a blend of tongue and steel strings

[saw]

indiscernible pop music,
no doubt another Spotify junkie
pulling weeds in the yard next door
maybe smoking a little as well,
good to hear the sounds of "normal"
smell it as well....
anti-viral activity
pulling those weeds of malcontent

my neighbor goes back inside
so I crank up Axis Bold As Love,
Jimi can bust up any bad dream
he can always shred the ennui of confinement
can always put just the right spin on the ball
English, the snooker players call it
I've always thought his guitar
was just another one of his voices

that his vocal expression and his instrumentation were
in fact, A duo
that his guitar was singing and talking just like his open mouth
and his mind was a blend of tongue and steel strings

[sasha]

Jazz arranger Gil Evans, who had written & led orchestrations for Miles Davis (e.g., "Sketches of Spain" and "Porgy & Bess"), wanted to do the same for Jimi Hendrix. Jimi had agreed to the project, but died a few weeks before they recorded anything. Can you imagine what he mght have sounded like with a full jazz orchestra behind him? Evans often included a Hendrix tune on his own releases after Jimi's death, with guitarists Ryo Kawasaki or John Abercrombie filling in, and trumpeter Hannibal Marvin Peterson on vocals. Kawasaki and Abercrombie were able enough, but jazz-trained and perhaps a bit too mannered to cover Hendrix. (Stevie Ray did it better, I think.) Peterson, unfortunately, fell a bit short as a vocalist. (I never did understand why an outstanding instrumentalist would insist on singing instead...) Still, the recordings are a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. If only, if only.......
 

Gil_does_Jimi.mp3

(8.77 MiB) Not downloaded yet

[saw]

listening to your link as I'm typing.....good stuff....and thanx for the background info as well....yeah...can you imagine....I often think of what Hendrix would have, could have done....what he'd be doing right now....and Janis Joplin as well to name a couple

[sasha]

"Little Wing" came from Evans' LP "There Comes A Time". I faded out just before an embarrassingly weak vocal from Peterson. The other two - "Little Miss Lover" & "A Merman I Should Turn to Be" were from an LP devoted entirely to Hendrix, "Gil Evans Plays Jimi Hendrix". Both are probably available from some online streaming service.

[saw]

Little Wing may be my favorite Hendrix song.....and Axis Bold As Love was one of those life changing LP's for me....I instantly could see more colors and textures, and my overall passion for music deepened.....also Cream's Disraeli Gears.....perhaps these 2 artists put the concept of Power Trio more obvious on the map

[sasha]

I didn't come to appreciate Hendrix until much later, coming to him by the backdoor via jazz. I can think of two LPs that permanently recalibrated my ears: Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew", and an avant-garde release on Nonesuch, "The Electro-Acoustic Music of Iannis Xenakis". My first exposure to Miles had come from "Filles de Kilimanjaro" in college, during a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to "culturify" myself by checking out jazz. I wasn't ready, and just couldn't hear the music. "Bitches Brew" changed that. Big Time. It was an epiphany. Xenakis' musique concrete was another - it changed my very concept of what constitutes music. Melody, rhythm, structure - nice to have, but not essential. Waves lapping on a beach - two trees groaning against one another in the breeze - rain pattering on the roof of the car, a distant train in the night, a field full of crickets, a coin spinning down on a counter - all music.