SVJ Playlist: Hendrix Highlights

I wasn't a huge Jimi Hendrix fan when I was a kid. I was too wrapped up in the cult of the Doors to pay much attention to the psychedelic bad-ass who I knew even then was the greatest musician of our time.

I was familiar with his albums and did like a few of the songs. I do remember the day Hendrix died 45 years ago today, at the beginning of my sophomore year in high school -- not because I felt any kind of personal loss but because a couple of my friends seemed truly saddened by the news as if they had lost the family dog.

Little did I know at the time that, you know, these things do come in threes and Jimi's death would only be the first of a shocking trilogy. Janis Joplin, whom I cared not a thing about at the time, passed a mere 16 days later. And Jim Morrison -- the one that kicked me in the gut -- checked out the following summer.

Three rock gods of my youth shockingly dead -- all of them a mere 27 years old. All were victims of what we now know as the deadly disease of substance addiction but what we stupidly thought of at the time as the noble pursuit of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll euphoria.

Anyway, it was several years into my adulthood before I warmed to Jimi Hendrix' music. Still, I'm not so obsessive. But I'm plenty appreciative. This guy did things with his electric guitar -- playing it upside-down -- that has been emulated plenty but never has been matched in a half-century. There's no denying that.

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There was another side to Hendrix' talent that doesn't get talked about much -- the man was a marvel in a recording studio. Listen to Electric Ladyland, the last studio album he released before he died. It was credited to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but this was all Jimi. This was Hendrix as studio owner, studio designer, producer, engineer and solo artist.

Hendrix recorded several tracks for a planned followup. Decades later, producer Eddie Kramer constructed First Rays of the New Rising Sun as best he could from tapes and scribbled notes Hendrix left behind. Most of those tracks weren't new to the public, as many turned up on a couple of compilations soon after Hendrix died.

The 48-minute playlist offered up here is a mixture of 11 Hendrix live cuts and studio tracks. These are among my favorite Jimi Hendrix tracks. I left out some of the more obvious songs you can hear a million times a day on terrestrial radio. Rather, most all of these are the non-hits that some corporate radio programmer has never heard.

Please listen, and enjoy. And maybe through this you might find a gem that you've never heard.