During 1969, Eric Burdon joined up with the Californian funk rock band War. It was just 12 months later the band were playing at Ronnie Scott's in Soho, London when Burdon's friend Jimi Hendrix was to join them on stage for the last two numbers of the night. Both songs were played more or less as loose blues jams for Hendrix and the group to work out.
This momentous night in Frith Street was also recorded by one of the audience, a 20 year old from Shepherds Bush, London who had quite unknowingly recorded a piece of music history. Bill Baker had just a Sony cassette recorder and a cassette to capture that night at Scott's and had to turn the tape over to record the last part of the gig when Hendrix was introduced as the guest and hence losing the first part of the War performance.
The two Hendrix tracks from this recording, "Mother Earth" and "Tobacco Road", were later included without permission from Bill Baker on a bootleg LP, although how the tape was passed to the bootlegger isn't clear. The recording quality of the end product was poor as were many bootlegs of the day.
The recording eventually entered general circulation in 2009 and then in December 2010 was remastered in California with the recording improved.
The end result is more like listening to an old blues recording from the 1920's rather than the bright new 70's age of stereo.
But that one night on September 16th 1970 is much more than the final audio result as it documents the last performance of Jimi Hendrix. Within little more than 24 hours he was gone.
Here is an extract from Memphis Slim's "Mother Earth Blues". The uploader has also improved the quality even over the last remastering and edited it to just Jimi's two solo's. The picture above is assumed to be taken on that night.
