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.
Thank you!
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