I don’t’ have exact dates to attach to this music or these events, but Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, Love, Melanie, & Van Morrison all had something happen during November. Plus a few extras.
Future Woodstock Performer/Joan Baez
In November 1960: Joan Baez (age 19) released her first album, Joan Baez.
In November 1968 Melanie (age 21) released her first album, Born to Be.
November Music et al
Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox
Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox in the Army
November 1961, Hendrix met fellow serviceman Billy Cox. He was walking past the service club and heard Hendrix playing guitar inside. Cox, intrigued by the proficient playing, which he described as a combination of “John Lee Hooker and Beethoven”, immediately checked-out a bass guitar and the two began to jam. Soon after, they began performing at the base clubs on the weekends with other musicians in a loosely organized band called the Casuals. (see Hendrix Military for expanded story)
November Music et al
Love/Forever Changes
November 1967: Love released its classic album, Forever Changes. It is considered by many (including me!) to be one of the greatest albums EVER! [BBC review]
Van Morrison/ Astral Weeks
Van Morrison at the Band’s Last Waltz
November 1968: Van Morrison released the classic album, Astral Weeks. Even better than Love’s Forever Changes. I’ve never heard this album enough. [Rolling Stone review]
Steppenwolf/Monster
In November, 1969, Steppenwolf released the album Monster contained epic song by same name.
November Music et al
LSD
In November 1967, authorities released Ken Kesey and he moved to Oregon. (LSD see February 4, 1968; KK, see November 10, 2001)
In October 1965 Curtis Knight recorded “How Would You Feel.” Knight’s guitarist was the young and still-living-in-the-USA Jimi Hendrix.
Curtis Knight Jimi Hendrix
Before Knight
In 1962, Hendrix had left the Army after a brief unproductive stint. At least as far as his military prowess was concerned since he spent much of his hitch playing guitar.
In February 1964, Hendrix had won the amateur contest at the Apollo Theater in NYC.
In March 1964, Hendrix was part of the Isley Brothers band and recorded the two-part single “Testify” before beginning a tour with them.
Earlier in 1965, Hendrix had played a session for Rosa Lee Brooks on her single “My Diary” Around the same time he also backed Little Richard on “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got, But It’s Got Me.”
After Knight
September 22, 1966 was Jimi Hendrix’s first day in England after the Animals’ ex-bassist turned producer Chas Chandler “discovered” him in New York City fronting Jimmy James and the Blue Flames in the various Greenwich Village clubs.
Though Hendrix only recorded three studio albums, anyone with any of his recordings of any kind tried to jump on the Hendrix goose that seemingly laid only golden eggs.
In 1965, he had signed a contract with PPX records to play with Curtis Knight. After Hendrix and his Experience struck it big with Are You Experienced?, PPX packaged Hendrix’s Knight tracks as its own album while playing up Hendrix’s role in the Squires.
A similar PPX album called Got That Feeling was also planned for the U.K. in 1968 before the courts stepped in and barred the release, with Hendrix himself calling it “musically worthless.”
March 2015
47 years later, Hendrix’s estate, Eperience Hendrix LLC, released You Can’t Use My Name: Curtis Knight & The Squires (featuring Jimi Hendrix) The RSVP/PPX Sessions. The name is an obvious reference to previous legal issues. Experience Hendrix selected 14 of the 88 studio recordings Hendrix had made with Curtis Knight.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ “Hey Joe” 1986 on the Nightmusic Show
Sometimes the power of a musicians’s instrument hides the horror of the song’s lyrics. So it was for me with “Hey Joe.” By the time I got to the third track of the Experience’s debut album, I thought I was experienced. Of course I wasn’t, but I’d fully imbibed the music’s Kool-Aid. What would the next track do to me. And side 2 awaited!
It was on October 23, 1966 that the Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded ‘Hey Joe’ at DeLane Lea studios in London. It became their first single.
It wasn’t the first time someone recorded the song and who wrote it remains a bit of a controversy.
Niela Miller
Niela Miller was one of the many young folksingers drawn to Greenwich Village.
According to a piece in the Fret Board Journal, Sometime around 1955 she wrote “Baby, Please Don’t Go To Town,” a mournful song about the joys and perils a young woman faced in the city. She recorded the song in 1962.
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
Billy Roberts
Billy Roberts was Niela’s boyfriend and liked the song. He wrote new words and changed the story to a guy Joe who’d murdered his lover. He copyrighted “his” song in 1962. He played his “Hey Joe” and many of Greenwich Villages artists heard it and covered it.
Later Roberts moved to San Francisco.
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
Chet Powers > Dino Valenti
Another Greenwich Village expatriate, Chet Powers also started playing the song in LA, hoping a band would pick up “his” song.
Powers’ name by then was Dino Valenti, a name we don’t associate with “Hey Joe” but should associate with a song we are certain he wrote: Let’s Get Together.
Tim Rose
And yet another Greenwich expat, Tim Rose, performed “Hey Joe.” Rose claimed that it was a standard he’d learned as a boy. Here’s Tim doing the song in 1967:
Despite much searching, no one has found a traditional song that predates Naomi Miller’s song or Robert’s re-interpretation.
Los Angeles
Be that as it may, the Byrds and Love group also began to include it in their sets. It was The Leaves, another Los Angeles band, that recorded the song as a single in 1965.
Here is a video of their version. Jim Pons, the bass player, later joined The Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and the Mothers of Invention (who had their own Mothers-version of the tune–“Hey Pop, where you goin’ with that button on your shirt?”)
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
Finally Jimi
And of course, THE version for most is Jimi’s. As you can see above on the album label Billy Roberts gets credit. Here’s a great live Hendrix version.
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
Other Joes
Others who have covered the song including Wilson Pickett, Patti Smith, and Eddie Murphy. In fact, a site called “Hey Joe Versions” shows a list of over 1800 artists who have covered it.
For me the one that gets to the song’s horror is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ version that you heard above. Here’s the video to watch and enjoy.
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
If you’d like to read more, there’s a likely better article than this one written by psaudio.com’s Stuart Marvin . Follow this link. In it he has his own list of covers.
The Leaves (1965)
The Byrds (1966)
Jimi Hendrix (1966 U.K./1967 U.S.)
Love (1966)
Cher (1967)
Johnny Hallyday (1967)
Deep Purple (1968)
Johnny Rivers (1968)
Wilson Pickett (1969)
Patti Smith (1974)
Roy Buchanan (1974)
Spirit (1975)
Ten Years After (1979)
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (1986)
Seal (1991)
Eddie Murphy (1993)
Otis Taylor (1996, 2008, 2015)
Helge & The Firef*ckers (1999)
Robert Plant (2002)
Brad Mehldau (2012)
Charlotte Gainsbourg (2013)
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
Those Poles!
Marvin also adds this interesting historic fact: …during a 2019 “Thank Jimi” festival in Wroclaw, Poland, 7,423 guitarists simultaneously played “Hey Joe” in a public square, breaking the record set at the previous year’s festival by 12.
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
