Jimi Hendrix - Mosaic (1970)

Just when I thought that I had every Hendrix out-take out there on the many, many bootlegs that I have, a couple of new multi-CD sets turn up, which include stuff that I hadn't heard before. The 'Black Gold' 5CD set includes a number of out-takes and alternate versions of tracks recorded around 1970, with quite a few of them being different takes of 'Electric Ladyland' songs, but it also features a jam with Stevie Wonder on 'I Was Made To Love Her', a new song to me called 'Honey Bed', and two takes of a title that I didn't recognise called 'Pride Of Man'. The other box set was the 6CD 'Astro Man' collection, which consists of 3 CDs of studio recordings and three live discs, with the studio discs including alternate takes and mixes of songs as old as 'Purple Haze' and '51st Anniversary', and quite a few from the 'Cry Of Love' period. This set also included some tracks with titles new to me, such as 'Highway Of Broken Dreams', 'La Pouppee Qui Fait Non', 'World Traveller', and 'Too Bad', the last two with organist Larry Young. It could be that these were just already released tracks with new titles, and that actually proved to be the case with 'Pride Of Man', as you can see from the notes that accompanied the 'Black Gold' set, and as they had some interesting insights, I'm repeating them here. 'I Was Made To Love Her' was recorded on 06 October 1967 at the Playhouse Theatre, London, with Stevie Wonder playing the drums and Noel Redding on bass. There are no vocals, but faintly you can hear someone, possibly Wonder, singing verses from 'Ain't Too Proud To Beg', which I split off to make a new track, and Hendrix lays down some nice licks on both of them. 'South Saturn Delta' is just Hendrix solo on guitar, with no other accompaniment, unfettered by the horns and everything else you hear on the 'Lifelines' albums, and utilising some very effective stereo separation. 'Midnight, Valleys Of Neptune Arising' was recorded on 03 April 1969 with Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, and a couple of the takes sound just like the 'Pride Of Man' out-takes, and so that is why I didn't recognise that title, as it turns out that it's just one segment of the afore-mentioned 'Neptune...'. 'Sending My Love To Linda' comes from 21 April 1969, and is an instrumental take of the song which has appeared on other bootlegs with vocals. It's unlike the version on 'Lifelines', which besides having vocals, has a much more restrained guitar sound, with this version sounding much heavier at times, and I extracted the best version from the three takes on the CD. 'Blues Suede Shoes' was taped on 23 January 1970, and is a great studio version of the live track from 'In The West' album, while 'Honey Bed' hails from 10 September 1969, or possibly 23 December 1969, depending on who you believe, and I've taken the best parts from the five incomplete takes to make one good version of the song. Not much information about 'The Things I Used To Do', other than it was recorded some time in 1969, and is an edited version of the fourth vocal take of an unreleased track. So from these two multi-CD box sets I've managed to extract nine songs which I didn't already have, and with some judicious editing here and there it gives me a 51-minute album, which was perfect. I've wanted to use the mosaic of Hendrix's face that was created with guitar picks for some time, and I thought that this was the ideal album for it, and as this is a random collection of different recordings, I've also titled it 'Mosaic', as that seemed to fit. 

    
Track listing

01 The Things I Used To Do
02 Honey Bed
03 Blue Suede Shoes
04 Midnight, Valleys Of Neptune Arising
05 World Traveller
06 South Saturn Delta
07 Too Bad
08 Ain't Too Proud To Beg
09 Sending My Love To Linda