Dec 27 2024
Dave Thompson.
‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house… trapped in that semi-festive wasteland when it’s too early for the parties, but too late to think about very much else, Jimi Hendrix whiled away mid-December ’69 at the Record Plant with the Band of Gypsys.
It was an inspiring time, but a fraught one regardless. With The Experience gone and Chas Chandler too, a lot of people in Jimi’s orbit were watching these latest developments with mounting unease. It was only a couple of months, after all, since the guitarist had been singing the praises of another group entirely, Gypsy Sun & Rainbows. Now that was already a thing of the past, together with the “200 reels of tape,” which drummer Mitch Mitchell guessed they’d got in the can, and Jimi was off with Gypsy bassist Billy Cox, and another drummer entirely, Buddy Miles. And they were threatening to play freeform jazz.
Manager Michael Jeffery wasn’t at all keen about any of this. Maybe the Gypsys’ putative producer, Alan Douglas, who did have a background in that sort of music, but the guitarist’s fans were still rock ‘n’ rollers, and the last thing they needed was a smorgasbord of noodles. The only consolation, Jeffrey knew, was that Jimi would get bored soon enough. He got bored with everything these days.
Boredom was the last thing on Jimi’s mind in mid-December, though. On and off for the last two months, he had lived, breathed and most of all worked on, the Band Of Gypsys, trekking back and forth between the Record Plant studios, and the apartment on 57th and 10th where he was spending his down time, putting together the statement he knew would blow the doubters out of the water completely.
Besides, the sessions weren’t anywhere near as impenetrable as Jeffrey apparently feared. Tracks like “Ezy Rider,” “Stepping Stone,” “Lover Man,” “Izabella” and “Born Under A Bad Sign” proved that for all his far-reaching musical ambitions, Hendrix remained a bluesman at heart, and no matter how far his
bandmates tried to tug him, he’d always follow his instincts in the end.
It was those instincts that informed him that the Band of Gypsys was never going to come to fruition if they stayed at the Record Plant. So much of the band’s music was a split between intuition and spontaneity, and those were elements that couldn’t simply be summoned out of nowhere when the studio tapes started rolling, and which certainly weren’t compliant to the ticking of the clock. In early December, then, shortly after he returned to New York from Toronto, Hendrix began looking around for a second home for the band, some place they could just practice, jam and mess around, and not have it cost an arm and a leg for the pleasure.
He found it at Baggy’s.
Located down on Grand Street, Manhattan, Baggy’s was the most informal kind of rehearsal space imaginable. It was run by Tom Edmonston, the Soft Machine’s road manager when they toured with The Experience, and if you cast a jaundiced eye over the place, it was an absolute dump, a roughly appointed warehouse space with rugs on the walls and floor, big enough for two bands to fit in at once, but only if they didn’t both want to play.
It was cheap, though – $25 an hour – and it was familiar as well. All three members of the Band of Gypsys had spent time in places like Baggy’s, and they took to it like ducks to water. There they would work through the song ideas that arose during the Record Plant sessions; but were suppressed because there wasn’t time to explore them; there, too, they would put the finishing flourishes to the songs they’d already finished, readying them for the Band Of Gypsys’ great unveiling at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve.
But Baggy’s wasn’t a particularly private place. Even though Edmonston made sure that the studio was closed to any other artists while Jimi was around, word swiftly spread about this illustrious guest. By his second visit to Baggy’s, the street outside and the roofs all around were choked with onlookers, hoping to catch a look of what was going on inside.
The eavesdroppers were very rarely disappointed. The versions of “Burning Desire” and “Hoochie Coochie Man” which originally highlighted the now out of print Loose Ends album in 1974, hail from one night at Baggy’s, and no matter how loose and occasionally speculative they seem on vinyl, squeezed between outtakes from the Record Plant and Olympic Studios, still the energy sparking between the three musicians is undeniable, until it didn’t matter how rudimentary the studio’s taping facilities were (very!), the magic cut through the murk and mud regardless.
Running the feed directly into the tape machine, Jimi split the band’s sound into the most elementary stereo imaginable guitar in one channel, bass in the other, and Buddy drumming straight up the middle. But that’s all they needed. There was never any intention whatsoever of these tapes making their way into public earshot, they were for the band’s own reference alone, a rough record of what they’d be doing at the Fillmore, before they actually did it, and a sketch of what they intended accomplishing at the Record Plant the following day.
It didn’t always work out like that, of course, and December 19th was a case in point. A productive trip to Baggy’s the night before had been followed by an infuriating slow one at the Record Plant, a day which began at 3 a.m., then got completely bogged down on “Earth Blues.” By the end of the session, all they had to show for their efforts was an untitled jam (later titled “Strato Strut”), one take of “Message To Love,” and 16 insufferable stabs at the recalcitrant “Earth Blues.”
The presence of The Ronettes, five years on from their chart-topping high, but still some of the sweetest voices on the scene, lightened the mood a little, though, particularly once they delivered their backing vocals; and by the time the Gypsys had reconvened at Baggy’s, spirits were both high and playful.
During the December 18 and 19 Baggy’s sessions, the tapes rolled, the band played, and the uninvited audience on the roofs and fire escapes outside braved the bitter city chill to catch every note they played. It might even have been for their sakes that Jimi decided to unleash a little Christmas cheer at the end of the session, to send them all home with something to smile about. First, a funky “Little Drummer Boy,” an effortless segue into a sweet “Silent Night,” then a pause, and farewell with a passionate “Auld Lang Syne.”
The Gypsys caught his drift and threw themselves into the moment. Billy started singing, and outside, maybe the listeners did as well, and when it was over, Jimi just laughed “hey, how long was that?” “A long time!” replied Buddy; “an album!” finished Billy. “Okay,” Jimi responded, “let’s listen to it then.”
As work tapes for Jimi’s reference, the guitarist kept them in his apartment for review. Sadly, they were amongst the trove of materials looted following Jimi’s tragic September 1970 passing. A few tapes were eventually discovered when Alan Douglas exhumed the first of the Baggy’s tapes, two or three years after Jimi’s death, as he scoured the guitarist’s legacy for the latest in a long line of new collections. Most of the music, he dismissed as unreleasable—long jams that meandered and didn’t really go places, the occasional flashes of impromptu brilliance either too short, or too shoddily recorded, to justify even a barrel-scraping release.
But there was room for a couple of tracks on Loose Ends, and room for three more on a promotional EP, which Hendrix’s U.S. label planned releasing in time for Christmas, 1974. Under the overall title of … And A Happy New Year (Reprise PRO 595), this 7” EP featured “Little Drummer Boy” and “Silent Night” on one side and an abruptly faded “Auld Lang Syne” on the other. On the original recording, the Robert Burns’ New Year’s chest-beater lasted more than seven minutes, jamming on long after Buddy Miles sang his section; on the single, Douglas chose to fade it after only four.
Wrapped in a cool picture sleeve, though, and dispatched to a favored few radio DJs, …And A Happy New Year would become one of the turntable hits of the entire festive season, battling it out for airplay supremacy with the perennial likes of Elvis, John Lennon and the Brady Bunch.
Four years later, it was at it again (PROA 840), this time as a 12-inch single, with all three tracks running into one another on both sides – the single, of course, split “Auld Lang Syne” onto the B-side.
“Every time we played it, the phones just lit up… people used to call up asking if we could play it at a certain time so they could record it.”
~ Don West
Don West, a DJ at KOME in San Jose, CA (and co-producer of NPR’s now-legendary 1982 four-hour documentary Jimi Hendrix: A Slight Return) had owned the 7-inch version since early 1975, playing it annually (at least until the station changed format in 1993), much to the bemusement of even informed listeners.
“Every time we played it, the phones just lit up. When it was just the 7″ version, we played the ‘Little Drummer Boy’ side, then ‘Auld Lang Syne’ would come on for New Year’s. After the 12″ came out, we’d just play the whole medley, the five-minute medley.”
It was a favorite request, “people used to call up asking if we could play it at a certain time so they could record it… and usually we’d try. It’s always tough, as radio gets more and more restrictive it became harder. Christmas records were in very strict rotation, so it wasn’t always possible, but when I could, I’d do it.”
In 1999, the original recordings of the Christmas medleys were remastered and issued on the 3-track EP Merry Christmas And Happy New Year, which finally offered both December 1969 recordings of the medley including the original 4:29 recording in its original, uncut-form, plus the unreleased 7:25 extended version.
Despite the rough-hewn nature of the original Baggy’s tapes, the remaining recordings provide a revealing glimpse of Jimi Hendrix’s in the studio, recording with friends and having fun experimenting with new songs.
Christmas Discography
Since debuting in 1974 as a promotional single to a limited number of radio station DJs, Hendrix’s Christmas medley of “Little Drummer Boy / Silent Night / Auld Lang Syne” has been released in various forms on CD as well as 7”, 10” and 12” singles. Here’s a brief look back at some of those releases:
… And A Happy New Year
(1974, 7” Vinyl Single, Reprise Records, Promotional)
… And A Happy New Year
(1979, 12” Vinyl Maxi-Single, Reprise Records, Promotional)
… And A Happy New Year
(circa 1980s, 7” Picture Disc Vinyl, Unofficial Release)
Merry Christmas And Happy New Year
(1999 CD Single/EP, MCA Records)
Merry Christmas And Happy New Year
(1999-2008, 7” Single. Multiple Releases on Gold, White, Red and Green Vinyl)
Merry Christmas And Happy New Year
(2015, CD Single, Experience Hendrix, Promotional Single)
Merry Christmas And Happy New Year
(2010, CD Single/EP and 10” Vinyl, Legacy Recordings/Sony)
Merry Christmas And Happy New Year
(2012, 10” Snowflake/White Vinyl, Legacy Recordings/Sony)
Merry Christmas And Happy New Year
(2019, Record Store Day, Picture Disc, Legacy Recordings/Sony)
Postscript
Since this article was originally published in Volume 3, Issue 5 (November/December 1999) issue of Experience Hendrix: The Official Jimi Hendrix Magazine, additional recordings from these fabled Baggy’s sessions have been remastered. In addition to the 1999 EP release of Merry Christmas And Happy New Year featuring both recordings of the Christmas medley; in 2002, as part of the long-running series of authorized bootleg-recordings Dagger Records, Jimi Hendrix: The Baggy’s Rehearsal Sessions was released featuring 12 additional recordings from these recording dates. Beyond the good humor presented on these Christmas classics, the Baggy’s Rehearsal Sessions showcases the free-wheeling spirit of three good friends together in the studio as they prepared for their Fillmore East concert debut. Taken together with Band Of Gypsys or the newly expanded Songs For Groovy Children deluxe box set (released in 2019), these early rehearsals offer fans a more detailed view of one of Hendrix’s most lasting achievements.
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