All
songs below are compositions by Jimi Hendrix.
All recordings made by myself, at home.
This work, amateur, has no kind of lucrative purpose.
To start the playlist click the
button
below.
All recordings made by myself, at home.
This work, amateur, has no kind of lucrative purpose.
To start the playlist click the
button
below. 
Jimi
Hendrix was the musician who, more than 50 years ago, most inspired me
to start learning my instrument. He was one of the first artists I listened
to on my own. Without him, I think my whole life would have been very
different. I definitely owe him much.
I remember, as if it was yesterday, listening to his music every day back from school in my little room in my parents' house. I had received a small cassette recorder as a gift that allowed me to record whatever I wanted (a Philips, the first ones to appear on the market, a sort of rectangular box not very thick with a speaker on top) and I had found a way to hack it to slow down the tape drive motor as I wanted. Having started learning the guitar shortly before, it allowed me to pick up all of JH's licks that were too fast to pick up at normal speed! I remember being particularly affected by the news of his death, feeling a bit like an orphan of something and letting go of my first non-childish crying, I was 13 years old.
2020 is the year of the fiftieth anniversary of his death and I felt it was absolutely necessary for me to pay tribute to him by recording some of his songs. It was a great pleasure to rediscover some of it and learn it (whenever not done before), and to record them, at home, peacefully. I'm sharing the result with my friends with a view to perhaps very modestly try to making people discover or rediscover the work of a major artist of the last century whose most of us are still children.
Daniel G. - 2020
I remember, as if it was yesterday, listening to his music every day back from school in my little room in my parents' house. I had received a small cassette recorder as a gift that allowed me to record whatever I wanted (a Philips, the first ones to appear on the market, a sort of rectangular box not very thick with a speaker on top) and I had found a way to hack it to slow down the tape drive motor as I wanted. Having started learning the guitar shortly before, it allowed me to pick up all of JH's licks that were too fast to pick up at normal speed! I remember being particularly affected by the news of his death, feeling a bit like an orphan of something and letting go of my first non-childish crying, I was 13 years old.
2020 is the year of the fiftieth anniversary of his death and I felt it was absolutely necessary for me to pay tribute to him by recording some of his songs. It was a great pleasure to rediscover some of it and learn it (whenever not done before), and to record them, at home, peacefully. I'm sharing the result with my friends with a view to perhaps very modestly try to making people discover or rediscover the work of a major artist of the last century whose most of us are still children.
Daniel G. - 2020
Spanish
Castel Magic
|
The
lyrics of "Spanish Castle Magic" were inspired by a club
called the "Spanish Castle" which was located south of
Seattle / USA (Jimi's birthplace), in what was then King County
(now the city of Des Moines, Washington).
It was built in the 1930's to avoid Seattle's restrictive nightclub laws at the time. In 1959, the club began hosting top local rock bands such as "The Fabulous Wailers" and occasional touring stars. Jimi Hendrix performed at the "Spanish Castle" on several occasions. The club was demolished in April 1968. According to rock critic Dave Marsh, "Once you know the legend of the Wailers at "Spanish Castle" and the facts about Jimi's presence, the lyrics of his "Spanish Castle Magic" seem haunted by a certain nostalgia: "It's very far away, it takes about half a day to get there if you go with my... dragonfly," he sings. In the lyrics Jimi invites us to join him on a cosmic journey as a "dragonfly" to a faraway place "even though it's not in Spain"! The "riffs" of the song, as always inspired by "Rhythm & Blues", are particularly breathtaking, it's a real pleasure to play and sing! |
Power
To Love
|
This
song came to life with different lyrics under the title "Paper
Airplanes" played with Buddy Miles (drummer) during a live
jam at the Newport Pop Festival in June 1969. When the two men worked
together in the studio later that year, they returned to the song
and developed it further into "Power Of Soul" (aka "Power
To Love"). However, Jimi never managed to finish a studio version
of it.
One of the riffs came from the song "Mary Ann" by Ray Charles! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToBJ5VzEhNw This song is remarkable for the number of different riffs it has. Hendrix was really the king of the find in terms of riffs (but not only). And the different key changes further accentuate the effect of diversity. The song is long though, doesn't have the conventional structure of a "pop" song but you don't get bored for a second because of the perpetual evolution of the phrasings and keys! One of my favourites! |
Bold
As Love
|
Beautiful
text with its colourful images such as "Her fiery green gown
sneers at the grassy ground..." or Blue are the life-giving
waters taken for granted". Very poetic lyrics for an epic that
starts like a soft ballad and climbs in crescendo to a totally lyrical
end.
Hendrix's biographer, Harry Shapiro, describes the theme of "Bold as Love" as "an Olympic battle of passions whose strategy is traced ... obviously in terms of colour", noting in relation to the lyrics that "The conclusion must be that love comes in many shades, that love is hard work and that to be properly involved requires commitment and courage". Denise Sullivan, author for AllMusic (a metadata database dedicated to music), explains in the same way that the song "describes a rainbow in an epic declaration of love with multiple colours", proposing that "one interpretation may be that people are one, despite our different nuances; another may be that in each person lies a set of emotions, each corresponding to a colour" and concluding that "in both cases, full integration is Hendrix's ideal". I love, as in all my favourite Jimi tracks, the pure Rhythm & Blues style of the guitar part. |
Manic
Depression
|
One
of the rare songs by Hendrix using a 3/4 bar. A waltz in a way,
but with the dynamics of a binary rock & roll!
Written in 1967 at the very beginning of his period with "Experience". "Manic Depression" is the former name for the bi-polar disorder. But, of course, in the song, the use of these terms is more a romantic expression of a feeling of frustration than of psychiatric illness. In this song, Hendrix sings of despair and confusion, and wonders what kind of world he lives in. His protective refuge from chaos is "music, sweet music". |
Remember
|
In
"Remember", Jimi addresses a woman, trying to remind her
how good life was when they were together. Everything seems to have
turned bad or completely disappeared since he broke up with this
woman, who he is promising he will change his ways for...
"Remember" is 100% Rhythm & Blues inspired (although a bit tinted with "pop") with its very moving rhythmic structure and, of course, its classic riff which is repeated for almost the entire song in cycles of 11 bars. A model of its kind! |
Message
To Love
|
One
of the first tracks of the second period of Jimi's work, the one
that brings him back to his Rhythm & Blues roots after the rather
"Pop" experience of his first group (actually called "Experience"!).
The guitar "riffs" are clearly R&B but, and this is what makes Hendrix's genius, played in a different context and with a sound inventiveness unknown until then. He really took full advantage of the new technologies that were emerging at the time for the electric guitar and he applied them thoroughly to this style. This song was never released in its studio version, a version that was never finished given the choice of the song to be on the monumental live album "Band Of Gypsies". The lyrics of this song are very positive, it's a call for freedom and love of life. |
Angel
|
Jimi
Hendrix wrote "Angel" in reference to a dream he had about
his mother, Lucille Hendrix née Jeter, when he was a child;
speaking in a December 1967 interview conducted by Meatball Fulton,
Hendrix explained the inspiration behind the song by describing
the dream as follows:
< My mother was bein' carried away on this camel. And there was a big caravan, she's sayin', 'Well, I'm gonna see you now,' and she's goin' under these trees, you could see the shade, you know, the leaf patterns across her face when she was goin' under ... She's sayin', 'Well, I won't be seein' you too much anymore, you know. I'll see you.' And then about two years after that she dies, you know. And I said, 'Yeah, but where are you goin'?' and all that, you know. I remember that. I will always remember that. I never did forget ... there are some dreams you never forget.> In the biography Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy, Hendrix historians Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek have compared "Angel" – which they describe as "arguably Jimi's finest ballad" – with fellow The Cry of Love track "Night Bird Flying", citing similarities in their lyrics as evidence of the more personal subject matter explored by the musician in his later career. The song has also been likened lyrically to "May This Be Love" (from Are You Experienced) and "Long Hot Summer Night" (fromElectric Ladyland), in which Shapiro and Glebbeek feel that Hendrix is seeking a "mystical woman ... as his only means of inner peace and personal salvation". The harmonic progression of this song, obviously R&B influenced (I would have totally seen Otis Redding singing it!), is simple but beautiful. With this story of a mother and an angel on top, it's a very touching journey to dreamland. |
Crosstown
Traffic
|
A
few minutes of pure pleasure where Jimi brilliantly uses road and
mechanical terms as a metaphor for his emotional state about his
unfaithful partner. This song is about a girl he finds difficult
to get rid of. Making her understand that she's not / no longer
wanted is like driving through a traffic jam!
The lyrics are similar to those of many blues songs in that they are full of sexual references in clever metaphors such as: "I'm not the only soul who's accused of hit and run. Tire tracks all ‘cross your back , I can see you had your fun"... |
Fire
|
A
favourite of Hendrix's on stage and often in the first part of a
show.
Despite its sexual connotations, the song has a very innocent origin. Indeed, the main lyrics ("let me stand next to your fire") are inspired by a day around Christmas 1966 when the band, having just finished a concert in the cold, went to see the mother of bassist Noel Redding in Folkestone, England. Upon their arrival, Jimi asked Redding's mother, Margaret, if he could "stand by his fire" to warm himself. The family dog was lying by the fire, which inspired the reply: "Move over Rover, and let Jimi take over" (which can be heard in the bridge after the second chorus). This was a breakthrough for Hendrix, who, at that time, started writing songs at the request of his manager Chas Chandler. Laying down guitar riffs was easy for him (for sure!), but he also proved to have a talent for lyrics, for example by being able to turn a single line into a fiery tale of lascivious passion! |
I
Don't Live Today
|
Musicologist
Ritchie Unterberger considers the lyrics to "I Don't Live Today"
to be more at home in a gothic rock setting than in psychedelia,
however; he describes the music as being "played and sung with
an ebullience that belies the darkness of the lyrics."Author
Sean Egan wrote that Hendrix "superbly, and with great economy
of words evok[ed] despair, whether that despair be an individual's
or the despair of a devastated and brutalized race."
The "tribal" rhythmic patterns (intro and verse that follows) serve as a platform for a delirium of guitar feedback that gives a very special atmosphere to the song. In honour of his Cherokee heritage, Hendrix used to dedicate the song to American Indians and other minority groups. |
Ain't
No Telling
|
Very
little information about the history of this very short track except
for some unimportant things like dates, circumstances and place
of recording of the original studio version. Yet it's a great piece
of Hendrixian Rhythm & Blues with, on top of that, a particularly
weird structure, the bridge being unfailingly reminiscent of a progressive
rock delirium. Definitely a song that I love despite the difficulty
to sing it given the flow of the lyrics!
|
Drifting
|
Hendrix
is said to have written this magnificent ballad as a tribute to
R&B legend Curtis Mayfield, with whom he played early in his
career.
This song is clearly a song about the quest for love. Very few words, but so well said: Drifting On a sea of forgotten teardrops On a life boat Sailing for, your love, sailing home. Drifting On a sea of old heart breaks On a life boat Sailing for, your love, sailing home. According to Jimi's sound engineer, Eddie Kramer, he would have had the remarkable ability to record a solo that he knew, played backwards (by turning the tape recorder the other way round), would sound perfect on a part of a song. It's possible, but, from experience, I know that any solo played backwards can more or less do the trick, it's a bit of luck. The more takes you do, the more you're likely to find what you need ;-) I also used this process in my recording, at the end. |
Straight
Ahead
|
That
song started life as "Pass It On".
It is one of those compositions that should have been on Jimi's 4th album if his life had not ended prematurely. The song was finally released in the posthumous album "Cry Of Love" after being finished and mixed by Eddie Kramer (sound engineer) and Mitch Mitchell (lead drummer of Hendrix's bands). The lyrics say a lot about Jimi's mental state at the time: "Hello my friend, so good to see you again. I've been all alone, all by myself. I just couldn't make it"... |
Ezy
Rider
|
Clearly
inspired by Dennis Hoppers' successful counter-culture movie "Easy
Rider" from 1969. The film featured two other Hendrix songs:
"If Six Was Nine" and "Axis: Bold As Love".
It had several twists and turns, the themes and "riffs" of the latter having already been incorporated into other songs before it was recorded in its final form. The intro riff was set by Jimi and his band "The Experience" as early as 1967, when they worked on the completion of a song composed by Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell (bassist and drummer) entitled "Dance". The band remembered this riff and came back in 1969 with a jam now known as "Lullaby For The Summer". Another instrumental, known as "Mushy Name" on some unofficial releases, later became the centerpiece of "Ezy Ryder". |
Little
Wing
|
According
to Hendrix, "Little Wing" came from an idea he had originally
developed while playing in Greenwich Village, when he was fronting
his band "Jimmy James and the Blue Flames" in the summer
of 1966. He later explained that he was further inspired during
the Experience's performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
In discussing his lyrics, JH was characteristically enigmatic. In a 1967 interview, he explained "Most ballads come across in different ways. Sometimes you see things in different ways than other people see it. So then you write it in a song. It could represent anything". In different interviews, he acknowledged an American Indian-influence on his songs "I Don't Live Today", "May This Be Love", and "Little Wing". He described "Little Wing" as being "based on a very, very simple Indian style", perhaps referring to some Native American mythologies in which spirits inhabit nature and animals, including birds. In one interview, he saw it as self-explanatory: "That's exactly what it's about, like 'She's walking through the clouds'". Music journalist Charles Shaar Murray likens the figure to a feminine ideal: "Sometimes she is a spirit, sometimes a fantasy, sometimes a woman as solidly, palpably physical as he is". The figure first appears as "Waterfall" in "May This Be Love", where she offers solace and hope, and as "a soulful, loving sprite" in "Little Wing". However, other writers have suggested that the figure is similar to the guardian angel associated with Christianity,which is clearly what she represents in Hendrix's later song "Angel". |
