. . . . . JIMI HENDRIX . . . . . .ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC .

Thursday, December 3, 2009

ROCK AND ROLL

.......................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................................................................................

..............................JIMI HENDRIX / 3..................................

...............BAND OF GYPSYS - THE CRY OF LOVE....................

................................FRONT COVER .....................................

...................................BACK COVER....................................

.................................INSIDE COVER....................................

................................INSIDE COVER........................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

..............................................................................................

.....................THE ESSENTIAL JIMI HENDRIX........................

..................................FRONT COVER...................................

..........................................................................................

....................................BACK COVER...................................

..................................INSIDE COVER.....................................
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

...................................INSIDE COVER....................................
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

..........................................................................................

...........THE ESSENTIAL JIMI HENDRIX VOLUME TWO............

...................FRONT COVER WITH .45 COVER .......................

..........................................................................................

...................................FRONT COVER ..................................

...................................BACK COVER....................................

...................................45 RECORD.........................................

................................45 RECORD.COVER................................
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

.....................................................................................................................

...................................AT HIS BEST ......................................

.................................FRONT COVER....................................

.....................................................................................................................

....................................BACK COVER...................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

.......................................................................................................................................

.............................COSMIC TURNAROUND.............................

..................................FRONT COVER...................................

.......................................................................................................................................

...................................BACK COVER....................................

.......................................POSTER........................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

.......................................................................................................................................

.....................................FREE SPIRIT...................................

....................................FRONT COVER..................................

.......................................................................................................................................

...................................BACK COVER....................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

.......................................................................................................................................

......................THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE.....................

...................................FRONT COVER..................................

.......................................................................................................................................

...................................BACK COVER....................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
.......................................................................................................................................
..................................ISLE OF WRIGHT...............................
....................................FRONT COVER.................................
.......................................................................................................................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

.......................................................................................................................................

............................MIDNIGHT LIGHTNING.............................

..................................FRONT COVER...................................

.......................................................................................................................................

...................................BACK COVER....................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..*..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

.......................................................................................................................................

...................................SOUND TRACK..................................

...................................FRONT COVER....................................

.......................................................................................................................................

...................................BACK COVER....................................

.................................INSIDE COVER.....................................

..................................INSIDE COVER...................................

......................................SLEEVE..........................................

.........................................SLEEVE.......................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..**..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

.......................................................................................................................................

...................................SMASH HITS.....................................

...................................FRONT COVER..................................

.......................................................................................................................................

....................................BACK COVER...................................

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..**..<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

JIMI HENDRIX AT HIS BEST VOLUME 2

SIDE ONE
DOWN MEAN BLUES
FEELS GOOD
FRIED COLA

SIDE TWO
MONDAY MORNING BLUES
JIMI IS TENDER TOO
MADAGASCAR

It was Autumn 1964. A cruel wind, freezing and sullen, ripped the profuse scum and garbage off Bleeker Street and sent it flying out of sight above the houses. Sharp pieces of grit lodged in my legs and spattered my eyes. Even soda cans went crashing down the street. Behind me a howl went up. My friend and I turned round fast. Behind us, someone had been hit in the face by a flying soda can.

“Hey Jimi, are you alright?” said my friend Jake (former lead guitar with the Jugs). He knew everyone in the village. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Yeh, Yeh” said Jimi. “Long as my guitar’s cool, I’m cool.” “In New York City, its law of the jungle, fittest survive, you dig.”

We laughed. All the while I was staring hard at this strange figure. It was the first time I had seen him. In those days, extreme poverty kept him on the streets, sometimes even sleeping there a few hours in the early morning in someone’s back doorway. He would carry his guitar on his shoulders always. His jacket was black and frayed. His bowler hat was perched on his huge mass of hair.

I was to see Jimi several times more that winter. Usually he rushed past me on his way, unseeing. In those days, he was totally unknown in New York. Only he and a handful of others were aware of his incredible musical power. Back and forth among that handful Jimi would come and go, all day and night, seeking, learning to refine and re-define, grasp his powers and master them, develop and explore his talents upon the highest apex he could achieve.

And among the several places where he jammed running from one jam to the next, he met those musicians who could contribute to his search. One night coming out of Stanley’s Bar on Avenue B, I bumped into Jimi.

“Come over to my pad and play some music,” I said. He fell in with me silently. He was always quiet, almost shy, so different from the Jimi on stage.

I am a piano player unknown except among musicians, mostly those of the New York avant-garde music scene; though I had always felt there could be a meeting between this form and rock.

That night we played far into the dawn and it was the most astonishing experience of my life. Eagerly I awaited more. Jimi came round many more times that winter, playing sounds that shattered all conventions and traditions exploring areas with feedback and electronic effects that had never before been touched. This was the pure Jimi, the pristine musician, resplendent in his crystalline form, unsullied by fame and unstained by fortune.

Sometimes I would turn on the borrowed Sony to get an idea of where the music was leading to. Everytime we played back we would laugh and shake our heads in amazement and exhilaration. Occasionally, too, a Conga drummer would sit in with us, not always able to follow the intricacies of the rhythms I patterned out with my chords and la la la’s. And so these recordings came about.

Jimi, just before his death, talked to me about them. He felt there was a spontaneity there he had been unable to achieve with his trio; something he had sought ever since but never again experienced. He would like to see them turned into records. He told me this two weeks before his death. We were both in New York. We spent a long time talking old times. He remembered our free form experiments done in my East 11th St. pad when we had both been kids with musical stars in our eyes.

“They’d make better records,” he said. “Than some of the shit that’s making me so much bread.”

“I still have the tapes Jimi”, I said. “Okay, why don’t you come to London,” he pleaded quietly. “That was real music.” I asked him if this meant he was no longer playing real music. He did not answer. I asked him if he remembered how he had played to my chords and the two of us had achieved a spontaneous rapport so quickly and smoothly under my youthful direction. He laughed. He remembered only too well.

“Your structures, Mike,” he said, “were your own. Your were great. But you didn’t make it. I did. Strange, Mike, you never made it. And strange I feel jealous of you.”

Two weeks later, in London, he was dead.

MIKE EPHRON.

THE ESSENTIAL JIMI HENDRIX

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?
THIRD STONE FROM THE SUN
PURPLE HAZE
LITTLE WING
IF 6 WAS 9
BOLD AS LOVE
LITTLE MIS LOVER
CASTLES MADE OS SAND
GYPSY EYES
BURNING OF THE MIDNIGHT LAMP
VOODOO CHILE (SLIGHT RETURN)
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN (TO ELECTRIC LADYLAND)
STILL RAINING, STILL DREAMING
HOUSE BURNING DOWN
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS
IZABELLA
FREEDOM
DOLLY DAGGER
STEPPING STONE
DRIFTING
EZY RIDER
Warner Bros. Records Inc. - a subsidiary and licensee of Warner Bros. Inc., a Warner Communications Company - 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, Calif. 91510 - 3 East 54th Street, New York, New York 10022 - Made in U.S.A. 1978 Warner Bros. Records Inc.

Jimi Hendrix
Nov. 27, 1942 – Sept. 18, 1970
By Don Menn.
His hands are what made him look so tall. They could have been stitched onto someone a foot taller. But James Marshall Hendrix, who only stood 5” 11”, made good use of what he had and what he heard.

What he heard to begin with were the sound of the Forties and Fifties blaring out of radios, phonographs, and the televisions in his hometown of Seattle, Washington. He was acquainted as well with the sounds of other eras preserved in his father’s extensive record collection, which contained primarily blues and R & B artists. The sounds from those around him must have stayed in his ears, too -- his father slapping the spoons on his thighs and palms, his mother (Lucille, who died when he was ten) running her fingers occasionally up and down a piano, and his aunt playing keyboard with authority at the Dunlap Baptist Church (where Jimi’s funeral was later to be held). Jimi’s dad, James Allen Hendrix, a landscape gardener, traded in his sax for an acoustic guitar to replace the broom his 12-year old boy strummed. Jimi began to train himself. He’d watch other guitarists and see those playing things which he’d pick up and try to himself, usually left-handed, but sometimes right-handed. Though he never learned to read music he was always jamming, and logged much practive time gigging a half-dozen rock orientated groups in Seattle. They played the local clubs or travelled 120 miles north to Vancouver to work dances for 50 cents an hour and all the Cokes and hamburgers they could consume. Mr. Hendrix still has a mental image of his elder son (Jimi’s brother, Leon, was five years younger) flopped on the sofa playing along with records, radio, and television, and that’s where Jimi probably got that Peter Gunn theme he plays on the War Heroes album. Jimi’s parents were originally from Vancouver, and he spent much time there in elementary school and visiting his grandmother when gigging around British Columbia in the days after he’d entered Garfield High School back in Seattle. But, however highly he was later to be thought of, in Seattle a lot of people didn’t consider Jimi that extraordinary a guitar player. Not the anyway. In 1959, when he was seventeen, Jimi convinced his father to sign the military enlistment papers (he wasn’t eighteen yet, and needed parental approval), and off he went with the 101st Airborne Division. This 26-month excursion into par trooping ended on his 26th jump which wracked his back and foot, and brought him an early discharge. But he’d kept up with his music. Earlier in boot camp he had written his father begging him to send a guitar, because Jimi thought he was going crazy. With the instrument he jammed with anyone, including Billy Cox who would later play bass with Jimi in the Band Of Gypsys. Between 1963 and 1964 Jimi toured the South, “the chitlin circuit” as he called it, with a wide variety of acts. He landed in New York in 1964. His prominence as a sideman grew, and by the time he joined King Curtis in 1965 he had worked with Ike and Tin Turner, Little Richard, Joey Dee, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, B.B. King, the Isley Brothers, and Curtis Knight and the Squires. Chuck Rainey, who played bass with King Curtis while Jimi and Cornell Dupree shared lead guitar roles, recalls that Hendrix was an exceptional musician, just happy to be included. “if he was hired as the third guitar player.” Rainey says, “he was happy: he never had a bad thing to say about anything.” He also remembers that Jimi had perfect pitch, was ambidextrous, and had enough finesse with jazz numbers to lead him to conclude that Jimi had some knowledge of the Billy butler and Charlie Christian eras. For anyone who doubted it, Jimi could and did play jazz solos as opposed to strictly rock and rhythm and blues.

Jimi formed his own New York group in 1965. He called it the Blue Flames and himself Jimmy James. By mid-1966 they were gigging in pop music’s backyard – Greenwich Village. Accepting a position as lead guitarist for John Hammond, Jr., this Jimmy James character began to make a name for himself among an even more elite crowd that included Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Animals. This led to a fortuitous visit from Bryan “Chas”Candler, formerly the bass player with the Animals, who decided that his and this wild guitar player’s futures should be zipped together. After arranging for passports, Chas presented Jimmy James with a ticket, some money, and a promise of meeting Eric Clapton – whom the young guitarist was just hearing about and gaining some interest in. After the arrival in England, Mr. Hendrix received a call from his son saying that he was going to be made into a star. He had also redeemed his original surname, but changed the spelling of his first. Now he was Jimi Hendrix.

In London, Chas snatched up Mitchell ( a drummer) and Noel Redding (a lead guitarist who was handed a bass) and the Jimi Hendrix Experience was born. An immediate success in Europe at smaller and then larger clubs, the group signed a contract with Track Records who released “Hey Joe” and “Purple Haze” which became instant hits. Though then considered to be the hottest act in Europe, the Experience was an underground rumor on Jimi’s side of the ocean.

However, the group did not remain obscure long in the United States. On the recommendation of Paul McCartney, the planners of the Monterey Pop Festival (June 16-18, 1967) booked the Experience. At the last show on Sunday, Jimi Hendrix flabbergasted those attending, and America got its first glimpse of what he could do with an electric guitar and lighter fluid. But guitar players were stunned less by his theatrics than by Jimi’s unusual approach to music, and his fluent control over and use of distortion which had previously been a game of chance or a factor to be eliminated from (not added to) one’s sound system. The second glimpse for America was from the wrong eye. The Experience was put on tour with the Monkees in early 1967 and the idea was not a bright one. The Moonkees’ young fans were not prepared for Jimi’s wild sensuality and roaring music. After less than a half-dozen performances, management fabricated a story that the Daughters of the American Revolution had had the Experience banned, so the group pulled out of the tour.

Hendrix returned to England where his popularity had remained high, and positive response from his records in America coupled with word of his performances in Europe helped erase the memory of the Monkees fiasco. Jimi played to standing room-only crowds in tours of the United States in 1968 and 1969. Hendrix became a guitarist’s guitarist, jamming constantly with top musicians in the pop field in famous after-hours meetings that included luminaries such as Johnny Winter, John McLaughlin, Steven Stills, and artists from other realms, such as reed virtuoso Roland Kirk. The members of the Experience began to drift apart in late 1968.

Jimi was showing signs of desiring to work with other musicians, most notably the Band Of Gypsys which included Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass. Their performance at the Fillmore East in New York was recorded and portions were remixed in their only album, though the group never did tour together. Talk of reforming the Experience and going on tour in the spring of 1970 came to nothing. Jimi apparently went through a period of intense reevaluation on his music and artistic goals. In the spring and summer he toured with Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, and in August of 1970 he played at England’s Isle of Wight Festival after staying awake all night with Eric Barrett for the opening of his own recording studio, Electric Lady Studios in New York. There he gave a bad performance which has been regarded often as indicative of depression, or general decline in his abilities as opposed to baring a to-be-expected slip-up resulting from sleep deprivation, jet lag, and the 2: A.M. slot.

On September 18, 1970, James Marshall Hendrix was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Mary Abbots hospital in Kensington, England. Professor Donald Teare, the pathologist, explained the cause of death had been “inhalation of vomit due to barbiturate intoxication.” Though there were not enough drugs in Jimi’s body to have caused his death, speculation arouse as to whether or not he had attempted suicide. This had been discounted by nearly every person who knew Jimi, many who recall that he was in fact rather enjoying life and the prospect of entering a new, highly creative phase of his career. It should be noted that the sleeping pills which he took were not his own, and were in fact a German brand which are normally broken into quarters before ingesting. Jimi probably had no idea of the dose he was taking to catch a little sleep in the early morning hours of that day. Moreover, in the ambulance Jimi had been placed in a sitting position with his head back: if he had not been sick enough to die – and he wasn’t – the impossibility of clearing his throat and breathing at this angle was enough to kill him, and it did. From all appearance his death was tragic and avoidable mistake.

Gerry Stickells, his road manager, had Jimi’s body flown home for the funeral, attended by such notables as Johnny Winter and Miles Davis as well as many of the musicians with whom he had performed. His burial took place on October 1, 1970, at Greenwood Cemetery in Seattle.

What would Jimi have done had he lived? All is speculation, but he expressed many dreams to those around him; some may have been pipe dreams, some may or may not have been brought to reality. Eric Barrett says he sensed “that a whole new trip was coming down.” Jimi would call him, and they’d sit up all night discussing ides. Hendrix had wanted to buy a big top, hire his own security guards, and set up three- and four-day concerts on the outskirts of towns; guards would have been there to keep order and things running smoothly as opposed to turning a concert into a drug bust.

Jimi died the week before he was to have completed preliminary meetings with master jazz arranger Gil Evans to do some recording. (The Gil Evans Orchestra Plays The Music Of Jimi Hendrix. RCA, CPL1-0667, contains selections that Evans presented in his all-Hendrix concert at Carnegie Hall as a part of the New York Jazz Repertory Company’s 1974 programs.)

Jimi himself spoke of a desire to take a year or so off to study music more systematically to learn to write and read. In one interview he expressed an interest in mixed media, in exploring the healing power of sound and color used in coordination. He told Roy Hollingworth in an interview published the day before his death, that, “In older civilizations they didn’t have diseases as w e know them. It would be incredible if you could produce music so perfect that it would filter through you like rays and ultimately cure.”

GUITARS, AMPS, AND DEVICES
The equipment of Jimi Hendrix. “You name it, he used it,” states Eric Barrett, Jimi’s equipment manager from 1967 to 1970. This fact is what makes a complete accounting of all Hendrix’ guitars, amps, distortion devices, and accessories so formidable a task. Fortunately, however five years after Jimi’s death many of those who played with him, purchased for him, and equipped him – his father, his road managers, his fellow musicians – still recall information that he can not tell us himself.

Somewhere between his eleventh and twelfth birthday, Jimi received his first guitar – an inexpensive acoustic – from his father, who bought it after seeing his son holding the neck of a broom and strumming the bristles. This first guitar was replaced by an inexpensive electric when the youngster reached twelve, and by an Epiphone when he was about fifteen.

Jimi and the Fender Stratocaster eventually became the perfect match. He bought the right-handed model because he preferred to have the controls on the top, restrung it, and turned the nut to accommodate having high E closest to his toes. The necks of his Stratocaster during ’67 and ’68 were usually made of rosewood (there were exceptions) which tended to be thinner than the maple necks on the ’69 and ’70 models. Jimi made his own adjustments at the bridge and around the pickups.

He owned innumerable Stratocasters (he often carried thirteen or more at a time) – black, white sunburst, whatever was in that day. Only half a dozen can be accounted for today, these being instruments in the possession of Buddy Miles and Mr. Hendrix.

Jimi also favored Gibson Les Paul’s, and he owned at least three Flying V’s throughout his career (only one remains, a black V with gold pickups, now treasured by Eric Barrett). One other Fender model – the Telecaster – was always on hand, though Jimi rarely used it, and then usually only in the studio. On one occasion he may have played a Stratocaster with a Telecaster neck.

Once Jimi became wealthy enough to buy whatever he needed, his accumulation of instruments began. Henry Goldrich of Manny’s recalls selling him everything from a Gibson 330 to a Firebird to a Mosrite double-cutaway electric dobro (which he dropped and broke the same night he purchased it). Other guitars were: a Guild 12-string acoustic; a Gibson stereo; and Acoustic Black Widow (Mr. Hendrix salvaged it); two Hagstrom 8-string basses (Jimi played them on “Spanish Castle Magic” on Axis: Bold As Love); three Rickenbckers – a bass, a 6-, and a 12-string guitar; a Gibson Dove acoustic; a Martin, new when bought; and an old Hofner electric. Eric Barrett adds that Jimi generally had more than one of everything except the Rickenbacker’s.
Modifications to his instruments were scarce or minimal. He had purely decorative designs hand-painted on some of his Stratocasters (as with the one he burned at the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967) and on his Black Flying V. Barrett does not recall Jimi doing this himself, though his road manager of four years, Gerry Stickells (who was also his equipment manager, preceding Barrett), thinks that Jimi did do the painting.

Frets were rarely reworked because Hendrix’ guitars didn’t last long enough to become worn. In the early days before the Experience carried extra equipment, Stickells says Jimi used to take the small panel off the back of his Stratocasters because that made it easier to change strings. If he broke one during a performance, Stickells would make the change while Jimi kept playing.
Jimi spent hours bending his tremolo bars (by hand), to get them near enough to the body so that he could tap the strings individually as well as raise and lower their pitches. In a sense, he also ‘modified” his guitars by smashing them, since often the axe he used at the next performance would be an assemblage of the unsplintered parts gathered up in a box and stuck together by Barrett.

There are two other alterations to Jimi’s guitars that may or may not have happened. Jess Hansen of the Jimi Hendrix Archives stood on stage at Jimi’s last concert in Seattle. He clearly remembers seeing another toggle switch on the back of the black strat, located approximately where the neck joins the body. Jimi manipulated this switch throughout the evening, though its effect, purpose, or permanence is not known. Bill Lawrence, one of the world’s foremost experts on guitars and their electronics, says he suggested a design to Jimi for rewiring his Stratocaster. Dan Armstrong, another fine craftsman who learned much of what he knows from Lawrence, may have actually done the work. (Lawrence was not certain whether it happened, and Armstrong did not respond to repeated queries.) Whatever, it may have been a one-time modification since Goldrich, Barrett and Stickells – those most immediately responsible for Jimi’s equipment – know nothing of such a rewiring of the stock instruments with which they kept Jimi supplied.

Jimi experimented with various amplification systems, but, to use Barrett’s words, “It was 99% Marshall.” In his rhythm and blues days, Jimi had a Fender Twin Reverb (which he very occasionally used in the studio after he became a worldwide phenomenon). Jimi also sniffed out Orange amps at the December ’67 Pink Floyd “Christmas On Earth” show in London, and at his very last concert. Apparently, he could not get the sounds he wanted from them. In 1967, Buck Munger, now of L.D. Heater of Beaverton, Oregon, solidified a five-year contract (it lasted fourteen months) between Jimi and Sunn after the Monterey Festival. He recalls Jimi “right off the boat, with banged up Marshall and Fender gear.” Sunn supplied the entire Experience with anything they needed in exchange for Jimi’s research and development input.

Jimi started with a cabinet Sunn designated as 100-F, with one JVL D-130 in the bottom and an L-E 100-S driver horn in the top. There was not much midrange (Munger describes it as “almost a surfer sound”), and Jimi combined this with a stack of Marshalls to get blend. Later, the Sunn setup included up to five Coliseum PA tops, altered for guitar at 120-watts RMS, each with ten speaker cabinets with two JBL D-130 F’s. “We then went to four 12” Emminence, at his request,” Munger states, adding that Jimi convinced Sunn that the minimum acceptable power at that time was 100-watts RMS (they had been working with 60-watts).

The arrangement with Sunn, which worked well for bassist Noel Redding, did not satisfy Jimi. Part of the problem, according to Munger, was that the English RMS rating might be double the American one (even when a 200-watt English amp only put out as much power as a 100-watt American amp). “Jimi was used to the big numbers,” Munger explains, “ and when he turned his Sunn amps up, he got a lot of noise he didn’t like.” Sunn tried to solve the problem by putting on a dial that Jimi could turn up only to eight (though it would seem, on looking, to be at ten). Soon thereafter, Jimi went back to Marshalls. This setup was humble in the beginning. Stickellssays that Jimi and Noel shared one miked, 100-watt Marshall stack for their first album. This stack grew. Jimi came to use two 200-watt Marshall amps with four cabinets. At other times, he used three 100-watt and even three 200-watt heads, miked through PA systems, and as many as six cabinets (with a seventh for monitor on Redding’s side). Eric Barrett recalls that the group carried between a dozen and eighteen tops and box upon box of speakers, which had to be changed daily, after Jimi tore through them with his guitar. The grille cloth, however, was left hanging. Since Jimi performed with his amp settings nearly always on full, his systems wore out fast. But his amps were given still greater power through the wizardry of a Long Island electronics brain, Tony Frank, who rewired and tuned up those 100-watt amps (which Barrett believes weren’t putting out anything near that specification) so that they delivered 137-watts. Furthermore, Henry Goldrich states that the Marshall factory, after learning who Jimi was, began putting insomewhat heavier tubes and resoldering Jimi’s amps so everything wouldn’t fall apart. With all this power, it’s refreshing to note that Les Paul remembers a phone conversation in which Jimi expressed to him a desire for a tiny amp, in those days preceding mini-amps. As far as can be determined, Jimi primarily used Fender Rock “N Roll light gauge guitar strings (.010, .013, .015, .026, .032, .038), though Mike Bloomfield insists that Buddy Miles insists that Jimi used very heavy strings on the bottom, a medium gauge on his A and D, a Hawaiian G string, a light (not super light) gauge B string, and a super light E. This was supposedly not just for experimentation, but something that Jimi did all the time because he thought it would keep the whole guitar in tune a little better. Bloomfield’s information is not entirely secondhand, for he has tried some of Jimi’s Stratocasters which Buddy now owns. Miles was not available for comment.

Jimi’s principle distortion devices included the Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, the Univox Univibe, and Vox wah-wah pedals. Stickells says that the Experience made it through the first tour with only two or three Fuzz Faces contrasting with the two dozen units that were later carried. Similarly, at least a dozen Univibes (which simulates a rotation speaker) were always on hand, and two dozen wah-wah pedals. Barrett explains that this was necessary because “Jimi never would put his foot on a fuzz or wah-wah: he’d put his whole weight on it: they didn’t last long.” The wah appeared on the market towards the end of Jimi’s first tour, and he quickly incorporated the pedal into his stock setup.

Other boxes and pedals included some made by Roger Mayer. He built, in Barrett’s words, quite a few little toys for Jimi: they didn’t have names, just little labels to identify them.” Most often used was a device called the “Octavia,” especially built for Jimi, which changed the octave on the guitar (Barrett doesn’t remember whether the jump was up or down) when Jimi stepped on the pedal. Most of the other devices were not used on stage, though Jimi on occasion used them in the studio, as he did nearly every device he brought home from anywhere. Numerous other individuals also presented him regularly with homemade equipment.

Miscellaneous units included The Bag (held like Scottish bagpipes); a Maestro Fuzz tone, which Mike Bloomfield saw Jimi use while he was with John Hammond, Jr.; and in 1967, 1968, and possibly 1969. Hendrix may have used a couple of Leslie speakers before the Univibe was developed. It could not be substantiated that Jimi used an Echoplex, or any of the equipment made by Electro-Harmonix, as has been suggested by various sources.

For picks, Jimi chose whatever medium gauge his hand came up with when he stuck it into the drawer at Manny’s. Eric Barrett simply reports that on tour the Experience carried thousands of picks. They also packed hundreds of guitar straps, also from Manny’s, to match Jimi’s shirts. The after hour jams that Mike Bloomfield mentions in his reminiscence wee recorded probably on two TEAC four-track machines bought at Colony Music in New York. The range of interest that Jimi manifested with regard to guitaring extended into other musical realms, for he not only collected everything imaginable for his own specialty, but also bought pianos, trumpets, saxophones, and other instruments all of which he wanted to learn to play so that he could do an entirely solo album. “That,” says Henry Goldrich, “was what the studio was all for.” Clues to why Jimi preferred one brand or device over another are scarce. “He didn’t express to anybody what he wanted,” Eric Barrett explains, adding that, “his ear knew, and only his ears.” The only scrap available comes from Mike Bloomfield, who states that he recalls Jimi giving him “a big lecture – that Fuzz Face and Cry Baby were the only ones that really worked.” Bloomfield was told by Hendrix that the Cry Baby gave the greatest range from treble to bass, the hugest wah effect, the fastest action, and had the most authentically vocal sound. Fuzz Face, Jimi felt, was the most distorted sounding of such units. The two plugged together gave permanent sustain and endless distortion.

It is impossible to determine for certain all the equipment and effects Jimi used in the studio and on records. We are left only with morsels: Are You Experienced? And Axis: Bold As Love were both recorded (and mixed on a custom board) on four-track at fifteen inches per second at the Olympic Studios in London. Jimi’s guitar is a Stratocaster on the first album, except on the “Red House” cut, for which he used his old Hofner, which was in such disrepair that the pick-ups were stuck on with Scotch tape (he only used it couple of times in performance before it was stolen). A Les Paul is probably used for “House Burning Down,” on Electric Ladyland, while the black Les Paul was featured on Band Of Gypsys. Eddie Kramer, Jimi’s engineer from 1967 to 1970, feels that it is useless to approach Jimi’s music in so analytical a manner. This is partly because Kramer’s own approach was often too improvisational to capture, and partly because he does not wish to divulge studio techniques which he considers the finer points of his work. “I think the mystique should remain,” Kramer states. “Analyzing it to the point that you want in your magazine is not a good idea. Part of the mystique is what I created with him in the studio, and I’d like to leave it at that.” And so, that is where we must leave it.
Reprinted by courtesy of Guitar Player Magazine, Box 615, Saratoga, California 95070.

SIDE ONE
ARE YOU EXPERIENCED ? A
THIRD STONE FROM THE SUN B
PURPLE HAZE C
LITTLE WING D
IF 6 WAS 9 E

SIDE TWO
BOLD AS LOVE F
LITTLE MISS LOVER G
CASTLES MADE OF SAND H
GYPSY EYES I
BURNING OF THE MIDNIGHT LAMP J
VOODOO CHILE (SLIGHT RETURN) K

SIDE THREE
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN (TO ELECTRIC LADYLAND) L
STILL RAINING, STILL DREAMING M
HOUSE BURNING DOWN N
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
O
ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS P
IZABELLA Q

SIDE FOUR
FREEDOM R
DOLLY DAGGER S
STEPPING STONE T
DRIFTING U
EZY RIDER V

ALL TITLES WRITTEN BY JIMI HENDRIX EXCEPT “ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER” BY BOB DYLAN TRACKS A B FROM THE ALBUM “THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE/ARE YOU EXPERIENCED” A YAMETA PRODUCTION
TRACK C FROM THE ALBUM “THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE/SMASH HITS”
TRACKS D E F G H FROM THE ALBUM “THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE/ELECTRICK LADYLAND” PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY JIMI HENDRIX
TRACKS I J K L M N O FROM THE ALBUM “THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE/ELECTRIC LADYLAND” PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY JIMI HENDRIX
TRACKS R U V FROM THE ALBUM “JIMI HENDRIX/THE CRY OF LOVE” PRODUCED BY JIMI HENDRIX, EDDIE KRAMER AND MITCH MITCHELL
TRACKS P S FROM THE ALBUM “JIMI HENDRIX/ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUND TRACK FROM RAINBOW BRIDGE”. PRODUCED BY JIMI HENDRIX, MITCH MITCHELL, EDDIE MITCHELL AND JOHN JANSEN
TRACKS Q T FROM THE ALBUM “JIMI HENDRIX/WAR HEROES’ PRODUCED BY EDDIE KRAMER AND JOH JANSEN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: MICHAEL JEFFREY
SLEEVE DESIGN: JOHN PASCHE/GULL GRAPHICS
A DEPAJA ENTERPRISES LTD. PRODUCTION
RELEASED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF ALAN DOUGLAS
IN ASSOCIATION WITH LES KAHN FOR DOUGLAS PRODUCING CORPORATION.

COSMIC TURN-AROUND

SIDE 1
NO SUCH ANIMAL PART 1 (2:25)
TOMORROW (10:10)
NO SUCH ANIMAL PART 2 (2:35)

SIDE 2
COME ON BABY I (2:50)
COME ON BABY II (3:28)
I LOVE MY BABY (6:25)
DOWN NOW (2:35)
LOUISVILLE (2:20)

Rarely in the annals of pop culture has an artist melded his onstage persona with his offstage demeanor. Jimi Hendrix defied the improbable by living a lifestyle even more outlandish than his 1967 cinema appearance in “Monterey Pop” might lead one to suspect. His southpaw strokes on the Fender Stratocaster were a sight to behold; the visual panoply sprinkled with feathers, multi-colored headband and chains of all metallic persuasions.

Jimi was not only a consummate showman, he was also the messiah of the electric guitar. True, the jazz legend, Charlie Christian, had come along some three decades before to assume significance on the instruments, but Charlie bore more of a melodic strain and less of an energetic cycle. Jimi combined the Univibe to simulate a speaker, a wah-wah pedal and fuzz box, but this multi-electra vision had to be controlled to be effective. Jimi was the only artist, in a generation of great rock guitarists that included Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield and Jimmy Page, who could so control the feedback that it sounded as though more than one player was being used.

Strangely enough, Jimi, when he backed the Isley Brothers, was considered a talented young man who aspired to little more than semi-name status. It was a time when such folkie-pop units as the Chad Mitchell Trio, Kingston Trio and twisters, Chubby Checker and Joey Dee were considered the epitome of sincerity. Jimi played with such as John Hammond, Jr., before Chas Chandler, the former Animals bassist convinced Jimi the British were ready for his eccentric capabilities.

Jimi began to restring his Stratocaster with Slinkies, this, his concoction to appropriate reversal of the strings on a right hand guitar to suit his left hand fantasies. With four 100-watt Narsgakk tops, six 4 x 12 Marshall cabinets and a 4 x 12 monitor, Jimi was ready to burn the roof off any auditorium he played. By coincidence, he decided to incorporate the fire spectacle in his act, as though bowing to some pre historic spirit. After demolishing a Forest Hills audience used to the more sedate tennis matches, Jimi flew off to London and mana mono duels with such legends as Clapton and Townsend. He took drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding into his unit and the Jimi Hendrix Experience was born. Not since the noted Wildman, Screamin’” Jay Hawkins, he of the Dracula capes and fine pine coffins, had recorded “I Put A Spell On You” (Okeh) was there anyone to compare with Jimi for histrionics. But, Jimi abhorred the role of clown for comic relief alone, he blended his superior guitar skills into the almost religious rite of musical passage. He also began to record as though time were running out. In September, 1967, he did. “Are You Experienced” with such netherworld confusion as ‘Manic Depression’ and ‘Purple Haze’ among the rhythmic confections. He quickly followed that debut up with “Get That Feeling” in November of the same year. His single of “Foxy Lady” made the charts, but the closer he came to mega-bucks, and at $60,000 a stadium performance he was top-of-the-line, the further Jimi seemed to go into his shell.

The audience was starting to run his life; drive him to even more spacy heights. He could record “You Got Me Floatin’” on the “Bold As Love” album, but there was more inner truth to the rendering than even Jimi cared to admit. He functioned offstage in some kind of haze, as though a transmutation had invaded his skin. The overextended sombrero hat and the chainmail pose began to reflect an inner despair that bound him to theatrics and foregone performances. From fire to destruction of guitars to the compulsory art of taxing his own soul Jimi was going a lonely road. Though he became the Prince of Catharsis for his followers there was a price to be paid. The album “Electric Lady Land” cut in August, 1968, with his “Voodoo Chile” and “And The Gods Made Love” indicated a torment too fierce to hide, too hideous to constantly inflict on one’s inner psyche.

Where Jimi had been likened to the millefiori of a Venetian mosaic, with a thousand flowers stained on his soul, he now became more elusive while at the same time becoming all too available to the excesses of life. James Marshall Hendrix was still in his mid-twenties when the specter that haunts all superstars began to take its toll. Could he possibly top his last effort?

“Crosstown Traffic” and “Gypsy Eyes” were singles that did not let his fans down, but also did not take them to the heights. There is a moment when an audience, transfixed though it may be, pause’s to reflect in yet a manner alien to the performer. One night, at a now defunct New York pub named La Vie En rose, operated by the canny Monte Proser, the headliner was Ella Fitzgerald. She combined her scat-bop arias with ballad repast until it was more than a feast. The audience was literally begging for more. Ella obliged, the pink spotlight accenting this charismatic figure. In walked Barbara Curley the model of the moment, and hard as they tried to resist, the audience was torn between bowing to the artistry of Ella And the translucent beauty who seemed to have arrived from another planet. Jimi found himself paying both roles, the macho marquis and the pop-mantis. He became his own prey in this dance of death.

This album a pairing of Jimi’s exuberant ways, eons away from the five course guitar as carved by Belchior Dias in Lisbon, circa 1581 shows Jimi to be redefining his artistry. His chords flash as though being pursued by some arched interloper, while at the same time he modifies tempos to allow us to breathe once again. In 1970, at Bill Graham’s rock palace, Fillmore East, on New York’s Second Avenue, Jimi showed the skeptics he was still for real. He no longer lingered on “Hey, Joe” the first English hit single, but instead excoriated his own being to flesh out Stratocaster possibilities. On September 18, 1970, with a vision of Claude Boivin’s mother of pearl four-course guitar, or whatever last spirit. Share his visions for a moment, and ask yourself “was there ever a Jimi Hendrix, or could there ever have possible been such sounds?”
----CHARLES MIRON

COSMIC TURNAROUND, a classic find of rare Hendrix tapes never before released on an album, spins you back to the time when Rock ruled and Guitar was King. When you talk about Rock and Guitar only one name can come to mind, Jimi Hendrix. Stratocasters, Marshall Amps, Fe4edback and Slinky Strings, that was the Hendrix sound.

Jimi love to jam with friends and fellow musicians. This album contains unreleased live jams, and studio sessions. COSMIC TURNAROUND BEGINS WITH “No Such Animal” which was produced by Curtis Knight whom he had been working with prior to the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They collaborated together on an album released in 1967 called “Get That Feeling. “ We see Hendrix forming his own totally distinctive style on this cut – straight ahead guitar, drum, bass.

Jimi then slides into a live jam “Tomorrow’, recorded during the era of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. What’s notable about this cut is the way Hendrix sets up his own unique bluesy riff, so that the rhythm guitar could fall into the groove. The slinky strings give Jimi the ability to stretch notes farther than any guitarist before or after him. Towards the end of this jam Jimi breaks into CREAM’s smash hit of 1967, “Sunshine Of Your Love.”

Opening Side Two we see the seeds of The Hendrix Sound growing. “Come On Baby Parts 1 & 2” was written by Hendrix and Lonnie Youngblood. Youngblood was another one of Jimi’s associates before forming The Experience. What’s interesting about this cut is that this is one of the few times where we find Hendrix sharing lead riffs with saxophonist Youngblood.

“I Love My Baby” is a blues cut. The bass and drummer keep the sound together so that Jimi can let loose. Jimi then goes low-down on “Down Now.” The vocal phrasing on this cut correlates with his guitar playing. The album closes with sweet “Louisville” – a real change of pace for Jimi, smooth and straight ahead.

The Hendrix sound is a new today as it was in the late 1960’s. Rock fans, young and old, are discovering and re-discovering that special Hendrix sound. Jimi might be gone but his music will always live on.
Liner Notes – John Veranes, Len Lovalli
Album Produced by John Brantley except for cut No Such Animal Part 1 & 2 which was produced by Curtis Knight.

. . . . . JIMI HENDRIX . . . . . .ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC .

MUSIC IS THE OXYGEN OF MY WORLD

Thursday, December 3, 2009

ROCK AND ROLL

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Followers

JIMI HENDRIX

Click on these links for more exciting ROCK AND ROLL EXPERIENCES

JIMI HENDRIX AT HIS BEST VOLUME 2

Blog Archive

THE ESSENTIAL JIMI HENDRIX

COSMIC TURN-AROUND