Hendrix's and Coltrane's awareness of each other

Two giants at the same time, churning and burning, exploring similar inner realms. Granted, John was a star when Jimi finally arrived, but Jimi's arrival and impact was not the kind to go unnoticed. I am sure Jimi probably spoke of John, did John ever speak of Jimi? Is there any proof in interviews of the time? Or pictures of either's recordings in either's record collection? Was either ever sighted at the other's live show?

 

John Coltrane died around the same time Jimi first released Are You Experienced. As far as I know, sadly, they never got the chance to really become aware of each other. They both spoke of similar feelings, about the metaphysical powers of music. It was left to Miles to begin courting a relationship with Jimi before he tragically died. Obviously Jimi's legacy had a profound impact on Electric Jazz and Improvisation going forward from that point.

 

Hendrix was virtually unknown in the States when Coltrane died. I doubt he'd even heard of Jimi. Unlike Miles and some other guys, I don't hear anything in Coltrane's later recordings to suggest Coltrane was paying much attention to the rock/pop world in any substantial way in 66/67.

 

Good point, for some reason I always think John died in '69! No wonder the silence on John's end. So it's up to Jimi now. It's almost like a changing of the guard, like the universe couldn't have two guys around looking to channel and transform sonic turmoil.

How about Ayler, Shepp, etc.,?

 

John Coltrane passed away in 1967. Wes Montgomery passed away in 1968. Neither one of them had anything like the name recognition of popular music artists. I'd say that Miles Davis was better known, but only relatively speaking. Miles is the only one who had done an interview with that early influence on mass-market American hip taste, Playboy magazine (in 1962.) I'm sure that Jimi was aware of both Wes and John by 1967. Wes because he was a guitar player's guitar player, and also someone who got a little bit of airplay on pop radio stations in the mid-1960s, doing tunes like "Bumpin' On Sunset" and jazzing up covers of hits like "Windy" and "Eleanor Rigby" set to lounge music arrangements by Creed Taylor (later of CTI). I'm sure that Hendrix must have been exposed to the music of Coltrane and his acolytes at some point in his mid-1960s Greenwich Village days. That neighborhood was something like geographic Ground Zero for Coltrane's core audience. So he undoubtedly heard the "outside" music of free jazz players in the clubs, in the parks, on the street, on the radio. It was an exploratory era. Like this one is shaping up to be, I think. If politics doesn't interfere.

 

This story is from the November 15th, 1969 issue of Rolling Stone.

Jimi Hendrix: “I Don't Want to Be a Clown Anymore”

Fingering through his record collection (extensive and catholic; e.g., Marlene Dietrich, David Peel and the Lower East Side, Schoenberg, Wes Montgomery), he pulls out Blind Faith; Crosby, Stills and Nash; and John Wesley Harding. The Dylan plays first. Jimi’s face lights: “I love Dylan. I only met him once, about three years ago, back at the Kettle of Fish [a folk-rock era hangout] on MacDougal Street. That was before I went to England. I think both of us were pretty drunk at the time, so he probably doesn’t remember it.”

 

Mitch Mitchell would've been listening to a fair bit of Coltrane stuff, I'm sure Hendrix was probably a fan too.

 

That's some neighborhood. In the early to mid 1960s, you could run into Robert Stone, Hunter Thompson, Diane DiPrima, Ishmael Reed, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Peter Stampfel, Steve Weber, Jimmy James Hendrix, Michael Hurley, David Crosby, Lou Reed, Sam Shepard, Patti Smith...all of them practically unknowns at that point, all still scuffling on the street. And that's an incomplete list.

When Hendrix moved back to NYC in 1969, he got his first apartment of his own there, in the Village- 12 W. 59th St., less than three blocks from the Village Vanguard.

 

I haven't previously considered the possibility of a connection between these two masters. However, a connection that I have noted is a similarity between Albert Ayler's work and the Hendrix version of The Star Spangled Banner. I can't imagine that anyone who absorbed the latter would have much problem with the former.

 

Hendrix: The End Of A Beginning, Maybe

It’s revealing to hear Hendrix talk about jamming in London last year with Roland Kirk, jazz’s amazing blind multihorn player. Jimi was in awe of Roland, afraid that he would play something that would get in Roland’s way. You can tell, by the way he speaks of Kirk, that Hendrix regards him as some kind of Master Musician. As it worked out, Jimi played what he normally plays, Roland played what he normally plays, and they fit like hand in glove. As Hendrix tells it. “Boy – that Roland Kirk!” says Jimi, pursing his lips. It is a fond memory.




This story is from the March 19th, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone.

 

I'm thinking Ayler heard Hendrix, who eventually heard Ayler doing him on the saxophone. At least in terms of the wilder, more "out" stuff that people tend to associate with Jimi's innovations. rather than his more melodic and lyrical side. As with John Coltrane.

 

Are you sure about that address? Maybe a typo? Because that's up by Central Park, nowhere near the Vanguard.

 

Yes, the numbers have to be wrong in that address.

 

oh yeah, you're totally right about that- I had the numbers reversed- the correct address is 59th W. 12th St!

 

But when you ask the Experience about their influences, they’re all quick to say they got where they are without picking up much from anybody. They grant major similarities between the way avant garde jazzmen like Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler play and the sound of the Experience in full flight. To Jimi, it has a lot to do with the drumming. “That’s where it all comes from, is the drumming,” he says.

Hendrix: The End Of A Beginning, Maybe

 

Creed Taylor was the producer. Don Sebesky arranged many Montgomery dates,including the final three for A&M/CTI. And,as long suspected,the arrangements were pretty much added after Wes made the recording with a small group. As for Creed being "later of CTI",the A&M era was where CTI started. And that merger was started with Creed taking Wes along with him from Verve. The first batch of A&M/CTI LPs,were Wes(3001), Jobim's Wave(3002),Herbie Mann's one off,the Glory of Love(3003) and Tamba 4-We And the Sea(3004)(these would be the only LPs in the bunch that were released in mono commercially. Jobim was involved with Verve for an album in 63 and was currently recording under the Warner Bros. umbrella. But it was Wes who near-guaranteed pop airplay with those cover tunes. Without knowledge of the actual story,I suspect that Creed's deal with A&M was contingent on bringing Wes along.

 

That's right, the arranger was Sebesky. (Don't shoot me, hardcorists, but I like his work on those records. I like hearing those songs. No, it isn't "Blue Bossa", or "How Insensitive." But it's just cool enough sometimes.)

 

I think the Byrds were mentioning Coltrane's influence before Coltrane died, but as far as I know Coltrane never mentioned listening to rock.

 

I have them all. Wes was a gateway drug that led me to 50+ years of finding music I liked. Those A&M/CTI covers involving Sam Aantupit's designs and Pete Turner's images are still the best ever made.

 

Jimi’s taste in jazz leaned toward the progressive: Wes Montgomery’s A Day in the Life, Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery’s The Dynamic Duo, Jaki Byard’s Freedom Together and Sunshine of My Soul, the Free Spirits’ Out of Sight and Sound with Larry Coryell, Acker Bilk’s Lansdowne Folio, the Roland Kirk Quartet’s Rip, Rig and Panic, and the Charles Lloyd Quartet’s Journey Within.

Jimi Hendrix's Personal Record Collection | Jas Obrecht Music Archive

 

Jimi Hendrix ~ The Free Jazz Collective

 

I knew him very slightly. He played on a number of festivals that we were appearing on with Miles’ group and he was in New York at the same time that we all were. The opportunity I had to play with him was a call I got one afternoon to come down to his studio and just have a jam session with John McLaughlin and Buddy Miles. It was very loose and a lot of fun, and that was the extent of it. It’s interesting though-he had this really long cord and he would walk up to cats and give them a little riff to play and then he’d walk up to someone else and give them a little riff to play, and that’s exactly what Miles did, that same kind of intuitive orchestration.

Dave Holland

Jimi Hendrix: Modern Jazz Axis - JazzTimes

 

...this is from the link above. Are they talking about the Band of Gypsys album?

”an LP which will be released in January. The name of the album, Gypsies, Suns and Rainbows, epitomizes the new Hendrix feeling.“

 

I don't know that the dates bear this out. Ayler was playing in full Ayler mode by 1964. He wouldn't have heard Hendrix then since he was still playing back up with other musicians. And if you check out Ayler's 1962-63 Scandanavian recordings, you can hear him going in the free direction even that early. His big problem with those recordings was the rhythm sections who had no idea what he was trying to do.

 

I heard Stevie Ray Vaughn play live twice. One of those performances, he was playing a lot farther out than anything I've heard on a record. Middle Eastern type modal playing, stretching farther than the blues into that "Eastern music." The trio work was outstanding. Tommy Shannon was seriously interacting with SRV. They were lifting off. There must be some of that adventurous playing in his recorded archive.

That said, I think Stevie Ray's ambitions were still almost entirely confined to playing the blues, and like almost all of his contemporaries as young blues guitarists in the 1980s, in that respect he was entirely an emulator, albeit an exceptionally skilled one. He had yet to expand his musical horizons to find his own voice. Whereas Jimi brought a lot of influences other than the blues into his music from the outset. "May This Be Love" is like an exceptionally trippy electric arrangement of a J-pop tune, with a blues bridge thrown in. "Little Wing" is not like any blues song I've ever heard. The chordal work in that is outstanding. Only a few chords, most of them basic, but a lot of voicings.