About a year before John Hartford’s death, a group of artists including Hartford himself gathered to pay tribute to his 30 years of writing and playing music.
From A Tribute to John Hartford Live at Mountain Stage comes this highlight, and in this writer’s opinion Gillian Welch infuses her take on “In Tall Buildings” with a melancholy missing from the writer’s own version.
Hartford is perhaps best known to the uninitiated as the writer of Glen Campbell’s 1968 breakout hit “Gentle On My Mind”.
Ian Anderson, of the band Jethro Tull has been named the best Rock n Roll flute player aka flautist for the 55th consecutive year. The honor was unanimous and Anderson also came in second and third.
Anderson first won the award in 1967 when Jethro Tull first formed. “In the 1960s I actually had a little competition” said Ian. “There were a few bands here and there that incorporated a flute in a song or two. Honestly they were all hippie hacks. Over time though there was less and less competition and eventually I was the only nominee. Go ahead name another Rock n Roll flute player, I dare you. I double dog dare you. See, exactly as I thought.”
In January 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, played their first date at Brian Epstein’s Saville Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue. Cream were in the audience that night listening to Jimi do a souped-up rock’n’roll version of B.B. King’s ‘Rock Me bay’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, ‘Wild Thing’, ‘Hey Joe’ and one of Jimi’s compositions, ‘Can You See Me?’ Eric Clapton later related to Rolling Stone how Jimi’s performance that night inspired Cream’s most famous song, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’:
“He played this gig that was blinding. I don’t think Jack [Bruce] had really taken him in before. I knew what the guy was capable of from the minute I met him. It was the complete embodiment of all aspects of rock guitar rolled into one. I could sense it coming off the guy. And when he [Jack] did see it that night, after the gig he went home and came up with the riff. It was strictly a dedication to Jimi. And then we wrote the song on top of it.”
Coincidently, Jimi used to play this same song as a dedication to Cream, one of his favourite bands, unaware that he was in fact playing his own dedication.
Source: Jimi Hendrix – Electric Gypsy by Harry Shapiro & Caesar Glebbeek, Heinemann 1990.
Every Moment Has A Song 