This is not about the more widely known "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," which closes the same album, Electric Ladyland. "Slight Return" is the radio rock song that rightfully has a place in the hearts of many people the world over for its ridiculous guitar riff and solo. Can't argue with the legitness of that song. And it caps off one of the greatest complete experience albums ever made, an album that envelopes you, takes you up and down and up again, and defines entire nights that you'll remember for your life.
But elsewhere on the album is a very different "Voodoo Chile." Where "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" is a contained radio-friendly rock song, "Voodoo Chile" is a 15-minute blues experimentation recorded live for a crowd at Electric Ladyland studios, where the album was made.
This is the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Kind of.
The song features two of the three regular performers: Jimi Hendrix (guitar, vocal) and Mitch Mitchell (drums). But bassist Noel Redding had stormed out of the session, pissed about a mob of people being invited into the studio during the session. Stepping out of the mob to play bass in his stead was Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane. On organ was Steve Winwood!
Each of these guys puts their stamp on this traveling epic.
The slow, swaggering six-beat of the drums is a menacing, tired classic blues pattern. The bass lays an ominous texture over this. And Jimi's guitar wails out into the freaked out night. Why do I picture Jimi's music booming in Vietnam more than any anybody else's? Songs like this seem to take war and the racial issues underlying that sick war, the Black identity rising up in defiance of being thrown into this war, and build something explosive out of it.
Before this album, Jimi had mostly been content to experiment in the psychedelic side of things. Even his blues numbers from that time, like "Red House," were very polite versions of the blues for his admiring and largely white English fans to regard from their tiered seating.
In "Voodoo Chile," there is far more Robert Johnson going on than Jimi had ever let happen before. Go compare "Voodoo Chile" to Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues." There is a shared quality in the guitar, this whiny voicing with bending high notes. There is a loping pace, a mournful, blown-out attitude. Jimi's version just adds a level of technical radiance that his genius had over his roots precursors.
Jimi's soloing is just staggeringly wild, fluently expressive. I love the improvisations and variations in all the instruments. I love the energy of this being live. I love the crowd noise leaking in.
It seems to take a new trajectory every time.