Coming along after a spate of re-released and remastered Hendrix albums (including the posthumous First Rays of the New Rising Sun), this does not contain any of the experimental 60s psychedelic jamming of the South Saturn Delta bootleg album, but instead offers something totally different: for Blues is exactly what you would imagine, a bootleg compilation exploring the depth and complexities of Hendrix's guitar-playing and instrumentation, full of aural intensity, deliberate sound-distortion, feedback-frenzies and free-style "sound paintings" of one of the great musical icons of the 20th century.

The songs collected here show Hendrix exploring the roots of his own experiences and influences, mashing together the vast histories, styles and techniques of blues music throughout the 20th century, filling each cover or original track with rock, rhythmic funk and jam-rock. Blues music was the greatest influence on British rock during the 1960s, and when Hendrix appeared on Carnaby… more »

Coming along after a spate of re-released and remastered Hendrix albums (including the posthumous First Rays of the New Rising Sun), this does not contain any of the experimental 60s psychedelic jamming of the South Saturn Delta bootleg album, but instead offers something totally different: for Blues is exactly what you would imagine, a bootleg compilation exploring the depth and complexities of Hendrix's guitar-playing and instrumentation, full of aural intensity, deliberate sound-distortion, feedback-frenzies and free-style "sound paintings" of one of the great musical icons of the 20th century.

The songs collected here show Hendrix exploring the roots of his own experiences and influences, mashing together the vast histories, styles and techniques of blues music throughout the 20th century, filling each cover or original track with rock, rhythmic funk and jam-rock. Blues music was the greatest influence on British rock during the 1960s, and when Hendrix appeared on Carnaby Street in 1966-7, Clapton, Jagger, Jones and Harrison saw the real deal, a real American example of the music they had been so inspired by throughout their own youth.

Here, Hendrix relishes all the solo practice sessions of his youth, and the rock 'n' roll bands he'd toured with in adolescence and his early twenties. Constrained by tour schedules and frowned upon when his experimental side came through on stage, his New York years, flitting through the clubs of Greenwich Village and SoHo, displayed the intimacy of a form of blues that dominated his own style.

The solo sessions of the New York days are best exhibited here in the opening track, the 12-bar acoustic version of Hear My Train A'Comin, showing the usually-ear splitting Hendrix sound could be brought down to a simplistic yet beautiful level of musical depth. After this, then, we see Hendrix and the Experience experimenting during radio sessions and special performances. Hendrix, Mitchell and Redding jam for 8 minutes on Born Under a Bad Sign, a sort of Muddy Waters/Howlin' Wolf-esque work of aural wonder; the ever-famous Red House is present twice, as a studio recording and as an Electric Church Band (that is, post-Band of Gypsies, with Billy Cox replacing Redding after the Experience disbanded, 1970) version; then there's the pre-Slight Return classic electric blues version of Voodoo Chile from the Electric Ladyland album, a bootleg version of Catfish Blues that harks back to John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins, and Once I Had a Woman, an exploration of sound distortion, with wah-wah and octavia pedals moaning the guitar pitches and tones into sounds that no-one would probably even dare contemplate today.

Hendrix thought that the most pure form of blues music was free-form, and perhaps the masterpiece of his live career, other than Izabella, the 22-minute Isle of Wight version of Machine Gun or Woodstock's Star-Spangled Banner, is the closing track, an electric version of Hear My Train A Comin'; opening and closing with different versions of the same song demonstrates the full scale of Hendrix's talents, and the electric version, recorded on one of the famous Berkeley concerts from May 1970, is a 13-minute epic full of air-guitar craziness, sound pedals wonging away, feedback screeching across the auditorium while a riot took place outside. This is one of the ultimate examples of his genius, guitar-playing transcending the annals of rock history towards something much more organic and almost spiritual. Four months later, he was dead. But the musical legacy he left was beyond comprehension, as if he were born to set the benchmark for every talent that came along afterward. Ultimately, Blues is one of the great examples of a free spirit.