Ever have one of those days where you go into a closet and come out with a box full of things you hardly remember? I just cleaned out two and found several things that I had long forgotten. One was a 1990 special market cassette (those kind you’d always find on spinning displays at truck stop entrances) of Jimi Hendrix from Capitol records called Early Instrumentals.
Countless cassettes like this were produced in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The process went something like this:
- Find a recording of a long lost band who had a member who became a huge star
- Secure the licensing rights
- Flood the market with a low-budget tape and/or LP/CD
- Rinse
- Repeat
This tape had a killer surf-styled track called Hornet’s Nest that featured Jimi’s guitar doing a dazzling duo with an organ — think Flight of the Bumblebee meets Dick Dale. Unfortunately, as was the case with most budget releases like this, there were no details about which band Jimi was playing with at the time.
Thanks to ye olde blogosphere I managed to find out that these studio recordings were made around 1965 with Curtis Knight and the Squires. You can still buy a copy of this cassette, if you don’t mind forking out $12-$25.
More on Hendrix’s early days can be found at EarlyHendrix.com and the Axis Jimi blog.
I am the creator and site administrator at The Basement Rug. I have been collecting LP's and CD's for more than 30 years. I