One Song - Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze"

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

This week on One Song, Diallo and LUXXURY kick off a two-part deep dive into Jimi Hendrix’s legacy, starting with the track that put him on the map—“Purple Haze” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. They unpack the countercultural movement of 1967 that launched Hendrix into stardom and explore how he fused blues and psychedelic rock into something entirely his own. Plus, LUXXURY reveals the one thing every guitarist gets wrong about the song. One Song Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40SIOpVROmrxTjOtH7Q1yw?si=f6500a0063d949a3 Songs Discussed: “Purple Haze” - The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Strawberry Fields Forever” - The Beatles “Light My Fire” - The Doors “Somebody to Love” - Jefferson Airplane “To Sir With Love” - Lulu “The Letter” - The Box Tops “Ode To Billie Joe” - Bobbie Gentry “Testify, Pts. 1 & 2” - The Isley Brothers “House Of The Rising Sun” - The Animals “Hey Joe” - The Leaves “Hey Joe” - The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Foxey Lady” - The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Hold It” - Bill Doggett “Taxman” - The Beatles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sorry for the drum chills. I loved it. It added something. There was something missing in that little pocket, and you gave it to us. So luxury today, we're diving into the legacy of an artist whose impact is so deep, we've decided to do not one, but two episodes for him. That's right. He was one of the best guitar players to ever exist.

But more than a virtuoso, he was a creative visionary who masterfully balanced innovation and tradition combining blues and psychedelic rock. That's right. We're going to start our two-parter today with the, a song that thrust him into superstardom, a song that every guitar player has been playing wrong for decades. You heard us? You just know there's a guy out there going,

I already knew that. No, no, no. This isn't for you. One guy knows, but many people don't know. We're going to get into it. We're talking one song, and that song is Purple Hays by Jimmy Hendrix. Visit BetMDMDM Casino and check out the newest exclusive,

the Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge.

BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddell. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind. I can find iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen.

You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And if you want to watch one song, you can watch this full episode on YouTube and Spotify. And while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, so Luxury, what was your first introduction to Jimmy Hendrix, The Artist? The Jimmy Hendriss the artist was just always in the world. When you're growing up in San Francisco and you're in high school or middle school. He's on a few walls, I imagine. Oh my God, you're going down.

Hate Ashbury because like it's the first time you've been out of it. Hang a right at the Jimmy Hendrix mural and then make a left at the Jimmy Hendrix mural. It's such a big part of like the culture, I suppose, of the 80s, you know, post-70s. But like in San Francisco especially, he's one of those icons that was on a million T-shirts, a million murals, a million posters, right up there with a pantheon of all the hippie rock gods of the time. Yeah, I missed that San Francisco. Yeah. That San Francisco is long gone. What about you, Dialo?

You know what? I think my exposure to Jimmy Hendrix was almost exclusively through TV shows. and movies, the occasional record compilation. You know what I mean? Like, he was just that dude who represented hippie rock, 60s rock. Hey, man, is that Freedom Rock? We'll turn it up, man. We'll turn it up, man.

That's to the people who are under 40. That is a reference to a commercial. It's the greatest advertisement of all times. It is. Hey, man, is that Freedom Rock? Yeah, man. Well, turn it up, man. Freedom Rock has it all, man.

40 original rock hits by the original artist. on four records, three cassettes. By the way, my first exposure to that commercial was the S&L parody of it where John Lovins plays the guy from Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia? Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, I've already pissed off a lot of our listeners by referring to Jerry Garcia as that guy for the Grateful Dead.

I will say right off the bat, I have always had this push or pull, love, hate relationship with the music of the 60s because as a kid growing up in the 80s, it was just forced on us too much. We share this, by the way, this is where we align more than anything. Because, yes, growing up in the 80s, in the Bay Area, where I went to school with, like, kind of what you would think would be the sons and daughters of that era. But it was actually a bunch of rich kids who listened to that music, and it felt really inappropriate to me. Like, it's like, you don't deserve the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd and the Beatles or whatever it is, Zeppelin. No, I know.

But you know what I think is going to be good about this episode is that I think one of the mission statements of the show is to hear songs like you're hearing them for the first time. Right. This song, and so much of the Jimmy Hendrix catalog, is associated now with, you know, old guys wearing a Hawaiian shirt, you know, trying to convince you the guitars, make all the best music. It's boomer rock. It's white male boomer rock. But here's the good news. I think that when you take away all that stuff and you strip it all away and you just come to this, you know, this song. The stems, the essence of the music. Yes. Right. I think what we will be able to get back to is that at its heart is this amazing song by this once in a lifetime, maybe once in a lifetime, maybe once. in a century artist, almost a religious figure. We're going to strip away all the crap, and we're going to get to the music.

We're going to have a great appreciation for not just Purple Hays, but for Jimmy Hendricks. Absolutely agree. So I'd like to start this conversation around the cultural moment that Jimmy arrives in with this song. It's 1967 an incredible year for rock music. This is when everyone got a little weird, a little psychedelic. This is the year that gave us Strawberry Fields by the Beatles. Light my fire by the doors. Somebody to love by Jefferson.

You want somebody. Don't you need somebody? San Francisco's own. That's right. The baby boomers were booming. I mean, you're in San Francisco, really only 20 years removed from the summer of love. You're absolutely right.

1967 was the summer of love. The famous kind of iconic moment where everything coalesces perfectly and everything since then for boomers has been downhill in the sort of like, you know, mythology of the time. Another thing about growing up in the 80s that nothing was lamer than hippies,

hippie culture. We grew up in a time of Reagan and just, that was like the quickest diss. It was just like, oh, what a bunch of idiots. Our cynicism came from the fact that we lived through or was we, those 20 years in between 67 and 80s, Reagan had happened and so many of these boomers had grown up. At the time, the kids of the 60s, I should say, the hippies had grown up to become just kind of corporate

and, like, create the 80s Reagan culture. Well, if I can jump in here, this is something I actually want to say because I think it relates to right now. Yeah. I think it's very relevant to right now. It's easy to think because when I was growing up, I was like, well, 1967 leads into 1968. I was like, if everybody was a hippie, how did Nixon get elected in 1968?

That's because when we look back on a year, we usually find the culture really interesting. And we have the privilege of knowing, oh, that's the year that this came out. That's the year that came out. But if you take a look at the top songs of 1967, Purple Hays is not there. I think this song peaked at like number 65. Right. It wasn't the top 40 at all. No.

The top four songs of 1967, and this is a fact, are to Sir with Love by Lulu. The box tops the letter. Bobby Gentry owed to Billy Joel. Yeah. Today, Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Now, what does that tell us? That tells us that even in 2025, like right now, most people are listening to whatever, like, the number one songs are,

and we're going about our lives. But I guarantee you, when we look back 20 years from now, there's a song that's like probably going to top out somewhere in the, you know, number 67, number 82. It may not be the top 40 stuff that lasts the 50, 60 years. You have to be tapped in. You have to be tapped in to a certain extent to know that the summer of love is happening in San Francisco in 1967. So it's important to remember that most people,

are, to use the nomenclature of the era, squares, L-7. L-7. But I can't even do it right. I love L-7. We love that band. That's a great band. But the hippie counterculture is happening. And by the way, it's so centered in the Hade Ashbury District of your hometown,

San Francisco. And there's this huge event in Northern California. On the coast in Monterey, yeah. Yeah. June, 1967, curated by Mr. Paul McCartney himself, among others. It's the Monterey Pop Festival. This is one of those really. really important moments, not just in the development of the political movement and the cultural

movement, but in the progression of music and music experimentation during this time. This is definitely the Lala Pallusa of its day, and I think that was conscious when Lala Paluza came into being, the eclecticism of it. The lineup had The Who, the Mamas and the Papa, is already opposite ends of the spectrum, and great songs, both, but like, you know, very different presentation. Eric Burden and the Animals, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the birds, even Otis Redding, and even Booker T and the MGs, this is insane. This would be like if we had, I guess,

turnstile and Sabrina Carpenter and, you know, and Kendrick Lamar. Like, what an insane lineup that would have been. It would have been insane. Insane. And not everybody knows about the Monterey Pop Festival. In some ways, Monterey gets overshadowed in our conversation nowadays by Woodstock, but Monterey really did go first.

It did go first. And it's the American debut of the Jimmy Hendricks experience. Now, it's important to note that, like, Jimmy's pretty much unknown at this point. He's played for a lot of people in America, right. In America. But this is his, you know, big coming out party, so to speak. And he's given it in the coveted Sunday spot by Paul because Paul's like, you got to check this guy out.

And it can't be underscored enough that this is a career-breaking moment, not just because he's on a lineup with all these amazing bands, but because he blows all these amazing bands and their members out of the water with an epic historic performance that ends with him literally lighting his guitar on fire. That's right. Pete Townsend of the Who tells us, incredible story because you have to remember. So what we're going to talk about a lot in this episode is how Jimmy Hendrix brings together a lot of things from the blues to performance techniques

that had been done maybe bits and pieces here and there, but when he does it, he transforms all of it together in a blaze of glory in a sense. It's like the original version of Star Wars. That's right. Postmodern mess, but it all came together and it made sense. Right, because at the time, the Who was blowing up amps on stage, smashing guitars.

Yeah, that was their thing. There's great footage of them, like, blowing stuff up on TV on the Smothers Brothers. and they don't want to follow Hendricks because they're coming from England where we're going to get into this. He's already revered in England. Backstage, Pete Townsend and Jimmy Hendricks

have a conversation about who wants to go on and follow up on the other one. No one wants to follow the other one. So Jimmy Hendricks, according to Pete Townsend's telling, won't take no for an answer. He insists the Hugo first, knowing that whatever they do, he's going to upstage. And sure enough, when he gets on stage,

he pulls out all the stops. He's doing the teeth playing. in the behind the head plane. He's on the ground. And famously, he takes a match and kerosene and lights the guitar on fire for one of the most iconic moments. Captured in a photo.

Concert footage history. Let's have a look at this iconic performance. Yeah, audio listeners, you won't see this. Watch us on YouTube. Everybody else. Enjoy this clip of this classic performance. We talk about the destruction of musical instruments during performances.

Like, I really do believe that... This is a tradition that begins in this time like we're talking about in this way, It looks honest and fresh and new. And just like anything, if you do it for 20, 30 years, it just starts to look super cornball. But not here. And the other thing I notice is that when Jimmy burns his guitar, it doesn't come across is one of the Who Destroy their instruments.

They've still got that sort of like modish, you know, quadrophenia. It feels tantrummy. It feels tantrummy. Yes, it's tantrum. Right. It feels kind of like adolescent rage. Yeah, it feels tantrum. It's not coming from the same place as when Hendricks does it.

No, I think what Hendricks says is so beautiful. In fact, he said that he meant his burning of the guitar as a sacrifice. He said, you have to sacrifice the things that you love, and I love my guitar. I love that quote. So that's incredible. And it gives it a different meaning to your point. So it's not just a matter who's going to upstage who, although that was part of it. Pete Townsend and the Who, and then Jimmy coming on after him.

He does upstage them, but he also adds more meaning to the act. So let's take a second and let's back up a little bit and talk about how Jimmy got his start. I know his first love musically was the blues. He was a huge Muddy Waters fan. But James Marshall, Jimmy Hendricks, was born November 27, 1942 in the town of Seattle, Washington. He's from Seattle. Which is very unlike most of the black artists from this period that we cover on this show, because they're usually born somewhere in the south or maybe like in the, you know, post-migration north or whatever.

But he's born in Seattle. Not from Chicago, New Orleans. No, he's from Seattle. He starts playing the guitar at a very young age while he's still, you know, 15, a teenager. And in 1961, he joins the Army, but he was discharged pretty quick. That's right. And when he leaves the army, he starts playing full-time in bands. He is a backup guitar player.

It's not his own band. He's playing in other people's bands. He's playing as a sideman. He's playing with Icon Tina Turner. He's playing with Sam Cook, Wilson, Pickett. And he's playing with Little Richard. He's playing with Little Richard. That's so cool.

But Jimmy apparently was a horrible side man. Well, you know, this happens. His heart wasn't in it. His heart wasn't in it. And it's hard to be creative sometimes in that position. I've been an assistant. I've met assistant. Sometimes I'll be like, you're a terrible assistant, but I read your script.

Yeah. And you're a really good writer. And that happens sometimes. I always told my old boss, I'm like, I was a terrible assistant. I apologize, Brett. But I was meant to be doing other things. Jimmy was meant to be doing other things because as a sideman, he always wanted to elaborate and experiment.

And they're just like, just play the part. Jimmy. Yeah. God damn it. Don't hog the limelight. Come on, James. People tell stories of how they would go to see him in the time. And he just, he has the charisma that people always talk about with stars.

He couldn't be the sideman for long. And that can piss a lead act off. your sideman's drawn all this light. So often, Jimmy would find himself quitting or he'd get fired. I want to hear a snippet from an early pre-Hendricks, Jimmy, if you will. This is him playing with the Isley Brothers on 1964's Testify, Part 1 and 2. If you want to be a witness, I want to listen while I testify. Maybe I can help you to get some souls and be a witness, baby.

You want to be a witness? He's like too many horns, too much organ. We don't need any other instruments. You know, what's going on here? You know what I love about that song, though, is like, you know, like, I don't know if people were on like uppers or whatever, but like, it's so furiously fast. Like, to this day, sometimes I'll go out and I'll be like, like, I want to hear live music that's like plays like fast like that with that tempo or whatever. I actually feel like Anderson Pock has a place here in L.A. I think I might have mentioned on the show before called Andy's.

It's one of the few places where you can get consistently really good live, for the lack of a better term, black. music, because most live music venues, they're playing rock or some version of it. It's like a place where you can actually go in here like R&B and soul played by a live band. It's a different vibe. Testify, right. This is a gospel vibe. It's fast. It's got that energy, but it's got Hendricks in there somewhere buried and it's a little hard to hear.

You can kind of hear him fucking a little bit back. He kind of peeks out every now and then. But yeah, he wasn't long for this world. So Jimmy gets tired of being a side man. He moves to New York. He moves to New York. But he's still playing mostly with these R&B bands. And at a certain point in the late 60s, around 66, he learned.

he learns that something different is happening in Greenwich Village. Yeah. Downtown. So in 66 or so, he goes to the village and there's this completely different scene. It's not the R&B Act. It's not the Solax. Some of it is the folk scene. Some of it is just experimental cross-pollination of poetry and music.

And he really resonates with this. And this is where he starts to form his new sound and identity as a musician and as a solo artist. I think he makes friends with Keith Richards' girlfriend. That's right. You don't want that. Can I just say you don't want to talk to. you go, oh, who are you hate? Oh, I was taking out with Jimmy Hendrix.

You don't want to hear this. It's not good news, guys. But what happens when he runs into Linda Keith? That's right. I think for a while she's dating Keith Richards and then a little bit later, she goes on to Brian Jones, who will be making a surprise appearance

in our two-part episode. We won't get into that quite yet. But at the moment, she's a huge fan and she's turning all of her friends on to Jimmy. She's like, this is the most incredible musician I've ever seen. When she learns that the animals are in town, Now, the animals, just for those who don't know, incredible British band,

most famous probably for this song. This is House of the Rising Sun, 1964. When she learns that the band is in town, she tells her buddy, Chas Chandler, who's a bass player, that he's got to come down and check this guy out because she knows that Chaz is looking to leave the band and kind of start being a producer,

start being a manager. So on Linda Keith's recommendation, Chas Chandler goes down to Café Wa in Greenwich Village in 1966, and he sees Jimmy, James in the Blue Flames, which is an early incarnation of what Jimmy's calling himself, Jimmy James. When he hears Jimmy do his cover of, Hey Joe, his mind is blown. He hears what Linda hears, and he sees something in this kid and decides he wants to get on board and see if he can't take him to the next level. And I'll admit, I didn't know that Hey Joe had been recorded before. I mean, like, I thought,

I associate Hey Joe with Jimmy. Yeah, no, Jimmy made it his own, but it is an old folk blues song. It's from the blues tradition. It's authorless, so to speak. And a lot of people have cover this, Frank Zappa, the birds, Patty Smith. Right. There's a wonderfully contentious who recorded it first and who heard it from who discussion going on in the Wikipedia page about this. The birds heard it first and the leaves got it from them. Let's just listen to the leaves version, which we know to be one of the earliest recordings from 1965. Great. Hey Joe. Oh, is that our horn? That's a sharp harmonica. Oh, wow. Can I say? I actually like this. Yeah, it's a good one. I'm a fan of mid-60s garage rock, like the seeds. That's right.

We love all the Nugget stuff, all the garage rock stuff from the mid-60s is the best. Oh, we love it. Not bad. Now, let's hear a bit of the Jimmy version. Hey, Joe. Little Led Zeppelin riff there. A whole lot of love. Is that intentional?

I mean, I just hear a similarity, and we know Jimmy was listening. When did a whole lot of love come out? A whole lot of love comes later. Like, a whole lot of love is 69, I think. Top is 69. Yeah, recorded. I think recorded 68. So we think they might have heard that.

I mean, there is no doubt. Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin definitely heard this version. He must definitely love Jimmy Andrews. And he loved that riff because it's a whole lot of love. Do do, do, do, do. You know, the next time a rocking roll guy says, oh, hip-hop sampling, that's just stealing.

I'll be like, there's been a lot of stealing. There's a band called Led Zeppelin. I want to introduce you to. We did a whole episode on those guys. We did clarify the stealing versus borrowing versus new. But, you know, it's all in the mix. This is a shared tradition, a blues tradition. My guess is that when Jimmy heard, when Hendricks heard Page's version. He's like,

sounds familiar, but we're all kind of borrowing from each other. The other thing that's obvious to the ear is that, like, Jimmy loves the blues. Yes. And this feels like the blues. He slows it down. It's not garage rock fast or aggressive. Like, he's just like, hey Joe.

This is his version. And the atmosphere added by the vocals, the background vocals, it gives it such a, like, melancholy, like, appropriate to the song, which frankly, the song's about where you're going with that gun in here, shooting your old lady. And it being kind of fast...

I don't think I heard one lyric on the least version. I don't think I caught any lyric. I love the vibe. Did not hear one lyric. The storytelling is a little out the window. And one thing that Jimmy brings to a lot of the songs,

one of the contributions he makes is how there's this fluid, seamless, lyrical, melodic sound storytelling connection. Yeah. It really is all embedded there in the recording. So I feel the darkness of the lyric a little more

personally in the Hendricks version. I love it. So this more bluesy version of the song goes on to be a hit. in the United Kingdom in 1966, charting at number two. Shout out to those BBC and just those British DJs

from picking up on what was bubbling underneath the surface in the swinging London day. That's right, but it doesn't make much of a dent in the U.S. Jimmy is very, very widely known and popular and revered in England, but he's almost an unknown in the U.S.

except to the heads, of course, who are like, you know, got their ear to the ground and the up-and-coming. Thank God, you know, the British start, you know, falling in love with Jimmy. And it really does make me wonder if there is a version of this story where Jimmy could have made it in the U.S. first. I don't think so. You see, we see this across so many genres.

The British typically appreciate what's going on in black culture, especially our music culture, before the mainstream white culture does here in the States. We've seen it in rock, in soul, in hip-hop. We just did an episode about House. It's always the British and the Swedes, ironically, who are like, oh, what are those, you know, black guys doing over there? I don't know why I went through a British accent. sound like any movie doing, oh, we're going to kick Clarence out of the group and still always good ideas.

Another S&L reference. They didn't know there are going to be two S&L references. The 60s in England, the 60s from the Beatles and the Stones and the Who and cream. Yes. All of these white male British acts that are doing American blues translated into British English. And by the way, the black artist here, it's almost like a catch-22 for them because on the one hand, they have fans who are appreciating them. Yeah.

You know, we talked on the Supremes episode how the Supremes did really. really well, you know, as a girl group in the UK. At the same time, when the British invasion starts, a lot of the black musicians, especially what in Motown, like, they're just doing black music. Why can't we do our music and so like that? Why do you think American blues music landed so differently and was received so differently in the UK than in America?

Listen, man, I mean, like, I think number one is our country's history. We have a long, tortured history of race and racism. You still have people who don't want to accept the fact that racism even existed. And they try to erase that from the history books and from the public conversation. And quite honestly, some of it is proximity, not just in terms of geography, but time. Like, in the 60s, there were plenty of, you know, white male gatekeepers who were like, why can't everybody sing like Sammy Davis Jr? In the 80s, they were like, why can't they sing like the blues anymore?

Like, it's never enough for black music to just be where it is in that moment. Like, it seems like a lot of times people always wanted to sound like what it sounded like 20 years ago. Even right now, people are like, why doesn't hip hop sound like the 90s anymore? Like, no, just let the music go, let it progress and let it have its fun. It's so interesting you say that because in this 1973 documentary, his roommates, Jimmy's ex-roomates, are interviewed. They're so wonderful these twin brothers. And they talk about how Jimmy was really insecure about how he was perceived among his American black friends. Absolutely, yeah.

So what he was doing was so out there and different and innovative, he recognized that maybe it wasn't being received how he would have hoped, which is would love. And he wanted it to be received. wanted it to be received. That's a good point. And this is part of maybe why he said yes to Chas Chandler inviting him to England to give him a start there. On top of that, I think it's a matter of proximity. Your neighbor can piss you off. You know what I mean? You can hate the guy who lives on the other side of town or across the train tracks way way way easier when it's somebody who's a whole continental way. Right, right. You know what I mean? I always think that that's why like when you go to like places like Canada or even Seattle where Jimmy's from. Like there's a greater

acceptance of black people and black artistry and black genius in a way that's not going to happen in Mississippi, where even to this day, like, people don't realize Mississippi has per capita the most black people, you know, but look at how tortured that relationship is down there between white and black versus, you know, Vancouver where it's cool, baby. You know what I mean? So there is a certain thing called proximity that I think that's taking place here. It's hard not to, I think that's so interesting to hear you analyze like that. And it's hard not to see that as being a way that Jimmy is treated differently in a positive way.

I think there's a story that Pete Townsend talks about how he has a rivalry with Eric Clapton. He tells this great story in the Jimmy Hendricks documentary from 73, which I recommend. But he basically tells this story about how when Jimmy comes to town, Clapton calls him out of the blue. They've never spoken before. They're not friends. And they have a rivalry. They're two of the greatest, most well-known white male guitarists of the mid-60s British blues moment that's being had.

Clapton's the god, but Jimmy's the new god coming to town. They go to the movies together. They start talking as their first like hang. And they bond over Jimmy Hendricks. And it sounds like from the telling, they're kind of gauging whether the other one is threatened by Jimmy or maybe they're threatened by each other, but they can use their appreciation of Jimmy to kind of bond over it.

It's such an interesting story. And to me, the telling has something to do with Jimmy being better than both of them. But he's from America. So it's like, oh, it's kind of tolerable. It's kind of okay for us because it's not just you down the street. There's this Freud language. Freud says the narcissism of minor difference. Yes.

The guy who looks like you but has a slightly better corner office and you've got your cubicle bothers you a lot more than someone who's much different from you. I do think ultimately, Chaz and the British scene co-signing on what Jimmy was doing was critical, was critical not only for his success over there, but definitely for his success coming back over to the states. You're absolutely right. And the first thing that Chaz does that helps propel him to Superstar him is finds him his band. The Jimmy Hendris experience, they have tryouts and Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, this incredible trio, the power trio that become the Jimmy Hendry experience.

These are British men that he brings into the equation. So it's really in England that the foundation for Jimmy's career begins with the musicians and also the manager and the opportunities that he gets. Jimmy's timing, can I just say, it's impeccable, because he arrives in London just in time for swing in London. You know what I mean? London's like the best place for Jimmy to like find his tribe, so to speak. They love him there and he's really appreciated as an artist and then all the guitar players are in awe of him. So with the success of Hey Joe and his rising star in the UK, Jimmy and his new band, the Jimmy Hendrix Experience, sets out to record the album, Are You Experienced?

which will contain a song that we're talking about today, Purple Hays. We're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, we're going to dive deep into the stems and reveal the guitar part that everyone has been playing wrong. That's right, you've been playing it wrong. Is Jimmy playing the devil's interval? Do you know what the devil's interval is? We'll tell you what it is, and you'll find out if something else is going on there when we get back.

All right, welcome back to one song, luxury. Without further ado, let's get into the music. Can we start with that iconic opening? Absolutely. Well, let's listen to it, and then we'll break. it down. Stop it right there. Wait, play just the first note.

Play just the first note. I think, I mean like, I feel like. That's the name the song in one of those kind of notes. This is like our Robin S episode. You hear the first note. You know what this is. This is so iconic. Who hasn't tried to play this on the guitar other than me?

Well, we've talked about this sound before. This is a tritone interval. Those two notes together are extremely dissonant because they are half the distance of the octave. Away from each other. If you listen to Don Penn, no, no, no. It's two stacked minor thirds. If you go back to Lady Gaga, poker face, we talked about it then, too.

It's the same interval. And what do we know it as sometimes? The devil's interval? That's right. Why is it called the devil's interval? So it's funny because when I was- This is like how everybody does this a rock concerts, even though they're like a 40-year-old accountant?

When I was growing up as a musician, guitar player, fan of metal, it was sort of known, but later found to be, I think, not true, that like the church banned this interval. I don't think the church, I think it's not the case. but you won't find it that often in early music, but not never. But it was considered to summon the devil because it was the most dissonant thing you could play is those two notes together. Again, it's either a diminished fifth or an augmented fourth. It's half the distance of the entire, of the scale, basically. And what's interesting about this song is it starts with that.

So right out the gate, you get this devil's derr. It's really, that's why it sounds the way it does, almost abrasive. It definitely grabs your ear. Yeah. What was interesting as I was getting into the Sims, I never knew. And I think a lot of people who've been playing it for years, I will now reveal to you that I've been playing it wrong all this time. Wait, you're telling me this is not just Jimmy hitting that note? It's not Jimmy playing the interval.

He's not playing the two notes at once. I think you might have just blown my mind. Can you tell us what that means? Sure. Well, dissonance is always in the eye of the listener and it's always contextual. So dissonance in this case is because these two notes together are quote unquote, they don't sound right. They sound like they rub. They sound maybe abrasive. They sound a little harsh. Well, here are the two notes, and I'll play it in the same key that Jimmy did. This is the diminished fifth,

which would be a B-flat, at the same time as the E, which is the root note. Now, when you play them together, you get this. Right? It sounds a little evil. It's summoning the devil. The devil is coming to heartbeat studios right now. So what I thought he was playing, and I think a lot of guitar players I've seen online, I've seen people doing covers. It sounds like he's playing this. That's actually not what's happening. Let's listen to what Jimmy Hendricks is really playing. Wow.

He's just playing the one note. He's just playing this B-flat. And that's being harmonized by Noel Redding on bass, who's playing that root E-note. And that sounds like this. And there's either some bleed in there because this was a four-track recording originally that got bounced multiple times.

And in the process, there was probably some bleed. it's possible that Noel might be playing a subtle but I think what's really happening is he's playing the E because when you see them live you'll just see now. Now you'll note Noel's fingers are playing and here they are together we had Jimmy with the B-flat

and Noel with the E. So I'll start with Jimmy and then I'll add null. So now it has been revealed how the tritone at the beginning of Purple Hayes actually is constructed. One song making a big news flash. So to be clear for all of us who don't play the guitar, right. It's been believed for a long time that Jimmy was playing this sort of like complicated dual note. By everyone who's not a Rick Beato fan. Yes, exactly. Correct. Yes. But it's actually Jimmy's playing B flat and Noel Redding's playing the E, the root.

Exactly right. And together they form the interval by two players, you know, kind of like if we were to vocalize and harmonize it, we only have one note that we can sing. Oh, man. So it's a little bit like that. even the devil's interval anymore. I don't know. I think it's only summoned hippie-dom and boomers. It's definitely summoning boomers to the comments. Let's put it that way. We're going to call it Diablo and devil. Not Diablo. Diablo, Dialo, different people. I want to get to the drums. What do we got? We got Mitch Mitchell on drums, do we not? Mitch Mitchell. One of the greatest drummers of all time. We love this man. Was he officially in the Jimmy Hendrix? Sure. Oh, he's the longest performing collaborator with Jimmy.

Okay. Let's not forget, this is 1967. He only has three years of music in front of him, which is crazy, all this incredible catalog. But he's playing with Mitch almost the entire time. There's a moment in band of gypsies and a few live performances, but Mitch is pretty much there until the end. Is Mitch also British? Mitch is British, yes.

So Mitch is, starts as a session musician, and he's actually, it's interesting we talked about the Who earlier because he apparently filled in for Keith Moon on a couple of session dates when Keith wasn't available because Keith was doing key things. So the connection is obvious. The sound of his playing. There's a lot of tombs. There's a lot of busyness, I would say. And it's very

jazz influenced. In particular, Elvin Jones. There's a great Hendricks quote. Mitch Mitchell, quote, played me a record by Elvin Jones once. And he said, damn, that's you. He's like, he heard the influence, the Elvin Jones influence. So let's hear Mitch playing drums, and then we'll talk about it. All those fills. The fills. And no symbols, actually. That's interesting. He's playing the crash. He's playing the crash. He's just, he brings in the, the, the, the, the like once a measure, right? He's hitting that crash to every two bars, three, four, two, every two bars

he's hitting the crash. Okay. But in this section, at least, he's not hitting a high hat or a ride symbol. Right. He's not keeping time with an eighth or quarter note. He's just playing kick and snare,

throwing a lot of syncopation. Yes. And, of course, those iconic fills. The fills are great because the fills don't, it never sounds quite the same every time. It feels like every time he's doing a slightly different fill. It's exciting and it adds in the air to your point, uncertainty,

and almost chaos, right, underneath it all. It's so exciting. He's one of my favorite. By the way, when we were playing this in the studio, I noticed that you would think we would both be doing air guitar. Yeah. And we're both doing, like, the drum. Yeah.

Yeah. You know. That's right, because they're so, and getting it wrong, personally, almost every time. Yes, you never quite know what he's going to do. predicting his fill. That's an unpredictable fill. That's an unpredictable fill.

Here he is in the turnaround right after the excuse me while I kiss the sky part, which is actually a three bar section that Kiss the Sky moment. and everything kind of stops and is floating. And then we get this two-bar fill, Mitch Mitchell. And it sounds so loud, too. You hear the room. You hear the room. The reverb of the room.

You hear the room. And listen, this is, this gets towards, like, where hippie culture is, like, freaking killing it. Killing it. It's so unpredictable. There's a certain, like, monstrosity of a freedom going on with what, like, just, hey, drummer, just give me a fill. Yeah.

But just give me the energy. Right. that we're trying to convey. And never do it the same way twice. And never do it the same way twice. That part really works. Even as a guy who loves drum machines and music comes out of computers, even I recognize why this is special.

And there's a little bit of a swing. It's not literally da, da, da, da, da, but he gives it a little bit of a. The pulse is not a straight eighth pulse. But what he's choosing to do is so much more free flowing. And it has, it's not literally a jazz rhythm. It's not literally swing. But it's swinging. This is swing in London.

He's playing a little bit of a swing and beat here. So in the bridge. towards the end, he does some of these really gorgeous drum fills. I'll play them for you. And then I'll add some context. All these triplet fills. I promised I would bring some other stuff in and I didn't, because I only wanted to hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll continue it on and I'll add some bass in. We'll get a little hint of Noel Redding. Okay, so we alluded to Noel Redding, and this is my Noel Redding tribute here today. Another British white man who's playing with Jimmy in the experience, just to make the point really explicit, this is a power trio. There's only three,

Musicians making this music. That's great. There's nobody on keys. Nobody's on keys. There's not a second guitar player. Right. And part of that is because the freedom that Jimmy was longing for as a side man, when you have a rhythm section and you're everything else, the freedom that he has just

with a quick eye contact indicate to the other melodic player, the bass player, we're going to keep going with this part or it's time for the change. He has total freedom to play, sing, to stop the song, to change the song, to go on a 10-minute tangent. So that's a really important part of this. So Noel is his other musical, no shade on Mitch. He's also a musician. But the bass player is the other guy you got to lock in with to make sure you're kind of playing the right notes. Yeah. And Jimmy is the leader of the group. But it's important to say that, you know, on this episode, Purple Hays, we find the group very collaborative, everybody sort of throwing in their ideas and really just jelling,

like in a way that may not be the case on their third album. Right. You're absolutely right. And this is one of those cases where holistically these three guys made this song. Yeah. But not all of them are necessarily like included in the publishing. But we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that a little bit in a second. But right now we're talking Noel Redding in the bass.

And let's hear a little bit of it. Just holding it down. It should be said, by the way, that Noel Redding was a guitar player. And when he came down to the audition, he didn't realize that he would be auditioning for bass. Oh, wow. But it just happened on the spot. And they love the cut of his jib.

So they hired him. This is like almost the opposite of, we've talked about the Beatles so much. But it's almost the opposite. It's like usually like Paul's doing like all this impressive stuff and Ringo's just holding it down. Here, Mitch Mitchell, you were playing that clip. I couldn't help but like do some desk drumming. And Noel Redding on bass is holding it down. We'll play some of his cooler moments later.

But right now he's just locking in. Yeah. A little bit later when Jimmy is soloing like crazy and some of the triplet fills we heard, Mitch's part, this is what Noel's doing. And then I'll start to add some stuff back in. Mitch is really taking up all the air in the room with that, isn't he? Yeah, Mitch is going insane. By the way, Mitch kind of doing like what Art Blakey and the jazz.

All the jazz stuff. It might have done there. It sounds really good. The bass sounds really muffled. Is that to highlight? Was that intentional? It's 1967 technology right now. And they're innovating in a huge way.

But they're still on four tracks. By the way, that's in England. In America, they have eight tracks. Yeah. And the engineers in Britain are sort of jealous of that. But they're limitations. Frank Sinatra's recording on eight tracks in Capitol Records. He's just like, yeah, what are those strings, baby?

Part of what we're hearing when we isolate the bass is that recording technology for bass hasn't gotten to where it got to you later. In fact, this is around the time that when you listen to a lot of the records, you start to hear more bass because just the ability to record those frequencies is a new technology that's enabled by some of the new tools and techniques. So in this moment, what we're getting is this wonderful, warm, round tone, but it's a little muffled. You hear a lot of bleed from the other tracks because it's four track. And isolated, you're right. It sounds, it's actually kind of surprisingly, quote, unquote, dirty. But it may makes sense,

perfect in the mix. Especially for the speakers that you have in a wood paddled station wagon. Right. I mean, like, this sounds amazing there in ways that you wouldn't sound good in your Tahoe now. It wasn't intended.

No one was listening to just the base of the time. You were listening to Noel and you were listening to Mitch and you were listening to Jimmy. And again, just with the drums and bass together, it's sick. And by the way, I have to say, I said the word round.

This is a tone that to this day, bass players are trying to recapture. So even though the innovation and the technology has been exceeded, so to speak. This is so desirable. This sounds good. It still sounds good to our modern ears.

And by the way, it's always fun on the show when we have the full multi-tracks to a song that's got a fade-out on the recorded version, on the album version. And we have something after the fade-out? We have how the song ends, because they're the band. There's the three of them playing the whole song together. And then at some point, they had to go, okay, let's stop. Well, look, we're going to make news twice today because guess what? You can hear some of this music after the fade-out.

Let's hear it. Here's the end of Purple Haze. That's the end of Purple Hays. Wow. You've heard it here first. You heard it here on one song first. So today we're talking about Jimmy Hendricks. I don't know that there is anybody who more personifies the term rock star or rock god or whatever you want to call it.

God. Yeah. And specifically the guitar, I feel like everybody from Eric Clapton to Prince to anybody to anybody who ever picks up a guitar, they all in some ways have been influenced by this man. I'm so proud that we have the guitar stems to play for our listeners today. With Jimmy, we can't go wrong. So start us off with whatever part you want to start us off. All right after that tritone, the devil's riff at the beginning, we hear this classic iconic melody. Here it is isolated.

Jimmy Hendricks, Purple Hayes. Let me ask you this. I don't play the guitar. Is that hard to play? Can you play that? Here's why that's a great question. Anyone can play that, quote, unquote, but you can't play it like that. Really?

And the subtlety of it is because Jimmy was using the guitar like it was part of his body. It was part of his voice. Yeah. As we'll be talking about for this next little bit and on our next episode, the interweaving of him singing and playing is like this unified expression, unit of expression. So I can play those notes. It's just one note at a time. It's not particularly fast or difficult. But it won't sound anything like Jimmy.

Not just because I'm not him, the performer. and not just because I don't have his instrument and not just because I don't have his effects chain and his martial stacks, but all of those contribute to getting further and further away from sounding like Jimmy. As a non-gat guitar player, I'm just trying to understand, and I recognize why it sounds good and why it's genius,

and I love the fact that so many people respected him and revered him. I'm actually just trying to understand where in does the subtlety lie? Can you give me one example of the subtlety that everybody was chasing but just couldn't quite grab? I love this question, and I love the challenge of answering it because caveat to our listeners, I'm going to fall short of being the universal correct answer. That doesn't exist. But to me personally to my ears, one of the things I hear is the fluidity of the sound,

how all of those notes just kind of glide together. And also the sound itself is this sort of perfect round. You don't hear the articulation of each individual notes, which is like the right thing for this riff in this moment. And the notes bleed into one another. It kind of bleed into it. It feels very fluid. It feels like an extension of his voice. It feels sung. It feels like it coheres with the voice we're about to hear. It's Jimmy as a guitar player and vocalist. It's the unity of him as an expressionist artist, musician. I've heard that impressionist statement. Impressionism or expressionism? Both of them are accurate. If I said expressionist and you liked impressionist, that's what I said. I heard Impressionist when I'm doing the research,

but I know what you say. There is a flow to it. And it's almost like a snake riding water. And as you said the word impressionist, I think of impressionism painting, and this feels like the sonic version of that. It's not meant to be a photograph and like perfect and accurate and technically amazingly, I don't know. I guess I'm contrasting it with what comes later in the 80s where there is this desire to be technically proficient and perfect. But with this, he is insanely gifted as a performer and can play fast. Insane. But this is more about that it's this, I keep, the word fluid keeps coming. It feels like water. It feels like water. feels like at 1890s, Toulislo Trek or Manet or something like that.

We should have never taken that ass before we did this episode. That was a mistake. That's so funny. How long have we been in the studio? It's not inaccurate to point out that this is that time. And psychedelia and acid, there is this synesthesia happening in the music. I feel it. I feel why this would feel trippy to you in 1966.

Coming out of your speakers in 1967. What is the Jimmy Chord? Let's talk about the Jimmy Chord. So there's a story. So Chaz Chandler was not just Jimmy's manager. But Jimmy actually lived with him for a time in his apartment. And the collaborative process, by all accounts, was that Chaz and Jimmy, Chaz helped Jimmy finish stuff. So he would hear something and like it and say, that's good, keep going kind of thing.

The story he tells is, I heard him playing a guitar riff, a new guitar riff at the flat, and I was knocked out. So I told him to keep working on that saying, that's the next single. We don't know exactly which part of this song, because there's five or six riffs. But my guess is that it's probably this one. Here's the riff that ends with what has come to be known as the Jimmy Chord. It's this one here. That high one. I'm sure he wasn't the first person to play it.

Why is this called the Jimmy Chord? Not the first to play it, but we hear it a lot in his music. He also uses it in Foxy Lady. Jimmy Chord! Okay. Jimmy Chord, Jimmy Chord. Yeah, Foxy Lady just does something to me, man. That's a great tune.

That's a great tune. Very similar riffs. They're like sister songs. And Purple Hades. Yeah, they're definitely related. I've always thought of them as being sisters. They are sisters. Absolutely right.

We hear that chord elsewhere in music before Jimmy uses it. It's in this song by Bill Doggett from 1958 called Hold It. And bright the year before, we hear it on not one but two Beatles songs, The Word. And this one, very prominently, this is Taxman from 1966. What are the notes of the Jimmy Court? So I'll play for you and break down what the Jimmy Court is. When other people played it first, why is it known as the Jimmy Court? That's one thing about what Jimmy Hendrix's legacy.

is, I would say, is as a synthesizer of a lot of things, the tradition of the blues transformed. This chord recontextualized in a new way where his use of it becomes ownership only because people know it from his use of it. It doesn't mean he was the inventor. Right. He does any more than he's the inventor of the pentatonic scale. He didn't invent Hey Joe or all on the watchtower, but somehow when he touched things, they became part of his story. And his voice and his performance style and everything about him as a person is the one of one of Jimmy Hendrix. So the Jimmy chord is a dominant 7, sharp 9, which means you're hearing this. So it's essentially a jazz court, for lack of a better word.

In blues music and rock and roll, you generally would either have a major third or a minor third. But in this chord, you get both. You have the major third happening here. So it's like this is a major chord, E major. But you also have a major third. of the minor third at the very top, they're distanced out enough that the two of them together make a pleasant sounding chord. But what's interesting is that we have kind of the essence of the blues in this one chord because that space between the minor third and the major third is the blue note we've been talking about on the few episodes recently. Back on our Don Penn No No No episode who spent a little time lingering in this space in between those two. So this chord has both of them. So in many

ways it sort of feels like the perfect Jimmy Hendricks blues. Yeah. Innovation. He's bringing jazz into blues. The ownership of the chord in some ways maybe comes from the song itself and the frequency of his use. But that's also very Jimmy to be doing that to bringing this old tradition of the blues

but electrifying it, adding these chords. Electrifying it. You know, I think that the rock influence is the technology he's using is using an electric guitar. Right. Which gives us that fuzz and that, you know, that thing that makes it sound like classic Jimmy. So this song has an iconic solo. Why don't we hear that?

Sounds like they're marching into a wall. Animal House? Yeah. Amazing. Now, I gotta say it sounds like I'm hearing more than one guitar in the solo. Oh yeah. There's a lot of overdubts happening. Yeah, that's the challenge of four tracks, right? You got to record it, then you got to go back and record something on top of it. What's going on here? Are there multiple takes layered? Yeah, there's a few things going on. There's multiple takes. And there's also multiple effects. all of which are very innovative. So Jimmy's famous for using the wah pedal. I don't believe that I hear it in this.

He's famous also. He didn't have a lot of effects because effects were new and he innovated their usage. So this isn't a song where his later famous wah pedal is used, but it is a song where his very famous fuzz face is the fuzz box, an early distortion pedal. But probably most prominently here is a device called the Octavia, which is actually invented by his sound technician,

Roger Mayer. Shout out, Unsung Hero, is the sound tech who created. this guitar pedal, which is why it sounds so high-pitched, because it's at least an octave, possibly two above. But there's a second technique that also is in the mix. They thought it would be silly to play the tape at high speed at the very end, so it would sound ridiculously high. So some combination of those two things, give us that top of the layer where we have this really high-pitched sound. Okay, well, now we come to the man himself, the voice himself, the voice of Jimmy Hendricks, and I did not know this. The engineer Eddie Kramer said

that Jimmy hated the way he sounded. It gives me so much hope. It makes me think that sometimes you can have a good voice and everybody say, hey, you can kind of sing, and you don't feel that way. Because obviously there are enough egos and there's confidence galore in the music world. And some people just come in, I got this.

It's good to know that some people can still be vulnerable. Vulnerable. Exactly the word I was looking for. Jimmy thought that he had the worst voice in the world, so much so that Kramer actually would turn off all the studio lights except a single one for Jimmy's lyric sheet. And then he built a barrier with screens on three sides so that nobody could see what Jimmy was doing

when he was recording his vocals. Isn't that crazy? This is Jimmy Henders for talking about. Yeah, he had such an insecurity about his vote. But he was the most expressive person with everything else he did from his visual appearance to his guitar playing. But in this one area, he was insecure. He probably only heard where he wasn't able to fully express

what he was feeling or wanting to say with his voice, which I think is with his guitar, he knew how to express it to a T. And his perfectionism is legendary. But with his voice, he just, you know, he probably was trying to get just past something. I heard that he couldn't even see Kramer's reactions to when he was recording. You know, he wanted to be facing away. Exactly.

So he would stay behind the screen. But he would pop his head out after a take. He'd be like, hey, how did that sound? You know? And Kramer would have to reassure him. Jimmy, it was great. It was great. Let's start with verse number one.

Sorry for the drum fills. I loved it. It added something. There was something missing in that little pocket. and you gave it to us. But okay, so this is the perfect time to talk about Purple Hays. What does it mean?

Was there a strain of marijuana that went by the name Purple Hays before this song? I mean, to hear history tell it and to hear Jimmy himself tell it, his explanation for it changes a couple of times, which I really relate to. My father was a painter. And whenever I would go to his art shows,

I would notice even as a kid, that depending on who he was talking to, he would change the meaning of the artwork. Like, just one audience. Oh, yeah, you got to do that. Oh, this is a, about blah, blah, blah, and then the other one, he'd be like, truthfully, I'm going to let you guys in a secret.

The more you can build the lore by making it confusing and contradict itself, the better. But you know what? In defense of my father and Jimmy, I don't even know that it was like, they weren't being sneaky or like, I think sometimes as an artist you'll create something and then you'll think about it. You'll be like, you know what? No, I think that actually what I was trying to say was, you know, like it can change for you. Yeah.

The meaning can change for you. That's my explanation too, is that sometimes, maybe sometimes you're sick of being asked the same question, or maybe you're trying to hide something about like a person you don't want to be revealing. But sometimes you just dawns on you as you're being asked, oh, actually, now that I think about it, there's this other thing I hadn't considered. Jimmy threw out the one time he had a dream that he was on a water. Yeah. That was one time it was that he thought that he was in the Greenwich Village and a woman had put a voodoo curse on him. Another one is that there's a book by Philip Jose Farmer called Night of Light, that he may have been inspired by. But one thing we do know is

that in an interview a little bit later, he said, he was talking about how the original version of Purple Hays, which, by the way, will pop up on the screen here. This is actual lyrics. You can see that it was originally called Purple Hays Jesus Saves. And he talks about how, to quote Hendricks himself, ooh, you should hear the real Purple Hays. It has about 10 verses. It goes through all these different changes. It had about a thousand words. And then he said, it gets me so mad because that is an even Purple Haze. At a certain point, I think he was disowning the two-minute, 51 second canonical version because to him there was so much more to the song that got cut. You mentioned that there's this fluidity between Jimmy's voice and his instrument.

Can we hear those two things isolated? They're going like this. They're like perfectly... I was just going to say they're interweaving. When he stops singing, he starts adding a fill to it. So he has one kind of singular melody that's going between his voice and his fingers, between the vocals and the guitar. Yeah, it's just...

It's almost hard to hear one without the... the other, but it was nice hearing one without the other to realize the intricacy of what's going on. And can I just point out that I think my favorite lyric is, is it tomorrow or just the end of time? It doesn't get any better than that. I feel like there's a head shop somewhere in the world with every single one of these lyrics. But see, I'm so glad that we've tackled this song in this episode because I almost don't want to associate it with, you know, drugs or Nixonian era politics or any of that other stuff, if you just look at it as just a song, it's a freaking unbelievable song. It's true. We've almost, listen, this is the elephant in the room about this song is that it's

about drugs and acid trips. But like in the telling and in all the research we've done, it doesn't seem like that's the only possible explanation. I don't even think it's the most likely one. I don't even think it was necessarily his driving force in recording. Exactly right. I think based on what we've been discussing today and listening to, this is not a song that's about an acid trip or based on his experiences under the influence. I think it's about Jimmy's vision of, you know, the thousand words that didn't make it were a much larger story that he's telling. Totally. So, luxury, I know Jimmy's estate is complicated. What can you tell us about this? Well, what we do know from the publicly available

information is Jimmy Hendricks is 100% credited for this song. But we also know that both Mitchell and Redding signed away all of their rights when they left the band. I think for a whopping total of 240 grand in 1969, 1970, they were given flat dollar amounts of a quarter million forever for any participation in the publishing of anything, Jimmy Hendricks. Well, but here's my other question. Who is the estate of Jimmy Hendricks at this point? I know he has a son. Is that the estate? I believe it is because it was Al for a while until he passed away to his father, James, Al Hendricks was the sole heir to the estate until he passed away. And now his,

the Hendricks name, image, likeness, and copyrights, all those trademarks, everything is part of the, quote, experience Hendricks LLC. I don't really know who's a part of that. But, you know. I mean, we do know that Jimmy did have a son. Yeah. But neither Noel Redding nor Mitch Mitchell or their estates, you know, or their airs get anything from any of this music. Yeah.

Okay. Well, you know, after listening to these stems, I have to ask you, what is your take on what made Jimmy just particularly innovative at this point, at this beginning point of the Jimmy Hendricks experience? Because, you know, it does feel like he was interpreting the blues differently than groups like the Rolling Stones. Yeah.

What say you? I think that what we've heard today is when you listen to Jimmy Hendricks as a guitar player and as a vocalist, and you hear the sound and you hear the seamlessly of performance and the innovation of things we've never heard before, not in this way, in 1967. You're right to point out that some of this had existed before. There's the pentatonic scale that's at the heart of the blues. Everyone was using that in all the groups you mentioned. But Jimmy's version of it was Jimmy's voice. Jimmy's voice was literally his vocals and also his fingers.

on the guitar and his teeth on the guitar, for that matter, and everything, every other way he played the guitar. Sometimes his teeth on the stage. I think that Jimmy Hendricks as a unique performer, it's impossible to give a perfect isolated description of why he was the way he was and why he was so innovative. But to this day, the power of Jimmy Hendrix's music, I think to this day, nine out of ten guitar players will cite him as their number one or their top three for Christ's sake because his voice was so one of one, so singular and so special. and so emotive, and you can't put your finger on it. There's no perfect, easy way to summarize him.

That's my best way to answer an impossible question, but I'm going to ask you the same impossible question. What would be your summary of the Jimmy Hendry's experience? Well, definitely at this point, at the beginning, I can understand why he drew so much attraction. I mean, like, everything about him seems to be innovation. We've talked at length about the musical innovation, but there's also his natural hair is fro.

You know what I mean? He didn't show up with his hair. conced into like a look like, you know, the guys in the four tops would have. And his clothes are very modern for the era. And more than ever, you know, just to go back to the Rolling Stones, so the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, like so many people are making basically pop blues. His blues are so influenced by jazz in terms of structure. Like they're not just like, he doesn't come in just like, I got a love for you, love for you,

girl, purple Hayes, purple Hayes. You know what I mean? Like, he comes in with. Purple Hayes, all the am. Like, I feel like the jazz influence, which I didn't really hear until you played those stems, it's absolutely there. Yeah.

And his style of playing, which merges the blues with the jazz, is just really different than what so many other people are doing in this period. And he's got the psychedelia. And he's listening to the sound of the Summer of Love in 1967. So I do feel like at this point in time, with RU experience, he's finally free of being a side man completely.

Yeah. He's working with musicians who he trusts, and they're really bringing people into what will be considered the music of the late 60s. They're sort of bringing the whole culture along with them. He's bringing it together, and the unique stamp he puts on, again, cream, you know, at the time, there are other artists that are doing a similar kind of blending of blues, electrification of blue Zeppelin's about to do it the next year. But the way Jimmy does it is so Jimmy Hendricks, as an American former GI, with exceptional. experience playing with all these R&B groups and then going to Greenwich Village. His story equals where we are individually and uniquely. Well, next week, we're going to go into part two of our conversation about Jimmy Hendricks

with the song all along the watchtower. It was released just a year after Purple Hays. What a run. But we're going to see how Jimmy continues to push boundaries through interpretation and recording experimentation. We're also going to see how that song helped drive this group, the Jimmy Hendrix experience, apart. I'm so excited to talk about that. Before we go, though, can I just play for you the fastest interpolation of all time?

Yes. This is Stormtroopers of Death, and this song is called The Ballad of Jimi Hendrix by Stormtroopers of Death. I love it. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at DIA-L-L-O and on TikTok at Diallo. And you can find me on Instagram, me. L-U-X-X-Y, and on TikTok at Luxury X-X. And you can also follow at One Song Podcast on Instagram and TikTok for exclusive content.

You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. I see more and more of y'all doing it on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for One Song Podcasts. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all of the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, that means you probably like this podcast. So please don't forget to give us five stars.

leave a review and share us with someone who you think would like the show. It really helps keep the show going. All right, luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, luxury. And I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duenas.

Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo, mixing by Michael Hartman and engineering by Eric Hicks. Production Supervision by Razak Boykin. Additional production support from Z. Taylor. The show is executive producer. by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wael, and Leslie Guam in beautiful Hollywood, California.