By Tine Roycroft

Jimi Hendrix fans are forever hungry ~ prowling the soundscape, looking for any traces of music or wisdom that the legendary guitar god left behind during his short, incredibly powerful career. In February 1969, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, which included Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, played two gigs at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The Feb. 24 show was well recorded and well documented. But only poor quality bootlegs were thought to exist for the Feb. 18 show ~ until recently.

Joel Brattin, a professor of early 19th century literature at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, spends his days teaching Dickens and Shakespeare, but his passion for and knowledge of Hendrix knows no bounds. Brattin was delighted when the editor of UniVibes ~ a magazine devoted to Jimi Hendrix ~ asked him to review a soundboard recording (audio taken directly from the mixing board used during the performance) from the Feb. 18 show.

“I was teaching a group of WPI undergraduates at the time in London. In May and June of 2012, I was doing a program on Dickens, Hendrix and Shakespeare,” Brattin said.

The professor was mailed the two CDs, and according to him, even as he played the songs through his small computer speakers, he could tell that the sound was amazing.

“What happens often is that there are a lot of audience tapes that surface,” Brattin said. “Somebody brought a little recorder with one microphone in 1968 or 1969, and they recorded from their seat in the audience. A lot of those recordings are poor. But this release is of excellent quality.”

Brattin feels that although Hendrix is known as an amazing rock musician, there’s a great deal the artist had in common with jazz and blues musicians; Hendrix did a lot of improvisation, for example. Some of this improvisation is evidenced on the Feb. 18, 1969, recording.

“Hendrix opened the show with an instrumental,” Brattin said, “which is not his usual mode ~ an 8-minute version of ‘Tax Free.’ Songs like that are always thrilling to hear because Hendrix does something different each time.”

The single, most amazing song in the show, according to Brattin, is “Spanish Castle Magic,” a song on Hendrix’s second album. A short piece, usually no more than four minutes, is actually 12 minutes long in this recording. To add to its power, in the middle of the song, Hendrix changed direction and began to play “Message to Love,” which is a song Hendrix made famous much later. Brattin believes this is the only recorded live performance of the song as played by the original Jimi Hendrix Experience band.

“Just to hear him veer off into ‘Message to Love’ from ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ is incredible,” Brattin said. “I think he’s the most extraordinary electric guitarist in history. I get tremendous pleasure listening to his work, and because of his work ethic, there’s just an awful lot of his material, despite his short career. He only had about three or four years in his professional career before his early death.”

Brattain’s classes at WPI are centered on Charles Dickens, but recently, Brattin did a presentation that concentrated on the best of Hendrix visuals, featuring rare films and videos of Hendrix performing.

There is no rest for this WPI Hendrix buff. “There’s a new studio album that was released a couple of months ago called People, Hell and Angels, which is supposed to be the final studio album released by the Hendrix family, so I have a review forthcoming for that,” Brattin said. “I’ve got book reviews and articles coming out, as well. There are always other projects coming up.”

For more information on Professor Brattin and his work, visit www.wpi.edu.

Photo (RIGHT): Jimi Hendrix performing at the Royal Albert hall in London 1969. (David Redferns/Getty)
Photo (LEFT): Joel Brattin.