Jimi Hendrix

Interestingly, I've just read an article about John Mayall. He's made an album to honour his old friend, Freddie King. Freddie thought that Hendrix was "too busy" and preferred Eric Clapton's playing.
In fact, it was Freddie King that caused EC to buy an LP.

Noteboat - great story.
Almost a parable :D

Greybeard - Freddie King's the man!!!!
When I hear Clapton.... I can hear the FK influence the most.
That to me is who Clapton seemed to cop most of his style from.
So it's pretty easy for me to see why FK would like Clapton a bunch.

What I don't understand is the LP connection....?
In the VERY EARLY days - Freddie played what looks to be a 55 Gold Top.
For the most part, he's known for playing a red ES-335(?) with Block inlays, gold trim, and a lyre vibrolla.
I could see that Clapton might have picked up the 'Crossroads' 335 for that reason.
Why the LP though????
Does the article explain it furthur????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGLmZCZ1sXY
Here's some Freddie for all to enjoy.
Talk about TONE, dynamics, and showmanship.... not to mention that he dresses like a dandy :lol:
and can shred with the best of 'em.

Slej -
Think of it like this -
I like motorcycles.
I have an affinity for Brit Bikes.
The Triumph T150V Trident is reputed to be the first 'superbike'.
All these Japanese cafe rockets came from that bike.
So the Trident was a very strong and obvious influence on these new Japanese bikes.
As an enthusiast, I of course love the old Triumphs.
As a matter of fact I had a 72 T150V.
Respected, turned heads, sounded cool, looked even cooler.
The new bikes are way faster, handle way better, are way more efficient... seemingly better in every way.
I don't like 'em though.
They're a dime a dozen. You trip over 'em in the gutter there's so many of 'em.
They're generic.
That's kinda the difference between Jimi and these shinola shredders. :D
Jimi's respected, turns heads, sounds cool, was innovative, and rare.
Shredders are a generic dime a dozen breed with no soul.
Like Uncle Bobby said when he kept making me play solo's when I was SLOWLY starting out....
Don't worry about speed, make your slowness work for you. I can teach a monkey how to run scales fast,
can't teach one to play with feeling though.

The closer you get to perfection, the more boring things get.
It's the quirks and the little problems that make life interesting.
Shredders are like girls that wear too much makeup trying to hide all the little flaws on their face.
I myself like girls that wear NO makeup.
And that's how I like my music too.

Ken

NoteBoat- Great post. Great story.

greybeard- I wouldn't be surprised if Freddie prefered Eric. He prob thought Jimi was too "pop" which is understandable. Plus Eric was most like Freddie out of all of the Kings(IMO atleast). You can really hear that in his music.

CitiZenNoir- lol great analogies with the girl/motorcycles. Great video of Freddie by the way.That was just so enjoyable to watch. What feel and tone.

Oh cmon Ken, little makeup does no harm. :P

What I don't understand is the LP connection....?
In the VERY EARLY days - Freddie played what looks to be a 55 Gold Top.
For the most part, he's known for playing a red ES-335(?) with Block inlays, gold trim, and a lyre vibrolla.
I could see that Clapton might have picked up the 'Crossroads' 335 for that reason.
Why the LP though????

I was a Gibson man throughout my early career, mainly because of Freddy King. I'd heard the cover of Let's Hide Away and Dance Away, on which he played a Les Paul Goldtop. I scoured the guitar shops after hearing that cover and bought one. That was my guitar from then on, and it sounded like Freddy King's.

Taken from an article
written by EC himself about his guitars (mostly Blackie). He also mentions Winwood and Buddy Guy for the Fender connection.

StormyMonday - Real Cool 8)
Thankx Much!!!! :D

Although, you can see how the stories keep changing. :lol:
I'm not sure we'll ever have the correct answers to a lot of these types of questions.

In the article - he says his first strat....
That would be the 56 2 color burst, Brownie.
He bought it in 67 in London.
It's well documented.

Blackie is a Frankenstein of 3 different strats.
One of those strats that he bought was also a gift for Jimi.
He was going to give it to him and let him hear the Domino's (sic) version of Little Wing.
Sadly, Jimi died days before they were to meet.

Ken

Like you've seen, Freddie (in his early days he was "Freddy") used a Gold Top - which was the instigation for EC to buy an LP.

According to John Mayall, Freddie and EC jammed a lot together - there's even a live LP of one jam session at a concert (I'll have a look where and when next time I pick up the mag).

I suspect that FK's preference was because EC played so much like him - and EC admits to FK being a major influence on his style.

^^^Didn't EC also record a "live jam" with BB King as well?

I know Jimi jammed with BB in 1968 once, and there is a bootleg of it. But I have yet to find it.

First, I wanna make it clear I do not hate shredders and am not trying to bash them, although I know it comes across that way.

I have a book by Troy Stetina called Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar I practice from all the time.

Speed Mechanics- Troy Stetina

This is a great book and I've learned a lot from it. I do not really practice Troy's licks, but I do read his advice on picking faster with more accuracy. Then I make up my own exercises using these techniques. And I practice these techniques for hours every week.

And I don't know of any guitar player who would not love to play with lightning speed and accuracy. I sure would.

So I truly respect all these guys as great musicians.

Now, with all that said, I really do not care for a lot of speed Metal. The horrible tone is probably the main reason, and the show-off thing is another.

But I do wish that I could play any idea that pops into my head while playing. Sometimes I get this idea to throw a real hyper-speed run in a solo and I can't do it. Yet. But I am getting better by practicing these great techniques.

But still, playing guitar for me has to be soulful. I do not want to hear a million notes, even if played perfect. It is too mechanical and boring. It lacks soul. I have always loved players who make their guitar talk to you. I love a fellow like Stevie Ray Vaughan who played with such fire and emotion, Hendrix too. I like the Blues players like BB King or Freddy King who was mentioned. They didn't play fast, but man, what they played was awesome, especially if you hear this kind of playing live. I love the dynamics of Blues guitar. I do not like the overly compressed tone of Metal. And there is some trickery to it as Noteboat said. With tons of compression and delay it is pretty easy to get that sound. You just gotta keep piling notes on one another. Really.

And I have heard a few speed solos that are fantastic. And I have heard Blues solos that stink. But I will still take slower, soulful playing any day of the week.

Just my personal opinion, means nothing really.

One of my personal biggest problems with shredders is the absolute lack of dynamics. The distorted, compressed tones lead to an absolutely flat tone, no matter what you do. You can slam on it with your pick or gently strum it and it'll almost sound the same. Violin or piano shredders on the other hand are fine with me, as there are such a huge variety of tones availlable at every speed. To me this means that the problem lies not with the musician but with the instrument, the electric guitar is not yet fully developped for musical shredding. The fun thing is that change is in the air, things like the Boss Dynamic Mode allows for an extremely dynamic sound, ranging from absolute clean to maximum gain just by varying the pick, a dynamic range not possible with normal analog gear. Or atleast not as far as I heared. I'm pretty sure that in the future pieces of current shredders will be re-done to truly show what is going on, without the current technical limitations. Ofcourse this will demand even more of the technical ability of the players but hey, noone said musical shredding is easy. :P

Gosh, I hate to seem slow but who is this Jimi fellow anyway? :twisted:

Gosh, I hate to seem slow but who is this Jimi fellow anyway? :twisted:

I think he runs the local parlour or maybe he's the one who eats the world. :lol: