In the summer of 1967 the Jimi Hendrix Experience, on their first cross-country concert tour of America, opened for the Monkees. They played only eight of the 29 dates:
- July 8th 1967: Jacksonville, Florida
- July 9th, 10th 1967: Miami, Florida
- July 11th, 12th 1967: Charlotte, North Carolina
- July 14th, 15th, 16th 1967: Forest Hills, Queens, New York
The Monkees were a knock-off of the early Beatles made for American television. Despite their questionable talent millions of 11- to 15-year-old girls in America loved them, in particular Davy Jones, frontman and heart-throb. They were the best-selling band in America at the time.
Jimi Hendrix hated them:
Oh God, I hate them! Dishwater. I really hate somebody like that make it so big. You can’t knock anybody for making it, but people like the Monkees?
His manager had a different opinion: opening for the Monkees would put Hendrix in front of hundreds of thousands of American record-buyers. Despite three hit songs in Britain he was little known in America. He needed something to follow up his success in June at the Monterey Pop Festival in California.
The Monkees loved the idea. They were huge fans: “some of the best music I’ve ever heard in my life,” said Mike Nesmith. Mickey Dolenz said:
The Monkees was very theatrical in my eyes and so was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It would make the perfect union.
It did not go well:
Dolenz:
Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps, and break into “Purple Haze”, and the kids in the audience would instantly drown him out with “We want Daavy!” God, was it embarrassing.
When Hendrix tried to get 20,000 girls to sing along with “Foxy Lady” they would say “Davy!” instead of “Foxy”.
Rock music critic Lillian Roxon saw the show in Forest Hills, Queens. She said Hendrix’s love for his guitar was:
so passionate, so concentrated and so intense that anyone with halfway decent manners had to look away. And that was the way the act began, not ended. By the time it was over he had lapped and nuzzled his guitar with his lips and tongue, caressed it with his inner thighs, jabbed at it with a series of powerful pelvic thrusts.
As a joke she said the Daughters of the American Revolution got him fired for being “too erotic”. In fact on the eighth night Hendrix gave the audience the finger and stormed off stage. And that was it.
One woman who saw the show in Charlotte when she was 11 remembers it this way:
I have no recollections of anyone screaming for the Monkees to come on stage. All I remember is everyone screaming, standing on chairs, jumping up and down, waving their arms in the air, and being entranced by Jimi Hendrix on that stage. The music was like nothing I had ever heard and the crowd was in a fever when he was on stage. The last thing I remember about the evening was him setting his guitar on fire.
Sources: snopes.com, The Monkees Summer Tour of 1967, WNEW, “The Rough Guide to Jimi Hendrix” (2009) by Richie Unterberger.
See also:
- Jimi Hendrix
- Monterey Pop Festival
- Woodstock
- The 1967 Detroit Riot – a few weeks later
- Things I would like to see if I had a time machine
Interesting story. In hindsight, it does seem humorous as we know how that kind of turned out in the end.
LikeLike
There are so many levels of irony involved in that set of facts.
Jimi wasn’t the only victim. Having been a kid during that era, I can attest that there were many kids who preferred the Monkees over the Beatles.
Did you know that Jimi also played for a time with the Isley Brothers? I believe he even crashed at the home of one of the Isleys. They thought his guitar playing was too wild.
Of course the easy commercial success of bubble gum pop over real art is by now so time tested and market proven that it’s not even remarkable. Justin Bieber, Brittney Spears, Nikki Minaj, everybody associated with Disney, the list could strech on for pages. With the ubiquity of auto-tune, guide tracks, etc., the only requirement to throw a pop star up the charts is a photogenic face.
The first hits by the Monkees weren’t played by the four guys in the show at all. They were written by professional songwriters and recorded by session musicians, mostly by The Wrecking Crew, which was sort of like the LA analog of The Funk Brothers, except the Wrecking Crew weren’t beholden to just one studio.
Later, as the band’s fame grew, the band, which contained at least two guys who had been actual working musicians before the show, began to insist on greater involvement in the process of writing their songs and performing them on stage.
The band’s manager, Don Kirshner, chafed at the band for being uppity and diluting his vision. He made sure this would not occur with his next fictional bubble gum pop act by building the band from cartoon characters: The Archies.
LikeLike
Nice post, Abagond. Hendrix played with a lot of soul/R&B giants (and lesser knowns).
The riff that everyone knows from Aretha Franklin’s “Save Me” was originally taken from Ray Sharpe’s “Help me Get the Feeling” on which Hendrix played though I’m not 100% certain that he came up with that riff. Cornell Dupree is listed as one of the songwriters. Dupree was a huge influence on Jimi.
LikeLike
The drummer for the monkees , Jimmy Dolenz , was actualy a child actor who was in a series called ” Circus Boy” , or something…
Ironicly , when Hendrix would hit it big with his English group and a wave of English rockers would hit the US shores, not only were some incredible Rhythm and Blues and Soul groups , like Fontella Bass, Smokey Robinson, James Brown , The Impresions , Martha and the Vandellas , Curtis Mayfeild , James Brown ( pretty much regulated to the Chitlin circuit until Rocky 2 came out) , and many others ,but, as well , some of the unbeleivible jazz groups like Miles Davis and John Coltrane who were at their peak of making some of the most incredible music on the century, were sluffed aside for the media driven hype for rock and roll…
Yeah, I think Hendrix stood out from many of the rockers , especialy because of his Soul background, which was very apherant in the way he held and played his guitar ( when he had the group with Buddy MIles, it was almost funky) , but, still, a whole lot of incredible talent was denied any real exposure to the public at that time….besides some ocasional American Bandstand and Hollywood a Go go aperances.
LikeLike
some of the unbelievable jazz groups like Miles Davis and John Coltrane who were at their peak of making some of the most incredible music on the century, were sluffed aside for the media driven hype for rock and roll…
“Sluffed off” Yes B.R., this hit some harder than others. A few months ago I watched part of a documentary on Mingus. The documentary made a link between an incredible downfall in Mingus’ career and the record company shift away from many types of music; definitely a shift away from Jazz, to an emphatic promotion of Rock music.
It was affecting and unpleasant to see what happened to him. I believe ‘Trane was established enough that he could still keep doing what he wished to do.
Miles would add to what you’ve said. (He was not going to be sluffed off so easy.) In his autobiography he talks about what he saw happening with Rock music taking the lead in the public’s taste for music. As you know, he rethought his approach to his record company, to his style, to how he was going to be able sell units, to whom he should collaborate with, etc and then he brought about Jazz Fusion. A born survivor, that man was, relentless and intelligent; essential qualities for life on planet Earth. (oh and love, nearly forgot that quality, oops)
As brilliant as Mile’s response was to Rock’s dominance I think he went through some suffering and self doubt too. I read his autobiography too long ago to know how accurate I’m being. (So correct me where I’m possibly off.) But I’m remembering this: Miles dated, I believe, an ex-girlfriend of Jimi’s. Apparently she was exceedingly beautiful which was matched by an intense vanity and shallowness. Miles, typically was a take no shit kind of man. But he put up with this woman for ages. As I recall, what he says in his book was that his sales were suffering and he knew there was some kind of ceiling for him now with Rock music being so dominant. He was depressed for quite some time about it all and stayed in this abusive relationship. He eventually got out of the depression and got rid of the chick.
Jazz really suffered a massive exogenous shock when Rock and Roll came around.
LikeLike
BR, question for you.
Do you know if Jimi Hendrix played with anyone in the funk band ‘George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic’?
since most of those guys started playing back in the 60’s, I wondered if they knew each other. Funk music sounded like it was influenced by Jimi Hendrixs’ style of rock music.
LikeLike
Interesting post.
I heard that the Monkees were a “mock” group trying to be like the Beatles, but as silly as their television show was, it was entertaining.
Looking back, it’s easy to make a correlation between this and how the music industry operates when it comes to “talent” and I use that term very loosely.
LikeLike
Miles’ wife at the time was Betty Davis (nee Mabry) and he gives her a lot of credit for turning him on to a lot of the new sounds and clothing styles that were going on at that time. He says that musically she was ahead of her time and if she had been active in the eighties, she would have been like Madonna or Prince. He was quite gracious in his praise.
Unfortunately, according to his autobiography she was also unfaithful to him and had an affair with Hendrix, and this, along with the difference in their ages led to a divorce. FWIW, I don’t believe that Betty Davis ever admitted to any affair. I can’t call it and I guess ultimately it doesn’t matter.
I wrote about Betty Davis here. I love her voice.
http://www.theurbanpolitico.com/2011/09/music-reviews-betty-davis-and-holmes.html
LikeLike
Well, SW6 , and, Shady , you make great points about Miles confronting and trying to find his niche in the rock world hype . And, Im not sure the exact story with his wife. I heard that John Mccglaugclin took him to a Hendrix concert , and, that peaked is interest , and, I kept hearing a rumor that they were supposed to have gotten together , but, it never went off….
Linda, I honestly cant anwser that question right now, but, an incredible drummer who plays jazz and funk and sometimes now plays for Santana (when his wife Cindy Blackman isnt), Dennis Chambers , was a Parlament Funkadelic drummer
The main thing about that period of the Monkees and Miles and Hendrix and the Rock wave was, that at that early 60″s period, Miles was into an incredible stage of developement with his jazz group, in a very killer jazz swing style , and a very high leval of music…and, rock and avant guarde jazz took attention off the greatness of that style, but, it will be studied for decades to come..you can beleive it
SW6, good point about Mingus ( by the way, you brought in a referaance to a Cannonball solo with Nav Singh copying it over Cannonbal , on guitar…..what is your relation with Nav Singh ?)
LikeLike
( I meant Miles seeing Hendrix piqued his interist)
Miles was influenced by Hendrix , and, wanted guitar players like Mccglauclin , Sonny Sharrok , Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas , and Mike Stern to aproximate that energy ( Scofeild got into more of a bluesey concept).
I saw those earliar Miles bands trying to go electric, with Correa, Jarret, Steve Grossman , etc, and, with Dejonnette going free a lot, they never tried to just aproximate a rock band, but, some reocords like Jack Johnson, Live Evil tried to get with pretty rocky with Sonny and Mccglauclin….but Jack on Live Evil is so out there, he predates drum and bass on a Miles solo on Fonky Tonk by decades…
And On the Corner wasnt a rock concept at all and the band with Cosey was really dark and layered and not really rock also
I played with Sonny Sharrock, Pete Cosey ( just passed and played on the electric Mud records) , Stern and Socfeild and Steve Grossman, all formadable players
But Miles did want some of those guitarists to aproximate Hendrix
Hendrix was great, dont get me wrong, but, rock is sort of 101 dick jane and sally of Afro diasporic concepts
LikeLike
Sorry folks, I didnt see my posts come up so i did a bunch of posts that sounded the same because I though they weren coming up.
So , sorry for some duplicat posts if they come up
LikeLike
Part of this story reminds me of the late 70s, when Prince was just starting out, and he opened for the Rolling Stones. He got booed off the stage because the Stones fans weren’t having any of it…or maybe they just couldn’t appreciate/didn’t understand what Prince was about. In any case, I wonder how many or if any of those people would later come to appreciate Prince and his music in the same way that Hendrix is revered now?
LikeLike
^Yuck! Prince opening for The Rolling Stones, things like that make no sense whatsoever. But, Prince opening for James Brown, I can imagine things like that…
LikeLike
@B.R.
HA! Relation with Nav Singh? B.R. good chap, you flatter me. I have no connection to the man at all. I just found his vid because I was searching for versions of Oleo on YouTube one day. I linked it in the Miles Davis thread ’cause I thought you (and others) would be into it.
LikeLike
Relative to their other white rock brethren, the Rolling Stones tended to give public credit and opening act opportunities to black musicians back in the day. One could be cynical and suggest that it was just to try to gain “authenticity” but so it goes. They have had Ike /Tina Turner, Buddy Guy/Junior Wells, Stevie Wonder, Peter Tosh, and BB King among other black opening acts.
Although in my opinion most of the Rolling Stones’ music lacks true swing and bounce, again, compared to other white rock bands, they do swing and so someone like Prince who plays real rock and roll and not just “rock” would theoretically have been a good opening act.
LikeLike
Shady, Im sorry I forgot to mention your name about bringing up Miles wife and Im going to read your link now…
I tell you what gets me about the whole rock hype by the media, and that is exactly what it was, there are people going to their graves thinking the Beatles ,Stones and Dylan are gods. When the truth is, they are going to be diminished and the people who were really breaking ground in music are going to be remembered and studied, like Coltrane, and Miles. And its going to be noted that James Brown changed the beat and affected all the music that came in on the hip hop tip that dominated the 90’s
Smokey Robinson is my poet for that era
Its just like back in the roaring 20’s, Rudy Valee was the big star of the day , but, we dont really go back and study him, we study Louis Armstribg, Duke Ellington etc
Hendrix was special and ther are some great rock people, but, the incredible talents smothered by all the record company hype is just sad. Ill take Fontlla Bass and Martha and the Vandellas over Janis Jopln anyday ( I admit Im very opinionate about this)
LikeLike
Nice article , Shady, Filles de Killamanjaro is one of my favorites
LikeLike
Interesting.
Today it would probably translate to “Kendrick Lamar opening for Justin Bieber”.
LikeLike
Thanks B.R. I love just about all music but get very upset with how some forms of music (or musicians) get ignored. But that’s life…
LikeLike
Also, I would be interested in hearing any Pete Cosey stories you have, B.R. he was another fellow who didn’t quite get the attention he deserved. Part of it may have been the obvious and part of it was I don’t think he often (ever???) recorded as a leader.
LikeLike
Which one to believe?
LikeLike
Shady….Ha, stories about Pete Cosey…for sure Ive got a couple
I was lucky enough to be running around with a great Chicago trumpet player, Billy Brimfeild, who I played with in a band. He got me into the George Hunter Moonlighters Big Band, George being an x baritone player with Dizzy Guilespi , had this band that used some of the absolute top black Chicago musicians…Pete was one of them..
My first encounter of Pete was at a jam session at the High Chaperal on the South Side and we were doing a really fast up tempo version of Milestones, and I was playing congas and Pete leaned over and said ” Hey man, would you lay out…”…I was young and he just crushed my little world…but I went home and cried and practiced even harder , so, he made me better
Another story, we were playing with the George Hunter band at big enourmous prom in downtown Chicago, and , an enormous gang fight broke out, and I mean enormous, like a scene from those old western bar fight brawls in the movies…and the fights were going all on the bandstand and back into the kitchen, and, all the musicians were scattering, and Pete got up on the mic, and in the middle of absolute chaos, was saying ” Brothers, brothers, we dont need all this violance and destuction…etc”
He did a lot of Chess record dates , and , was on the Electric Mud records, and was part of the famous AACM in Chicago , who explored deep varitetis of black music and avant guarde jazz
LikeLike
Thanks. B.R.
I had heard the story about Pete Cosey playing with Howling Wolf, who wasn’t that impressed with the new sound and at one point stood up to tell Cosey “Why don’t you take your amps and pedals and that wah-wah s*** and throw them all in the lake on your way to get a haircut?”
I’ve got most of Cosey’s work with Phillip Cochran I think.
I think I’ll pull out Agharta when I get home.
LikeLike
http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11973/calls-to-destroy-egypt-great-pyramids-begin
“Now, however, as Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sheikhs” observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president is “pious” enough—if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt’s first Islamic conqueror.”
LikeLike
As we can see, Muslims destroy Black African heritage. All Black Africans should rethink Islam. Black Africans should demand reparations from Arabs. The oil sheiks fear Israeli nukes, so they will comply.
LikeLike
This will not go well with Afrocentrists. Actually, regardless whether Muslims will become enraged or not, nuking Mecca becomes a moral and religious duty. Mecca is the idol of the Muslim. The very fact that Mecca has to be protected or avenged, proves that it is an idol. After all, that is the logic Muslims use when they attack someone else’s religious stuff. The destruction of Mecca proves that the Muslim will burn eternally in hell.
LikeLike
BR: Interesting comments and stories. Since we have had recorded entertainment media, we have seen markets saturated by a large volume of cheap pop pabulum, with a few bright points of real art. This relates to the nature of “art” once it becomes a commodity. Over time, as you note, the chaff falls away and we return to study the real wheat.
The advent of rock music as a hugely popular genre is almost directly related to the advent of high quality LP recording and widespread ownership of powerful stereo systems on which to play them. The genre could not have existed at that scale without these technological developments. And, because of these developments, there was a quantum increase in the volume of material released by the industry, most of which was pretty much completely worthless from the perspective of Art (with a capital “A”).
But there were a few bright point, Hendrix being one of them. Much in the way James Brown almost singlehandedly created funk, Hendrix literally re-defined the way the guitar as an instrument was played. I’m not talking about any unique modes or scales or chord substitutions. I mean the physical act of playing the instrument, how the hands impact it, how the power of the sound from the amplifier is used, etc. He added layers and dimensions to this lexicon that nobody before him had even imagined.
Segovia often spoke of the “innate excellence of the spirit” and how this can be revealed by technique. Of course Segovia was speaking in the context of classical guitar, but I’ve often applied that concept to Jimi in connection with the electric guitar.
LikeLike
Blanc2 , I hear you , as I said, Im very opinionated , and, I do think Hendrix is special.
About what people will look back on in 100 years, from now, that people wil study of the 60’s, no one can really say for sure, except yes, the mediocre will be diminished , that doesnt mean no one will talk about the Beatles, but, they wont have the hype of gods they have been awarded by the media now, and, that will make a huge differance. All of us will have to go to our grave for many years and then the truth will set in about what has real value at that time…
And here is a hint and something to think about, there are literaly , right now at this moment, hundreds into the thousands of educational institutions devoted to the study of jazz and what Miles Davis, Monk, John Coltrane , Loius Armstrong, Duke Ellington , Wayne Shorter etc contributed. Including music of that time of the Beatles, Stones, Dylan etc
Why? Because it really has depth.There are lots of things to discover ad learn, a huge amount of direction.There was tons of horrible commercial music in the jazz era, as mediocre as rock. But these incredible musicians are being studied en masse , right now in our higher institutions of learning in music.
I know they teach some Beatles somewhere , they teach rock somewhere , maybe GIT has a program, but, there just isnt the depth to really dig into it.
Rock is really made for young kids in a garage, mostly white, who just got expensive instruments from their parents. Rockers have to get outside thier idiom to really expand
I do plead guilty of being opinionated about this,
LikeLike
“Including music of that time of the Beatles, Stones, Dylan etc”, meaning they are studying music of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter and Coltrane that they were writing and playing at the same time as the Beatles were gettng their fame for I want to hold your Hand…
LikeLike
Think about it this way , Blanc2, the rockers got to have it all in their lifetime, the money, the fame, the legends in thier own minds, and legends in their lifetimes, some of them god status
Who is getting studied now is the black jazz musicians , who worked in the most deplorable of conditions, got jim crow stuck in their face in the south at that time, got messed over and turned down by the major lables except for the very few , had to deal with white jazers and rockers getting the successes
and now we are finding ot they were the Devine ones of that time
LikeLike
I don’t disagree with anything you say. As you know, rock’s power was as a social force, not an artistic genre. It was the music of proletariat youth. Leo Fender invented an inexpensive instrument, one an average kid could afford, and James Marshall invented a powerful amplifier from used WWII technology. Together, these two items enabled small groups of young people, with just a little bit of basic musical knowledge (the term “3 chord rock” doesn’t come from a vacuum), to play very loud and thus be heard by large audiences.
Punk rock recaptured that energy for a minute in the late 1970’s, before it was co-opted by the music industry.
At the same time, rock music has offered at least a few important facets to the lexicon of musical knowledge. Jimi Hendrix was one of the big contributors in that regard because of the dimenions he added to the instrument. He literally invented ways of playing the guitar that nobody had used before.
I’ll close with a fantastic metaphor for the tension you describe. There was a guy named Lenny Breau. You may or may not be familiar with Lenny. He was a guitarist’s guitaris, a jazz monster who did all manner of truly amazing stuff on the guitar. Lenny grew up in a musical family and was on stage from a young age. When Lenny was a teen, his family landed in Winnipeg (Canada). There, Lenny was befriended by a local teen who wanted to learn how to play guitar. Lenny hung out with this kid and taught him some basic chords and scales.
That kid was and is Randy Bachman, of the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Randy got rich and famous banging out three-chord rock, whilst Lenny Breau created works of sublime richness and beauty in obscurity, dying at a young age in a Hollywood hotel swimming pool, maybe strangled by his (probably fed up) wife, probably with tons of substances in his system.
Since then, Randy has gathered some of Lenny’s recorded but unreleased material, clean it up, release it, and disburse the profits to Lenny’s widow and family. There’s even a web site for this. Check it out.
http://www.guitarchives.com/
LikeLike
Blanc2 , thanks for that link on Lenny Breau. I have heard of him but I am not an expert on all his work
To be sure there are people who play good jazz who enter rock. And rockes who come to it later
I earnastly invite you , Blanc2 to investigate some of the music of Wayne Shorter, songs like , JuJu, Black Nile, Fe Fi Fo Fum, Witchhunt, Footprints, and go buy Miles Smiles ( maybe you have it already). Go to the heart of where one of our great geniuses of American music was at his best ( the Miles period), investigate the tempos they played at and the harmonies they wrote with and the structures and melodies and pollyrhythms. I have never been the same……
LikeLike
Been there, loved it, still doing it. Don’t you recall our discussions in these ideas in the Miles post a few months ago? Meanwhile, my son is hip to Cobham, Narada Michael Walden, etc.
Lenny Breau is well worth investigating. As mentioned, he was a guitarist’s guitarist. His technique, especially his use of false harmonics and walking bass simultaneously with melody, was genius.
LikeLike
Branc2 , I absolutly do remember our discusion, but, I never remember finding out the depth you are taking your jazz. You never mentioned if you were learning those songs by Wayne, and, I discover that jazz cats either love Wayne and know those tunes or they never heard of them ( but a lot of people know Footprints, but, Wayne is a lot more). I never found out if you really understand the form of Gingerbread boy , in other words how deep are you really taking your jazz? And that is my point, there are jazz players and then there are the Devine ones….Can you hold down an up tempo blues ? If you can, Id love to play with you….if you cant, you may not know entirly what Im talking about ( Blanc2 does play guitar, so, Im not challenging him just finding out what he knows)
I did listen to Lenny Breau a long time ago, and , I will check him out again, but , I did hear him and love his lyrical line and harmony, but, wasnt thrilled with the depth of his swing like this guy (please jump straight to 1:50) and see how this guy absolutly dominates the harmony , melody, and swing, he swings harder than Lenny, that is why I didnt just become a Lenny Breau afficianodo . Absolutly nothing against someone who is , but, Ive been there…also , and, there is a lot of room for personal taste…right? and then there are the innovators and their contribution, and jazz is a black American innovation..the deep treasure is in those black American roots. If you really are ino jazz,that has to be the roots of any discusion about jazz….why Lenny Breau ? just curious, because , I look to Wes (Montgomery) as the king of all those guys who sound like that…
By the way, I like your description of Hendrix and what he meant to the rock sound…My idea of the consumat musician who knows Hendrix, James Brown, Miles , Coltrane and the deepest of funk and soul singing….Marcus Miller….that is a cosumate musician
LikeLike
ha , I made a referance to a youtube in a post in moderation, and, I forgot to link it:
please go directly to 1:50 to see an example of what I love in a jazz guitarist…nothing against Lenny Breau, I just love this guy more
LikeLike
…and, I want to apologise for starting my jazz rap over here on a Hendrix, thread, it came up because Miles was influenced by Hendrix
If this is way out of place , Im happy to pick it up over on the Miles thread…
I admit, I dont like rock, the sound of the loud screeching guitars grates on my soul compared to a Wayne Shorter chord, the drummers are heavy handed and stiff compared to the Afro diasporic grooves I have been hearing down here in Brazil and compared to jazz, or clave ( god I saw a killer clave band in Miami, just killer, much hipper than rock), and just compare how a rock guy holds his guitar or bass to a jazz or samba master , like a stiff peice of wood
sorry, that is my 2 cents, and, I admit , Im boring
LikeLike
Caveatt, one rock guy I love, along with Hendrix..Santana…still going stong, and married to drop dead gorgeous Cindy Blackman…a jazz drummer ( who played with Lenny Kravitz)
LikeLike
I heard Mike Nesmith was big pimpin in those days.
His wife and mistress were pregnant with both his sons at the same time….
LikeLike
…Branc2, been checkng out Breau on Youtube, yes,incredible harmony, melodic line and facility….a guitar players player
but, he isnt the deepest swinger on guitar there ever was
LikeLike
Lenny’s thing was his amazing sense of chord substitution, and his ability to walk the bass while playing melody, which is very difficult to do on guitar. I can appreciate the stylings of G. Benson like those in the clip. I’ve heard/jammed with hundreds of guys who play like that, generally using a flatpick and a hollow body jazzbox set to the neck pickup, with the tone control turned all or part way down. It has become sort of the “official jazz guitar tone” — to the point where it’s almost a sense of artistic facism: you must play here, like ziss.
The genious of Lenny was his inhuman right hand technique, coupled with his “he must have two brains” ability to walk bass while playing melody. He could evoke voices from his guitar that most guitarists never even know exist, while playing two lines simultaneously. This is why I call him a guitarist’s guitarist. Much of Lenny’s genius is lost on people who don’t play the instrument.
As to Wayne Shorter, Art Ensembel of Chicago, Rahsan Roland Kirk, Don Pullen, one of my current faves The Bad Plus, I love all of this stuff and have spent much time listening/studying. I’m not nearly good enough as a musician to play that level of music. I came to jazz as an adult. It is something I will study my whole life and still feel as if I’ve only ever scratched the surface, but its beauty and depth and richness will be a treasure for me.
As to rock, I like the volume and the hubris and the testes that underlie its proletarian message of rebellion. It’s a different way of using and experiencing music. Certainly it has nothing of the cerebral and spiritual depth that jazz music contains, but then it doesn’t try to. It is a shame that our youth-oriented culture tends to elevate and reward shallow pop music while real jazz musicians struggle for daily bread, but that’s not the fault of rock music, it’s the fault of the star-maker machine that drives music sales.
LikeLike
@Blanc2
Really interesting conversation!!!! i love Rahsaan Roland Kirk!
Speaking of independent bass and melody lines Blanc2, what’s your impression of jazz guitarists like Joe Pass or in a different context blues/folk guitarists like Etta Baker/Elizabeth Cotten/John Hurt who employed that style of playing?
@B.R.
B.R. I definitely get where you are coming from because so many people in my family feel the same way about jazz. I like just about any form of music except for today’s pop. Yes, most rock drumming is to be polite somewhat simpler than most jazz drumming. =) But what is your impression of some of the people who are considered to be among the best of rock or funk drummers? People like Bernard Purdie, Buddy Miles, Neil Peart, John Bonham, Clyde Stubblefield, Jabo Starks, Ziggy Modeliste, Al Jackson etc.
Or coming from another angle what’s your take on “fusion” drummers like Billy Cobham.
Thanks!
LikeLike
Thanks for the reply, Blanc2….just to say a little more about Hendrix…the guy had a vision, not just his music, but, his whole thing, the look, the philosophy…he coupled it with what was happening in London at the time, and, Ill even say the English rockers had more shutzpa than than the American rockers, and, Hendrix was there and he made that scene along with some others and made his way into the business from that vision…
Now look at his first band…Mitch Mitchel was influenced by jazz drummers, but, his time was all over the place, they invented drum machines because of rock drummers like him and Keith Moon, and that they discovered jazz drummers, when playing pop, like Steve Gadd and Harvey Mason , were so strong and precise that they had to have machines to duplicate it
The bass player was actualy a guitar player , who Hendrix urged to play bass….so, Hendrix was carrying the whole thing
With Buddy Miles, he sure did have some deep dish groove funk behind him.
There is no telling where Hendrix would be today if he were alive…I think Santana is great example of where he might have headed, he probably would have played with Marcus Miller, someone who can play bop also
About jazz and Breau, yes, his forte is harmonic, you may not be impressed with the Wes and Benson stylists, but, Ive played with guys like Jimmy Ponder ( you may not have heard of him but what a player), Richie Hart ( with Dr Lonnie Smith, really deep dish swing) and Mike Stern and John Scofeild, who are all individuals who I think swing harder than Lenney, and they may all dig Lenney.
But, I want to make it clear to anyone reading this, jazz is huge, there are a huge amount of stylings and leanings, Im into the heavy deep black American aproach with the emphasis on hard bop, bebop, drums loud and groove up tempo into the ground…that is the style I champion, then at the same time, hard driving Afro Brazilian and Afro Cuban, all emphasis on power rhythm and groove
I respect all styles in jazz but , its all about personal taste, isnt it ? And, Lenney, Bill Evans , great people and great harmonic contributions, dont swing as hard as the innovators, and, Im into the deepest powerful swing, that is directly related to the Afro diasporic concepts Ive talked about, so that is why I express the opinions the way I do….I have nothing against anyones elses preferances, but, I have deep reasons for loving and playng what I do and can express those reasons very clearly
By the way, make sure to tell your son Cobham is from Panama and can play incredible clave rhythms and up bebop…he shouldnt miss that aspect of him or he isnt really getting him
keep up the music
LikeLike
Shady, just saw your message
Well, for me, funk is a differant story than rock, its more groovy, suple and is that James Brown history, James Brown invented it
His band at first considererd themselves jazz players, Bernard Purdie considered himself a jazz drummer
New Orleans is a story all by itself, yes the Meters etc
Same with the best fuson drummers, they were jazz drummers, Cobham, Lennie White, Alphonce Mouzon , Tony Williams
Marcus Miller is the greatest funder of all time, I played bop with him with Walter Bishop Jr (great bop player with Charlie Parker). Players who played real up tempo bop have to learn to groove and think quick. When they aply it to other idioms, they can play those idioms really well
LikeLike
….meaning Marcus Miller is the greatest funk player of all time
LikeLike
…the thing about funk is, the bass player is one of the most dominant instruments…”on the one” is a funk term for the bass player always coming back to the one after a little riff in his groove.
Slap bass etc absolutly dominate the funk sound and give it a unique push all its own…I love the great slap players like Marcus who also know jazz, there is a differance in their funk than if the only played funk
LikeLike
I beleive Jimmy Hendrix would have played with some of the great slap funk bass players if he was alive today
LikeLike
Speaking of Hendrix this is slightly off topic but not really. Can someone explain the process of “covering” a song for a CD. I was reading this article and the local bluesman Johnnie Basset says he wanted to do a version of “The Wind Cries Mary” on his new CD but was unable to get permission from the estate.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120711/ENT04/207110302/Blues-master-Johnnie-Bassett-taps-decades-music-history-latest-CD?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p
I thought that if a song was commercially released that you did not need “permission” to cover it on your own CD but that you HAD to pay the proper mechanical royalties. There are tons of covers where the original artist/songwriter didn’t like the new version it but if they got paid they couldn’t say too much. Evidently this is no longer the case. Has the law changed? How does this work? I am not familiar with anyone being able to legally prevent someone from covering a tune.
LikeLike
I heard Mike Nesmith was big pimping in those days.
His wife and Nurit Wilde were both pregnant at the same times with his two sons.
LikeLike
Actualy, the complications of copyright issues forced me to write my own material and use freinds material as much as posible
I cant quote exact law. but, I was turned down by a famous person to do their song, and their wife didnt let us use it. He was one of my idols and still is, but, it makes you want to become independent of anyone
If its a releas that isnt going to be visilble on a Billboard chart or what not, its safe to say you can release it and not raise a red flag
If there is any indication a person could make some money from another person’s song, that person is going to be very interested, and, it seems they can not give permision, also, at least it did happen to me.
LikeLike
@ Linda, I have not read any information about Hendrix ever playing with Parliament/Funkadelic. Eddie Hazel was the first lead guitarist for Funkdelic and may have just simply been inspired by the Blues as was Hendrix, the sound apparently grew out of the Blues. Hazel began playing with Billy Nelson in New York or New Jersey and was later recruited into Funkadelic. Eddie Hazel played lead on Maggot Brain which was finally voted one of the greatest gutar solo songs of all time by Rolling Stone, which was long over due.
Later, Michael Hampton joined Funkadelic and became a second lead guitarist with Eddie Hazel. Hampton, joined the band at a young age and admits all he did was listen to Hendrix records and try to follow his style.
Michael Hampton on Maggot Brain solo 2006http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LBLGGrZFCg&feature=related
Peace!
LikeLike
I love how passionate Hendrix was about his music
LikeLike
I love monkeys and animals, love Jimi, “the animals ” were cool, but “the monkeys” were the worst, at the time, Hollywood created for t.v. joke! to call them “dishwasher ” was kind in terms of insults, they were an insult to Jimi and serious musicians. wish he played a psychedelic “hey we”re the monkeys” ! “b
LikeLike