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Jimi is our chief hometown hero here in Seattle (Kurt Cobain being a very close second). This is from probably his most famous performance after Woodstock, live at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. (At the end of his gig, he climaxed "Wild Thing" by lighting his guitar on fire.) Anyway, I used to have an LP from Monterey with Jimi on Side One and Otis Redding on Side Two. (What a great album. Somewhere I lent it to someone and it vanished.) However, it didn't have the whole performance, and this was one of the songs left off -- which was dumb, since this is one of the finest versions of it. "Hey Joe" has been a rock standard for years, but Jimi's version is the standard by which all others are judged. Anyway, it's in the film version, and the newly remastered copy of the film is well worth owning.

PS Our sister site Newstalgia proudly features The Jags -- Live at the Paris Theatre, London, 1979 for your Saturday night listening pleasure.

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(Little Richard, with Jimi Hendrix in the foreground - yes, but it was brief)

By the time Little Richard made his way over to Vee-Jay Records (after leaving Specialty, the label with all his hits), Vee-Jay was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. True, they were the first American label to issue a Beatles album, and they rang up a string of hits with other artists such as Betty Everett, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed and a ton of others. Bad management, shaky financial footing and some errors in judgment finally forced the label into receivership in late 1965, pretty much putting an end to Vee-Jay as a force in the music business and leaving a number of artists without a label.

But before it came to a crashing halt, Little Richard managed to do two sessions in 1964. One session was a greatest hits rehash of his earlier Specialty material. But the second session featured new material including this track I Don't Know What You've Got, featuring a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix on guitar, during a brief tenure with the band.

Sadly, this track hardly made a dent in the charts when it was issued in 1965. Richard would head off to another label shortly after and Hendrix would head off to England and start another chapter in rock n' roll history.

It does make you wonder what would have happened if history had turned out different.

From Wikipedia:

In 2004, Tedeschi was featured on the PBS show, Austin City Limits, flanked by William Green, on Hammond organ, Jason Crosby, playing keyboards, violin, and vocals, bassist Ron Perry, and Jeff Sipe, on drums. The performance was extremely well received.[4] In the same year, Tedeschi turned a few heads when she was listed by Peter Gammons of ESPN in his list of "all time top 20 favorite albums." She came in at a respectable #15 for her album, Just Won't Burn. Not to be outdone, husband Derek Trucks also made the list, at #9 for Joyful Noise, both surprising accomplishments, given that both artists play blues, a genre often overlooked. In addition, the other musicians on the list were some of rock's elite, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Little Feat, and Jackson Browne, to name a few.

I love excuses for posting Hendrix embeds, and this piece of news is definitely a valid one.

Jimi's sister Janie, the President and CEO of Experience Hendrix, told Gibson guitars that she plans to release unreleased Hendrix material every 12 to 18 months for the next ten years. Gibson is releasing a line of Hendrix signature guitars, including a signature Flying V.

"We probably have another decade of music, including video. Every 12 to 18 months we'll continue to have new releases and Dagger [Experience Hendrix's label for live recordings] official bootlegs," she told Gibson.

"Jimi was a workaholic. After Electric Lady studios was built he was able to record constantly for as many hours as he wanted to. It's almost as if he knew he had only four years to accomplish everything that he did. We have an amazing amount of original masters, including a lot of material that hasn't been previously released."

The prospect of new original material from the studio is an exciting one, as the consensus is generally that the best live recordings of Hendrix's career have mostly seen the light of day. New compositions, however, are another story. We'll see.

The San Francisco-based promoters that are putting on WestFest, a free 40th Anniversary Woodstock concert on October 25th, will announce today that they do not plan to comply with a cease and desist order from New York's Woodstock Ventures, the production company that put on the original Woodstock in 1969.

According to a press release from Boots Houghston, producer of WestFest, Woodstock Ventures has been shutting down "any event in the world that plans to celebrate the "40th Anniversary of Woodstock," as well as anyone who tries to use the phrase "Peace and Love." Houghston claims that since at least 18 of the original artists that were at the original 1969 festival were from San Francisco, that they have as much a right to use the name as anyone.

Among the SF performers are DFH veteran and Country Joe McDonald, a performer at the original Woodstock, and an ensemble of 3,000 guitar players playing Jimi Hendrix's 'Purple Haze' at the same time.

Understandably and predictably, folks involved with the San Francisco production think that going to the mat on trademark issues over the word "Woodstock" is not exactly in the spirit of Woodstock itself, and that Woodstock has plenty of a debt to settle with San Francisco. "We're the ones who started the whole vibe to begin with," Hughston said.

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We had a great discussion here last week about our favorite Beatles covers. What about Dylan covers? Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" might be Jimi's best known, but "Like a Rolling Stone" live at Monterey is my favorite Dylan cover, hands down.

What's yours?

I met Mitch in LA a couple of times through some music friends, but that was a long time ago. RIP.

Mitch Mitchell, drummer for the legendary Jimi Hendrix Experience of the 1960s and the group's last surviving member, was found dead in his hotel room early Wednesday. He was 61.