Jimi Hendrix - Highway Chile - Non-Album Tracks (1968)

Jimi Hendrix is not only widely acclaimed as the greatest guitar player of all time, but he was also a surprisingly talented singer and songwriter.  He was a remarkably prolific songwriter and performer as well. In just three years as his own act, he recorded more quality material than many artists record in a long lifetime.

However, he only put out four albums while he was alive (if you include the live Band of Gypsys album) and the various people in charge of putting out material posthumously have typically done a poor job of it. Happily, it's been hard to screw up live show releases, as one just has to release the show. But with the studio material, time after time, albums have been put out like "Voodoo Soup" or "People, Hell and Angels" with seemingly no logic to them other than collecting a bunch of songs from all parts of his career. (Not to mention problems with overdubs and edits and the like.)

I'm going to post a series of albums that attempts to at least do a better job organizing his best studio material (of songs not on the studio albums put out in his lifetime) by dividing the material into various time periods. Here's the first such album, "Highway Chile." This covers the best of the studio material from the start of his career heading his own band in late 1966 through the end of recording the Electric Ladyland album in 1968. Some of the songs were released as A- and B-sides, but about half of them didn't come out until long after he'd died. The album is similar to "Are You Experienced?" or "Axis: Bold as Love" in that it mostly consists of short, tightly structured songs.

Much of this material is inferior to Hendrix's first three albums, but those are some of the greatest albums of time (all three are included in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the top 500 albums of all time), so even the leftovers make for an album that's better than most music being released at the time. Besides, about four of the songs are on greatest songs of all time lists. This album could have come out in late 1968 or early 1969 as a sort of Hendrix equivalent to "Last Exit" by Traffic, which also gathered up stray 1967 and 1968 tracks, including some previously unreleased stuff. As it was, some of the songs on this did come out on the "Smash Hits" greatest hits in 1969, but most of that repeated songs from his other albums.

I didn't include any alternate takes of any of the songs on his first three albums, though I have another compilation of the best of those that I might post here later. I included a  Noel Redding song, since he was sort of the George Harrison or John Entwistle figure of the Experience, getting to do his own song every now and then. Plus, it has Hendrix playing guitar on it.

Note that when it comes to not overlapping with the "Are You Experienced?" album, I considered the British version of the album, not the American one. In general, I consider the British versions of 1960s albums the standards, because that almost always better reflected what the artist envisioned.

As far as the album title, I figure that by the time this album would have come out in late 1968 or early 1969, the hits like "Purple Haze" and "Hey Joe" would have been old news. So I went with a less well known song title.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
03 51st Anniversary (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Highway Chile (Jimi Hendrix)
05 There Ain't Nothing Wrong [Little One] (Noel Redding, Jimi Hendrix & Dave Mason)
06 The Stars that Play with Laughing Sam's Dice (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Mr. Bad Luck [Look Over Yonder] (Jimi Hendrix)
09 South Saturn Delta [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Taking Care of No Business (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Three Little Bears (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Somewhere (Jimi Hendrix)
13 Tax Free [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
14 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www16.zippyshare.com/v/PB1NAuMF/file.html

Note that I made the cover art, based on a photo from the "West Coast Seattle Boy" box set.