I've been seeing Albert King on PBS a lot recently, playing with Stevie Ray Vaughan for the television series known as In Session (1983), and it's just great. Albert King is rarely given the respect that he deserves by the media (although that's not the case among musicians), so I'll make a simple statement here. No blues guitarist has been more influential on the generation of blues-rockers to follow. His time-feel, vocabulary, attack and pitch control have been studied and emulated by Hendrix, Clapton, Vaughan and many, many others. I'm not saying that B.B. (no relation) and Robert Johnson weren't as important - they were - but not more. And it's astonishing to realize that, like Hendrix, he was left-handed and played a right-handed guitar upside down. But unlike Hendrix, he didn't re-string it! You can see it clearly in this video from the show mentioned above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odemgv5eLok&feature=related. And here's "Born Under a Bad Sign", from the album of the same name recorded with the formidable Booker T. and the M.G.'s in 1967: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-f3XipcBqA&feature=related.

I'm not sure where I heard my favourite Jimi Hendrix story, so I'm not positive about its veracity, but here it is anyway: When Hendrix was nine or so, he was evaluated by one of his school's counselors and when the report was filed, it said that the fact that he didn't have a guitar was damaging him psychologically. Well, as I mentioned, I'm not sure that this actually happened, but I do know that he eventually did get a guitar, and learned how to play it. His first album, Are You Experienced, was released in 1967, and for a rock trio record, it still hasn't been surpassed. "Purple Haze", the first song, might be the greatest opening track ever. The thrillingly dramatic intro opens up into a groove that features Hendrix' mastery of implied guitar rhythms - something he must have learned in the highly disciplined musical world of sixties professional rhythm and blues - but here adapted to an entirely new purpose. Another characteristic of the album is the astonishing variety of the soloing - it's almost compositional in nature. Hendrix seems to have had the ability to think way ahead in the song's form when improvising - an attribute often associated with Charlie Parker and other great jazz musicians. On "Manic Depression", for example, he plays against the beat to create powerful tension, on "The Wind Cries Mary", he plays a solo that seems to bring in elements of both country and blues - wait a minute, that's the formula for rock and roll itself - and gets the mix just right: it's one of the best solos I've ever heard. The songwriting throughout is quite simply beautiful: "Love or Confusion", "May This Be Love", "I Don't Live Today" and the title track (which uses a question mark, unlike the album title) are sophisticated, surprising, and yet natural, compositionally-speaking. There isn't a weak cut on the album.

A few words on the rest of the band: They are great. Mitch Mitchell on drums seems to have been influenced both stylistically and in terms of touch by the most important jazz drummer of the era, Elvin Jones. He uses variation more than most rock drummers do, for one thing. His interplay with Hendrix is fascinating throughout the record, and particularly on the instrumental, "Third Stone from the Sun". Noel Redding on bass, had more experience as a guitarist than most bassists do, which may have helped him to think along with Hendrix. His decision-making is uncanny - his groove, too. To sum it up: When listening to the album, keep in mind that this was their debut recording. Man.

I mentioned two great debut albums yesterday - Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left (1969) and The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced (1967) - both of which could be legitimately considered as the finest recordings of their respective careers. It got me thinking about a couple of things: 1. Why does it often seem to be the case that the earliest recordings of an artist are generally those that are the most popular with listeners? 2. Which other debut albums deserve to be considered, along with those mentioned above, in the category of the best ever? One album that I posted on not too long ago that deserves inclusion is The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967), which shares a key characteristic with the other two: its variety. The way I see it is fairly simple. A first album is like an undergraduate degree - or perhaps the first year or two of serious study in a discipline. Artists want to take a survey of the terrain, to experiment with as many aspects as they can, and to show what they can do. Also, they are still at the point in their career where the perceived possibilities far exceed the limitations. As time goes on, artists will often get more specific in their work, and investigate certain aspects of music in a more focused and/or thorough way. For example, compare White Light/White Heat (1968) with its supercharged electric sound, and The Velvet Underground (1969), with its acoustic settings, to the first album with its examples of both. I hope you'll agree that this is an interesting area to consider, and I'm going to continue to do so over the next few posts. Tomorrow: Are You Experienced.

Yesterday, while writing about "Little Wing", I mentioned that in the song Hendrix transcended his rhythm and blues roots. A couple of points: 1. Rhythm and Blues was a term invented by Jerry Wexler, a producer for Atlantic Records. He was looking to replace "race music" (understandably) to describe African-American popular music. Rhythm and blues, therefore, is not the same thing as blues, which is an older and more specific (or narrower) genre that is primarily based on a particular AAB, twelve-bar song form. (Stevie Wonder is usually considered the greatest living r&b artist. B.B. King is at the top of the blues list.) 2. Both r&b and the blues are crucial to Hendrix' playing, and he expanded the possibilities of both styles. 3. Most lead guitar blues playing is based on a pentatonic (i.e. five-note) scale. This leads some to believe that the music made from it is somehow simpler than other improvised forms (jazz, for example). This is a mistake. One doesn't count the colours in a painting to determine its complexity or power. The same goes for music. Hendrix' playing rivals anyone's in any genre. If you don't believe me, listen to "Come On (Part 1)" from Electric Ladyland (1968).

Perhaps the most beautiful guitar playing on a rock record is the introduction to "Little Wing" from Axis: Bold as Love (1967), by Jimi Hendrix. To me, it is a perfect example of Picasso's great aphorism that states, "A work of art is one that keeps on changing even after it's finished", because every time I hear it, it sounds different. It is based on a vocabulary that Hendrix learned and developed while playing with a variety of rhythm and blues acts including the Isley Brothers and Little Richard. But it transcends its roots. One of the reasons it does so is its almost unbelievable rhythmic depth. One of my teachers once said, "When I think of Hendrix' time-feel, I want to smash things up and run into the street screaming." (He was serious, by the way.) Another quote about Hendrix comes to mind, although I forget the source: When Hendrix first played London, someone at the back of the crowd said, "You'd better not go to the front of the stage; it's all wet up there." He was asked to explain. "All the guitar players are crying." We still are.

(By the way, it is very much worth checking out some of the cover versions of the song, including the one on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970) that features both Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, and Stevie Ray Vaughan's instrumental version on The Sky is Crying from 1991.)

Howdy. Further to yesterday's discussion: The ability to maintain tempo, even as intensity rises or falls, is much more difficult than it sounds. It's a bit like the way that draftsmen can draw very straight lines freehand - much practice required. The greatest musicians in any style are always the ones with this quality. Glenn Gould, Jimi Hendrix, James Jamerson, John Coltrane, Ringo Starr. You can hear it in the music. The spaces between the notes are beautiful, thrilling, awe-inspiring. The difficulty in finding musicians capable of playing like this has unfortunately led to pop music essentially being played by machines. This might pass for a while - i.e. the time it takes for teenagers to buy a product en masse, make people famous, etc. but ultimately music made this way will not have the staying power of music played by humans.
So back to the Stones - to their credit, they know how good Charlie is, and at their best, they play with him. When they run into trouble, they don't. Sometimes, the band starts very strongly and then gets a bit out of control ("rushes", in Musician) as the track goes along. Sometimes they don't lock in with him at all.
On the Stones' website, there's a video of Charlie talking about jazz drumming, where he discusses, almost apologetically, the fact that what he knows he learned from copying, and he speaks with the humility found in all great musicians. But this is how all serious musicians learn. One of the paradoxes involved in music, and the other arts as well, is that the more copying someone has done, the more originality they end up contributing. (For a literary parallel, read T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent".) This also leads to the aforementioned humility.
Suggested listening: "Bitch", "A Day in the Life", "Little Wing", "My Favorite Things","Ain't No Mountain High Enough" (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell), The Goldberg Variations 1981 (cf. 1955).