Deep Album Cuts Vol. 200: Jimi Hendrix







This column has been one of my favorite things I've done on this site over the years, but it's crazy that I got to 200 installments, and still have so many artists on my wishlist that I can easily imagine passing 300 and beyond that. Narrowcast had its 15th anniversary last year, and in June the blog passed the 1 million views mark (or maybe that happened a long time ago, it's hard to tell if Blogger's current traffic stats go all the way back to 2004). The site's 3000th post is also on the horizon, will probably happen in September. I've written for a lot of places for money and larger audiences over the last 15 years. But I like having this place as my home base to write about whatever I want without thinking about who's the audience or how to monetize it. And it's always felt really good to have this outlet, especially lately when there's not much I can do but hang out at home and listen to music and write. Big thanks to anyone reading this and anyone who's ever taken a look at the site over the years. 

Since the 100th deep album cuts playlist was Stevie Wonder, I wanted #200 to be someone special too, and Jimi Hendrix has been one of my favorite musicians for about as long as I've cared about music. September 18th will be the 50th anniversary of Jimi's death -- obviously he released a relatively small amount of music in his lifetime, and his posthumous discography has been a bit odd and scattered. So I wanted to do a mix of less heralded gems from the Jimi Hendrix Experience albums while also trying to find the best of the posthumous records. 

Jimi Hendrix deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Are You Experienced?
2. May This Be Love
3. I Don't Live Today
4. Third Stone From The Sun
5. Spanish Castle Magic
6. If 6 Was 9
7. Little Miss Lover
8. Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)
9. 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)
10. Gypsy Eyes
11. Machine Gun (live)
12. Night Bird Flying
13. Drifting
14. In From The Storm
15. Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)

Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced (1967)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Axis: Bold As Love (1967)
Tracks 8, 9 and 10 from the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland (1968)
Track 11 from Band Of Gypsys (1970)
Tracks 12 and 13 from The Cry Of Love (1971)
Tracks 14 and 15 from First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997)

As far as I'm concerned, the Jimi Hendrix Experience's only 3 albums are as good as just about anybody's 3 best albums, those records are simply an enormous achievement. And each of them has been my favorite at different points -- Electric Ladyland was an early standard bearer for what a rock artist could do with the sprawl of a double LP studio album, and Are You Experienced is just remarkably packed with titanic, immortal classic rock standards. Axis: Bold As Love is kind of the awkward middle child of the trio -- none of its songs have really entered permanent classic rock rotation like the hits from the other 2 albums, but it being less overplayed means it's still kind of a fresh listen to me. "Spanish Castle Magic" just kicks so much ass, I'm obsessed with it. 

Jimi is my favorite guitarist, but Mitch Mitchell is also one of my favorite guitarists, I think he doesn't get mentioned enough alongside Bonham and Moon and Baker as one of the really inventive powerhouse drummers that helped push rock into louder and wilder areas in the late '60s. There's a great story in Elvis Costello's book Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink about his drummer Pete Thomas (another of my personal favorites) as a teenager idolizing Mitchell, who lived in his hometown, and hanging out outside Mitchell's house until he was invited in. 

"Little Miss Lover" provided the breakbeat for A Tribe Called Quest's "Scenario," and "Are You Experienced" was sampled on no less than 3 classic hip hop songs: Pharcyde's "Passin' Me By" and Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill A Man," and Beastie Boys' "B-Boy Bouillabaisse"(it's also one of 3 Hendrix samples on "Jimmy James"). And of course, "Third Stone From The Sun" was interpolated on Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy." 

There's a fairly little music by Hendrix from before the formation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966. In the mid-'60s, Jimi played guitar with the Isley Brothers, and then was in Little Richard's backing band. There are only a couple of known studio tracks of them playing together, and I included one, "Dancing All Around The World," on my Little Richard deep album cuts playlist a few months ago. 

Hendrix made a lot of music in the nearly two years between the release of Electric Ladyland and his death, most of which came out posthumously. And it seemed to be a really interesting period that he never got to see through to fruition. Hendrix wanted to expand the Experience to a larger ensemble, which Noel Redding wasn't into and quit. The larger Gypsy Sun And Rainbows band played Woodstock, and then evolved into a new trio, Band Of Gypsys with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles. The last album Hendrix completed and approved for release in his lifetime was the Band Of Gypsys live album, released to fulfill a contractual dispute and buy him some time as he worked on the next studio album. It featured all new songs, including an epic 12-minute version of "Machine Gun." 

After Hendrix's death, his collaborators and producers sorted through all the unreleased recordings for his uncompleted 4th album, which was planned as a double album. But they kind of split up the unreleased songs across several albums, two in 1971 and one in 1972, then several more over the next few decades. The way I first heard a lot of Hendrix posthumous songs was when Voodoo Soup was released in 1995 -- I liked that record, but it and other albums overseen by Alan Douglas drew criticism for having overdubbed instruments from musicians who weren't in the studio with Hendrix. So when the Hendrix family regained control of the catalog, they released more highly regarded attempts to construct Jimi's 4th album like 1997's First Rays of the New Rising Sun. There's also a whole lo-fi solo demo Jimi made in early 1970 for an album called Black Gold that has yet to come out other than one track, I really hope that surfaces someday. 

It's kind of sad to me that Jimi left behind so much unreleased music that he's kind of had a much more muddled posthumous output that hasn't endured in the same way as some other stars who died young in that era. Janis Joplin, who died 2 weeks after Jimi, had a posthumous #1 album and #1 single a few months later. By comparison, Jimi has had dozens of posthumous albums, including a few that were top 5 on Billboard. But only a couple of his post-1970 singles charted on the lower reaches of the Hot 100, and never became part of his canon of classic rock staples, much less major hits on the scale of "Me and Bobby McGee" or "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay." 

I love some of those posthumous Jimi songs, though, especially "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)." I first heard it via the cover on the 1993 Stone Free tribute album (by every member of Temple Of The Dog except...uh, Stone). And that rules and is in some ways more polished than any of the Hendrix recordings of the song, but I think I picked the best of the ones available and it's pretty awesome. And "Drifting" is gorgeous. Of all the musicians that died young, Hendrix is the one I think about the most in terms of what he could've made, just imagining what the '70s would have been like with him experimenting even more freely thoughout the decade. 

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream
Vol. 154: Pavement
Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert
Vol. 156: Gang Starr
Vol. 157: Little Big Town
Vol. 158: Thin Lizzy
Vol. 159: Pat Benatar
Vol. 160: Depeche Mode
Vol. 161: Rush
Vol. 162: Three 6 Mafia
Vol. 163: Jennifer Lopez
Vol. 164: Rage Against The Machine
Vol. 165: Huey Lewis and the News
Vol. 166: Dru Hill
Vol. 167: The Strokes
Vol. 168: The Notorious B.I.G.
Vol. 169: Sparklehorse
Vol. 170: Kendrick Lamar
Vol. 171: Mazzy Star
Vol. 172: Erykah Badu
Vol. 173: The Smiths
Vol. 174: Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Vol. 175: Fountains Of Wayne
Vol. 176: Joe Diffie
Vol. 177: Morphine
Vol. 178: Dr. Dre
Vol. 179: The Rolling Stones
Vol. 180: Superchunk
Vol. 181: The Replacements
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