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.