The Jimi Hendrix song that made Stevie Ray Vaughan weep
No one, not even the most sneering hardcore and black metal fans, can seriously doubt the playing ability of Jimi Hendrix. Although mainstream accounts of iconic musicians are so often loaded with hyperbole, the American axeman revolutionised the guitar. His time in the sun might have been brief, but it speaks volumes that he changed music and the six-string in just a handful of years, with everyone from Black Sabbath to Stevie Ray Vaughan and John McGeoch fans of the late icon.
While we often concentrate on Hendrix’s blazing din as heard in the likes of ‘Voodoo Chile’, ‘Purple Haze’ and the proto-metal masterwork, ‘Spanish Castle Magic’, he was a player who effectively straddled the line between the elements. For every moment of scalding, pulsating rock, he conjured ones of ice-cool melodic splendour, where he fused his innovative and heavy proclivities with the expressive nous of the blues that initially inspired him. Just take his cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’, for instance. It’s one of his most important tracks and sits comfortably in the small but effective nexus between heaviness, hardness and melody.
Just as there were times when Hendrix leaned more into sheer heaviness than intricate melody, there were also moments when he reversed course, crafting deeply moving passages of intense tenderness. Just one listen to ‘Angel’ or ‘Little Wing’ reveals how profoundly Hendrix could explore this emotional spectrum through his playing. His real achievement was in being such a versatile and dynamic guitarist.
One man who understood the melodic intenseness of Hendrix better than most was Stevie Ray Vaughan. The Texan Stratocaster-wielding maestro is one of the many notable artists who probably wouldn’t have existed without the ‘Purple Haze’ star. Although his work on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance would make him a household name, Vaughan’s own efforts, such as his 1983 debut Texas Flood, a staple of the blues-rock genre, show his prowess on the fretboard and how he expertly took aspects of Hendrix’s sound and moulded them in his image.
Vaughan was always open about the influence of Hendrix on his style and was one of the only artists to cover one of his songs successfully. His instrumental version of ‘Little Wing’ is exceptional and was rightly dubbed one of his definitive performances after his tragic 1990 death.
Model Melinda Merryweather, who befriended Jimi Hendrix while he was filming Chuck Wein’s Rainbow Bridge in Maui, Hawaii, shared that she once played Vaughan a track Hendrix had written for her. The song moved him to tears. She recalled that just before he left the island, Hendrix recorded an acoustic demo titled Scorpio Woman, later featured on the posthumous compilation Morning Symphony Ideas.
“He couldn’t read or write music, so he would play into a little tape recorder … for eight or nine hours … (and then) take that back to the studio and build the song around it,” she said. “I played it for Stevie Ray Vaughan, and he just broke down and cried because he didn’t realise Jimi (also) had to struggle (with the song-writing process)”.
The Hendrix estate wanted professional musicians to finish the song, as well as the sound of him getting up to answer the phone removed from the demo, but Merryweather insisted it stay in its raw state. “I’m going, ‘God, that’s the whole beauty of it,’” she concluded. “It’s all just so precious and beautiful and rich.”
It remains a rare capture of Hendrix in a natural state; no wonder it had such an effect on Vaughan. It clearly wasn’t just Hendrix’s sheer melodic aptitude. Hearing your hero doing in such an environment must have been incredibly profound.
