World Saxophone Quartet - Little Wing
Well, it's a big day. I'm 60 today, and this page is 13. I'm on a tight schedule, but I felt like I had to mark the observance somehow. The way my body and hips are going, I might not get another Zero Year milestone, so I must blog whilst the blogging, and my body temperature, are still hot.
So here's a Fun Fact: Did you know that the first public performance of The Jimi Hendrix Experience was in London, and on the very day I was born?
It's kind of disputed, as he is alleged to have played in a private show at the end of September 1966 at the same Scotch of St. James club. But this was the first time The Beatles caught wind of him.
Anyway I thought I'd start integrating weird and more obscure anniversaries and events into this page, and someone smashed this ridiculous post on DIMEaDOZEN a couple of weeks back that I felt couldn't be more appropriate, so here we is.
What we have here is almost Harmolodic Hendrix, without a hint of the electric guitars you might, justifiably, expect.
Because beginning in 2005, the mighty World Saxophone Quartet inaugurated a project where they take the compositions of Hendrix into an almost Ornette Coleman, Body Meta territory.
What results is, at moments, totally indistinguishable as whatever of Jimi's songs they're playing, but it takes the exploratory angle implicit to this music and maximizes it in the WSQ's inimitable footprint and style.
There's even guests, such as the superlatively expressive Craig Harris on the trombone in this picture here.
And Jamaaladeen Tacuma, whom I covered not that long ago on his birthday, and who thunderthumbs his way through this set like a herd of thundering funk elephants.
Rounding it out is Lee Pearson, one of the world's most underrated drummers, who turns in a solo in Machine Gun that gets all the Frankfurters lathered in hot, spicy mustard. Here, have a taste right off the grill!
World Saxophone Quartet
Experienced: The Music of Jimi Hendrix
40. Deutsches Jazzfestival
HR-Sendesaal
Frankfurt, Germany
10.31.2009
01 Peter Kemper introduction
02 Hattie Wall
03 Freedom
04 Hey Joe
05 If 6 Was 9
06 Little Wing
07 Machine Gun
08 The Wind Cries Mary
Total time: 1:28:23
disc break goes after Track 04
David Murray - tenor saxophone, bass clarinet & vocals
Oliver Lake - alto & soprano saxophones
Hamiet Bluiett - baritone saxophone
Tony Kofi - alto saxophone (Tracks 01-07)
Jamaaladeen Tacuma - bass
Lee Pearson - drums
Bruce Williams - alto saxophone (Track 08)
Craig Harris - trombone (Track 08)
digital capture of an German digital FM broadcast on the HR2 channel
Track 08 is a bonus track from The Barbican, London UK 11.14.2005
and is a digital capture of a digital BBC FM broadcast that, spectrally, is equivalent to a preFM source
edited & slightly remastered for unity by EN, October 2026
521 MB FLAC/direct link
521 MB FLAC/direct link
I added a bonus track as well, with slightly different personnel, from a couple of years previous when the WSQ Hendrix project was just getting started. And because it's one of my favorite JH tracks.
So yeah! Happy birthday to me! I'll be back on HalloWEEN with some badass Boognish to terrify the masses, and I hope this Hendrix-in-the-reeds experience suits your Sunday in spectacular fashion!--J.
