I'm not one to mourn celebrities, even my favourite musicians or other artists, who pass on what's generally considered too early. Hendrix is different. While I don't mourn his early death (I wasn't even born yet then), I sometimes get frustrated as I feel he really would've had a LOT MORE to give. 

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=22885" rel="nofollow - The Ultimate Experience compilation was one of my most listened to CDs when I was 15, around the time it came out. I love the three albums that the Experience made. I don't really care for Band Of Gypsys, though it's been years since I last heard it. Also, for whatever reason, I've never listened to the posthumous stuff much. There must be good things in there, so any suggestions would be welcome. Or is it all just cashing on a legend? 

(More of a side note, as it crossed my mind, but in my teens a friend of mine suggested forming a band with him and another friend of his who I didn't know. We met and talked and naturally discussed what music we were into. I told I liked this band and that and of course Jimi Hendrix, to which the guy replied with a very harsh racist slur. Needless to say, the discussion was over and the band was never formed.) 

While Hendrix is usually most celebrated as a guitarist (and for a reason!), I appreciate him maybe even more as a songwriter, singer and producer. An important part of his genius as a guitar player was the way he treated guitar with studio techniques on Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland. 

Exactly! 

"A hundred years from now, people will still be trying to figure out just what he did, and how he did it."

and how he did it on an upside-down guitar.

Again...love many of the tracks he did at any rate.

I think his main problem in the studio was the mix & production, and actually the records got much better for Ladyland and BoG when Jimi started producing himself.   He had an incredible ear despite his rough sound and wrote some astounding music, he just needed a little more time to bring it all together.

And one of the few releases where the American edition is better than the original British version.

We need to work on your reading skills...never said weak. Some songs simply didn't blow me away...acid or not.

Fortunately the CD remaster fixed that little difficulty.

There are 2 other albums worthy of consideration. Axis: Bold As Love and The Who Sell Out. Great songs and the last as a proper and fun concept album.

Cboi Sandlin wrote: Also, SGT Peppers is way better than Hendrix’s debut.

Yeah I'm afraid this is correct--  I love Jimi with a passion, far more than the Liverpudlians, but in any objective sense Peppers is a superior piece of work.   Even Jimi would agree, as he played the title cut and others from said LP often and with reverence.  

Cboi Sandlin wrote: I actually prefer Bold As Love. Also, SGT Peppers is way better than Hendrix’s debut.

Not sure why a comparison is warranted.

They approached music from completely different viewpoints.

Both masterpieces in my world.

See, we actually agree on some things....

Hendrix is a guitar GOD...plus he played with R&B greats like Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner.

There is a fantastic 5cd live document with Band of Gypsys called Songs For Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts. Although the sets contained a lot of repeated songs, they are done differently enough that they remain interesting...especially "Machine Gun". 

^ Great set but incomplete, missing quite a few songs from all four shows.  

There's some good amateur video footage from those sets as well... somewhere on Youtube.

Hi,

That's a really tough comment, but I don't know how to discuss it. 

European music, has a lot of guitarists that improvise and experiment left and right. Richard Pinhas, Robert Fripp (not in KC but in other material), the late Michael Karoli (Can), the well known John McLaughlin, Steve Hillage in his solos and meditative stuff and someone in America that Steve Vai has shown/said was one of the best improvisers ever ... Frank Zappa, and there is a clip somewhere in the tube that SV plays for us, and I think it is about 10 minutes long or so, where Frank really does well, and probably pulls off what some Europeans had been doing, as well as John McLaughlin. (Just to name a few right off the bat)

I don't dislike Jimi at all, but HOW HE USED the guitar and the effects was really nicely done, and that is something that many lead guitarists all over do not do well, without over doing an effect and it ends up just sounding mechanical and not fluid ... and this is my beef against a lot of lead guitar stuff in the metal area. It is about the loudness and the noise, and not the music itself, and Jimi, at least, was mostly about the music, and in my book, by the time he got to BoG, I think that the quality had dropped a lot since he now was playing "the blues" and not the more experimental and free form stuff that gave his touch a really good impression. Even though the JHE is, for the most part, just songs, and many ended up on radio, the stuff in BoG was nowhere near as adventurous to my ears as the early material.

It's hard to say ... I think that many of us would wish that Jimi had played for 10 to 20 more years, and try more different things with his guitar, although, I'm not sure that a whole lot of it, would have the explosiveness that the early stuff did when he was blowing people out of the stage!

Not sure how serious Dave is, but you don't get to be a universally acclaimed innovator if you're not very good. 

Jack Nicholson reminds me that Jimi Hendrix will forever be remembered as The Shining light of Psychedelic Rock, and the following video is a specially extended version of "Astro Man" (with a suitably astronomical theme), from Jimi's first posthumous solo album: The Cry of Love (1971)

"If you can't improvise like Hendrix...".   Really?   Who could improvise like Hendrix?   Not even Trower or Hansen could improvise like Hendrix.   Sometimes even Hendrix couldn't improvise like Hendrix.

Anyway, I've been a guitarist for almost forty-five years and the truth is that Jimi, separate from his spontaneous psychedelic inventions, was a supremely accomplished and professional guitar player.   You wouldn't know it if you compare him to a John McLaughlin or an Al DiMeola, but he was.   And frankly I think McLaughlin & DiMeola would be the first ones to acknowledge that.  

The fact is that you don't reach that level of innovation without first mastering traditional playing inside and out.   

...word to your mother...I'll chalk up Davesax post as a WTF moment, blame it on...umm not sure so still WTF!!! 

Hi,

There are many that pretty much love and appreciate Jimi, although we don't listen to different things enough to see it.

One listen to Terje Rypdal in a variety of albums, and then the masterpiece EOS (with just David Darling), shows what his appreciation is all about. This particular album is a sort of "chamber music for electric guitar and bass", and something that rockers can not appreciate because, one - it has no lyrics and two - it is a wonderful chamber music concert, something that rock folks can not even consider or appreciate. But to me, this would be Jimi at his incredible best and how to use the guitar and effects. A very rare performance, and one that Terje would repeat many times doing different things, not just some jazz'y stuff ... I like his rock forays with different folks. Very adventurous and not afraid!

John Weinzierl (Amon Duul 2) would probably never say it, but his work in "YETI" (specially the title cut) and then all the way for many years, is quite far out and inspirational. I am not sure that he would tell you that Jimi is his special friend, but the music has a side and punch to it, that is very similar to Jimi. And it's hard not to love the way his guitar comes and goes everywhere, in things like "Wolf City" (the album) and then the two masterpiece anthems in "Vive La Trance". 

There are many others that appreciated the work and played like it. So, in some ways Jimi's influence was never really forgotten, or left behind, but it gave his imagination an outlet that is still remembered.

https://www.teahub.io/down/iiRhwmw_jimi-hendrix-at-woodstock-woodstock-jimi-hendrix-live/" rel="nofollow">

Jimi Hendrix was the demarcation point. There was guitar prior to Hendrix, and then there is everything after. No one single guitarist had as profound effect on the instrument as Jimi Hendrix.

Eric Clapton first witnessed this when he allowed Jimi onto the stage for one song at a 1966 Cream gig in London, subsequently recalling that "He played just about every style you could think of, and not in a flashy way. I mean he did a few of his tricks, like playing with his teeth and behind his back, but it wasn't in an upstaging sense at all, and that was it ... He walked off, and my life was never the same again.” Backstage, an irritated Clapton grumbled to Chas Chandler, "You never told he was that f*cking good." 

How profound? Bob Dylan could never play "All Along the Watchtower" the same ever again:

Hail one of the true greats in the history of Rock! 

What's absolutely sad and irritating is the way in which the tight-a**ed Hendrix family is trying to drain ever last dollar out of Jimi's legacy. Trying to find YouTube videos of hundreds of Hendrix tracks is fruitless because they are withheld. And what's hilarious is I own nearly every worthwhile Hendrix release. I merely want to post videos so that someone who is unaware of Hendrix can get a fuller view. F*ck them.

He just wanted to play.

"No."

"Then how do you know if he was a very good saxophonist or not ?"

"Well. He sounded good to me."

"But you don't play."

"No."

"So what you're saying is "I went to Ronnie Scott's and there was a sax player who sounded very good to me, but I don't have the faintest idea about what being good on a sax is and actually don't know if he was good or not."

I've played the guitar on and off for 30 years, if that matters, and I think there's more to good playing or being a "guitar god" than just pure technical skill. 

Also, I don't think you have to master a skill yourself to recognize if someone is good in it. 

As for Beyonce or Lady Gaga, I haven't listened to either of them but as far as I know, they're good singers and performers. Do they write their own music or play it on their records? If they do, I'd say they are good musicians. If they don't, as I suspect, they're not (or at least they aren't showing it). 

Hendrix wrote his own music and played it himself. 

As a guitar player (which I guess, according to you, is now a prerequisite to make a statement about Hendrix's abilities -- which I suppose now precludes any of us from formulating an opinion on any instrument for which we have no direct playing familiarity), I completely and utterly reject your views.

I could list a compendium of great guitarists -- far, far better than you or I -- who also would completely disagree with you. The vast group of guitarist who claim direct influence from Hendrix is so diverse, it's is amazing -- unprecedented.

But I think I'll just leave off trying to convince you otherwise. What would be the point? But I'll just comment on a non-guitarist (because, evidently, he would not have a clue), Miles Davis. John McLaughlin took Miles to see the film Monterey Pop because Miles had complained he hadn't seen Jimi play. Per Mclaughlin: