Jimi Hendrix - Northern California Folk-Rock Festival, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA, 5-25-1969

I haven't posted a lot of live music by Jimi Hendrix for a couple of reasons. For one, there are a ton of official live albums that have been released. And for another, there are lots of widely available bootlegs as well. I'd rather spend my time posting interesting things from lesser shared musical acts. But I'm making an exception here because I think I significantly improved the quality of this recording, as I will explain in a minute.

First though, I want to explain why I developed an interest in this particular Hendrix concert. I was trying to look up some information about Santana relating to the closing of the Fillmore West concerts I recently posted, and I came across the helpful www.santanamigos.com website. I happened to come across some quotes in it from Carlos Santana where he extensively praised this very Hendrix concert. Here are the quotes. This first one is from a 1994 interview:

"The first time I saw Jimi was at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds in San Jose. It was probably the most incredible concert I ever heard in my life. I have never heard him play better after that. The show was absolutely incredible. Jimi was at the peak of his art. At one moment he would get caught inside a proton or a neutron, and the next minute he would throw you to the Milky Way. I've never been exposed to that drastic form of expression. Somebody actually recorded it that day. I listen to it and I'm still blown away. You can hear all these waves of spirits crying through his guitar. We were like - 'Oh my God! How can he do this?' It was scary, I had never heard anybody express electric music the way he did that day. 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."

He discussed this concert some more in a 1995 interview:

"I saw him at Santa Clara Fairgrounds in San Jose in '69 but I didn't get to talk to him then - I still didn't know him. I think that was the best concert that I ever heard him play. He had supreme confidence that day. There was nothing in his mind about business or chicks or anything that I could tell because he just came out like Michael Tyson, when Michael Tyson would knock guys [out] in three seconds. There's a certain 'stance'. That's what Miles Davis said: 'I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands, you know.' He had a certain stance, man. He was all over that Strat and had supreme confidence, that's all I can say."

After reading those quotes, I thought, "Wow, I really need to listen to a recording of this concert." After all, if there's someone who knows a thing or two about playing great lead guitar, it's Carlos Santana. So I found the bootleg recording he mentioned. 

However, I quickly realized there was a big problem with it. It's an audience bootleg, and it recorded Hendrix's lead guitar very nicely. But everything else was buried way back in the mix. The drums, bass, and especially the lead vocals were very hard to hear. In a way, this isn't so bad, since it allows one to hear Hendrix's amazing guitar work very clearly. Still, I tried to fix it. It turns out I couldn't do much to improve the drums or bass. The MVSEP program I used didn't detect enough for me to be able to adjust the volume. I did boost the drums some, but only in some sections of songs. Still, I figured that was an improvement.

However, it turns out I was able to make a massive change to Hendrix's vocals. They went from being almost inaudible to the expected volume level in most cases. In my opinion, this really improves the recording. It's still an audience boot, and it still has issues, but it's quite listenable now. 

Now, here's a little background about this concert, as I understand it. Hendrix played with the Experience. It was one of their last concerts, as they would break up a month later. These were the other acts that were supposed to perform at the festival: Jefferson Airplane, the Chambers Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Eric Burdon, Spirit, Canned Heat, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Youngbloods, the Steve Miller Band, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Taj Mahal, Noel Redding, Lee Michaels, Blues Image, Santana, Elvin Bishop, Poco, People!, Lynn County, the Loading Zone, Sweet Linda Divine, Cat Mother, Doc Watson & New Lost City Ramblers. 

However, it seems not all of those acts actually appeared. There had been a "Northern California Folk-Rock Festival" in 1968, and that had gone pretty well, with a handful of big name musical acts performing. However, it turns out both Hendrix and Led Zeppelin were advertised to appear at this 1969 version despite not actually being contacted by the promoter, Bob Blodgett, to do so. Probably, that was a tactic to boost sales. This resulted in Led Zeppelin suing Blodgett, and they didn't perform. To safe face, at the last minute, Blodgett paid Hendrix $30,000 to perform. So luckily we got this recording. I haven't found any other recordings from the 1969 festival though. I did find an article from the time saying that Eric Burdon was a major cancellation, but he may have been the only other big name not to show. I've included that article in the download zip, since most of it talks about Hendrix's performance.

Also, another rock festival took place nearby over the same weekend, as kind of a hippie protest against Blodgett, called the Aquarian Festival. About 20,000 people attended that one, while about 60,000 people attended this one. Here's a link to another article that talks about that conflict:

The Northern California Folk Rock Festival 2 | Aquarian Family Festival in San Jose, CA | Music & Nightlife

It's not mentioned in that article, but I read elsewhere that the debacle over this festival basically ended Blodgett's career as a music promoter. Even though he ultimately did get Hendrix to perform, it wasn't enough to save his reputation due to the original false advertising he did.

Anyway, I'd love to hear from die-hard Hendrix fans, if they think Hendrix's performance here was really as exceptional as Carlos Santana says it was. I found another quote where Santana said he saw about eight or nine Hendrix concerts in total. Perhaps he was just the most impacted by seeing him for the first time?

By the way, I find it interesting that most of the last twenty minutes long was a medley that was mostly instrumental. And that included very early versions of two songs, "Message to Love" and "Room Full of Mirrors," that he would play a lot more in 1970. 

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Drum Solo [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)
06 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)
08 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
09 I Don't Live Today (Jimi Hendrix)
10 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
13 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)
15 Message to Love [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
16 Room Full of Mirrors (Jimi Hendrix)
17 Sunshine of Your Love [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
18 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] [Reprise] [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jN326S4x

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/mx8Ys4AuS35kU8A/file

The text at the top, plus the yellow framing, is from a concert poster for this concert. In the middle, I put a photo of Hendrix that also is from this exact concert. 

The Wikipedia entry for this festival is short and doesn't say much, but it has a nice version of the concert poster:

Northern California Folk-Rock Festival (1969) - Wikipedia 

Jimi Hendrix & Various Artists - Jimi Hendrix as Session Musician, Volume 3: 1969-1970

Here's the third and last album showcasing the session work by Jimi Hendrix, arguably the greatest lead guitarist of all time. This deals with the last two years of his life, 1969 and 1970.

By 1969, Hendrix was a big star. He loved performing live, and often dropped in as a guest in concerts put on by other musicians he liked, especially when they played in small clubs near where he lived. However, he still didn't guest on records that much, especially those that got released while he was alive. 

A couple examples of him doing this are "Yes I Need Someone" and "The Clown" by Eire Apparent. Hendrix actually produced the entire debut album by this band from Northern Ireland, and these are just two of the songs from it. Unfortunately, he mostly kept a low profile with his guitar playing on this album, with these two songs probably showing the most playing by him. His Experience band mates Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell also played on many of the songs. The band broke up after that single album. 

Another song released in his lifetime was "Old Times, Good Times," which came out on the 1970 debut solo album by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills and Nash fame), simply called "Stephen Stills." Hendrix and Stills formed a musical connection and often jammed with each other, but very little of it saw the light of day. "30 Dollar Fine" and "No-Name Jam (Instrumental)," and "White Nigger (High and Dry)" are all Stills songs with Hendrix that didn't get officially released until decades later. In fact, "White Nigger (High and Dry)" is still unreleased, probably due to song title, obviously now considered quite offensive.

A song that almost came out in Hendrix's lifetime is "The Everlasting First," released by Love. This came out at the very end of 1970, a couple of months after Hendrix's death. Hendrix had a natural bond with Arthur Lee, the lead singer and main songwriter of Love, due to both of them being Black men in a overwhelmingly Causasian rock world at the time. This song was cowritten by Hendrix and Lee. The two of them actually knew each other before either of them became famous. Hendrix even played guitar on a song written by Lee back in 1964. 

Generally speaking, the other songs here came out much later, on archival releases. Tracks 3 and 4 are from the "West Coast Seattle Boy" box set. Track 6 is from "The Experience Sessions." Track 10 is from "People, Hell and Angels." Track 13 is a jam session, and remains unreleased. Track 5, "Doriella Du Fontaine," is a curious case, because the lead vocals weren't added until 1973. That's from "Change the Beat: The Celluloid Records Story."

That just leaves the three bonus tracks. These all sound fine, despite the fact they're all still unreleased. But the reason I made them bonus tracks is because they actually are from concerts where Hendrix guested, and the theme here is him guesting with studio sessions. Perhaps someone could help me find enough songs for a full album (or albums?) of Hendrix being a guest star in concerts, then I could move these to that. Unfortunately, in my opinion, a lot of the recordings of his guest appearances have poor sound quality. "Baby's Gone Away" and "The Sky Is Crying" come from the Newport 69 Festival in Northridge, California. "Mother Earth" is from a concert at a club in London on September 16, 1970. I'm not sure, but I think that might be his last public performance, because he died of a drug overdose just two days later, on September 18, 1970. I don't remember why I put "[Edit]" since I did that a long time ago. But I think I cleaned up a lot of the audience noise (it being from an audience boot), and possibly boosted the vocals.

This album is 52 minutes long, not including the three bonus tracks.

01 30 Dollar Fine (Stephen Stills with Jimi Hendrix)
02 Yes I Need Someone (Eire Apparent with Jimi Hendrix)
03 Instant Groove (King Curtis with Jimi Hendrix)
04 Mastermind (Larry Lee with Jimi Hendrix)
05 Doriella Du Fontaine (Lightnin' Rod with Jimi Hendrix & Buddy Miles)
06 Noel's Tune [Instrumental] (Noel Redding with Jimi Hendrix)
07 The Clown (Eire Apparent with Jimi Hendrix)
08 No-Name Jam [Instrumental] (Stephen Stills with Jimi Hendrix)
09 The Everlasting First [Extended Version] (Love with Jimi Hendrix)
10 Mojo Man (Albert Allen & the Ghetto Fighters with Jimi Hendrix)
11 Old Times, Good Times (Stephen Stills with Jimi Hendrix)
12 White Nigger [High and Dry] (Stephen Stills with Jimi Hendrix)
13 Dreamin' [Instrumental] (Eric Oxendine with Jimi Hendrix & Richie Havens)

Baby's Gone Away (Jimi Hendrix with Buddy Miles & Lee Oskar)
Mother Earth [Edit] (Eric Burdon & War with Jimi Hendrix)
The Sky Is Crying (Buddy Miles with Jimi Hendrix & Lee Oskar)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/n4ipEFiN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/SmqRzx0abYg8ATZ/file

The cover photo shows Jimi Hendrix with Stephen Stills, presumably in a recording studio. I don't know any details about where or when the picture is from. The original was in black and white, which I colorized with the help of the Kolorize program. It also was dark and murky. I ran this through the Krea AI program a couple of times until it looked a little better. 

Jimi Hendrix & Various Artists - Jimi Hendrix as Session Musician, Volume 2: 1967-1968

Over a week ago (as I post this in early November 2025), I posted Volume 1 of this series, highlighting Jimi Hendrix when he was in the role of a session musician for others. That first volume dealt with the years 1964 to 1966, before he was famous. This was deals with the years 1967 and 1968, when he quickly went from a musical nobody to a superstar.

In early 1967, Hendrix took the British musical world by storm, leaving even "guitar gods" like Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend with their jaws on the floor. So he would have been in great demand as a session musician. But for most of 1967 and 1968, he was too busy with his own career. Plus, I imagine many other musical acts would have been too intimidated to ask him. Most of the records he was on in a session musician role in these years were for people he had been musically associated with before he was famous, especially Curtis Knight and Lonnie Youngblood. So performances with those two people make up five of the eight tracks here.

All but one of the songs here have been officially released. The one exception is an instrumental jam with the members of the band Traffic, simply called "Jam Thing." Perhaps Hendrix wasn't acting as a session musician in a strict sense for that one, but again this seems the best album to fit it in.

Note the version of "Save Me" here isn't exactly an "outfake," but it is a clever edit that created something new. Basically, at different times, Aretha Franklin sang over the exact same backing track that Jimi Hendrix played lead guitar over. So I just combined the two of them together. I made a separate post just for this song edit, which you can find here for more details:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/03/aretha-franklin-with-jimi-hendrix-save.html

Anyway, I thought this is as good an album to include that edit to as any. 

As for the other songs, track 1 is from "You Can't Use My Name: The RSVP/PPX Sessions." Tracks 3 and 4 are from "The Summer of Love Sessions." All three of those are songs Hendrix did with Knight in the summer of 1967 to fulfill a record contact he'd signed before he got famous. Track 5 is from "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues." Track 7 is from the Hendrix compilation album "People, Hell and Angels." Track 6 is from the album "McGough and McGear." Track 9 is from the Hendrix box set "West Coast Seattle Boy."

The last song, "Ex-Art Student," is also from "McGough and McGear." Like track 6, "So Much in Love," it was written by Mike McGear, who is the brother of Paul McCartney. The song features Hendrix on the guitar, with Dave Mason on sitar. Backing vocals were done by Graham Nash, McCartney, and McCartney's girlfriend at the time, Jane Asher.

If I've missed any session work he did during these years, let me know and I'll add them in. I only wanted to include songs where his guitar playing was prominent, especially if he performed guitar solos. And I didn't include any guest concert appearances. He often joined other bands on stage to jam, though sadly precious few of these events got recorded.  

This album is 49 minutes long. 

01 Gloomy Monday [Edit] (Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix)
02 Save Me [Edit] (Aretha Franklin with Jimi Hendrix)
03 Taking Care of No Business (Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix)
04 Love Love [Edit] (Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix)
05 Georgia Blues (Lonnie Youngblood & Jimi Hendrix)
06 So Much in Love (McGough & McGear with Jimi Hendrix)
07 Jam Thing [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix & Traffic)
08 Let Me Move You (Lonnie Youngblood with Jimi Hendrix)
09 Sweet Thang (Billy Lamont with Jimi Hendrix)
10 Ex-Art Student (McGough & McGear with Jimi Hendrix)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tu7WMCKt

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/WzlmCr5rUOvYjdm/file

The cover photo was taken in Zurich, Switzerland, in May 1968. From right to left, that's Steve Winwood, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall, and Eric Burdon. The original I found was in black and white. But I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program, and then Photoshop.

Jimi Hendrix & Various Artists - Jimi Hendrix as Session Musician, Volume 1: 1964-1966

Here's something a little different from me. It's a collection of songs where Jimi Hendrix was a supporting player rather than the main artist. I've never done a collection of "session musician" appearances like this before, because normally I don't think that's interesting enough to make an album. But Hendrix is one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, in my opinion, so even these sorts of performances are worthy of hearing, in my opinion.

Note that this is not complete by any means. I deliberately left off some songs I found with Hendrix playing guitar on them. That's because I only wanted to include songs where he made a notable impact, typically with a guitar solo. I found enough music for three volumes. For this first volume, I found all but three of the songs on the "West Coast Seattle Boy" Hendrix box set. The other three are tracks 9, 14, and 15. That box set does a good job collection his earlier session work. But the later two volumes mostly come from other sources.  

I could write pages about Hendrix's pre-fame history, and the tracks here. But if I do that, I probably would never get around to posting these volumes. So instead, I'll keep it short. Luckily, there's a good Rolling Stone article about his songs as a session musician before he became a star. I highly recommend you give this a read:

Jimi Hendrix: 10 Great Pre-Fame Tracks

I'll quote the intro to that article here:

"Before he was experienced, Jimi Hendrix was a hard-working sideman, playing studio session dates and backing bands across the so-called Chitlin' Circuit and beyond during the first half of the Sixties. After his discharge from the 101st Airborne Division following his brief spell as a paratrooper, the chance to dive headlong into rhythm and blues behind pros like Little Richard, King Curtis, and the Isley Brothers served as a valuable apprenticeship - though a decidedly unglamorous one. ... Despite the challenges, a letter Hendrix sent to his father during this period reveals his steely resolve to realize his destiny. 'I still have my guitar and amp and as long as I have that, no fool can keep me from living,' he writes. 'Although I don't eat every day, everything’s going all right for me. It could be worse than this, but I’m going to keep hustling and scuffling until I get things to happening, like they’re supposed to for me.' This baptism by fire forged the singular style that would make his name cultural shorthand for musical virtuosity." 

Hendrix actually began performing on the Chitlin' Circuit in late 1962, mostly in the South. At various points, he backed up lots of famous soul music stars, including Wilson Pickett, Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner, and Jackie Wilson. However, this album begins in 1964, because that's the first time he managed to be included on released records.

In June 1966, Hendrix finally felt confident to form his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Performing in small clubs, he quickly made an impression. From there, he got an opportunity to move to Britain and do some recording. He left the U.S. in September 1966. Success quickly followed, with his first hit single, "Hey Joe," released near the end of the year. So that's where this volume ends, at the end of 1966.

Most everything here are failed, obscure singles. However, "Mercy, Mercy" was a significant hit. (It's interesting to note that Hendrix sometimes played that song in 1967, after he became famous.) I deliberately avoided live recordings as much as possible. If you're interested in that, I've posted an album gathering songs Hendrix sang when he was a part of Curtis Knight and the Squires in late 1965. Here's a link to that one:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/03/jimi-hendrix-with-curtis-knight-squires.html 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Testify (Isley Brothers)
02 Mercy, Mercy (Don Covay)
03 Can't Stay Away (Don Covay)
04 Have You Ever Been Disappointed (Isley Brothers)
05 I Don't Know What You Got But It's Got Me (Little Richard)
06 My Diary (Rosa Lee Brooks)
07 Utee (Rose Lee Brooks)
08 The Little Old Groove Maker (Jimmy Norman)
09 I'm a Fool for You, Baby (Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix)
10 Dancing All Around the World (Little Richard)
11 Help Me [Get the Feeling], Part 1 (Ray Sharpe)
12 I'm So Glad (Frank Howard & the Commanders)
13 [My Girl] She's a Fox (Icemen [Lonnie Youngblood & Jimi Hendrix])
14 Soul Food [That's A What I Like] (Lonnie Youngblood with Jimi Hendrix)
15 Wipe the Sweat [Instrumental Version] (Lonnie Youngblood & Jimi Hendrix)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/msRGNEov

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Cp32kOQTpNlMFtL/file

The cover photo shows Curtis Knight and the Squires from 1966 or thereabouts. Can you tell on your own which one is Hendrix? He's the one on the left, with the toothy smile. This picture was in black and white, but I colorized with the help of the Kolorize program. 

Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-18-1967, Evening Show

This is the fifth and last album I'm posting from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I've mentioned previously, the festival itself was divided into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This is the longest album from the festival, and probably the most important in musical history, especially due to the set by Jimi Hendrix.

With most of the previous parts from this festival, I've made reference to a Wikipedia page listing all the songs known to have been performed at the festival. Let me do that again, as I mention the missing portions:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

The Blues Project started the evening show. The two songs here are the only ones listed at the Wikipedia page, but it's known they performed more. Unfortunately, the band was in the process of breaking up when this concert happened. A key member, Al Kooper, left a couple of months prior to this. (He had his own solo set at the festival.) The band collapsed shortly thereafter, though there were later reunions.

The second set was by Big Brother and the Holding Company, starring their lead singer Janis Joplin. As I mentioned previously, they were the only act to perform twice at the festival. That's because they went over very well the first time, the day before, but the band's manager didn't allow them to be filmed at that time. (The cameras were running but pointed at the ground, which at least allowed the audio to be recorded.) By the next day, the band members were convinced that getting included in the documentary about the festival would give their career a big boost. So they played a short set of just 15 minutes, compared to 23 minutes the day before, in order to get enough film footage. It turned out to be a very smart career move indeed. When the "Monterey Pop" movie documentary came out in 1968, Joplin's performance in it helped make her a big star.

The next set is quite a mystery - even the band's name: "the Group with No Name." This band was led by Cyrus Faryar, a singer-songwriter who had previously been in the Modern Jazz Quartet. But no songs from this set have been made public, and none or the names of any of the songs performed are known, nor is the number of songs. It seems they were not well received. A Newsweek review of the festival said they "were terrible and may well not last long enough to get a name." That turned out to be accurate, because the band broke up before they released any music. 

After that came Buffalo Springfield. I'm especially excited about this, because up until 2024, only five of the songs they performed were publicly available. But that year, there was a "record store day" release of their entire set here. That release included three songs that were previously unreleased, and even unbootlegged: "Hung Upside Down," "Nobody's Fool," and "Pretty Girl Why."

Here's a review about the Buffalo Springfield set in Rolling Stone Magazine in 2024: 

First-Ever Buffalo Springfield Live Album Released on Record Store Day 

This performance is unusual in that key member Neil Young quit the band about a week before the festival, only to rejoin shortly afterwards. (He quit and rejoined multiple times.) Young was temporarily replaced by two people: lead guitarist Doug Hastings and rhythm guitarist and vocalist David Crosby. Crosby's involvement was controversial, because he was still a member of the Byrds at the time, and in fact he performed in their set at the festival as well. 

Here's a quote about the controversy by Roger McGuinn, the leader of the Byrds: "I didn't know David was going to sit in with Buffalo Springfield, and that wasn't really a big deal. What was happening was that we were not happy with each other, like a marriage breaking up. He was really upset because we didn’t do his song 'Triad.' That was the big bone. He wanted to be the lead singer of the Byrds, you know, the head Byrd. That wasn't happening. To his satisfaction, we were sharing vocals equally. At Monterey I was trying to be a trooper, like Bobby Darin taught me, and try and soldier on and do it."

I don't know how much Crosby's sitting in with Buffalo Springfield impacted his role with the Byrds, if at all. But he was kicked out of the band a few months later. And his involvement with Buffalo Springfield was key to his future music career, because he would later be a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with two members of Buffalo Springfield: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

The next act up was the Who. Jimi Hendrix moved to Britain in late 1966 and soon found fame there. One he was living there, he and the Who had seen each other perform. They were both impressed with and intimidated by each other. Neither wanted to be upstaged by the other at this festival, especially since both had made destroying their instruments part of their acts. They decided to toss a coin. The  Who won the right to play first.

Adding to the competition between the two acts, backstage before their sets, Hendrix played his guitar while staring at the Who's lead guitarist Pete Townshend, trying to impress him with his skills. Townshend said later, "It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me. Playing at me like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit.'" 

Here's how the Wikipedia entry about the festival describes the finale to the Who's set: "At the end of their frenetic performance of 'My Generation,' the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and slammed the neck against the amps and speakers. Smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage." 

The Who's set was relatively short, only 25 minutes, when they were allowed to play up to 40 minutes. So their set here is complete. But their performance was very impactful, especially due to the destruction of their instruments. They were a British band, and hadn't had any hits in the U.S. yet, except for "Happy Jack" in 1966, though there already was a lot of buzz about them. Their performance at the festival would raise their profile in the U.S., helping them to have two more U.S. hits later that year, "Pictures of Lily" and "I Can See for Miles."  

Eric Burdon of the Animals later commented about the Who's performance: "The American audience went: 'What the hell is this?!' The climax of the show was just like a terrorist attack, with the bombs and the smoke. It was just shocking!"

After the Who came the Grateful Dead. The band would go on to play concerts for decades, becoming one of the most popular touring bands in the U.S. But keep in mind this was very early in their career, with their debut album ("The Grateful Dead")coming out only three months prior to this festival. In a Newsweek review of the festival, music critic Michael Lydon commented: "The Grateful Dead were beautiful. They did at top volume what Shankar had done softly. They played pure music, some of the best music of the concert. I have never heard anything in music that could be said to be qualitatively better than the performance of the Dead, Sunday night.

The next act was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was possibly the most musically historic set of the entire festival. As an aside, Hendrix was not well known in the U.S. at the time of the festival. The main reason why he appeared at the festival, and especially at a pivotal spot near the end of the final night, was because Paul McCartney of the Beatles was a member of the board of governors for the festival, and he absolutely insisted that Hendrix had to perform there. The Wikipedia entry on the festival has a good summary of what happened during Hendrix's set, so I'll quote that here:

"Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced [Hendrix]. His use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, aware of the Who's planned explosive finale, he had asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he'd placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of 'Wild Thing,' which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike." 

Actor Dennis Hopper had this to say: "Hendrix was certainly a great guitar player. He became part of the guitar, it was an extension of his, ah, his feelings and his sex and everything. He was unmatched in that."

And music critic Robert Christgau wrote this in The Village Voice decades later: "Music was a given for a Hendrix stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour de force. It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire, but the showboating does distract from the history made that night - the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying."

The final act of the evening, and thus the entire festival, was the Mamas and the Papas. They had had many big hits of their own by this time. But the band's main songwriter John Phillips had recently wrote a single meant to promote the festival, "San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair]." Rather than had his own band play it, he gave the song to Scott McKenzie, who was having a huge hit with it right when the festival was happening (as I detailed in the write-up in the first part of this festival). McKenzie wasn't just a random singer though. He and Phillips were friends since childhood, and played in different bands together. When Phillips created the Mamas and the Papas, he invited McKenzie to join, but McKenzie turned down the offer, wanting to try a solo career instead. In any case, towards the end of this set, McKenzie joined the band and sang his hit song with the Mamas and the Papas backing him.

Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar had this to say: "The group who really made me feel good, I can't tell you how nice, was the Mamas and the Papas. There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - and they looked so good together." (As an aside, he enjoyed many of the other acts in the festival, but hated the destruction of instruments by the Who and Hendrix.)

Now, this is going to be an extra long write-up, because before I finish with this festival, I want to write a little bit about how it came to be in the first place. I'm putting that explanation here because it turns out the main instigators of the festival were actually the members of the Mamas and the Papas, so I think it's fitting to put this explanation after talking about their set. The festival came together rather quickly, in just a few months, but during that time the band members worked tirelessly on it, basically putting the band on hold for a while to do so.

The band put on a pretty good performance despite being too busy organizing the festival to rehearse much beforehand. But in retrospect, the fact the band spent so much time organizing the festival was probably a sign that they had grown tired of being in a band together. Phillips remembered as the apex of the band's career, saying, "There would never be anything quite like it again." The band put out a new album in October 1967. But after that, they decided to take long vacations to "get the muse going again," according to Phillips. But instead, the band fought during their vacation time, resulting in an announcement that they had broken up. They did manage to reunite for another album in 1968, only to break up again.

The festival was originally conceived as a money-making event. But the people involved didn't have the money to pay for star acts. So the organizers changed the idea to a benefit concert (although first class transportation was paid for all the acts). The profits from sales of albums drawn from the festival still help fund charities decades later, especially due to steady profits from the hit "Monterey Pop" movie documentary. Ravi Shankar was the only act to be paid, because he signed a contract early on, before it was changed to a benefit concert.

The festival had a very unusual board of governors to help organize it: John Phillips, Donovan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Roger McGuinn, Johnny Rivers, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, Lou Adler, Terry Melcher, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Alan Pariser. All the next except the last four were famous musicians at the time. The last four were successful music producers or managers. Some, like Phillips and Simon, were very involved, while others like Smokey Robinson basically just gave their name to the effort.

By the way, one of the last things I want to mention about this festival is all the bands that didn't play. Here are some names, plus the reasons why they didn't participate in paranetheses: the Beach Boys (internal squabbles), Donovan (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to a drug charge), the Kinks (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to being banned due to a union dispute), the Lovin' Spoonful (fighting a drug charge, plus internal squabbles), and Dionne Warwick (cancelled right before the festival because she had a schedule conflict). Kaleidoscope (the U.S. band, not the British one) did play at the festival, but only outside, for the crowd who didn't have tickets to get inside.

There were still more acts that were asked but declined. Producer Lou Adler later said, "There weren't a lot of tours [at the time]. We're still talking 1967. Not a lot of acts [were] working all the time. The San Francisco acts [were] playing around San Francisco. The big acts couldn't get visas to get in. The Motown acts were working, the blues acts were working, but the acts that we went after, they had time even though we had a short window [to get them]. ... Everyone jumped on very quickly. We tried for the Impressions. We got some no's, from some of the Motown acts, and Chuck Berry passed."

In my recent write-up about the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, I mentioned that legendary 1950s star Chuck Berry was notoriously cheap. This is another good example of that. John Phillips tried to invite Berry. "I told him on the phone, 'Chuck, it's for charity,' and he said to me, 'Chuck Berry has only one charity and that's Chuck Berry. $2,000.' We couldn't make an exception." 

Anyway, that's the festival. I hope you enjoy. Personally, if I could get in a time machine and see just one rock festival, I think it would be this one, even over Woodstock in 1969. Actually, the people who created the Woodstock festival came up with the idea immediately after watching the "Monterey Pop" documentary movie in 1968. Like many others, they wanted to repeat the success of Monterey, but make a lot of money from it instead of doing it as a benefit concert.

Here's an interesting quote from Chris Hillman of the Byrds, contrasting the two festivals. "I didn't do Woodstock, and I remember Gram Parsons and I were sharing a house in the San Fernando Valley, and Woodstock was on the news. The situation there. We were laughing, and I said, 'That's no Monterey.' And it wasn't! There was a sense of commaraderie at Monterey." 

This album is three hours and 35 minutes long. 

01 talk (Tommy Smothers)
02 talk (Paul Simon)
03 The Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
04 talk (Blues Project)
05 Wake Me, Shake Me (Blues Project)
06 talk (Tommy Smothers)
07 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
08 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
09 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 talk (Peter Tork)
11 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
13 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
15 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
16 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Pretty Girl Why (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
23 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
24 talk (Eric Burdon)
25 Substitute (Who)
26 talk (Who)
27 Summertime Blues (Who)
28 talk (Who)
29 Pictures of Lily (Who)
30 talk (Who)
31 A Quick One while He's Away (Who)
32 talk (Who)
33 Happy Jack (Who)
34 talk (Who)
35 My Generation (Who)
36 talk (Bill Graham)
37 talk (Bill Graham)
38 Viola Lee Blues (Grateful Dead)
39 talk by emcee (Grateful Dead)
40 talk (Grateful Dead)
41 Cold Rain and Snow (Grateful Dead)
42 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
43 Alligator (Grateful Dead)
44 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] (Grateful Dead)
45 talk (Bill Graham)
46 talk (emcee)
47 talk (Brian Jones)
48 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
49 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
50 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
51 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Jimi Hendrix)
53 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
54 Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)
55 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
56 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
57 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
58 Can You See Me (Jimi Hendrix)
59 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
60 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
61 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
62 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
63 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
64 Wild Thing (Jimi Hendrix)
65 talk (Paul Simon)
66 Straight Shooter (Mamas & the Papas)
67 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
68 Got a Feelin' (Mamas & the Papas)
69 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
70 California Dreamin' (Mamas & the Papas)
71 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
72 Spanish Harlem (Mamas & the Papas)
73 Somebody Groovy (Mamas & the Papas)
74 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
75 I Call Your Name (Mamas & the Papas)
76 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
77 Monday, Monday (Mamas & the Papas)
78 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
79 San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair] (Mamas & the Papas & Scott McKenzie)
80 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
81 Dancing in the Street (Mamas & the Papas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8vU9t776

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3WanaF2nlZaXyl8/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: David Crosby (with hat), Richie Furray (with glasses) and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (smashing his guitar) of the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, and Jimi Hendrix.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 5: Jimi Hendrix

By this time on August 30, 1970, the Isle of Wight Festival was coming close to the end. But there were still four more acts to go, and the next act was probably the most anticipated one for the crowd: Jimi Hendrix.

Unfortunately, Hendrix's performance was not his best. Hendrix hadn't played any concerts for a month, which was a long time for him back then. Drummer Mitch Mitchell later admitted that it was a mistake not to rehearsed before they took the stage. "We were rusty, and it showed. The audience didn't help, and we had technical problems, with funny voices coming through the PA." And  "it was cold and dank."

Pete Townshend, lead guitarist for the Who, later commented, "What made me work so hard was seeing the condition that Jimi Hendrix was in. He was in such tragically bad condition physically. And I remember thanking God as I walked on the stage that I was healthy." Perhaps Townshend had a point, because Hendrix died just two weeks after this concert. It was his last performance in Britain.

However, Murray Lerner, director of "Message to Love," the music documentary of the festival, disagreed: “I didn’t think he was in bad shape, I just thought he was tired. He did great renditions of 'Red House' and 'Machine Gun' – which I think is as good as anything he's ever done. Although admittedly he didn’t give the usual wild, waving around [performance]." 

Lerner added, "Before he went on, Jimi asked: 'How does "God Save the Queen" go?' And then he played it. He said: 'Everyone stand up for your country and your beliefs, and if you don’t, fuck you.' 'Machine Gun' is always great, but in this case [Hendrix said]: 'Here’s a song for the skinheads in Birmingham. Oh yeah, and Vietnam. I almost forgot about that.' 'Machine Gun' goes on for about 17 minutes.”

Personally, I think this performance is better than most people give it credit for. It did start poorly. Hendrix apparently had just taken a nap before going on stage, and he was still groggy. After a few numbers, he actually commented between songs that he was starting over. I think from that point on, he got a lot better. I like concerts from the latter part of Hendrix's all-too-short career, where he played many of his great newly written songs, like "Dolly Dagger" and "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)." It's particularly nice that he played "All Along the Watchtower," because he didn't do that one very often.

The recording sounds excellent, because his entire set was officially released in 2002 as the album "Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight." Most of it has also been released on DVD.

This album is an hour and 59 minutes long. I think it's the longest recording from the festival.

065 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
066 God Save the Queen [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
067 Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Jimi Hendrix)
068 Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)
069 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
070 All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)
071 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
072 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
073 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
074 Lover Man (Jimi Hendrix)
075 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
076 Freedom (Jimi Hendrix)
077 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)
078 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
079 Dolly Dagger (Jimi Hendrix)
080 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
081 Midnight Lightning (Jimi Hendrix)
082 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
083 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
084 Message to Love (Jimi Hendrix)
085 Hey Baby [New Rising Sun] (Jimi Hendrix)
086 Ezy Rider (Jimi Hendrix)
087 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
088 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
089 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)
090 In from the Storm (Jimi Hendrix)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NeDbLvUo

 alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EWOSu6jNjn9BhXt/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/jxKcS

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Jimi Hendrix - Highway Chile - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1967)

It's important to note that I have already posted this album. But I'm posting it again because I've made some major changes, and I want to be sure that every Jimi Hendrix fan notices this version. I've doing a revision of the Hendrix stray tracks albums I did up until his Band of Gypsys period, so once I finish that, I'll delete the original version.

So what's different? I added five early Hendrix songs, and to make room for them, I kicked a similar number of songs to the next album in this stray tracks series. I feel these five songs are an important but almost totally forgotten part of Hendrix's musical legacy, so some explanation about them is in order.

The standard story of Hendrix musical origins, which I believed until recently, goes like this: Hendrix spent several years as a sideman in a variety of soul music bands, playing for the Isley Brothers, Little Richard, and many others. Eventually, he hooked up with little-known soul singer Curtis Knight, who gave him more of a spotlight, letting him solo more and even occasionally sing lead. But Hendrix's musical career was still going nowhere until Chas Chandler, former bassist for the Animals, discovered him playing in a New York City club, decided to manage him, and sent him to start anew in England. Hendrix recorded his first single, "Hey Joe," with his new band the Experience, and soon was a superstar. After he became famous, his recordings with Curtis Knight were endlessly rereleased and repackaged, but were generally totally shitty, and only suckers would ever buy them. His career began with "Hey Joe," and anything prior to that is basically worthless.

Like I said, that's what I thought. But it turns out the truth is more complicated than that. I remember reading somewhere that Hendrix's very first songwriting effort was the song "Stone Free," which he quickly wrote when the single "Hey Joe" (which is a cover) needed a B-Side. Not true at all. It turns out that Hendrix's songwriting began years before. Many of the songs he did after he was famous actually got started during his time with Curtis Knight, or possibly even earlier. For an eye-opening look at this earlier part of his career, I suggest this live collection I made:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/03/jimi-hendrix-with-curtis-knight-squires.html

It cuts out all the songs sung by Knight and keeps only the one sung by Hendrix. You'll see a lot of songs (mostly covers) that Hendrix often did in concert later, such as "Killing Floor," "Bleeding Heart," "Driving South," and so on, further showing the continuity of his music before and after he moved to England and became a star.

Anyway, most of the recordings Hendrix did with Knight are bad. Knight was a soul singer of limited talent who's only true claim to fame is his brief connection to Hendrix. Most of the songs are generic versions of famous soul songs that were done much better by others, or originals that were second-rate knock-offs of more famous songs. But in among that are a number of Hendrix originals, mostly instrumentals, that show off both Hendrix's emerging songwriting talent as well as his lead guitar prowess. Those instrumentals make up most of the extra five songs I've added to this album. I think they're all worthy of being heard alongside his more famous stray tracks material, also included on this album. I figure they've remained obscure almost entirely due to record company rights issues.

However, the first song is actually Hendrix's first lead vocal on record, not another instrumental, and it especially needs to be heard by any Hendrix fan. Actually, it's kind of his first lead vocal. I did some editing to make it that way, so that needs to be explained as well. Another early collaborator with Hendrix was Lonnie Youngblood. In 1966, Youngblood released a single called "Wipe the Sweat." It started out with Youngblood singing lead vocals, but then halfway through it switched to Hendrix doing most of the singing. The B-side was an instrumental version, with some great lead guitar from Hendrix. So I cut out the Youngblood vocals, started with the Hendrix vocals instead, and then stitched on Hendrix's lead guitar from the B-side. The result is a fun "new" Hendrix song, one that he co-wrote.

All the songs here are in chronological order, at least as close as I could get it. I think I moved "No Such Animal" after the "Hey Joe" single songs so there wouldn't be three instrumentals in a row. But note the final instrumental with Knight, "Hush Now," actually comes after "Hey Joe" and other singles. That's because in the summer of 1967, after Hendrix already was a superstar, he went back and recorded some more with Knight! That blows the simple notion of his career starting with "Hey Joe" and all Knight stuff being shit that is easily ignored right out of the water.

Are any of these five newly added obscure songs great? No, but they're all good, and I think one can appreciate them in a new light hearing them surrounded by Experience songs instead of other Curtis Knight songs. People at the time would have sat up and taken notice at Hendrix's guitar prowess based on those instrumentals alone, had they been presented in the right way at the time.

As for the other songs that make up the rest of this stray tracks collection, they only include some of the greatest songs of all time! Not just "Hey Joe," but also "Purple Haze," "Stone Free," "The Wind Cries Mary," and more. These are the A- and B-sides from the "Are You Experienced?" era of his career. In the US, some of those songs made the album, but they didn't in Britain, and I'm basing everything off the British album versions. A couple other early songs, "Mr. Bad Luck," and "Taking Care of No Business," were recorded around the time of those album sessions, but not released until much later. Note that both of those songs are examples of songs that were written by Hendrix well before the Experience, back in the Curtis Knight time period, or earlier.

Anyway, I hope you'll find this album an enjoyable musical listen, even as it bridges the gap between the Curtis Knight recordings and the Experience recordings. To sum up what I said above, although Hendrix did essentially get famous overnight with the "Hey Joe" single, his musical maturation was a gradual process, and the seeds of his greatness were evident in some of the recordings with Knight, most especially the instrumentals that he wrote.

This album is almost exactly 45 minutes long, which is an ideal length for albums from that era.

01 Wipe the Sweat [Edit] (Jimi Hendrix with Lonnie Youngblood)
02 Hornet's Nest [Kato's Special] [Edit] [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
03 Knock Yourself Out [Flying On Instruments] [Edit] [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
04 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
06 No Such Animal [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
07 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
08 51st Anniversary (Jimi Hendrix)
09 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Highway Chile (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Mr. Bad Luck [Look Over Yonder] (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Taking Care of No Business (Jimi Hendrix)
13 Hush Now [Edit] [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)

 

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119368/JimiH_1966-1967_HighwyChile_atse.zip.html

I used the same cover for my earlier version of this album. It shows Hendrix with the rest of the Experience some time in 1967.

Jimi Hendrix - Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 5-30-1970, Late Show

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the early show for Jimi Hendrix's famous concert in Berkeley, California, in 1970. Both his early and late shows are considered among the very best of his concerts, both in terms of sound quality and performance. The entire evening was professionally recorded and even filmed. It ultimately was turned into the movie "Jimi Plays Berkeley."

I've hesitated posting the late show, due to the simple though weird fact that the late show has been officially released while the early show has not. One might understand this if the set lists were the same, but they're actually quite different. I feel compelled to post the late show too, for consistency's sake, especially for the matching cover art I made, as well as the way I've broken all the talking between songs into their own tracks. But I do hope and assume that if you're downloading this, you already own the official version.

I don't have much to say that I didn't say in my comments for the early show. The late show is somewhat shorter than the early one, at an hour and seven minutes compared to an hour and 25 minutes for the early show. One other thing worth mentioning is that the concerts took place during a very fraught time for the town of Berkeley. There were ongoing, large protests about the Vietnam War, which was happening all over the country. But on top of that, there was a protest about People's Park, a public park in Berkeley that was in danger of closing. In 1969, a large protest about the park was put down by police firing buckshot from shotguns, which resulted in one death. Hendrix was probably referring to that in his comments before the song "Machine Gun" where he referenced the war taking place in Berkeley.

01 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Pass It On [Straight Ahead] (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Hey Baby [New Rising Sun] (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Lover Man (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
07 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
08 I Don't Live Today (Jimi Hendrix)
09 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
11 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
13 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
14 The Star Spangled Banner [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
15 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
16 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
17 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121693/JimiH_1970e_BerkelyCommunityTheatre__5-30-1970__Late_Show_atse.zip.html

See my comments from the early show about how I made the cover art from a concert poster for the concert. I used a different photo of Hendrix for the center of it. I know the photo comes from the Berkeley concerts, but I don't know if it's from the early or late show.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 4 (1968-1970)

Here's the fourth and last of my albums compiling Jimi Hendrix's BBC performances, as well as other radio or TV appearances of similar sound quality.

This was the most difficult album to put together of the four. The others largely drew from officially released versions of songs. But for this volume, only three of the 12 performances on it have been officially released.

I'm not sure why Hendrix played on the TV and radio so much in 1967 (three volumes' worth) but so relatively rarely from 1968 to 1970, the year he died. 1968 is a particular puzzler. That year, he had a very big hit double album with "Electric Ladyland," which went to number 1 in the US and number 6 in Britain, and it contained "All Along the Watchtower," which was a sizeable hit in both countries. So he had material to promote. But, strangely, he only played a few songs from that album in concert, and didn't do TV or radio appearances for it either. His one such appearance in 1968 was for Dusty Springfield's BBC TV show, but that took place months before "Electric Ladyland" was released. It's also strange the three songs played for that weren't included on either of the official Hendrix BBC albums. I've included them, but the sound quality is a bit rough.

At least there's a good explanation for Hendrix not playing for the BBC much in 1969 and 1970. The first week of January 1969, he appeared on the BBC TV show of British pop star Lulu. He was supposed to play "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" then "Hey Joe." Lulu was due to turn "Hey Joe" into a duet halfway through the song, then she'd sing her traditional final song of the show. But Hendrix thought doing a duet with Lulu wasn't cool. (Apparently he liked Dusty Springfield more, sine he sang the duet "Mockingbird" with her in 1968, which is on this album.) So, halfway through "Hey Joe," right when Lulu was supposed to join him on stage, he switched to playing an instrumental version of the Cream hit song "Sunshine of Your Love."

Noel Redding, bassist in Hendrix's band, later explained what happened next:

"This was fun for us, but producer Stanley Dorfman didn't take it at all well as the minutes ticked by on his live show. Short of running onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was nothing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talking at the end, played through Stanley tearing his hair, pointing to his watch and silently screaming at us. We played out the show. Afterwards, Dorfman refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most widely used bits of film we ever did. Certainly, it's the most relaxed."

However, as fun as that was for the band, it is widely believed that Hendrix got banned for any future appearances on BBC TV or radio. And that's borne out by the fact that he didn't perform for the BBC from the Lulu show in January 1968 until his death in September 1970.

Luckily, Hendrix's fame was growing in the US. He appeared on popular US late night talk shows in 1969: "The Dick Cavett Show" (twice) and "The Tonight Show." The sound quality for these appearances are also a bit rough, especially for the song "Lover Man." My musical friend MZ did his best to improve these songs, but there was only so much he could do. By the way, for "Lover Man," Hendrix was halfway through playing the song when his amp blew out. The show quickly cut to a commercial. When the show returned, he started the song again and finished it without any further trouble. I've only included the full version of the song.

I had to search high and low to find any instances of Hendrix playing on TV or radio in 1970. I found out that two songs ("Come On" and "Red House") from a concert in Stockholm, Sweden, were played on a Swedish radio station at the time. I've included those even though the sound also is fairly rough. Of all the songs on this four volume series, I'd say "Lover Man" plus these two songs have the worst sound. But MZ worked on these as well, and improved them. I figured they're still good enough for inclusion, especially because one of them, "Come On," was a song that Hendrix played live very rarely.

By the way, for this entire series, I tried hard to sort the songs from one volume to another to avoid having two versions of the same song on the same album. The first volume has two versions of "Hey Joe," and this one has two versions of "Voodoo Child." I couldn't avoid having "Voodoo Child" twice here since it's a 1968 song and the three previous volumes are from 1967 performances only. But I shuffled the song order a bit so at least the two "Voodoo Child"s aren't next to each other.

01 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Mockingbird (Jimi Hendrix & Dusty Springfield)
04 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
06 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Sunshine of Your Love [Instrumental Version] (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Izabella (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Lover Man (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Come On [Let the Good Times Roll] [Full Version] (Jimi Hendrix)
13 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15120755/JimiH_1968-1970_BBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a screenshot from Hendrix's 1969 appearance on Lulu's TV show.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 3 (1967)

Here's Volume 3 of Jimi Hendrix's performances for the BBC. Like the first two, all of the songs are from 1967. He did a ton of TV and radio performances in 1967. That isn't surprising. But what is surprising is that he did comparatively few from 1968 to 1970. I have just one volume in this series covering those three years.

This time, all but three of the songs were played at the BBC, and were on the official "BBC Sessions" album. The three exceptions come from a Dutch TV show called "Hoepla." One of those, "Catfish Blues," was released on the official "Blues" album. The other two remain officially unreleased. The "Hoepla" show was recorded very well. It was in front of a live audience, but I've removed the clapping as much as possible.

Other than that, there's no much to say for this album. However, as I mentioned earlier in this series, Hendrix played some songs for the BBC that he rarely or never played "live" (in the studio) again. One can especially see that on this volume, with rare songs like "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window," "Hoochie Coochie Man," "Wait Until Tomorrow," "Day Tripper," and even a "jingle" he wrote for the BBC called "Radio One."

01 Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Hoochie Coochie Man (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Driving South [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Catfish Blues (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Hear My Train A-Comin' [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Radio One (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Wait until Tomorrow (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Day Tripper (Jimi Hendrix with Robert Wyatt)
12 Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15120521/JimiH_1967g_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken in the TTG Studios in Los Angeles in October 1968.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1967)

This is the second of four volumes of Jimi Hendrix playing at the BBC. Once again, all the performances date to 1967.

As I mentioned in my description of Volume 1, four of the songs here (the first four) chronologically belong with Volume 1, but I put them here in order to cut down on the duplications of the same song on one album. That's also the case for the last song, which should belong on the next volume in this series.

You may note that three of the songs here have "Alternate Take" in their names. That's because when Hendrix played at the BBC, he sometimes did more than one take of the same song, then only one version was played on the radio. Luckily, recordings of these alternate takes survived, and in just as good sound quality. If these are "inferior" versions, I don't hear that. They just have different solos and such.

For this volume, five of the 14 songs have not been officially released. Four of those come from Hendrix performing for TV or radio shows other than the BBC. There also is one song ("Burning of the Midnight Lamp") that was officially released, but not on the official BBC releases because it was from one of those other TV or radio shows.

Also, one of the unreleased songs WAS from the BBC: an instrumental medley of the Motown hits "I Was Made to Love Her" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." However, only about half of that version was included on the official "BBC Sessions" album, and this is the whole thing. By the way, that medley, plus an instrumental known as "Jammin'" also feature Stevie Wonder on drums.

As with the other volumes in this series, I was highly selective on what to include in terms of sound quality. There are other songs played on TV or the radio at the time that didn't make the cut, usually selections from concerts that are marred by lots of crowd noise. So the sound quality here is uniformly high. Even better, my musical associate MZ edited some of the unreleased songs to make them sound better than the commonly circulating bootleg versions.

01 Foxy Lady [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Hey Joe [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
06 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Jammin' [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Stevie Wonder on Drums)
09 I Was Made to Love Her - Ain't Too Proud to Beg [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Stevie Wonder on Drums)
10 Hound Dog (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Driving South [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Little Miss Lover (Jimi Hendrix)
13 Catfish Blues (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15120218/JimiH_1967f_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo shows Hendrix in a recording studio in October 1967.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1967)

One clear highlight of Jimi Hendrix's recorded work are his recordings for the BBC. The sound quality and performances are just as good as those on his studio albums, and he played some interesting songs he never or rarely played in concert. Many of these performances were first officially released on the single album "Radio One" in 1988, and then more were released on the double album "BBC Sessions" in 1998.

The official "BBC Sessions" album certainly is a good one. But they missed a few songs. More importantly, there are some performances for TV or radio shows that sound just as good, except they weren't done for the BBC. I've expanded the reach of the "BBC Sessions" to include this non-BBC material as well. That has allowed me to make four albums of this stuff instead of two. This is the first one.

One nice benefit to putting these performances on four albums is that I have carefully organized them to reduce the number of times one album has two or more versions of the same song on them. For whatever reason, the vast majority of Hendrix's TV or radio appearances were in 1967. His song repertoire was small back then at the start of his fame, and he only had a few hits. So he tended to perform the same songs over and over again, especially "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze."

Due to that fact, as well as the fact that there's a ton of Hendrix material out there, I've chosen to only include the versions that sound the best, without repeating songs too much. For this album, the only duplicate I have is two versions of "Hey Joe." Note that I've generally stuck to ordering these albums by the dates they were recorded. But I've made a few exceptions to reduce the duplications. So, for instance, I've moved versions of four songs ("Hey Joe," "Purple Haze," "Foxy Lady," and "Stone Free") that were recorded in early 1967 to the next album in this series.

Three of the 14 performances on this album are still officially unreleased. In addition, two more are from official releases other than either of the BBC albums. One of those, "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," actually was played on the BBC, but on a TV show instead of the radio. That one was only available as a rare bonus track for the "Jimi Hendrix Experience" box set.

I'm glad to say that none of these performances are marred by BBC DJs talking over the music. If there were instances of talking before or after songs, I've cut that out to keep the focus on the songs.

I've included one bonus track, an unreleased version of "Rock Me Baby." This also was played for the BBC. But unfortunately, the last minute or so got cut off, so I faded it out. I suspect that's why it wasn't included on the official BBC albums. The sound on that one is a little rough, but my associate MZ worked on editing it to at least make it sound better than it had been.

01 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Love or Confusion (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
06 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Jimi Hendrix)
13 I Don't Live Today (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Driving South [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)

Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119366/JimiH_1967e_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo shows Hendrix playing "Purple Haze" at the BBC's "Top of the Pops" TV show in March 1967. I didn't include any music from this performance because he sang to the recorded version of the song.

Jimi Hendrix - Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 5-30-1970, Early Show

I'm going through a Jimi Hendrix kick right now, so expect more posts of his music soon. I've finished posting all the stray tracks albums I've made for him, and I'm going to start posting more of his live material.

After three decades of fairly incompetent management, the Hendrix music catalog has been treated better for the last twenty years or so, since it's come under new management. That said, there still are some baffling decisions about what has been released and what hasn't so far. The two Berkeley concerts that Hendrix played on May 30, 1970 were professionally recorded and filmed. (The film of it, "Jimi Plays Berkeley," was released in 1971.) In 2003, an official live album was finally released. But it was only of the late show!

The release of only the last show is a real head-scratcher. Both of the Berkeley shows are great, and the set lists of the early and late shows are fairly different. Many serious Hendrix fans consider the Berkeley concerts to be among the very best of his concerts if you consider both performance and sound quality, and some even say it was him at his absolute peak. Furthermore, many also say the early show was even better than the late one. Plus, the early one is about twenty minutes longer, at an hour and a half. So why the heck hasn't the early show been released too?!

Actually, many of the performances from it have been released, here and there. For instance, "Johnny B. Goode" was released on "In the West" and other albums. "Hear My Train A-Comin'" was released on "Rainbow Bridge." "Ezy Rider" was released on "Band of Gypsys 2" (strangely enough, since Berkeley wasn't a Band of Gypsys concert). "Red House" was on the "West Coast Seattle Boy" box set. A few other songs were on more obscure releases, such as an EP that only came out in Britain for a limited time in the 1990s. But it's a crying shame the early show hasn't been released in full.

Luckily, there's an excellent bootleg version that came out around 2011 that sounds just as good as any live album from that era. (If you have a boot of the concert from before that time, you should replace it, because the sound is even better than earlier versions.) Clearly, it must come from the master tapes of the mobile recording unit. That's the version I've used here.

I only had two major issues with that recording. The first is that because it's such a pristine soundboard, it often didn't record much of the audience noise. So at the end of some songs, I've boosted the volume of the cheering to be as loud as typical cheering after a song ends. The second issue is that Hendrix's talking between songs was often unusually quiet. I've carefully boosted that up to make it more audible while leaving everything else alone. Sometimes it gets a little hissy because I had to increase the volume so much, but that can't be helped. The hissing is minor, in any case.

1970 was the last year of Hendrix's life. His concerts that year were admittedly hit or miss. But, in my opinion, when he hit, that was peak Hendrix. I especially like the fact that his set lists were more varied, with lots of new songs and less of the old warhorses like "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze." Personally, I think if I were to recommend just one Hendrix concert to someone who doesn't know his music that well, it would be this one. Oh, and the movie "Jimi Plays Berkeley" is pretty good as well, so you should check that out too.

01 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
03 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Jimi Hendrix)
05 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)
07 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
09 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
11 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Freedom (Jimi Hendrix)
13 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)
15 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
16 Message to Love (Jimi Hendrix)
17 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
18 Ezy Rider (Jimi Hendrix)
19 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
20 The Star Spangled Banner [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
21 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
22 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
23 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121534/JimiH_1970d_BerkelyCommunityTheatre__5-30-1970__Early_Show_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I found a copy of a promotional poster for the Berkeley concerts. I used that for the framing artwork, plus the text. I had to make some major changes to clear out room for a photo in the middle. I also only kept some of the text, and then I edited the text slightly to make it specific for the early show (the poster was for both the early and late shows). The picture in the middle comes from Hendrix at the Berkeley concerts.

Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight & the Squires - George's Club 20, Hackensack, NJ, 12-26-1965

In September 1966, an obscure lead guitarist known as "Jimmy James" changed his name to Jimi Hendrix ("Hendrix" being the last name he was born with), moved to England, got a new band, and quickly became a superstar. But what about his music prior to that? He did head his own band, known as "Jimmy James and the Blue Flames," for much of 1966. Unfortunately, no recordings of them are known to exist. However, I've managed to create an album of a Hendrix concert all the way back in December 1965, thanks to some selective editing. The sound is a little rough, but I consider it a great listen for any serious Hendrix fan.

To better explain what I did here and why, I need to explain more of Hendrix's early musical career. Starting in 1963, he spent a few years as a little-known side man and session musician. Generally speaking, he played guitar for well known soul artists like the Isley Brothers and Little Richard when they toured. He found this very frustrating, because his incredible skills were very little used. In 1965, he began playing sometimes with Curtis Knight and his band the Squires. Knight was fairly obscure himself, so he didn't have a big ego, and he recognized Hendrix's talent. As a result, Hendrix was given much more of the spotlight than before, getting to sing quite a few songs while also showing off his lead guitar prowess, including doing showy tricks like playing solos with his teeth.

In December 1965, Knight recorded at least one concert at a small club, George's Club 20, in Hackensack, New Jersey. We know one of the concerts occurred on December 26, 1965, because Knight mentioned the date in his between-song banter. But many of the songs were played twice, suggesting that the band played two concerts that evening, or shows from more than one night were recorded. There's a surprising lack of audience noise on the recordings, and some of it seems to have been added in later, so it's not entirely clear if these were really live recordings, or done in the studio, or maybe played at something similar to a soundcheck, with a nearly empty club.

In any case, these December 1965 recordings appear to be the only early "live" recordings of Hendrix that have survived. A double album bootleg version has floated around for many years. In 2017, Hendrix's record company issued an official version called "Live at George's Club 20" that's half as long as the bootleg. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the official album and the bootleg are about the same, and both leave something to be desired. This music sounds better than a typical audience bootleg from the era, but not as good as a professionally recorded live album from that time, or even a well-recorded bootleg soundboard.

For legal reasons, the official album couldn't mention Hendrix's name on the cover, not even in small print. To make matters worse, a majority of the songs were sung by Knight instead of Hendrix. To be honest, most of the songs are bar band-like versions of soul music hits, sung by someone (Knight) with merely a good voice instead of a great one. Because of these reasons, plus the rough sound quality, the album has remained obscure, even for most Hendrix fans.

But wait! I'm knocking these recordings a lot, but there is a real gem of an album buried within them. I've collected just the songs sung by Hendrix from the official album, plus a few that they'd missed from the bootlegs of the same show(s). By focusing on just that material, one gets a fascinating view of how developed Hendrix's musical talent already was in late 1965. His guitar skills were already extraordinary, and unlike the limited studio recordings he did in those early years where he rarely got to solo, he soloed all over these songs. A few even are instrumentals meant to highlight his guitar prowess. A good portion of the songs he sang were songs he continued to perform after he got famous ("Killing Floor," "I'm a Man," "Driving South," "Bleeding Heart," and "Day Tripper"). One song, "Come On," even made it's way in modified form onto his classic "Electric Ladyland" album.

Nearly all the songs sung by Knight that I didn't include were pop and/or soul hits. Some of them were in the charts at the time the recordings were made. By contrast, the Hendrix-sung songs were significantly more bluesy, including some obscurities, such as Albert King's "Travelin' to California." It's almost like discovering a different concert inside the larger concert. (By the way, "Driving South" is often considered a Hendrix original when it's shown up on some of his albums after he hit the big time. But it's basically the Albert Collins instrumental "Thaw-Out" with some lyrics added.)

Unfortunately, the song order is all jumbled up. The order on the bootleg is different from that of the official album, and both of them are probably different from what was actually played that night, or nights, considering that we don't even know how many concerts the songs are from. So I've made some changes in the order for musical flow reasons. But I've kept the between song banter (which is mostly by Knight) in the right places whenever possible. I put all four songs that come from the bootleg instead of the official album at the end. But, as I said above, the sound quality of those are about the same. However, one of those songs, "Bleeding Heart," got cut off halfway through, and fades out. That's probably why it wasn't included on the official album, even though it's a Hendrix showcase.

I'm happy to say that after the Knight-sung songs are removed, one is left with about 50 minutes of music, which is a nice album length. (Knight does sing back up on some of the songs here, and co-lead on a couple, such as "Day Tripper." He also does most of the vocals for "Driving South," but that's mainly an instrumental.) I think it would be quite similar to what Hendrix probably played a few months later when he fronted his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, except that Knight is basically the MC doing most of the talking between the songs.

In my opinion, this album is a classic case of "less is more." The Knight-sung songs are worth listening to, especially since Hendrix played guitar solos on some of them. But when I had the full recording dominated by Knight, it was a historical curio that I hardly ever listened to. Now that I've boiled it down to the Hendrix-led songs, I enjoy it more and listen to it a lot more. I hope you'll feel the same way.

01 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
02 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
03 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
04 Last Night [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
05 Land of 1000 Dances (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
06 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
07 Come On, Part 1 [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
08 Get Out of My Life Woman (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
09 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
10 Travelin' to California (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
11 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
12 What'd I Say (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
13 I'm a Man (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
14 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
15 Driving South [Thaw-Out] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
16 Day Tripper (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
17 Bleeding Heart (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
18 Bo Diddley - Hush Your Mouth (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
19 Walkin' the Dog (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xNqEPtc9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3jD2lMiA1MODP8F/file

Believe it or not, there actually are photos of Hendrix playing at the George's Club 20 from around the date of the concert. But they're black and white and low resolution. Instead, I decided to use a publicity photo of Hendrix as part of Knight's band from around that time period. It was high resolution enough for me to be able to zoom in on just Hendrix's head, so you could get a good idea of what he looked like at the time. Even that one was in black in white, but I managed to colorize it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Later, in 2025, I used the Krea AI program to drastically improve the detail in the image.

Aretha Franklin with Jimi Hendrix - Save Me (MASH-UP)

As far as I know, Aretha Franklin and Jimi Hendrix never played music together, either on stage or in the studio. But they kind of did, in a weird way, which is what the mash-up is all about.

In 1966, Hendrix was still known as "Jimmy James," and was a little-known lead guitarist backing up various soul music acts. He got occasional work as a session musician. For one such job, he was the guitarist for a 1966 song by Ray Sharpe with the King Curtis Orchestra, called "Help Me." The song was divided into two parts, and the part 2 B-side contained a Hendrix guitar solo.

The song was basically a soul version of "Gloria" by Them (with lead vocals by Van Morrison). It has the same driving three chord guitar pattern, and part 2 of "Help Me" even uses some of the same lyrics. The basic groove of "Help Me" sounded so good that the backing track was reused several times. For instance, King Curtis used it for an instrumental called "Instant Groove." King Curtis was also the original songwriter.

But the most important recycling of the backing track was by Aretha Franklin. She, along with her sister Carolyn, added her own lyrics and melody and completely transformed the song. It was included on her classic 1967 album "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You," and the song has become a classic in its own right. Unfortunately, while that version used the backing track that Hendrix played on, his solo was wiped from the final version.

What I've done here is take the Franklin song "Save Me" and then splice the Hendrix solo back in where a guitar solo would logically go. I tweaked the pitch and tempo slightly to get them to match. I think the mash-up works well, but I'll let you be the judge.

Hendrix's solo is about 30 seconds long. If you're expecting the amazing guitar pyrotechnics that he's famous for, you'll be disappointed. His solo is in a very different style than what he became famous for later. It's quite minimalist, and heavily influenced by guitar great Steve Cropper, in my opinion. But still, I think it's quite fascinating to hear his solo style from early 1966, before he changed his name to Jimi Hendrix and made radical changes to his life, dress, and personality.

I made this today because I'm working on posting some albums of Hendrix as a session musician. I'll probably include this on one of those albums, when I'm ready to post it. But I thought it was notable enough to merit its own blog post. I'm really surprised this mash-up hasn't been tried before (or at least I couldn't find one) because it's just combining different versions of the same original recording.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239497/ArethaFJimiH_Save_MeSongEdit.zip.html