Jimi Hendrix Experience – "Hey Joe" (1966)

Hey Joe, where you going

With that gun in your hand?

Stanley Jordan started taking piano lessons when he was six years old.  But he switched to the guitar when he was 11.

What made him drop the piano and take up the guitar?  The death of Jimi Hendrix.

“When I got the news that Jimi had died, I remember the shock and sadness,” Jordan told a reporter. “That was the moment I made up my mind: ‘I’m going to play the guitar’.”

Jordan’s decision to change instruments turned out to be a wise one.  After graduating from Princeton in 1981, he quickly established himself as a jazz guitarist.  His first studio album, Magic Touch, set a record when it went to #1 on Billboard’s jazz chart in 1985 and remained there for 51 weeks.

A couple of years ago, Jordan began to channel Jimi Hendrix in a new live show he called “Stanley Plays Jimi.”  In those shows, Jordan takes the stage dressed like Hendrix – complete with a large Afro wig and Hendrix’s signature headband – and performs covers of some of Hendrix’s best-known records (like “Foxey Lady” and “Purple Haze”).  He also plays some deeper Hendrix cuts, including “Little Wing,” “Red House,” and “Voodoo Chile.”

Stanley Jordan as Jimi Hendrix

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I recently saw Jordan’s “Stanley Plays Jimi” show at Blues Alley, which is Washington, DC’s premier jazz club.

Jordan is a remarkable guitarist.  He’s famous for his unusual two-handed tapping technique – instead of plucking or strumming the string, he produces notes by tapping the string with his fingertips. Click here to watch Jordan demonstrating that technique at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1986.  

A friend who saw the “Stanley Plays Jimi” show that night thought Jordan’s attempt to look like Hendrix was a bit much, and also wished that Jordan hadn’t imitated Hendrix’s playing style quite so closely – she would have liked the show better if Jordan had taken more liberties with the Hendrix originals and injected more of himself into his performance.

I had a different reaction.  My only complaint about the show was that it didn’t include several of my favorite Hendrix tracks – like “Manic Depression,” “Are You Experienced,” and “Hey Joe.”

That should come as no surprise to anyone given that I’m one of those guys who always wanted any group he saw live to play their big hits instead of a bunch of songs from their crappy new album that I had never heard before.  

In fact, I’m still a little pissed about a Sonic Youth concert that I attended in 1998 because the group played almost none of my favorites that night.  Instead, they chose to feature on tracks from their A Thousand Leaves album, which had been released only the day before their Washington appearance – meaning that I had no chance to familiarize myself with the music on it.  Today, A Thousand Leaves is one of my favorite Sonic Youth albums – I think it’s brilliant – but that night, those unfamiliar tracks were only so much noise.

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The great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once said that if there’s a rifle hanging on the wall in the first act of a play, that rifle must be fired in the second or third act.

(You don’t get it, do you?)

“Hey Joe” follows Chekhov’s principle.  It mentions a gun in the first verse, and pretty soon that gun is fired – with fatal effect.

Purt near everyone covered “Hey Joe” back in the day.  The song has quite a history, which I will explore in the very next 2 or 3 lines.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their cover “Hey Joe” as their first single.  It made it all the way to #6 in the UK, but failed to break into the Billboard “Hot 100” in the U.S.  

Believe it or not, Jimi Hendrix had only one top 40 single in the U.S. – “All Along the Watchtower” (which was nothing special).

That’s right – neither “Hey Joe” nor “Purple Haze” nor “Foxey Lady” nor “Crosstown Traffic” nor “Stone Free” cracked the top 40.  (How is that even possible?) 

Click here to watch a video of Jordan covering “Hey Joe.”  (Two minutes in, Jordan plays a solo using the tapping technique.)

Click here to listen to Hendrix’s recording of “Hey Joe.”  

Click here to buy that record from Amazon.