Voodoo Chile. If there is a case for reviewers’ claims that Electric Ladyland was a collection of “studio jams”, this 15-minute epic would be the main culprit. In Rolling Stone, Tony Glover dismissed it as “the sort of jam you’d hear in any club”—I’d like to join one of those clubs—yet “Voodoo Chile” has become one of Jimi’s best-loved tracks. The guests on this track are (from Traffic) Stevie Winwood on Hammond organ and (from the Airplane) Jack Cassady on bass. These were the final days of the era when musicians under contract to one label were not supposed to record with artists signed to another, hence Jimi’s guardedly coy statement:
I start with a few notes scribbled down on some paper and then we get to the studio and a melody is worked out and lots of guys all kick in little sounds of their own. Maybe if you listen real close you’ll recognise some of the guys working behind; if you do you’d better keep quiet about it ‘cos they’re contracted to other companies.
Steve Paul’s Scene Club, just around the block from the Record Plant, was Jimi’s favourite jamming joint. He would warm up at the Scene then, once he’d found a groove, carry the energy round to the studio; there seems to have been no shortage of volunteers to help him with the carrying. Even by Jimi’s standards, the studio seems to have been exceptionally full on this night, crammed with both musicians and hangers on. Winwood says there were so many musicians that they were lined up outside the studio, waiting their turn. Noel Redding says he had difficulty finding a place to sit. When he suggested to Jimi that it might be easier to work with a few less bodies around, Jimi just told him to cool it. Eventually Noel gave up and left the studio. Casady, who had his trademark semi-acoustic Guild bass with him, slipped into the vacant spot—though as far as he knew, he was joining a blues jam, not making a record. Winwood slid behind the Hammond organ and Hendrix led off on a long, medium slow blues in E. It must have become evident that this was more than just a jam when Hendrix led into a second, then a third take of the song: jams typically leap from one number to another with repeats being rare. At least six takes of “Voodoo Chile” were recorded, though several of these were breakdowns (i.e. halted in mid-song) and it’s the final take, plus overdubbed crowd sounds, that appears on the album.
The song doesn't need a great deal of musical analysis. Conceptually, it blends two of Jimi's great loves, Chicago blues and Science Fiction—interstellar hootchie-kootchie. Jimi had been playing the main figure from "Voodoo Chile" for years, in straight Muddy Waters style, as "Catfish Blues" or "Two Trains Running". Like them, the verse stays on a pedal-E (no chord changes) although in early demo form Jimi was playing "Voodoo Chile Blues" as a conventional 12 bar blues.
John Perry. Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland
"I still recall hearing ‘Voodoo Chile’ jam (so called) for the first time when we had first rushed out to buy the album and it was first played to me on a friend’s dad’s state of the art Hi-fi system and it blew us totally away! I had never heard anything like it then (or since) I knew then Jimi came from another planet!!
As Perry notes I’d like to go to THAT club but we all know and knew then it did not exist. Glover projects his own shortcomings perhaps that made him a something of a hack critical writing it wasn’t His harp playing and lack of fame might allow for sour grapes as he admits he was determined to dislike the new Jimi album (why is that? very revealing but sadly Glover is no longer with us so we can’t ask him!“)
* actually interestingly its not a quote from Glover’s orginal article that whilst somewhat jaded is overall uniformly favourable and what he actually says is:
"then a live cut, which sounds as though it was recorded late at night in a small club" . . . . clearly it isn’t live but overdubbed and their three takes were arranged and remixed in the studio but he doesn’t say ’the sort of jam you’d hear in any club’ at all! It was Jimi meaning it to sound like a jam session in a club hence the 'audience' after the fun he had playing with Winwood and Casady!
No comments:
Post a Comment