Jimi Hendrix

[rick_ovic]

I preferred Billy Cox in Hendrix's band. He had so much feel and locked in with Hendrix's guitar work perfectly.

Noel, on the other hand, went to the audition believing he was trying out for the guitarist's spot in the New Animals. He was offered the gig as bass player for The Experience, on the condition that he was provided with bus fare home from the audition.

From all of the Hendrix biographies I've read, the impression I get is that it was always about money with Noel.

[firstbassman]

Well, I’ll tell ya. I used to dismiss Redding as a player myself. However, that was based on listening to Experience LPs on cheap record players and stereos in the late 60s and early 70s. The sound quality was terrible, the bass was mixed down and muddy and, to be honest, I was mostly paying attention to Hendrix anyway.

Jump to the present.
My lead guitar player wanted us to add “Fire” to our setlist. So, I downloaded it and listened to it again after all these years.

The “Let me stand next to your fire” * part is just D and C. But let me say that Redding does some pretty interesting very fast stuff in that part.

But I certainly agree that for “keeping it in the groove playing” Cox was much more suitable.

By the way, there is a feature article on Billy in this month's "Bass Player" magazine.

That background singing part is the only singing I’m allowed to do in my band.

[lyle_from_minneapolis]

Agreed, Redding wasn't a "bad" player...but the opening bass riff of "Purple Haze" still makes for good comedy. Make sure to do the white man's overbite-thing.

[squirebass]

Mark,
I've always heard that when Hendrix was recording the Experience albums they would stay at the studio all night, and that he(Jimi) often would lay down the bass tracks himself after Noel had gone home for the night... That's just the story I heard and it may be apocrophal, I dunno... Noel Redding recently died and I have no desire to slander his name, but I remember one midnight movie I saw back in the mid '70s which was a tribute to Hendrix(it seemed like there was a different one each week back in those days -- always at the midnight movie theatre in town). In the movie, they had footage of the Experience playing live, and Hendrix was really rockin' out, Mitch Mitchell was banging hell on the drums, and Noel was walking around the stage with that big sunburst jazz bass, his hair in a bigger "afro" than Jimi's, playing exactly one beat behind the rest of the band... I really feel bad for him about that now, but in those days I just dissed him as a less than awe-inspiring bass guitarist. I thought it was so cool how Jimi sounded with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles on "Band of Gypsies". But Noel DID LOOK quite good up there on stage with him, with all the psychodelic colorful clothes and such, and his big chia-pet hair! Had Jimi started off the Experience with all black players at that time, maybe he would have been less of a "sensation" than he made otherwise, given the racial attitudes prevailing... That was pretty different in those days to see a black man front a band with white people in it. I'd say Jimi did a marvelous job of pulling it off tho and some of the leads were pretty inventive as well...