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Fact #35063

When:

Short story:

Jimi Hendrix records Voodoo Child with Steve Winwood on organ, Jack Casady on bass, Larry Coryell on guitar and Mitch Mitchell on drums, at The Record Plant, New York City, USA. The songs Cherokee Mist and Three Little Bears are recorded at the same session.

Full article:

Noel Redding (bassist, JHE) : It got to the point once in New York when I told him he was a stupid cunt. He depended too much on himself as writer, producer and musician. He was always trying to do it his way. There were times when I used to go to a club between sessions, pull a chick, come back, and he was still tuning his guitar. Oh, hours it took. We should have worked as a team, but it didn't work.

Eddie Kramer (engineer) : We had been over at The Scene all night when Jimi said, 'Hey man, let's go over to the studio and do this. The idea was to make it sound as if it was a live gig.

Jimi Hendrix : On Voodoo Chile we just opened the studio up and all our friends came down. We wanted to jam somewhere, so we just went to the studio, the best place to jam. Some of the sessions were like super-jamming. Al Kooper is on one track, Steve Winwood on another.

Steve Winwood : I remember Jimi just ringing me up and saying, 'Let's jam,' so I just went down and played on Voodoo Chile while he was recording Electric Ladyland.

John Glover (road manager, Traffic) : We'd just played a gig in Cleveland the night before, and I drove down to New York with the gear to set it up at some club we were playing, done the gig, loaded the gear back in the truck and I was knackered.

Then Steve Winwood says, 'Right, can we drive down to the studio now?' I just wanted to go to bed, but he says, 'No, we're going to this studio down in the village. We're going to play on Jimi's record.'

So we drive down there, set the gear up and fell asleep in the control room while they recorded Voodoo Chile. I'm the man who slept through a legendary Hendrix-Traffic session. (interview with Johnny Black, July 2007)

Steve Winwood : We recorded Voodoo Chile down in the Village and out in the corridor were all of these musicians, waiting to be given their chance. Guys like Larry Coryell were out there, hoping to play something.

Jimi came out and said 'Hi. Come in'. There were no chord sheets, no nothing. He just started playing. It was a one-take job, with him singing and playing at the same time. He just had such mastery of the instrument and he knew what he was and knew his abilities. That's why everybody says he was a humble, polite person, because he just knew what he could do and he didn't think he was better than he was.

Jimi Hendrix : There were also some cats from Kansas who hung around while we were recording, and I used them too. I'd start with just a few notes scribbled on some paper, and then we get to the studios and the melody is worked out and lots of guys all kick in little sounds of their own.

Jack Casady (bassist, Jefferson Airplane) : I believe it was somewhere around daybreak when we started working on that song.

Larry Coryell (guitarist) : Jimi asked me to play but, for the first time in my life, I said 'No, there is nothing I can add to this.'

Robert Wyatt (drummer, Soft Machine) : Coryell played all over the place for about ten minutes racing up and down the fret-board and Jimi steps up for his solo and went 'ba-WO-O-O-OWWWW' erasing everything he did in the last ten minutes with one note. It was silly for him to even try, like walking into a blowtorch... the fool.

Eddie Kramer : Even though there were some people watching in the studio, the applause was added as an overdub, so that the track would have a party feel.
(Source : not known)