No such thing as too much Hendrix.
The partnership of Experience Hendrix and Sony Legacy has launched another round of rare and unreleased live material from the greatest rock guitarist of all time.
• Winterland, a four-disc boxed set that captures The Jimi Hendrix Experience on a three-night stand (Oct. 10, 11 and 12, 1968) at San Francisco’s renowned Winterland Ballroom.
• Hendrix in the West, an expanded (and much improved) version of the guitarist’s first posthumous album, originally released in 1972.
The current standard for live albums culled from the vaults is to give 'em a sonic scrubbing but deliver the final product warts and all — sans editing (or overdubbing) clunky parts, stage patter, tuning and other moments that were once regarded as superfluous. That's the approach taken on Winterland. The recording is treated much like sacred historical document, so in listening you get a sense of the man as well as his music.
Hendrix was both serious about the music and playful during his three-night stand in the hospitable confines of the 5,400-capacity venue. The shows had chronic amp problems — which is why the tapes were consigned to the shelf — but Hendrix deals with these glitches good-naturedly (albeit apologizing to the audience at times). Besides, the amp issues are barely detectable on the CDs. And they sure don't seem to hamper his playing, which is freewheeling, exploratory and thoroughly in-the-moment. Experience sidemen Mitch Mitchell (drums) and Noel Redding (bass) are synched in, no easy task given the bandleader's penchant for wanton improvisation.
Hendrix plays an extended noise blitzkrieg as an intro to "Are You Experienced" (Oct. 10) — a song that was very much a product of the studio and not part of Hendrix's regular stage repertoire — and proceeds to slather on a sonic stew that loosely re-creates the meticulous layering of the original recording. He gives his Stratocaster such a proper ravaging that you can hear it fall out of tune on the song's coda.
On that same night, the band unveiled "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" a week before the release of Electric Ladyland, performing it with characteristic abandon but well under control — and adding an impromptu closing riff for good measure. Another welcome surprise is an Oct. 12 turn at "Little Wing." Hendrix plays his signature ballad with the requisite tenderness, his vocal very nearly spot-on. The closing solo hews close to the Axis Bold as Love original at first, but stretches out into a lovely, unhurried digression.
The boxed set includes multiple versions of songs from Hendrix’s regular set list: "Foxy Lady," "Purple Haze," "Red House," "Fire," "Hey Joe," Cream’s "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Lover Man," providing great grist for Jimi freaks to argue over the merits of each. And finally, the last track on Disc 4 is a rambling 20-minute interview conducted backstage in Boston Garden.
Winterland has also been condensed into an 11-track single disc, which must've been tough to sequence, there being highlights aplenty.
In contrast to Winterland's archival purity, the single-disc Hendrix in the West is a hodge-podge of live material gathered from 1968, '69 and '70. It's prime concert Hendrix, for sure, and has been re-sequenced and augmented with more and better material. The "Little Wing" from the 1972 issue (Royal Albert Hall, 1970) has been replaced by the one from Winterland.
The album's enduring curios are versions of two '50s rock n' roll standards: A straight-ahead run at Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," including a paint-peeling guitar break; and a meandering take on Carl Perkin's "Blue Suede Shoes," remade into slinky funk — both recorded at the Berkeley Community Center on May 30, 1970.
As a final FYI: The current Legacy series of releases also includes:
• Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight, a DVD edition mixed in both stereo and 5.1 surround.
• Jimi Hendrix: The Dick Cavett Show, a complete collection of Hendrix's celebrated sit-downs and performances on the thinking-person’s talk show.
Winterland, 5 Stars; Hendrix in the West, 4 Stars.
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2011.