DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Jimi 50 years ago.

While it's not a song he was famous for and it's an old blues classic, I love his rendition of Red House. It's a standard blues classic that even we covered in the Band Jack Schidt I sang in. Great song!

If "Electric Ladyland" and "Band of Gypsys" were any indication of how his writing and arranging were pointed had he lived, we missed out on much more than just his playing.

Sort of like Jaco in the sense that, legendary playing talent aside, they were both really coming into their own as brilliant writers and arrangers.

jmho

Electric Ladyland, LSD, headphones, and I had many nights together back in the day.

Jimi is definitely one of my favourites.

He took the guitar to a completely new level and yes, he had a lot more in him that, sadly, we’d never hear.

Pit: I agree about Red House. Up there with my fave Hendrix tunes, along with Axis: Bold as Love, and Little Wing.

Incredibly talented guy who left this world way too soon.

Just as I’m reading your post his cover of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ comes on the radio.

One of my favorite artists of all time. I've been listening to him since high school (and like most of us on here, that was a long time ago).

Definitely one of my top 10 all time artists. On any given day, anywhere from 1 to 10.

I stop at 10 because I don't think Jimi could fall out of my top 10.

Either "he was just right for the era" or "the era was just right for him".

Here's thinking they're both.

Dunno. Coming out with a song called Purple Haze when a specific type of acid called Purple Haze was the rage and the song wasn't about acid called Purple Haze???

"Scuse me while I kiss the sky".....

Hmmm.....

The Story Behind The Song: Jimi Hendrix's game-changer, 'Purple Haze'

“When I die, I want people to just play my music, go wild and freak out, do anything they want to do.” – Jimi Hendrix

If one would ever accredit an artist with being ‘ahead of their time’, then it is an accreditation that should be reserved solely for Jimi Hendrix. Raised in Seattle, Washington in the United States, Hendrix never had a single day of formal guitar lessons. Instead, he soaked all the popular blues and R&B music he could at the time with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Chuck Berry acting as his favourites. As a black artist himself, he was probably very savvy to the kind of treatment black musicians would endure, and his mistreatment may be completely unavoidable. When The Rolling Stones came to prominence in the London scene in Britain, the aforementioned blues players were re-awakened within the consciousness of the American public, bringing Muddy Waters and company out of their early retirement and back on to stages.

Hendrix started as a side musician supporting acts such as Little Richard, The Isley Brothers, and King Curtis. Hendrix was always much more than just a rhythm and blues guitar player even at a young age. His foundational start was embedded in the archetypes of blues music, which was good training. But Hendrix, very early on, decided he would drop that gig and move to New York to make an attempt at his own career.

The ‘Purple Haze’ summoner, the wizard on the guitar, Jimi Hendrix would eventually be discovered by another musician who played for a time in The Animals. Original bass player for the group, Chas Chandler left the band and went onto bigger and better things himself — he wanted to try his hand at producing. It was in New York where Chandler heard Hendrix playing in a club for the first time and the former bassit convinced Hendrix to come back to London with him, where blues and R&B were not only alive and well, but in fact, thriving. Not only this, but, overall, the British treated black musicians better.

Recruiting other amateurs, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding, who was initially a guitar player would be asked to try out on bass. With The Jimi Hendrix Experience formed, the band recorded a version of ‘Hey Joe’, which entered the charts. Hendrix biographer, John McDermott commented on the relationship and team effort between Hendrix and Chas Chandler: “It’s all about facilitating Hendrix’s talent. I think what Chandler realised is that with some parameters, this man is a tremendous artist, and I think he was smart enough to recognise ‘I need to get this rhythm section around him, we need to be in a good studio,’ and it’ll all take care of itself.”

Hendrix would proceed to play at various clubs around London, experimenting and finding his sound. This was when blues bands like The Rolling Stones were around, but guitar playing as an art form was becoming highly revered, as popularised by impressive players such as Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. The magic moment came when Chas heard the beginnings of ‘Purple Haze’.

Writer, John McDermott continues his story about the fateful day in 1966: “Jimi was playing a small club date in London and was backstage toying with the riff of ‘Purple Haze,’ and Chas, you know, being there, heard it immediately and said, ‘Write the rest of that. That’s the next single.’ Because I think he had heard enough of Jimi, even in the two or three months that they were together, to know that that is something very special, work on that.”

With enough funds gathered from the chart success of ‘Hey Joe’, Chandler was determined to bring the Jimi Hendrix Experience into a better studio where a young and promising studio engineer worked, namely, Eddie Kramer. Kramer worked in Olympic studios and he himself was also very experimental. Kramer remembers the story: “The studio manager said to me one day, ‘You know, Eddie, there’s this American chappie with big hair called Jimi Hendrix. You do all that weird stuff so why don’t you do this, you know?’ It was very English and very proper, and we hit it off.”

The necessary pieces were all in place for the creation of the brilliant classic hit that is ‘Purple Haze’. Kramer continued, “I mean, it was just a good feeling. He was very shy. When he stepped out on the studio floor and, you know, plugged in — oh, my God, it was just a revelation for me. You know, I’d never heard anything quite like it.”

Just as it happened to Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and The Beatles, the same happened to Jimi Hendrix. He was placed on a pedestal and heralded as the new king of the counterculture and the drugs that came with it. Many people associate the song, ‘Purple Haze’, with taking acid, but Hendrix said otherwise. In fact, the song was written about the time he had been reading a science-fiction novel and fell asleep. Hendrix dreamt that he was underwater, surrounded by an impenetrable purple haze. He believes that the purple haze was a spiritual and religious awakening and was perhaps protected by God. Initially, the refrain to the song was, “Purple Haze, Jesus saves.”

The song came out in March of 1967 and was a huge hit. The younger generations loved and adored him. Some critics, in their usual curmudgeonly fashion, opted to wage war. One critic called him ‘the psychedelic Uncle Tom’. To which Hendrix responded, “I don’t care, man. I don’t care anymore what they say anymore. It’s up to them then if they want to mess up the evening by looking at one thing. You know, because all that is included, man. When I feel like playing with my teeth, I do it, because I feel like it, you know? All that is complete when I’m on stage, I’m a complete natural, more so than, you know, talking to a group of people or something.”

Regardless of whether Hendrix truly is the psychedelic saviour of the time or not, Hendrix was truly an innovative guitar player who forever revolutionized rock n’ roll and popular music as we know it. ‘Purple haze’ will always be the anthem for the outcasts and the misunderstood.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/jimi-hendrix-purple-haze-story-behind-the-song/?amp

I couldn't imagine what it was like to witness this. 1968 at the old University of Toledo Fieldhouse. I can't find the exact setlist, but here's one from a concert 3 days prior, and a live video of one of my favorite Hendrix tunes:

"Purple Haze"
"The Wind Cries Mary"
"Foxy Lady"
"Manic Depression"
"Red House"
"Can You See Me"
"Love or Confusion"
"I Don't Live Today"
"May This Be Love"
Fire
"Third Stone From the Sun"
Remember
"Are You Experienced?"

Great article, thanks!

Jfan: a guy I used to work with is a baby boomer who grew up in southern Ontario. He saw Hendrix AND Led Zeppelin live in concert, just a few months apart. Zeppelin in Kitchener, Ont. of all places, Hendrix in Toronto.

When he told me that, I was like, “damn, that’s two major ticks off a bucket list, even in hindsight”

There are two guitar players that both died very young in life that make me wonder what might have been in music. Jimi Hendrix and Randy Randy Rhoads.

Abso-freakinglutely awesome thread! and shout out to the JFan for bringing something that hasn’t been played out.

I never really knew what a wah pedal was until I heard Voodoo Chile (slight return). That song was life changing as a little kid. “Stand up next to a mountain. Chop it down with the edge of my hand.” Really!?! Heck yes!!

Axis Bold as Love: I don’t even know where to begin but, since this s is a Browns forum, “orange is young full of daring, but very unsteady for the first go round.”

My best friend used to have the line from Long Hot Summer Night on his answering machine, “and the telephone keeps on ringin’“

If you haven’t listened to Castles made of Sand in the last year do it now. Do it.... NOW.

What about If 6 was 9 and the unabashed unashamed proclamation of “I’m gonna let my freak flag fly”

The opening riff of Purple Haze! In medieval times that interval was the Diabolus in Musica. If some drunken friar played the wrong notes on his pan pipe he mighta got kilt for that.

SRV had so much respect for Jimi that he refused to put words to his rendition of Little Wing.
Where
And yes Red House. Love that intro and the prelude to the solo,”I still got my guitar, Look out now.”

Click Bang what a Hang, I really have to go to sleep.

Speaking of sleep, what are you, like Rip Van Winkle and sleep months at a time, only to wake up and post on a Browns message board?

Ok Vk, here ya go.

Amen, bone!

This is my "desert island" album, FYI . . .