A fascinating look at what Jimi Hendrix was listening to at home can be seen at the Record Mecca blog. A collector acquired several of Jimi’s “well loved” (i.e. played to shit) albums in an auction from Kathy Etchingham, Jimi’s longtime girlfriend:

I thought people might enjoy knowing—and seeing—what Jimi was listening to during his London years.  The collection I purchased included Jimi’s copies of these albums:

Robert Johnson “King of the Delta Blues Singers”; Muddy Waters “The Real Folk Blues”; John Lee Hooker “Drifting Blues”;  Wes Montgomery “A Day In The Life”; The Roland Kirk Quartet “Rip, Rig and Panic”; Ravi Shankar “India’s Master Musician” and “Portrait of a Genius”; The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Electric Ladyland”; The Dream “Get Dreamy”; Howlin Wolf “The Howlin’ Wolf Album” and “Moanin’ In The Moonlight”; Bob Dylan “Greatest Hits” and “Highway 61 Revisited”; Elmore James “Memorial Album”; James Brown “Showtime”; Clara Ward “Gospel Concert”; Acker Bilk “Lansdowne Folio”; The Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Various “Chicago The Blues Today”; Various “American Folk Blues Festival ‘66” and Bill Cosby “Revenge.”

The copy of “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits” has some psychedelic doodling on the back, clearly by Jimi.  Somehow Bonhams didn’t notice this for the auction description—a very happy discovery for me.

The copy of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” has some of Jimi’s blood on the cover—according to Etchingham, the result of a wine glass accident.

 
Jimi Hendrix’s Record Collection (Record Mecca)

Thank you Michael Simmons!

 
Via Mr. Michael Simmons

 
Since Michael Jackson and the Beatles are, respectively, the best and third best-selling artists of the decade (with music that wasn’t even recorded this millennium in Jackson’s case and that is four decades old in the case of the Fab Four) the record industry seems to have realized that (Taylor Swift aside) most people actually want good music rather than bland, marketing department driven ditties. Or is that the reason? Of course there is also the old music biz adage that “the only good artist is a dead artist” (lookit Elvis, for f’s sake, to say nothing of Tupac and Biggie Smalls). There’s big money in death, it’s a great career move (although one difficult to enjoy), so it comes as no real surprise that the Jimi Hendrix estate announced today that they’d be releasing a 40 year old bunch of recording Jimi made with Billy Cox and others back in ‘69, called Valleys of Neptune. There has been a fair amount of posthumous Hendrix material ranging from great to not so great. Who knows, this Band Of Gypsys era material seems like it may actually be pretty good.

From Geoff Boucher’s cover story in today’s LA Times:

South African native Eddie Kramer was the lead producer on the album, and he was also the engineer in the studio with Hendrix during the original sessions. Kramer spent months using vintage analog approaches and the latest digital tools to excavate the material. “I felt like an archaeologist using a brush who finds, underneath the dust, this marvelous gold artifact,” he said.

Kramer said the music of “Neptune” comes primarily from 1969, a time of “both frustration and real excitement” for Hendrix as he pushed his way toward “a new direction.” The guitarist had brought in an old friend, bassist Billy Cox, to play on some of the tracks; on Friday, Cox, now living in Nashville, said he is giddy at the prospect of hearing the results of his work with Hendrix.

“I can tell you that Jimi was on his way to a powerful new thing, a new direction completely, he was going back to his roots and he wanted a sound with more soul,” said Cox, later in Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. “Who can say where it would have led him if he hadn’t died?”

 
Jimi Hendrix fans have a new experience in store (Los Angeles Times)

 
Betty Davis is one of the lost greats of 70s funk, but if there is any justice in the world her music will one day be as revered as it deserves to be. This woman was outrageous, sexy and she had mad musical chops! Originally a successful fashion model when she met trumpeter Miles Davis, Betty Mabry, as she was then known, traveled in circles that included Jimi Hendrix, The Chamber Brothers and Sly and the Family Stone. In 1968 she married Davis, but the marriage lasted just one year, breaking up, it was rumored, because she was having an affair with Hendrix (which she has always denied). In his autobiography, Davis credits Betty for opening his ears to the new possibilities inherent in the music of Sly and Jimi, and she inspired his music from Filles De Kilimanjaro (Mademoiselle Mabry is a tribute to Betty, obviously) to Bitches Brew (the title again alleged to reference Mlle. Mabry, albeit by then in a less flattering light).

After her divorce from Miles, Betty recorded two albums in the early 70s with crack backing musicians like Larry Graham, Merl Saunders (Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt), Neal Schon (Santana/Journey) and members of Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, even the young Pointer Sisters singing back-up. Davis was the original “nasty gal” creating the blueprint for suggestive “outrageousness” well-trod by today’s female chart toppers. One of her songs, the sexually forthright If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up was so controversial that the NAACP condemned her.
 

 
Then she recorded another great record of hard funk in 1975 called Nasty Gal, but sadly, she never really caught on. There’s no good reason for it, but luckily her reputation has risen again in recent years due to reprints of her albums by Seattle-based label, A Light in the Attic Records, who recently released her recorded in 1976 but shelved ever since album, Is It Love or Desire.

(When I met my future wife, she had a Betty Davis CD in her car stereo. As a man who puts “good taste in music” approximately third on the list of what makes a woman attractive, I can assure you I was impressed).

The Sound of Young America: Betty Davis Interview ?��Ǩ��� June 21, 2007: Betty Davis gives her first radio interview in 30 years.