New album shows why Jimi Hendrix still matters
WPI Hendrix expert Joel Brattin talks about new release from late icon, 'Both Sides of the Sky'
It’s easy to think of Jimi Hendrix as a distant musical icon. After all, March 15 will mark the 50th anniversary of the rock legend’s two sold-out shows with the Jimi Hendrix Experience at Clark University. Hendrix had something of a firefly career, burning brightly for the space of a few years before dying at 27. In his lifetime, his catalog comprised three studio albums, one live album and one “greatest hits” album. Framed that way, it doesn’t sound like much.
And yet, Hendrix’s music still reverberates vividly, with songs such as “Purple Haze,” “Fire,” “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” “Little Wing” and the Bob Dylan-penned “All Along the Watchtower” still as exciting as ever. Moreover, there’s been a steady stream of Hendrix’s recorded material appearing since his 1970 death, including private recordings, tapes from soundboards and bootlegs from concerts. Still, it would be easy for even the most fanatic Hendrix aficionados to think they’d heard everything. That’s why WPI humanities professor and Hendrix expert Joel Brattin is so excited by the release of “Both Sides of the Sky,” a collection of mostly unreleased recordings.
“I was surprised and delighted to find that there were several songs on this release that I had not heard, that I had not had an inkling of” says Brattin, who has written a review of the album for the international Hendrix journal UniVibes. “I think I’m pleased to see so many songs that are genuinely new and also excellent. … I think the album will please the hardcore Hendrix fans and a welcome introduction to people who haven’t heard his music.”
According to Brattin, the album — slated to be released March 9 — both shows different layers to Hendrix’s musicianship and highlights some of his collaborations. Indeed, the album kicks off with a rendition of Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” recorded April 22, 1969, his first session with his Band of Gypsys bandmates drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox. The trio recorded roughly 50 takes of the song, and yet the one on this album is one scholars hadn’t heard, and that wasn’t the only surprise.
“You get to hear him play bass,” says Brattin, “you get to hear him play electric sitar. There’s sitar and guitar, along with drums in the instrumental for some serious time in the seven-minute instrumental ‘Cherokee Mist.’ He’s playing feedback guitar, manipulating the sound with the tremolo bar. It’s an outstanding musical use of feedback.”
Elsewhere, on an arrangement of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock," Hendrix takes the bass, with Stephen Stills singing and playing organ. This recording, according to Brattin, predates the popular Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version.
“He’s a remarkably innovative bass player,” says Brattin of the recording, adding that the song was done in the same session as another song that appears on the album, “$20 Fine,” which was new to him and also features Stills singing. Hendrix plays multitrack guitar on that one, and Brattin counts it among his favorites. He also particularly likes the last two minutes of “Send My Love to Linda," recorded with Miles and Cox, and “Jungle,” which he says is “very restrained beautiful electric guitar and drums … it’s just a haunting minor theme, based on blues, with Hendrix's beautiful twist.”
Some of Brattin’s few disappointments come with two of the album’s otherwise more interesting collaborations. "Georgia Blues," which features Lonnie Youngblood singing and playing saxophone, is the only song on the album that has seen commercial release before, although he’s quick to note that the album the recording appeared on, “Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix,” isn’t one which most listeners would be familiar, and that this more public release gives it “a new level of canonicity.” He’s also mildly irked that the collaboration with Johnny Winter, who plays slide guitar in “Things I Used to Do,” has been edited from a much longer recording.
All told, Brattin finds the album to be something of a treasure trove and a good reminder as to why Hendrix’s work is still so popular and influential today.
“I think Hendrix is part of why generations after him have cared about the electric guitar,” he says, later adding, “Hendrix’s music can put people in touch with deep, personal, ineffable aspects of themselves.”
Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.