  The original "Train" recording was included on Valleys of Neptune, and a different take of "Train" was released on Both Sides of the Sky.




"Ships That Pass In The Night" was a new number that saw a few attempts, including one used on Valleys of Neptune, but the more notorious version, maybe from the same session, has an unknown piano and trumpet part.  Out of all of the hot jazz talent available, there was no one Hendrix was more excited about playing with than Miles Davis, and, the story goes, multiple attempts at setting up a session between them always fell through because of last minutes issues with money.  However there's also an inextinguishable rumor that such a session actually did take place, and this particular recording, which has a very familiar sounding muted trumpet, is evidence of that.  I don't know the answer, but I know which story I'd prefer to believe.





By now, as the tour was underway, Hendrix would continue to record but almost exclusively using the Cox/Miles rhythm section.  Another new song was "Keep On Groovin'", not really fully developed beyond a vamp but with lyrics that would evolve into "Steppin' Stone".  Devon Wilson helps out on backing vocals.  The entire session tapes for the April 22nd recording of Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy", about two hours worth, is available but quite repetitious.  The finished take was released on both :Blues and Both Sides of the Sky.  Hendrix also brought in drummer Rocky Isaac to play with Cox on some sessions.  A fresh approach to "Room Full of Mirrors" resulted in possibly the best version of that track (on JHE box).  "Crash Landing" was another new song, but sounded fully developed, and it's one of the more inexplicable of the recent material to abandon.  Besides its mauling by Douglas, it was released on People Hell & Angels.  Yet another "Bleeding Heart" was released on Valleys of Neptune.  "Drone Blues" is another generic title for what is in actuality a pretty frenetic performance.  Used on Nine To The Universe and now on Hear My Music.











Hendrix shared the studio with organist Larry Young, who was soon to contribute to Bitches Brew and John McLaughlin's debut Devotion.  More generic titles ("Young/Hendrix", "Fuzzy Guitar Jam") hide some tremendous funk-fusion within.  Both of these titles would make side-long tracks, and a very satisfying stand-alone LP.  "Young/Hendrix" was edited and showcased on Nine To The Universe, but is now available in its full 20 minutes on the WCSB box. 








In early May, Hendrix hooked up with Johnny Winter and they recorded several jams together, including one based around what must be the first iteration of what became "Earth Blues".  The best known of these recordings is a cover of Guitar Slim's "The Things I Used To Do", which has been a bootleg staple and sometimes credited to Stephen Stills.  It has finally gotten a commercial release on Both Sides of the Sky.  More generic titles, "Jam 292" (named after the tape box #) is less exciting than others from this period, but it still got a release on the Loose Ends LP, the :Blues CD and the Hear My Music CD.  "Jam with Horns and Piano" is better than it sounds.






A more formal inauguration of what would be Jimi's future direction came in late May when Hendrix recorded with Cox and Miles a medley of Band of Gypsies material under the name "Message To Love From Nine To The Universe", ie "Message To Love/Earth Blues".  An edit of this was the title track of Nine To The Universe, and has not been re-released since, but the full 20 minute version is certainly out there.  They also put down takes of "Bleeding Heart" and "Hear My Train", both of them coming out on People Hell & Angels along with the debut performance of "Villanova Junction Blues", also on PH&A, featuring the first appearance of Juma Sultan on percussion.





The foundation for Hendrix's next project was pretty firmly established even before The Experience went kaput, and it's clear that the new Hendrix sound was bound to be more expansive, with more diverse participants, and much blacker.  Unfortunately, it would also require something like a showdown against his management and squandering the highly profitable power trio profile with which Jimi had nursed his fan base.
 


 
Posted by Rampop II
11/28/2022 1:09 am
#57




Hap-py birrthday deearr Jimm-miii... 

 
Posted by Jinnistan
11/28/2022 3:19 pm
#58

His big 80.  Along with Joe Biden and Martin Scorsese this month.

I was going to do the next post last night, but I fell asleep instead.  Woke up this morning and found myself disappointed.
 


 
Posted by Rampop II
11/29/2022 2:24 am
#59

Jinnistan wrote:

His big 80.  Along with Joe Biden and Martin Scorsese this month.

I was going to do the next post last night, but I fell asleep instead.  Woke up this morning and found myself disappointed.
 

Hehe I see what you did there.

 
Posted by Jinnistan
1/13/2023 3:12 am
#60




Where was I?

Oh yeah, The Experience's Spring 1969 tour, which ran from Aprill 11 to May 31.  As can be seen from the last post, Hendrix continued to record throughout in-between shows, frequently with musicians who were not Mitch and Noel.  Shows from this tour remain some of Hendrix fans' favorite performances of the Experience, and it's an open question as to whether the increasing hostility between Jimi and Noel added to this explosive dynamic.  This was a time when it was becoming more common for Jimi and Mitch to deliberately miss flights so they wouldn't have to share a plane with Noel Redding, who was opening some shows with his own band, Fat Mattress, and appeared to be more convinced that somehow he deserved an equal spotlight to Hendrix.  He naturally took Hendrix's inclination for outside musicians as a threat to his own position.  And, spoiler alert, this would be the last Experience tour, ending with Redding either getting his walking papers or leaving in a huff (depending on source).  The "Break-Up" was one of the most popular headlines in the music press ever since Cream had split-up, and it didn't take much for people to sniff out discontent in the Beatle and Stones camps.  The Experience was near the top of the list of anticipated news of imminent demise, and Hendrix wasn't helping matters by constantly talking to the press about his more expansive plans and potential side projects.  Perhaps such rumors had something to do with this tour becoming the most lucrative American rock tour of 1969, as if everyone intuited that it was the last chance to see the original Experience in their live glory.  Adding to the tension, concerts that ended in riots and tear gas would be more common than normal.

There was other volatility during this time.  Hendrix had already managed to alienate his trusted engineer, Eddie Kramer, he had become sufficiently dependent on Mike Jeffery (and his shady mafia connections), and, on May 3rd right in the middle of the tour, he'd get busted for heroin possession by the Toronto customs authorities.  There's still a lot of unknowns and speculation about that particular event.  Hendrix was not a well-known user of heroin, and the available witness corroboration showed only a mild dalliance with the substance.  It very well could have been the case of an eager fan slipping him something he carelessly tossed in with his luggage.  It has been suggested that he was deliberately set up.  Writer and confidante Sharon Lawrence, who was with Hendrix when he was packing for the Toronto flight, and who testified at his later trial, is on the record that she saw the fan who handed Hendrix a plain pill bottle with a yellow cap, the same container which was found to contain the substance.  Lawrence said that Hendrix was in a rush and not paying attention and, in fact, trying to keep the fans out of his way (again, this goes to the issue with lack of personal security around Hendrix that Lawrence had already mentioned).  However Sharon Lawrence was not convinced that Mike Jeffery did not have a hand in the matter.  She relates that as the trial, six months later in December, approached, she would receive strange phone calls warning her.  One call, from "an important friend at a New York record company", told her:

"Look, Sharon, there are people associated with Mike Jeffery who could hurt you.  He doesn't want you or any other witness at that trial in Canada.  Michael Jeffery is a control freak; he has problems with Hendrix.  He wants to teach him a lesson.  I'm going to tell you the name of a man that Jeffery knows..."  And she did, and I never forgot it.  I checked out that name with a friend at the New York Times.  It was one of the aliases of a major Manhattan crime boss....

I thought about a conversation with a trusted source inside Reprise Records in Burbank, California.  "What I'm hearing", he said, "is that Mike Jefferey's long-term plans depend on keeping Jimi as a management client.  Mike's nobody without Hendrix, and it's no secret that Jimi wants out.  Maybe Jeffery's been cruel enough to set him up so no other manager will touch him... And if Jimi goes to prison, Mike controls unreleased Hendrix tapes plus that New York recording facility that they're building.  Mike has always been lucky.  Lucky and crafty....

Later, when Sharon Lawrence visited Jimi in Toronto before the trial, he whispered in her ear, "There are two guys listening on the other side of that door."  She noted: "Both of them, Jimi indicated, would be reporting back to Jeffery."

Lawrence's insistence on omitting the names of her sources may inspire skepticism in some, or it could be a testament to her worries that she would still be concerned about outing her sources to the wrong people some 35 years after the fact.

Back to the music.

This tour would also be the band's largest enterprise to date, as they now carried several trucks worth of sound equipment from show to show, both to improve the sound of the shows to state-of-the-art standards, mixed by Abe Fortas, and also to record a number of shows with a multi-track mobile facility operated by Wally Heider for a possible future live LP.  It's unknown exactly how many shows were eventually recorded, much less may have survived, but only two of them have become available - LA, April 26 and San Diego, May 24.  In addition to these are several audience recordings.  The best of these is probably Oakland (April 27) which was good enough to be the inaugural release on Dagger Records.  The show following the Toronto bust (May 3rd) is surprisingly good, and (unlike many of these tapes) complete, with a rare detour into "Little Miss Lover" and the first try at "Room Full of Mirrors" from the tour.  Another better-than-average tape from Providence (May 17) has the very first appearance of the brand new "Earth Blues" thrown into the "Spanish Castle Magic/Sunshine of Your Love" medley.  A three-source matrix of the Madison Square Garden show (May 18) has an opening pairing of both "Lover Man" and "Come On".  The show from San Jose (May 25) is excellent, with a monumental version of "Voodoo Chile" that goes all over the place, including new tunes like "Room/Mirrors", "Message to Love" and landing in "Sunshine" before heading back into "Chile" in apocalyptic fashion.  This performance remains the favorite Hendrix show by collecter Carlos Santana, who was also there in person.  "It was incredible to be assaulted with all these screaming winds.  He would really control that instrument like a jazz player or a blues player would.  It was like controlling a demon and making it sing."  Other shows from the tour that I personally have in my collection are from Philadelphia (April 12), Memphis (April 18), Dallas (April 20), Indianapolis (May 11) and Baltimore (May 16).




Of the two professionally recorded shows, the LA Forum has recently been given a high-class release from the estate, but the San Diego show is long out of print from the 1991 Stages box set.

The intended live LP was eventually released in 1972 Hendrix in the West, but unfortunately, for whatever reason, very little of the record was actually recorded west of the Isle of Wight.  It's still a very good LP, if you find a decent copy somewhere, but there's only a single track (albeit a 13 minute track) from the San Diego show, a version of "Red House" that archivists Shapiro/Glebbeek consider the very best version of the song.  The more recent Estate rerelease of this LP also substitutes a San Diego "Voodoo Chile" (the original mislabeled the RAH version) which captures some of the excitement of that show's ensuing riot.  The 1982 live anthology The Jimi Hendrix Concerts (also a very good hodge-podge) introduces the San Diego "I Don't Live Today", which is one of my personal favorite performances of that song.  In general, I prefer the San Diego show in many ways.  "When I say toilet paper, that's when you come rolling out", Jimi tells the surging crowd trying to siege the stage.  The full show was released on the 1991 Stages box-set, an interesting attempt to compile one complete show from every year 67-70, but unfortunately, "Foxy Lady" was strangely omitted.

The LA Forum show has also had a messy roll out.  In 1988, there was a three-hour syndicated radio show that broadcast throughout the US called Live & Unreleased.  This show was later released as a CD box in France, but when imports and dupes proliferated, it was finally released as Lifelines by Reprise in 1990.  This release was seen as dodgy by many because, as a radio show, it featured intrusive narration over the beginning and ending of tracks, and most of the tracks were fragments, only about one or two minutes in length except for some exceptions.  The draw is that it included a trove of unreleased treasures, teases really, of things like "South Saturn Delta", "Cherokee Mist", the Drake Hotel demos and many other nuggets that fans had not ever been able to hear.  As an extra enticement, Reprise added the LA Forum show as a fourth disc in the box-set, but this was later shown to be incomplete and edited.  In fact, "Foxy Lady" was removed entirely (again!), although Reprise later tried to correct this by making "Foxy" a bonus track on their CD reissue of Jimi Hendrix Concerts.  So those of us who wanted to take the time to make a mixtape restoring the correct running order, this became the version of the show as it has continued to be bootlegged (Earthquake in LA, et al).  But the new Estate release is the first time that the entire performance has been restored and released in its entirety.  The show itself is pretty tremendous, with a superb "Tax Free", one of the best "Star Spangled Banners", with Jimi sliding a little "bullshit" on the tail end of one sonic dive, and constantly taunting the security placed to prevent the (eventual) riot, "'scuse me while I kiss this policeman".


 


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