bernie grundman

 Experience Hendrix & Legacy Recordings released Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967.  This live concert performance was captured just five days before the US release of Are You Experienced, their album debut.  Amazingly, not a single second of this two-track live recording has ever been released before in any capacity, either via official channels or otherwise.

During their set, The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding) blazed through originals such as “Purple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” and yet-to-be-released classics “Foxey Lady” and “Fire,” as well as their own re-imagining of favorites Bob Dylan (“Like a Rolling Stone”), The Troggs (“Wild Thing”) and Muddy Waters (“Catfish Blues”). Having already conquered the band’s UK base as well as Continental Europe over the previous ten months, the vast majority of the 17,000 plus Los Angeles concert goers were there to see headliners The Mamas & The Papas and were caught off guard by Jimi Hendrix’s electrifying musicality and showmanship.

John McDermott is the director, writer and producer who has long been associated with the legacy of Jimi Hendrix.  He has served as the Catalog Director for the Jimi Hendrix family company Experience Hendrix, L.L.C. for nearly three decades.  Together with Janie Hendrix and Eddie Kramer, McDermott has co-produced every Jimi Hendrix CD and DVD release, including 1999’s Grammy Award-winning Band Of Gypsys, 2014’s Emmy Award-winning Hear My Train A Comin’ and the recent Grammy nominated Music, Money, Madness: Jimi Hendrix In Maui.   His most recent project is Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967.

Source: https://www.jimihendrix.com/music/hollywood-bowl-august-18-1967/

Host Maggie LePique, a radio veteran since the 1980's at NPR in Kansas City Mo. She began her radio career in Los Angeles in the early 1990's and has worked for Pacifica station KPFK Radio in Los Angeles since 1994.

Maggie speaks with Nick Gold (former head of World Circuit Records) about the genesis of the phenomenon of the Buena Vista Social and it's 25th Anniversary release. 
 ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ is both the name given to this extraordinary group of musicians and the album, recorded in just seven days in 1996 in Havana’s 1950s vintage EGREM studios. It was clear from the atmosphere of the recording sessions that something very special was taking place. However, no one could have predicted that Buena Vista Social Club would become a worldwide phenomenon – awarded a Grammy in 1997 and, at 8 million copies, outselling any other record in the same genre.

The acclaim of the original album has elevated the artists (including Ibrahim Ferrer, Eliades Ochoa, Compay Segundo, Rubén González & Omara Portuondo) to superstar status, inspired an award-winning film by Wim Wenders, and has contributed to popularising Cuba’s rich musical heritage. Produced by Ry Cooder for World Circuit, the timeless quality of the music and the sheer verve of the veteran performers have ensured that this will go down as one of the landmark recordings of the 20th century.

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the album’s recording, producer Ry Cooder and World Circuit’s Nick Gold have gone back to the original tapes and into the archive to produce this Deluxe Remaster package, featuring previously unheard tracks from the original 1996 recording sessions, previously unseen photos, and new liner notes.

Source: https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/buena-vista-social-club-album-oral-history-9646459/

Source: https://www.buenavistasocialclub.com/albums/buena-vista-social-club-25th-anniversary-edition/
This episode is from an archive from the KPFK program Profiles adapted for podcast. 

Host Maggie LePique, a radio veteran since the 1980's at NPR in Kansas City Mo. She began her radio career in Los Angeles in the early 1990's and has worked for Pacifica station KPFK Radio in Los Angeles since 1994.