Modern Listener Guide: Jimi Hendrix

By Frank Moriarty, Derek Trucks and John McLaughlin

As the iconic status of legendary musician Jimi Hendrix looms larger with each passing year, there is a continual generation of new listeners just discovering his work. They may know he is important by how often he is name-checked by today's top musicians and by the near-constant presence of his image across all forms of media, but they soon discover there is a complicated and confusing body of material spread across many titles and record labels.

Now acclaimed author and musician Frank Moriarty brings to life the world of Jimi Hendrix in Modern Listener Guide: Jimi Hendrix. With informed commentary and spirited critical perspective, Moriarty expertly leads the way through the studio sessions, live concert recordings, and myriad album and box set releases that comprise the imposing legacy of one of the world's great guitarists and musical personalities.

By balancing a colorful, up-to-date and historically accurate portrait of Jimi's life and career interspersed with insightful commentary on dozens of significant releases that stand as cornerstones of his creativity, Modern Listener Guide: Jimi Hendrix will be invaluable to readers just discovering Hendrix, and will also appeal to those already familiar with Jimi's compelling music and unforgettable life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543942484

Frank Moriarty

Frank Moriarty, Ph.D., has spent over 25 years researching the ecological effects of pollution. For over 8 years he was part of a research unit working on plant-parasitic nematodes at the University of Cambridge. He also joined the Nature Conservancy, and later became part of the Natural Environmental Research Council.

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PART ONE: NOT YET EXPERIENCED

CHAPTER ONE: UNSETTLED BOY

You either fell under his spell, enraptured, or you were shaken to your musical core.

There was no other choice if you were a guitarist existing in the hip London scene of 1966 - and suddenly encountered the newly-arrived-in-England Jimi Hendrix.

Convinced to allow Hendrix to play a song with his elite band, Cream, Eric Clapton – the guitarist his fans had proclaimed God – emerged from the experience stunned. He remarked to Jimi’s manager, Chas Chandler, "You didn’t tell me he was that good!"

The first time I ever saw Jimi was in Blaises Club, The Who’s Pete Townshend recalled in the 1973 documentary A Film About Jimi Hendrix. "I went in and saw him playing – and I was completely floored…"

One minute you were on top of the rock music world; the next, you had been knocked down by someone you couldn’t even fathom existing. There was nothing to compare Hendrix to because his music, his style – and his very essence - were truly new, breaking ground that had not even been imagined. It wasn’t a musical evolution – it was an electric revolution.

But those initial encounters were simply the first tremors of an influence that has reverberated ever-louder through the decades.

In the 1980s, Stevie Ray Vaughan: I loved Jimi a lot. He was so much more than just a blues guitarist. He could do anything. I was about sixteen when he died. I could do some of his stuff by then but actually I’ve been trying to find out what he was doing more so lately than I was then. Now I’m really learning how to do it and I’m trying to expand on it… Well, not that I can expand on it a whole bunch. But I try.

In the 1990s, Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains: He was a phenomenal guitar player… He was an innovator, he was extremely unique. He had a uniqueness that passed the test of time.

In the 2000s, Joe Satriani: As a guitar player and a professional musician I’m stunned at how revolutionary his playing was, how he took the rich history of music that he grew up with and used it in such an original way… It’s astounding. You could take out a pad and a piece of paper and say, ‘OK, why do all guitar players do this today?’ And you’d write down, ‘Because of Jimi Hendrix.’ And then you’d think of another thing we all do - ‘Because of Jimi Hendrix.’ The list would be really long.

And right now? Ask any guitarist today the roots of their interest in the instrument, and the odds are staggering that the name Jimi Hendrix will be uttered.

But it’s not just musicians who resonate under Jimi’s influence. Recent examples?

In January 2017 Scientific American reported on botanical researchers working in Baja, Mexico, who discovered a new species of hardy flower. With Jimi in mind, they dubbed their discovery Hendrix’s liveforever or Dudleya hendrixii.

And in late 2017 Pantone – the prominent company that invented a color standard embraced by the printing, fabric, paint, and plastics industries - picked as its Color of the Year 2018 a purple christened Ultra Violet. In its media materials Pantone acknowledged its selection was inspired by the aura of Jimi Hendrix, going so far as to name a range of variations based on the color after one of Hendrix’s biggest hits, Purple Haze.

There is a reason for this reverence: the stunning creativity that is revealed in each facet of the musical life of Jimi Hendrix. That his essential body of work emerged from the relative handful of days its creator was alive seems like an almost impossible occurrence.

But it happened.

The music of Jimi Hendrix continues to resonate. Instead of fading with time, it continually crosses the borders of musical genres, influencing new generations of musicians and listeners alike. (Frank Moriarty, Modern Listener Archives)

Jimi Hendrix was born - at the age of zero, as he occasionally joked - on November 27, 1942, in Seattle Washington, as World War Two raged across the oceans. He was the son of Lucille Jeter Hendrix and Al Hendrix, a couple entangled in a tempestuous marriage that was far from stable. Al - who had been drafted into the army - was stationed in Alabama when Lucille gave birth to a boy named Johnny Allen Hendrix at King County Hospital in Seattle, Washington. A child primarily of African American descent, Johnny also inherited Cherokee Indian bloodlines from Al’s mother, Nora.

Though Johnny would one day be known to the world as Jimi Hendrix, there was little indication his birth had irrevocably changed the future of music and the guitar. During his early years Johnny lived a life of near-constant family turmoil. Al tried to file for divorce from Lucille just after Johnny’s birth, and Lucille made it clear that caring for a baby was not a top priority for her. Lucille was known to drink too much and disappear for days at a time.

Johnny was shuttled about between members of Lucille’s family, Al’s family, and various friends. He suffered through a bout with pneumonia at the age of six months but was fairly healthy despite living a rootless existence with a revolving cast of caretakers. Finally, just after Johnny turned three years old, Al Hendrix returned to Seattle from his obligations with the armed forces, which had entailed lengthy stints in the Fiji Islands, Guadalcanal, and New Guinea.

Almost immediately Al traveled to Berkeley, California to collect his son, where Johnny was staying with a friend of the Jeter family named Mrs. Champ. After returning to Seattle with his child, Al and Johnny stayed with Al’s sister-in-law, Dolores Jeter. During this period Al unsuccessfully attempted to discourage his son’s natural left-handed tendencies, a common practice at the time. And although he would one day be world-renowned for his abilities on the guitar, Johnny, at the age of four, received his first musical instrument - a harmonica.

A three-year-old Jimmy Hendrix appears thoughtful in this portrait believed to have been arranged by his aunt Dolores Jeeter Hall. The photograph belies the turbulence of Hendrix’s young life. (Modern Listener Archives)

On September 11, 1946, Johnny Allen’s name was changed to James Marshall Hendrix. Al Hendrix was not pleased with the name Lucille bestowed upon his son, and chose James Marshall in honor of his brother, Leon Marshall, who had died in 1932. From that point on, the child was known as Jimmy – although the nickname Buster came into play from time to time.

When she learned that Al had returned from the army, Lucille sought him out and a short-lived reconciliation took place - long enough for Jimmy to gain two younger brothers. Leon was born on January 13, 1948, and Joseph Allen followed a year later in 1949. But the relationship between Al and Lucille was stormy and off-and-on at best.

In mid-1949, Al - now working as a laborer and gardener - sent Jimmy and his two brothers to Vancouver, Canada to live with relatives, chiefly his mother Nora Hendrix, who worked at Vie’s Chicken and Steak House. But not long after the boys were on their way back to Seattle.

In 1955 Jimmy Hendrix – third from left in the second row - attended sixth grade classes at the Leschi Grade School in Seattle, close by Lake Washington. (Modern Listener Archives)

Jimmy attended a variety of public schools, but already he displayed a growing interest in the guitar. He would take a broomstick and imagine it was the real thing, holding it across his body as he manipulated imaginary strings. Jimmy’s interest was so great that when he was eight years old and attending the Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle a social worker tried to convince the school to buy Jimmy a real guitar with funds intended for financial hardships. But the request was turned down, and Jimmy had to wait for his first guitar.

Lucille and Al Hendrix had a daughter in September, 1950, but the blind child, Kathy Ira, was more than the already-strained family could care for and she was placed in special needs foster care. Soon after, Al and Lucille’s troubled marriage ended in divorce after the birth of a second daughter, Pamela, who was put up for adoption. Al was awarded custody of Jimmy, Leon, and Joseph, but the physically challenged Joseph faced large medical expenses. Foster care to ensure his medical needs were met was the only solution available. Jimmy was ten years old, Leon was five. Al had trouble finding work, and the splintered family lived in difficult circumstances.

Despite living in poverty, many aspects of Jimmy’s childhood were like those of most children. At the suggestion of an aunt, Jimmy and his best friend, James Williams, joined the Boy Scouts. And they each had paper routes. Al often took the kids to the movies, where Jimmy became fascinated by the heroics of Flash Gordon. Jimmy also began to play football in a youth league.

But Al’s employment and financial troubles were continuing, and Jimmy and Leon were both regularly switching schools and addresses as their father moved throughout the Seattle area.

Jimmy is said to have had his first encounter with a famous musician when a Mrs. Penniman, who lived nearby, turned out to be the mother of Little Richard Penniman. Jimmy and Leon both met the flamboyant pianist, who had temporarily given up rock and roll in favor of preaching. Little did Jimmy know that one day Little Richard would be his employer.

The family’s financial circumstances were not improving, and by late 1956, Al was forced to give Leon up to foster care. Jimmy stayed with his father, and during this time had a second brush with a famous musician: at the age of 14 he saw Elvis Presley perform on September 1, 1957 in Seattle’s outdoor Sick’s Stadium, joining more than 16,000 others drawn by the growing attraction of rock and roll.

Meanwhile, Lucille Jeter Hendrix remarried after the divorce from Al, taking vows with William Mitchell on January 3, 1958. Jimmy had visited his mother during a hospital stay in 1957, but that was the last time he saw her alive. Less than a month after taking her new husband, Lucille died of a ruptured spleen and complications from years of heavy drinking. Al, Jimmy, and Leon did not attend the funeral.

In school, young Hendrix could be bashful, but he was also revealing a creative side as he became known for drawing and his cartoons. But soon that creativity began to be pulled in an entirely different direction.

Jimmy Hendrix at Meany Junior High School in 1958 (above left), a school named after a highly-regarded University of Washington professor, Edmond S. Meany. Hendrix’s high school career came to a close in late 1960, shortly after this portrait of the junior (above right) was taken at James A. Garfield High School. (Modern Listener Archives)

While helping his father on a quick job to generate some cash, Jimmy discovered a ukulele – bearing a lone string – that had been discarded in the trash. Suddenly, Jimmy’s focus was on that one string, and it wasn’t long before Al invested five dollars – a significant sum to the struggling Hendrix clan – in a battered six-string acoustic for his son. The five additional strings opened up a whole new world, and Jimmy soon found he had a lot to learn.

I didn’t know that I would have to turn the strings around the other way because I was left-handed, he recalled years later, but it just didn’t feel right. I can remember thinking to myself, ‘There’s something wrong here…’ I changed the strings around but it was way out of tune when I’d finished. I didn’t know a thing about tuning so I went down to the store and run my fingers across the strings on a guitar they had there. After that I got tired of the guitar and put it aside.

Fortunately for the world of music, Chuck Berry re-ignited Jimmy’s interest in the guitar and he joined his first band in 1958, The Velvetones. But Jimmy faced an immediate problem - he was drowned out by the electric guitars of the other musicians. Al bought Jimmy his first electric guitar a year later. With his son armed with the Supro brand guitar, Al recalled that the Peter Gunn theme was one of Jimmy’s first musical conquests.

After joining a new band, The Rocking Kings, Jimmy Hendrix made his first serious appearance on stage with an electric guitar in 1959. The venue was a National Guard Armory near Kent, Washington. But following a Rocking Kings gig in 1960, Jimmy’s Supro was stolen. Eventually, Al gave in and bought Jimmy a new electric guitar, this time a Danelectro.

Jimi left high school in October 1960 at the age of 17, failing to graduate from James A. Garfield High School. When not consumed by the guitar and his new band, Thomas and the Tomcats, Jimmy helped Al with landscape gardening.

He had a not-so-good running contracting firm, recalled Hendrix of his father, and in me he saw a cheap laborer. I didn’t see it that way. I had to carry stones and cement all day, and he pocketed the money.

With poor job prospects clouding his future and in the wake of several minor run-ins with the police, in May 1961 Jimmy - at the age of 18 - volunteered to join the army. A draft notice would surely be headed his way eventually, and by volunteering Jimmy was able to choose his fate. Jimmy Hendrix aspired to become a Screaming Eagle as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division.

Just before his nineteenth birthday, Jimmy arrived in Fort Ord, Kentucky - further from his home than he had ever traveled. While battling homesickness and enduring jump school, Jimmy turned to his guitar for solace. While playing one night, Jimmy made a new friend - a bass player named Billy Cox. Cox heard Hendrix playing and, intrigued by the sounds, walked up and introduced himself. Soon after, Cox and Hendrix teamed up to play in various service clubs. It was to be the beginning of a lengthy musical partnership.

Less lengthy was Jimi’s relationship with the army. In later years he claimed to have broken his ankle in a paratrooper jump in May 1962, though definitive medical evidence backing this up has not surfaced. A restless enlistee with a far-from-perfect record of service, Jimmy was still honorably discharged from the army at Fort Campbell on July 2. Hendrix and Cox had performed in clubs like the Pink Poodle in nearby Clarkesville, Tennessee, and that small town was where Jimmy decided to wait out the months until Billy Cox was discharged from the army in October.

Billy Cox and Jimmy Hendrix’s magic guitar have separate billing at Nashville’s Jolly Roger in 1962 (top), but the two also played there together in the King Kasuals (below) teamed with Moses Leonard on the right. The historic Jolly Roger stage is now preserved for posterity by the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. (Modern Listener Archives, Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum)

Cox and Hendrix labored away in small bands for the rest of 1962, eventually migrating to Nashville. After a brief sojourn to Vancouver to visit his grandmother Nora, Jimmy headed south to begin a lengthy period of dues paying. He played with blues musician Slim Harpo in Mississippi in early 1963, before heading back to Tennessee. Once there, Hendrix was reunited in a succession of bands with Billy Cox and guitarist Larry Lee.

Around this time, people nicknamed Jimmy ‘Marbles,’ because he walked up the street with an electric guitar, playing it, Cox told Guitar Player’s Jas Obrecht in 1989. "He’d play it in the show, he’d play it coming back from the gig. I saw him put 25 years into the guitar in five years, because it was a constant, everyday occurrence with him. People called him Marbles because they thought he was crazy. They couldn’t understand why a man would constantly be playing a guitar all the time…

I remember mornings waking Jimmy up, knocking on his door, and there he was laying on the bed with the same clothes he had on the night before, his guitar laying on his stomach or alongside him, Cox continued. He was practicing all night long.

You really had to play, because those people were really hard to please, Hendrix recalled. It was one of the hardest audiences in the South; they hear it all the time. Everybody knows how to play guitar. You walk down the street and people are sitting on their porch playing more guitar. That’s where I learned to play, really, in Nashville.

Not content to remain in Tennessee, Hendrix decided to try his luck up north.

A brief stint with the Isley Brothers followed, before Jimmy wound up as a tour guitarist for Gorgeous George Odell. He found himself on package tours that gathered stars like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson to follow grueling performance itineraries throughout the South’s so-called Chitlin’ Circuit.

Jimmy acquired his first Fender guitar, a blonde Duo-Sonic, early in 1964, before moving on to a sunburst-finish Jazzmaster late in 1964. This latter guitar accompanied him as he toured behind Little Richard on a gig facilitated for Hendrix by Odell.

Despite a brief period playing in the Ike and Tina Turner Review, Jimmy stayed with Little Richard until the middle of 1965, playing backing guitar and following the band’s strict dress code. Little Richard was a flamboyant performer, and Hendrix was left with little opportunity to display his burgeoning talent. In an interview in 1967, Hendrix recalled his stint with the mercurial rock and roll pioneer.

I had these dreams that something was going to happen, seeing the number 1966 in my sleep, so I was just passing time until then, Hendrix stated. "I wanted my own scene, making my music, not playing the same riffs.

Like once with Little Richard, me and another guy got fancy shirts ‘cause we were tired of wearing the uniform, Hendrix continued. Richard called a meeting. ‘I am Little Richard, I am Little Richard,’ he said, ‘the King, the King of Rock and Rhythm, I am the only one allowed to be pretty. Take off those shirts!’ Man, it was all like that. Bad pay, lousy living, and getting burned.

The pay may have been bad, but at least there was pay. When Hendrix quit Richard’s band in New York, he found himself with no source of income and was even forced to pawn his Fender Jazzmaster.

As Jimi played the role of anonymous sideman while cutting his teeth on the unforgiving surface of the road, he also made his first forays into a domain that would one day become his creative home – the world of the recording studio. Eventually Jimi would be torn by these two realms: the fame and fortune generated by life on stage and the release and realization of musical visions offered by the studio. For now, though, both aspects of the young guitarist’s existence offered little more than learning experiences.

Proof of Jimi’s musical existence from these years in the mid-1960s is fleeting – ghostly video snippets from a televised Nashville dance party, or Jimi lurking at the edges of the stage in fuzzy photographs in which it’s clear the photographer’s intent was not to capture Hendrix’s presence.

And then there are the recordings. Poorly documented, with varying degrees of quality as far as the songwriting and recording clarity, Jimi’s body of work from this era is a jumble of rumor and precious little proof about which sessions actually did portray the nascent studio ventures of Jimi Hendrix.

West Coast Seattle Boy

In 1995, after a lengthy court battle, the Hendrix family gained control of the Jimi Hendrix estate. To issue Jimi’s music and handle all related marketing concerns, a family-based organization called Experience Hendrix was formed. Janie Hendrix – adopted by Jimi’s father, Al, in 1968 – was named CEO of the entity.

In 2010 Experience Hendrix released a massive Jimi Hendrix career overview box set titled West Coast Seattle Boy, which included an official attempt to bring at least partial clarity to Jimi’s mid-1960s life as a backing musician. And though this material, filling the entire first compact disc of the set’s four volumes, does not capture all of the recorded work that went to tape in these years, it certainly acts as a fascinating window in time.

If any of his early employers could sense that there was true, raw talent lurking within Jimi Hendrix, it was the Isley Brothers. The R&B vocal and musical group had formed in 1954 in Cincinnati, Ohio. But by the late 1950s the group had moved east, and when Jimi began his association with them they were based close to New York City in northern New Jersey. Jimi’s first studio visit with the Isleys provides West Coast Seattle Boy with its lead-off track – and its first controversy.

The original 45 single of Testify, running nearly six minutes across both sides when issued in 1964, was essentially the Isley Brothers’ imagining various soul and R&B singers of the day testifying, with mock appearances by everyone from Ray Charles to James Brown – whose cry of Wait a minute! ends side one, encouraging the listener to flip the disc.

But in 1971, to cash in on their association with the recently deceased Jimi, the Isleys released an album titled In the Beginning. Instead of letting the actual beginning play out, Testify was retooled, and it is this version – crafted after Jimi’s death – that opens this box set.

Testify in its original format gave Jimi a share of the spotlight when it was initially recorded, reflecting the brothers’ awareness that their new guitarist might be something special. As presented on West Coast Seattle Boy, that spotlight is slightly brighter as the song has morphed into a funky and propulsive paean with new lyrics celebrating the joys of music. Its expected focus on the vocals yields to give Jimi a full ten seconds of soloing prominence. Using clean but aggressive picking, Hendrix swerves up and down the neck but stays close to the root chord. The song fades out and then back in, a simulation of two sides of a single, though the second half amounts to little more than a re-run of Jimi’s solo capped by an extended vamp to the fade.

Jimmy Hendrix recorded with the Isley Brothers on Testify, cut early in 1964. The single was the initial Isley release on their new T-Neck label, named for their Teaneck, New Jersey area home base. The song now appears on the first disc of the West Coast Seattle Boy box set. (Modern Listener Archives)

West Coast Seattle Boy’s journey through Jimi’s back pages moves on to a 1964 session in New York with South Carolina soul belter Don Covay, a singer best known for writing the classic song Chain of Fools.

In contrast with the Isley Brothers exhortations, Covay’s Mercy, Mercy begins with Jimi offering a delicate introductory passage, a touchstone on the way to later Hendrix songs like Little Wing. The sweet soul sounds that follow put Hendrix in a subservient role, but at least the introduction gives him a solid presence. A second Covay song which follows, Can’t Stay Away, finds Jimi almost audibly invisible.

Following these sessions Hendrix left New York behind for tour work, which sounded exciting but was far from it. He labored away behind artists including Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson as he re-adapted to the hard road lifestyle. By early 1965, he’d landed a spot in the band of the flamboyant Little Richard, bestowing upon himself the stage name Maurice James.

Richard’s arrival in Los Angeles gave Hendrix the opportunity to make his West Coast recording debut, but it’s unclear whether he entered the studio with a Richard session first or via a date with singer Rosa Lee Brooks. Experience Hendrix programs the Brooks material before Little Richard’s on West Coast Seattle Boy but it isn’t exactly a definitive placement.

Brooks recalls she met Hendrix at the California Club during an Ike and Tina Turner set, the husband-and-wife team who would also briefly act as Hendrix employers during this period. Through Brooks’ connection a deal was arranged for a single to be cut for local label Revis Records. With additional musicians recruited from Major Lance’s band, the session – tracked in a converted garage – included Arthur Lee on background vocals, a singer who would later form the influential band Love.

As on Mercy, Mercy Jimi’s most notable contribution to the first of the Brooks tracks heard here, My Diary, comes at the very beginning. Hendrix brings the song to life with a soulful, 10-second intro. These moments foreshadow a feel that would characterize the quieter songs of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, songs not to be written for another year. For now, though, Jimi’s guitar quickly submerges into a supporting role, navigating through standard soul territory with the rest of the small ensemble.

The single’s flip side is the curiously named Utee, inspired by a local Detroit dance craze called the U.T. The song kicks off with saxophone as the conspicuous voice, Jimi laying back with stabbing chord accents on the beat. More upbeat than My Diary, the track surges along pleasantly but not exceptionally until just past the one-minute mark, when Jimi emerges from the background with a 20-second blast of two-string double-stops and bent notes. Later in the solo he spices it up with vibrato shakes across the guitar neck. A somewhat chaotic ending wraps up Jimi’s longest recorded solo to date, setting up brief call-and-response passages as the song heads to its fade-out.

Upon release, the Rosa Lee Brooks single quickly faded into obscurity. That fate was also confronting Little Richard. Though acknowledged as a founding father of R&B and rock and roll, by 1965 Richard’s star was not shining so brightly in the what have you done for me lately? world of pop music. Accordingly, Jimi’s session with the singer from Macon, Georgia chosen for inclusion on West Coast Seattle Boy did not provide high-profile, career-defining moments.

The mercurial Richard was probably at his best in full-speed-ahead mode, with his blowtorch of a voice cutting through the sound of a rocking band. But on I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me he airs out his sensitive side, following Jimi’s brief, gentle, tremolo-laden introduction. As Jimi sinks into his customary early role of inconspicuous contributor – just the way this particular employer demanded it - Richard gets busy with an over-long, melodramatic ballad. The song is characterized by a dubious lyric in which the singer informs his beloved that she’s not very much to look at. Just the words a woman longs to hear!

Richard picks up the pace on Dancing All Over the World, inexplicably titled on some releases Dance A Go-Go. It’s a vibrant semi-stomper tracing a 12-bar blues progression revved up by Little Richard’s whoops and hollers. As for Jimi? He’s less identifiable, buried beneath Richard’s voice and the soloing sax.

By the middle of 1965 Jimi had made his way back to the familiar turf of Nashville, reuniting with his pal Billy Cox, who brought Hendrix into a session for singer Frank Howard. Jimi supplements Howard’s band The Commanders on I’m So Glad, a song that differs from the earlier West Coast Seattle Boy tracks with its distinct Motown influence. Though he gets no solo, Jimi plays his role in this Motor City cloning with a driving single-note pattern that rises up out of the mix in the verses.

Jimi’s stint with Cox was short-lived, as the young guitarist headed back to New York for a reunion with the Isley Brothers.

In early August Jimi joined the Isleys for his last session with the brothers, recording two more songs presented on West Coast Seattle Boy. Soon after Jimi’s death both Move Over and Let Me Dance and Have You Ever Been Disappointed were altered in mixing to bring Hendrix into prominence, as was the case with this compilation’s opening track, Testify.

Move Over and Let Me Dance is a whiny tale of dance floor conflict. Yet the somewhat gimmicky echo effects on the vocals can’t obscure the sound of Hendrix digging into his growing bag of R&B licks and tricks, offering fleeting impressions of the instrumental approaches that would soon become his hallmarks.

Oddly, the song is still fading out when Have You Ever Been Disappointed makes its presence known. In the wake of this inartistic segue comes a dead-slow, emotional recounting of life’s disappointments. Jimi’s playing throughout these six minutes is all about atmosphere, his amplifier pulsing with rich tremolo. Hendrix sketches the notes of the chord changes with delicacy and subtle, sliding accents.

As Jimi’s circle of connections grew in New York, more recording and live performance opportunities began to present themselves, though all were far from lucrative. Among these was a stint with sax player King Curtis, with whom Hendrix made his first recordings of 1966, a year that would turn out to be pivotal in Jimi’s life.

Working with Curtis must have seemed like a wise career move to Hendrix. The sax player was well known, having contributed the lead saxophone to The Coasters’ hits Yakety Yak and Charlie Brown. He’d also played with musicians ranging from Buddy Holly to Aretha Franklin.

Singer Ray Sharpe’s Help Me (Get That Feeling) Part One was tracked at Atlantic Studios on January 21 with backing provided by Curtis and his band, which in addition to Hendrix included two musicians who would become highly regarded studio players, bassist Chuck Rainey and guitarist Cornell Dupree. Teamed with Dupree, Jimi’s role in the song was to provide basic musical propulsion through this thinly veiled take on the hit song Gloria, which Sharpe had performed with Curtis’ band at a party.

The next three West Coast Seattle Boy tracks emanate from further 1966 sessions in New York, all recorded under the auspices of producer John Brantley at Abtone Studio. Perhaps most notably, they all feature Jimi teamed up with saxophonist Lonnie Youngblood. Hendrix and Youngblood became brothers in arms during this period, playing in bandleader Curtis Knight’s band, The Squires, and also working whatever sessions they could scrounge up. The two musicians had no control over those recordings, but many were later issued under both of their names once Jimi attained stardom.

The first of these Brantley-produced tracks is My Girl (She’s a Fox), a slow ballad attributed to vocal group The Icemen. Framed by gently pulsating tremolo, Jimi’s glassy introduction sets the stage for his ethereal rhythmic approach. He offers light flourishes set off by soulful organ from a keyboardist whose name is lost in the mists of history.

Singer Jimmy Norman’s That Little Old Groovemaker is more spirited, and The Icemen are present once again as backing vocalists. The entire band crashes in on a single note before yielding to Jimi’s brief-but-fiery opening salvo. While the song is potentially tailor-made for further Hendrix fireworks, sadly no solo space was offered, and as the song unfolds Jimi does little more than play accent notes.

Using a different strategy, Hendrix kicks off singer Billy Lamont’s Sweet Thang with a slinky, greasy collection of notes and percussive strikes across the strings. Jimi deeply bends a low note on his guitar’s neck to herald the entrance of Lonnie Youngblood’s horn accents. This mid-tempo song is short on structure, long on groove and shouted exhortations from Lamont. Jimi definitely keeps the pulse beating, but once again his moment in the soloing spotlight never materializes.

The final track in West Coast Seattle Boy’s survey of Jimi’s earliest work was crafted in 1969 – though Jimi’s contribution to the song was made three years earlier. How is that possible? King Curtis, acting as producer, simply took the 1966 backing track from Ray Sharpe’s Help Me (Get That Feeling) Part One and supplemented it with new overdubs. The resulting abnormality of a song was christened Instant Groove, though obviously the creative process was far from instant. Jimi’s original part from the initial sessions remained in the mix of the new song, an example of the kind of shenanigans that were common in the recording industry of the 1960s.

All of the West Coast Seattle Boy songs comprising this compilation’s first of four discs at least partially document the early years of Jimi Hendrix’s fledgling career. Yet questions will always linger about exactly what happened when. Jimi left the Isley Brothers, and a few months later he returned. My Diary and Utee were recorded in 1964, the spring of 1965, or the summer of 1965 – depending on which source you want to go with. The Don Covay sessions were in March 1964 according to Experience Hendrix, but most other sources insist they took place in May. Some assert the Little Richard sessions took place at the other end of the United States, in New York rather than Los Angeles. There are even some skeptical fans who question whether Jimi actually played on all of the tracks presented on West Coast Seattle Boy.

For the listener making first forays into the world of Jimi Hendrix, it’s best to simply enjoy this music and be aware there are doubts and varying opinions over questions which will never be fully answered.

Regardless, by 1966 Jimi Hendrix was officially a recording artist, scrambling to make himself a fixture of the New York City scene.

It sounded glamorous enough. The problem? He just might starve to death before any measurable success came his way.

CHAPTER TWO: PAYING THE DUES

Having left his stage name Maurice James behind – though he’d soon try Jimmy James - Jimmy Hendrix in the second half of 1965 was scuffling for survival in a big city that seemed altogether indifferent to his presence.

Temporary salvation came in the form of singer Curtis Knight, who hired Hendrix into his New York-based band and provided him with a sunburst Fender Duo-Sonic. The association with Knight provided the young guitarist with some desperately needed income.

Hendrix picked up session work with Knight as part of his band The Squires. Some of this work appeared on the song Suey, the B-side of the single As the Clouds Drift By, recorded by fading Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield. Still, road work provided the best opportunity to make money, and Hendrix spent November 1965 apart from Knight while touring with Joey Dee and The Starliters, now calling himself Jimmy James.

The musical heart of Joey Dee and the Starliters circa 1965: left to right, Jimmy – or Maurice – James on guitar, Jimmi Mayes on drums, and Calvin Duke, keyboards. Years later Mayes would record several times with Hendrix, including an appearance on The Cry of Love album. (Modern Listener Archives)

But it was in Knight’s company that recording sessions in two separate periods would take place. The first came in 1965, the second following in 1967. Both would prove to have a lasting impact on Jimi’s legacy.

In 1965, Hendrix entering Studio 76 at 1650 Broadway with Knight was unremarkable. But in 1967, as a rising star agreeing to help out an old friend on a few tracks, Jimi’s attendance at Knight sessions raised eyebrows. Hendrix would depart Studio 76 for the final time having enmeshed himself in a tangled web of serious business consequences.

Ed Chalpin was a hustling New York entrepreneur and record producer who had founded the company known variously as PPX International, PPX Industries, or PPX Enterprises. Chalpin was the man who’d signed Jayne Mansfield to her recording contract. And in October 1965 he signed Knight and The Squires as well as Jimmy Hendrix to a three-year contract for the grand total of $1.00 and the unfavorable promise of a 1% royalty rate.

The act of signing that contract would come back to haunt Hendrix. And the recorded residue from the Curtis Knight sessions amounted to a confusing mess almost from the moment the material was first put to tape.

The Authentic PPX Studio Recordings (aka The Complete PPX Studio Recordings)

You Can’t Use My Name: The RSVP/PPX Sessions

Live at George’s Club 20

In the late 1990s, two iterations of Jimi’s alliance with Curtis Knight under the guidance of producer Ed Chalpin appeared as six-CD sets. Bearing identical content, they were released by small record labels in Germany and Japan under the titles The Authentic PPX Studio Recordings and The Complete PPX Studio Recordings. Authenticity and completeness proved to be in short supply.

The tapes that Chalpin licensed for the recordings were turned over to two German engineers, Kalle Trapp and Rainer Hansell, who set about improving the material with a series of edits, splices and re-mixes, before turning the results over to one O. Uckermann for mastering. The discs that emerged from this workflow each contained just over 30 minutes of sounds, making the six-disc-set packaging quite extravagant considering it could have easily been compressed into a mere three discs.

Each disc bears its own subtitle, with proceedings getting underway with Get That Feeling - a familiar title to some Hendrix fans. That name had been used in the past for an early LP of PPX Studios material, just one of the dozens of albums that spawned from Chalpin’s licensing deals with small labels around the globe.

Across the first three discs of this small box set we hear Jimi in the studio laying down tracks, altered though they may have been by the German engineers. The introduction of Happy Birthday flutters in nicely on the muted-trumpet effect of Jimi’s wah-wah pedal, though the device would be used to far more creative gain in the months to come. Everybody Knew But Me – here stripped bare of all tracks save Knight’s voice and Jimi’s guitar – gives focus to Hendrix’s propulsive rhythms accented with cascading flourishes between the lyrics. And How Would You Feel reveals itself as a thinly veiled tribute – or rip-off – of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone. Not surprisingly, Dylan’s lyrics for the latter trump those of Curtis Knight for the former.

Disc four’s promising title – Live at George’s Club – tantalizingly hints at an honest peek at the state of the guitar art of Jimmy James circa late 1965, based on live recordings of a post-Christmas gig at George’s Club 20, a New Jersey nightclub that was located on Bridge Street in Hackensack. It is possible to suss out some truly exciting moments, like those found in the surging instrumental Driving South and the blues warhorse Bright Lights, Big City. But additional instrument overdubs and fake audience reactions place the material on this disc firmly in the company of the heavily-tampered-with songs on the discs that precede it.

What about the fifth and sixth discs? They confusingly and illogically mix more of the George’s Club 20 recordings with unrelated studio efforts, capping off this sloppy project in appropriate fashion.

For decades after Chalpin revealed his signed contract with Hendrix, the PPX boss fought countless legal skirmishes with Hendrix’s management and his estate. So, it’s no surprise that the liner notes contained within the skimpy booklets of these box sets present Ed Chalpin’s side of the story in heroic terms. The text also makes the highly dubious claim that all the instruments on the studio recordings save for the drums were played entirely by Jimi Hendrix.

Despite all the missteps, if these six-disc assemblies were the only point of access for this period of Jimi’s musical life it might be worth tracking down an inexpensive copy. But in recent years the PPX era’s game has changed.

In the summer of 2014, Experience Hendrix broke the news that they had finally gained jurisdiction over all 88 Hendrix-related studio and live recordings once controlled by Ed Chalpin. There was now the intention of implementing a coherent release strategy for at least some of the material. The news seemed certain to relegate the six-disc PPX CD sets to the status of greedy curios, joining the many Chalpin issued and licensed albums that preceded them.

The initial Experience Hendrix release of PPX material soon followed. Coming on February 18, 2015, the 14 songs of You Can’t Use My Name: The RSVP/PPX Sessions was officially a Curtis Knight and The Squires release, with Jimi’s name nowhere to be found on the exterior packaging.

Instrumentals like No Such Animal and Knock Yourself Out (Flying on Instruments) offer healthy servings of young Hendrix in a loose setting. But it can be rough going while enduring vocal-centric tracks like Simon Says or You Don’t Want Me, which demand a significant investment of time for little Hendrix payoff.

Ultimately, the PPX recordings heard here function as a documentation of Jimi’s raw talent within the context of the generic mid-1960s R&B music that served as an incubator for that talent.

Of course, these new mixes are not authentic representations of how this material was originally envisioned, if indeed anyone remembers what that vision may have been. Engineer Eddie Kramer has taken strides to put Jimi’s participation in these recordings in the best possible light. But the truth is that these tapes have all been manipulated so thoroughly almost from the moment the music was recorded that defining what is authentic is virtually impossible. Essentially, You Can’t Use My Name: The RSVP/PPX Sessions simply offers a different way of hearing this brief period of Jimi’s formative career with revisionist mixing presented as history.

A close look at Live at George’s Club 20 reveals Curtis Knight and Jimi Hendrix’s other bandmates opting for white shirts and dark ties, with Hendrix characteristically rebelling in his own small way. (Dagger Records, 2017)

The most honest presentation of just where Jimi stood as a guitarist and budding frontman is found on Live at George’s Club 20, released in 2017 on Experience Hendrix’s official bootleg label Dagger Records. The album is stitched together from recordings of two shows at the small New Jersey venue, captured on December 26, 1965, and January 22, 1966. While the George’s Club 20 material found on the last three discs of the PPX box sets was dramatically altered, here engineer Eddie Kramer has shown greater creative restraint.

The tracks on this CD do not come directly from the original reels that ran through a tape recorder more than fifty years ago. Some listeners even hold to the suspicion that some of this material was actually recorded in the studio. At the least, there has been manipulation of crowd noises, most likely in an effort to make the overall presentation more enjoyable. That’s understandable from a product perspective, at the cost of historical accuracy. But with this release issued on the official bootleg Dagger Records – aimed at a target market of Jimi’s most forgiving fans when it comes to sonic flaws – a just-let-us-hear-what-you’ve-got direct transfer from the tapes as they are would have been preferable.

In light of the work done by Kramer to make this collection more enjoyable, it seems strange that Live at George’s Club 20 has been relegated to the Dagger Records lineup; its contents arguably have greater appeal to a general market than You Can’t Use My Name: The RSVP/PPX Sessions, which was issued on the standard Experience Hendrix label by Sony Music/Legacy.

Unlike that earlier Experience Hendrix compilation of studio tracks – billed as Curtis Knight and The Squires, with Jimi’s name nowhere in sight – Live at George’s Club 20 recognizes the greater focus on Hendrix found in these live recordings. Accordingly, this release is credited to Curtis Knight featuring Jimi Hendrix.

Heard in relatively untampered format, these primitive live recordings are actually quite listenable – not exactly high fidelity, but the instruments are clear and present, the words and vocal inflections easily discernible. Of course, the performances are basic; the job of Hendrix and Knight was not to impress listeners artistically but to get feet on the dance floor, thereby whipping up a bar-profit-generating thirst. As such, one-chord vamps on a pounding beat are just as effective as more sophisticated compositions.

In the liner notes to Live at George’s Club 20 Knight bassist Ace Hall refers to the group having covered songs by The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but the focus of this release leans toward R&B and the blues. It contains selections from the songbooks of founding fathers like Albert Collins, Jimmy Reed, Albert King, Ray Charles, and Howlin’ Wolf.

Ironically, Live at George’s Club 20 opens with Wolf’s Killing Floor, the very song that Jimi would choose to cover as his opening salvo at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival just 18 months after these tracks were recorded. How dizzying those 18 months would turn out to be…

Traveling in the same musical circles as Hendrix and Curtis Knight was saxophonist Lonnie Youngblood, known as The Prince of Harlem. Both a band leader and musician for hire, Youngblood is seen here in Harlem in 1996. His contributions are heard on Live at George’s Club 20 as well as other Hendrix releases. (Frank Moriarty, Modern Listener Archives)

Highlights of Live at George’s Club 20 include Jimi’s slinky, low-down solo on Get Out of My Life Woman, and an energetic run through Driving South, based on the Albert Collins song but re-shaped by Hendrix.

Driving South would soon be familiar to newly minted Jimi Hendrix Experience fans in months to come. But in this early version played at George’s Club 20, the sounds are instantly and fully recognizable as the guitar work of Jimi Hendrix. Still, it’s not all smooth driving on the trip south.

Watch out, Jimi, Knight comically cautions, there’s a tree in the road! Ha! The frontman continues to improvise, calling out the names of imagined stops on