Band of Gypsys is a live album by Jimi Hendrix and the first without his original group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was recorded on January 1, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City with R&B musicians Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, a grouping frequently referred to as the Band of Gypsys. The album mixes funk and R&B elements with Hendrix's psychedelic rock guitar and wah-wah pedal-based jamming, an approach which later became the basis of funk rock. It contains previously unreleased songs and was the last full-length Hendrix album released before his death six months later.
After his appearance at Woodstock with an interim group that included Cox, Hendrix began developing new songs and recording demos. When Miles became involved, he and Cox agreed to record a live album with Hendrix to be used to settle a contract dispute with a former manager. The new material signaled a new funk-influenced direction for Hendrix featuring more humanistic lyrical themes. The two songs written and sung by Miles bear the stylings of soul music. The anti-riot and anti-war "Machine Gun" draws on Hendrix's earlier blues aspirations, but incorporates new approaches to guitar improvisation and tonal effects.
As the album's producer, Hendrix struggled with the sometimes problematic recordings and expressed dissatisfaction with the final product. Shortly after its release, Band of Gypsys reached the top 10 of the album charts in the US and UK as well as appearing in charts in several other countries. Although it was as popular as his albums with the Experience, it received mixed reviews. Some faulted the performances as tentative and underprepared; additionally, Miles' drum and vocal contributions have been characterized as plodding and obtrusive. "Machine Gun" is generally regarded as the album's highlight and one of Hendrix's greatest achievements.
The influence of Band of Gypsys is heard in the funk rock developments of the 1970s and has been cited as an inspiration by various later rock musicians. Reissues of the album on compact disc included three extra songs recorded during the Fillmore East shows, and additional material has been released on later albums.
Background In 1969, Jimi Hendrix was under pressure from his manager and record company to record a follow-up to his hugely successful 1968 album Electric Ladyland. He was also required to produce an album's worth of new material for Capitol Records in order to satisfy a contract dispute with former manager Ed Chalpin and PPX Enterprises. Capitol had released two misleading Chalpin-produced Curtis Knight albums with Hendrix on guitar, which competed directly with his own Experience albums. Additionally, Hendrix was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with bassist Noel Redding and the Experience format. During the recording of Electric Ladyland, he and producer Chas Chandler parted ways and Hendrix began to explore recording with other musicians and different musical styles. By the middle of the year, he had not completed any promising material and Reprise Records resorted to issuing his April 1968 UK compilation album, Smash Hits, with some new tracks for the North American market. A concert film of a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London in February 1969 was entangled in legal disputes and its release was uncertain. In May, while en route to a performance in Toronto, Hendrix was detained and charged with illegal possession of narcotics. If convicted of the felony, he faced as many as 20 years in prison. On June 28, 1969, Hendrix announced he planned to work with new musicians, including a new bass player. The next day, after a potentially life-threatening riot following a concert in Denver, Colorado, Redding left the group to return to London and the Jimi Hendrix Experience came to an end.
Hendrix then began experimenting with an expanded lineup for a limited number of American engagements. In addition to original Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, he worked with bassist Billy Cox and second guitarist Larry Lee, as well as percussionists Juma Sultan and Gerardo "Jerry" Velez. Cox and Lee were two musicians with whom he had played in R&B bands in Tennessee in 1962, shortly after his stint in the US Army. The aggregation, often referred to as "Gypsy Sun and Rainbows", performed as the final act at the Woodstock Festival on August 18, 1969 (while introducing the group at Woodstock, Hendrix added "It's nothing but a band of gypsies"). After a couple more appearances, including a September 8 episode of the late night American television The Dick Cavett Show without Lee and Velez, the ensemble disbanded. Lee returned to Tennessee, Sultan and Velez left to pursue other opportunities, and Mitchell joined Jack Bruce's touring group.
In October 1969, Hendrix and Cox began jamming and recording demos with drummer Buddy Miles. Miles had played with various R&B and soul musicians, as a member of the Electric Flag and fronting the Buddy Miles Express, both blues rock-R&B fusion groups. Miles was also a frequent jam partner of Hendrix and had played the drums the year before on the two-part song "Rainy Day, Dream Away"/"Still Raining, Still Dreaming" for Electric Ladyland. Cox and Miles expressed an interest in performing and recording a new album with Hendrix. Hendrix's manager, Michael Jeffery, saw the opportunity to record a New Year's performance at the Fillmore East for a live album and the trio began preparing for the upcoming concerts and new album. Between then and the end of December, the trio rehearsed at Juggy Sound Studios and recorded several demos at the Record Plant Studios in New York City, where Hendrix recorded much of Electric Ladyland. After Hendrix's December 10, 1969, acquittal in his Canadian trial, the trio rehearsed their material at Baggy's Studios up until their first concert appearance on December 31. In an interview, Hendrix explained, "We spent 12 to 18 hours a day practicing this whole last week, straight ahead, and then we went into a funky little club and jammed down there to test it out". Early versions of some of the songs which eventually appeared on Band of Gypsys from two of the rehearsal sessions were released as The Baggy's Rehearsal Sessions by Dagger Records in 2002.
Musical style, writing, composition As a new group, the Band of Gypsys needed to develop a repertoire. Several songs that had begun as ideas, jams, and demos with the Experience and Gypsy Sun and Rainbows (but unreleased) were carried over to the Band of Gypsys. These included "Lover Man", "Hear My Train A Comin'", "Izabella", "Machine Gun", "Bleeding Heart", "Stepping Stone", and "Message to Love". Three new songs featuring vocals by Buddy Miles were added: "Changes", "We Gotta Live Together" (both Miles compositions) and "Stop", an R&B song written by Jerry Ragovoy and Mort Shuman, which had been recorded by Howard Tate in 1968. Hendrix contributed new material as well, including "Power of Soul", "Ezy Ryder", "Earth Blues", "Burning Desire", and the riff for the jam song "Who Knows". The trio began rehearsing a set of songs for the four upcoming Fillmore shows.
Many of these songs represented a change in Hendrix's music from his Experience repertoire. Biographer and later Hendrix producer John McDermott elaborates:
Most of the arrangements were developed through extensive jamming, with Cox's and Miles' playing influencing Hendrix's ideas. According to biographer Keith Shadwick, Cox explained in later interviews, "the process was based on building up rhythm patterns and that each pattern dictated the shape and character of a portion of a song in which it appeared". Record producer Alan Douglas witnessed the approach during a jam at the Record Plant and saw it as inefficient. On the other hand, Shadwick feels that it was necessary: "it seemed the only way available, especially as neither Cox nor Miles, in particular, were exactly swift on the musical uptake". Music journalist Charles Shaar Murray noted, "Cox's funky, uncluttered bass style would give Hendrix's new music a more solid, less frenetic underpinning [than Noel Redding's style]. In every way, Cox's function would be to provide the steadiness Hendrix so urgently required". Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt described Miles' style as "pleasantly messy ... He wasn't as tight as a Stax drummer [such as Al Jackson Jr. ] ... his rolls would clatter about a bit". However, his often described "fatback grooves" laid down a solid rhythmic foundation and the combination of Cox and Miles added a "heavy, rolling fluidity which brings out a very different dimension in Hendrix's playing".
The mix of improvisation with R&B and funk elements is evident in "Who Knows", which was the opening song for the second (after the brief "Auld Lang Syne") and third shows. It is a loose jam rather than a structured composition and during the performance for the second show Hendrix teases the audience with "I hope you don't mind us jamming a little bit, we're just messing around ... seeing what we're gonna play next". Built on Hendrix's guitar figure, "Who Knows" is framed by Cox's economical funk-blues bass line and Miles' steady drum beat, which Murray describes as "a thick, lazy twitch". Hendrix explores guitar phrases using different tones and effects between vocal sections. According to Cox, Hendrix was using a new combination of effects for the first time. These included a Uni-Vibe phase shifter, an Octavia (developed for him by Roger Mayer during the recording of his first album), a Fuzz Face distortion box, and a wah-wah pedal. One mixture of them produces a "whistling, shimmering, ring-modulated tone so rich with upper harmonics" in the higher range, while in the lower range "it almost sounds like Froggy Went a-Courtin' ... all these [lower] oct[ave]-intervals give it such a dramatic effect". His use of the wah-wah employs "rapid foot movement and wide sweeps [which] tend to make the melody fade in and out". Also, by using a triplet rhythm with the pedal, a polyrhythm with the prevailing beat is created. The lyrics, some of which borrow from other R&B songs, are also improvised and show considerable differences between the two renditions. As it unfolds, there is an R&B-style vocal call and response section between Hendrix and Miles, then separate vocal sections for each, which Miles follows with scat singing. During the middle section, most of the instrumentation drops out and returns with more Hendrix guitar tonal explorations before winding down at 8:23 (second show) and 9:32 (third show). While McDermott feels that the jam is underdeveloped and biographer Harry Shapiro criticizes Miles' vocals, Shadwick and writer David Henderson focus on the "easy groove" and "lilting flow". Besides adding a fresh rhythmic element to his music, it also gives Hendrix more room to experiment with different approaches and sounds on guitar.
Similarly, the Buddy Miles song "We Gotta Live Together" is a jam piece. It forms the second part of a medley with "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" and had only been performed once before at the Baggy's rehearsal room. The song features Miles attempting to engage the audience in a call and response "testifying" soul music-style vocal section, which was mostly edited out for the album release. Hendrix and Cox back Miles' vocal sections with parallel funk-style lines, before a guitar solo using Hendrix's new combination of effects. Shapiro comments: