Jimi Hendrix & Otis Redding - Monterey International Pop Festival (1967)

(Various Artists )
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The Monterey International Pop Festival was scheduled for June, 1967.   In the back of everybody's mind it was to be the opening event for the "Summer of Love". This was a portentous time. In the same month The Beatles released Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Means Club Band, and the song San Francisco (Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair) by Scott McKenzie was about to help set a mood that would influence a generation.

The Monterey Festival organisers were former Beatles publicist Derek Tarter (who was to bring a reluctant Paul McCartney on board), LA businessman Lou Adler, Mamas and Papas main-man John Phillips and music biz wheeler-dealer Alan Pariser. Their aim was to set-up a non-profit making event showcasing "a diversity of international talent". Among those booked to appear were Indian satar maestro Ravi Shankar, The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, The Grateful Dead, the Mamas and Papas (natch), The Who, Otis Redding, Big Brother and the Holding Company and a young American guitarist all-but unknown in his native land, Jimi Hendrix.

The festival ran for three days and proved a huge success. Otis Redding put in a performance that literally took breaths away. He was the only major representative of American soul musk, but the power of his voice coupled with his intensity of performance revitalised a style of music that had been largely disregarded by white American record buyers. That he should die in a plane crash a few months later would only serve to heighten the remembered poignancy of his performance. The Who showed that they were world class rockers and Big Brother and The Holding Company, featuring rough diamond vocalist Janis Joplin, knocked everybody sideways.

But it was Jimi Hendrix who stole the show. Introduced by doomed Rolling Stone Brian Jones, who was there for that express purpose, Hendrix performed as if he were on stage in an intimate London venue. Although high on acid, he teased notes out of his guitar even he must have been surprised at. His banter between numbers was restrained but spot-on, and the band played the gig of their lives. At the end of the set, Hendrix set fire to his guitar and smashed it against his amp. Jimi Hendrix had arrived.

To consolidate on me success of Monterey, he was booked into a series of American showcases and, although an over-eager agent had booked him as tour support to the Monkees, this was aborted after a few mutually-confusing gigs, by summoning up the ogre of the right-wing pressure group, The Daughters of the American Revolution. [extract from The Mammoth Book Of Sex, Drugs & Rock 'N' Roll, p93-94]

The Monterey International Pop-Festival celebrated the strength and the joy of a new culture with a weekend of music, good feelings and flowers which drew some 50,000 marvellous and marvelling people to Northern California in the summer of 1967. The music, the community feeling and the heady sense of good will which the event radiated became an international social landmark which stood unmatched until two years later when it was joined by Woodstock, the East Coast reflection — somewhat magnified—of Monterey.

The weekend was an impressive and exciting summation of where rock and roll had been in the latter part of the 1960's and a carefully planned prelude to the next couple of years. The festival — this first rock festival, this first large-scale massing of artists and audiences — covered a lot of ground between its Friday night of the Association, Lou Rawls, Simon and Garfunkel and more to its Sunday of Ravi Shankar, the Mamas and the Papas, the Buffalo Springfield, the Who and more. For many of the artists, Monterey was the high point of their career, and their performances reflected the excitement. For others, among them the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Otis Redding. the Monterey International Pop Festival was the beginning of a new phase.

Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding were the rage of England in that summer of love and psychedelia but they had yet to play the United States and thus were no more than a rumor to most of the Monterey crowd. Their appearance at the festival was magical: the way they looked the way they performed and the way they sounded were light years away from anything anyone had seen before. The Jimi Hendrix Experience owned the future and the audience knew it in an instant. The banks of amplifiers and speakers wailing and groaning as Hendrix' fingers scurried across the strings of his guitar gave the trio's music as much density another rock groups were getting out of studio 8-track tape machines. And, of course, Hendrix is a masterful — though seemingly offhand — performer. Pete Townsend of the Who had become famous for destroying his guitar. Hendrix carried the ritual a couple of fantasies farther with lighter fluid and dramatic playing positions in "Wild Thing." When Jimi left the stage, he had graduated from rumor to legend.

Jimi in action

Otis Redding had been performing and recording for five years, but his fame and his following — despite a couple of undeniable hit records — were largely confined to black rhythm and blues audiences in America and to Europe, where he and the Stax/Volt Revue had a justly fanatic following. The Monterey International Pop Festival was comprised of rock people who were still a year or two away from rediscovering their roots, "the love crowd," as he characterized them. It's difficult to describe the extent of his impact Saturday night.

Otis Redding

He was the last act in a day of music which had left the spectators satiated and pleasantly exhausted. Redding went on around midnight, close to the curfew agreed upon by the festival organizers and the local police department and sheriff's office. Booker T. and the MGs and the Markeys had played a brief instrumental set and stayed on stage to back Redding. Within moments after Otis Redding hit the stage, the crowd was on its feet and — for the first and only time in a weekend of five massive concerts — was impulsively rushing toward the stage to dance in the warmth of his fire. Me rocked and rolled past the curfew with a dazzling performance which no one could think of stopping. That night he gave the Monterey International Pop Festival its high point and he was embraced by the rock crowd as a new-found hero. Six months later he was killed in a plane crash, leaving Monterey as perhaps the high point in his performing career—Pete Johnson [Liner Notes]
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OTIS AND JIMI BURN IT UP  [Rolling Stone magazine, Sept 2004, #630]
New stars are born at Monterey Pop Festival  (JUNE 16TH-18TH, 1967)
I'd like to introduce a very good friend, a fellow countryman of yours," said Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival on the California coast. "He's most exciting performer I've ever heard -: Jimi Hendrix Experience." Hendrix needed te big intro. Despite success in England, their "Are You Experienced?" was a  big hit, he was unknown in his native America. He took the stage in a gypsy vest, a head-band and a blazing-orange ruffled shirt, and lunched into torrid renditions of "Killing Floor" and "Foxy Lady". Possibly feeling the two hits of purple acid he had taken earlier in day, Hendrix babbled nervously to the crowd as he played the intro to the next song. I'd like to dedicate this next song to anyone with any kinda hearts and ears ...

Right now we'd like to do a little thing by Bob Dylan." A crashing, bluesy cover of "Like a Rolling Stone" came next, and the crowd belonged to him. "The Who and Jimi had the loudest amps I'd ever been close to" said Monterey Pop documentarian DA. Pennebaker."  I was in a state of shock—I was getting brain damage." To one-up the Who, who had already smashed their equipment during "My Generation", Hendrix pulled out all the stops. He plucked strings with his teeth, and, during the closing "Wild Thing", humped the amps and ejaculated lighter fluid all over his guitar, which he then Set ablaze. "I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of the song - I'd just finished painting it that day," Hendrix said.

Otis Redding also had a break-out show at Monterey. A soul singer from Georgia who had found success mostly on the Chitlin circuit, "Redding had never really played before anything other than a black audience [in the U.S.]," says director John Landis, who was in the crowd. Redding's intensely yearning ballad "Try a Little Tenderness" and rockers such as the Stones' "Satisfaction" electrified the audience. "Otis blew the whole place apart," said former Capitol Records president Joe Smith. "When you talk about the one moment when everybody leapt up, it was Otis Redding."
Years later, when Landis directed The Blues Brothers, he worked with Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn, who were in Redding's band. "I kept telling them it was so exciting to see Otis," says Landis. "They said, You thought it was exciting? You should've been onstage."
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Album Review: Jimi Plays Monterey (Polydor 827 990-2) [1986]
Arguably the best of the many live albums that have surfaced since Hendrix's death, this is a recording of The Experience's historic performance at the Monterey Festival on June 16, 1967. It was Hendrix's first gig in America since going off and becoming a star in Britain, and he rose to the occasion with a vengeance. Much to the horror of the boss of his American record company, and to the delight of 50,000 curious onlookers, he concluded his set by torching and demolishing his guitar during an anarchic finale of 'Wild Thing'. By the time he walked off the stage he was a star in America too.
This post presents this epic performance in full and in sequence, and includes "Killing Floor", "The Wind Cries Mary" (very rarely heard live), "Can You See Me" (ditto) and "Rock Me Baby", along with the more familiar "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze" and "Foxy Lady". But the track which makes the collection a must is the unique interpretation of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", which Hendrix handles with supreme panache, interspersing the tumbling poetry of the lyric with little guitar flourishes of unearthly grace. [review by David Sinclair, The Essential Guide to Rock on CD, Greenwich Editions, 1995. p160-161]
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Jimi Plays Monterey [Liner Notes]
Sunday, June 18,1967
Just after the end of the Six Day War, right before the historic Johnson-Kosygin Summit. Too bad old LBJ had to prepare to meet the Russians in New Jersey — he would have enjoyed Monterey. But he didn't make it, and that was Lyndon's loss. Jimi, Mitch, Noel and around 49,997 others were at the Pop Festival, the first of its eclectic kind. Jimi was rushing, a little anxious. no big story about, we couldn't make it here, so we go over to England, and America doesn't like us, because, you know, our feet's too big, and we go! fat mattresses, and we wear golden underwear, it ain't no scene. Hie that, brother. It's so groovy to come back here and really get a chance to really play." Clearly the man planned to kick ass. The Chinese had dropped their first H-Bomb the day before — but Jimi's set was the bigger blast, shattering love beads and granny glasses, blowing shredded flower petals back to the Haight. The first American performance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience was a major step in the evolution of the ear.

Jimi's set was designed and paced to carefully draw the un Experienced audience into this new world. Fully 55.55% of the tunes were cover versions. (Though ROCK ME BABY later became the all-Hendrix LOVER MAN, dropping the ratio to fifty-fifty.) These versions of FOXEY LADY (with a solo unique among the studio and other live versions), WIND CRIES MARY and PURPLE HAZE are previously unreleased. HEY JOE has only been available on the soundtrack from "A Film About Jimi Hendrix," and KILLING FLOOR only on "KISS THE SKY." From Brian Jones' introduction to the last anguished squeal of tortured Strat on WILD THING, this marks the premier of one of Jimi's most historic performances, complete and in sequence.

And the first time it's ever sounded this good. The 1967 Wally Heider 8 track master tape was first transferred onto a Frank Dickinson-modified 3M thirty-two track digital recorder. This new master was mixed through Sunset Sound's custom console, with API 550A equalizers and NECAMm automation, onto a JVC DAS 900 Vinch two-track digital recorder. At this point, minor edits were made by digital consultant Joe Gastwirt on a Neumann VMS 70, modified with a JVC quartz-lock motor, special JVC cutting head and full custom JVC electronics cranking out 800 watts (or one horsepower) per channel. Impressed? You should be — with all the steps noted above, digital mastering has insured practically no generational sound loss from the original live recording Disc, CD, tape or film, it doesn't get any better than this. Particularly when the raw material comes from the best — Jimi Hendrix
[by Paul Diamond]
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This post consists of FLACs ripped from both CD (Hendrix) and Vinyl (Otis Redding). I have chosen to include Jimi's full set, as every track was a master piece in my opinion.
Otis sang more than the five tracks included here, but finding decent recordings of his full set has eluded me, and so I have gone with the official recordings found on the B-Side of the vinyl release, which by the way, is in absolute 'mint' condition.
For the purists, I'm also including a Vinyl rip of the original Side 1 which features Hendrix.
These performances have been quoted as being the highlight performances for both of these artists and it is with great pride that I can provide them here for your pleasure.  Enjoy.

Track Listing
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
01 - Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
02 - Foxey Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
03 - Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan) 
04 - Rock Me, Baby (B. B. King-Joe Josea)
05 - Hey Joe (Joe South)
06 - Can You See Me (Jimi Hendrix) 
07 - The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
08 - Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
09 - Wild Thing (J.Taylor)

Otis Redding
10 - Shake (Sam Cooke)
11 - Respect (Otis Redding)
12 - I've Been Loving You Too Long (Otis Redding-Jerry Butler) 
13 - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Mick Jagger-Keith Richard) 
14 - Try a Little Tenderness (Harry Woods-Jimmy Campbell-Reg Connelly)
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Monterey International Pop Festival FLACS Link (395Mb)


Monterey Side 1 Hendrix Vinyl Rip FLACs Link (134Mb)
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Otis Redding - History Of Otis Redding (1967)

(U.S 1958–1967)
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Generally regarded as the single most influential male soul artist of the '60s, Otis Redding was one of the first artists to broaden his appeal to white audiences with a raw, spontaneous style that bore a stark contrast to the smooth, sophisticated music of Motown.

Otis Redding was born September 9, 1941 in Dawson, Georgia. When Otis was five the family moved to the Tindal Heights Housing Project in Macon, Georgia. Otis Sr. worked at the Robins Air Force Base, one of the local places of employment for blacks, and preached on the weekends. Redding began singing in choir of the Vineville Baptist Church. For much of his childhood his father was sick. Living for awhile in a shotgun house in west Macon known as Bellevue the family was forced to move back into the project after it burnt down.

Dropping out of Ballad Hudson High School in the tenth grade, and went on to work with Little Richard's former band, the Upsetters. and he send home $25 a week. Gladys Williams, a prominent local musician ran Sunday night talent shows that Otis began to compete in. After winning 15 times straight, he was no longer allowed to compete.

In 1959, Otis sang at the Grand Duke Club. In 1960  Redding began touring the South with Johnny Jenkins and The Pinetoppers. With this group he made his first recording in 1960 as Otis and The Shooters.

In 1962, Redding recorded a song he had written,"These Arms of Mine" at a Johnny Jenkins session at Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee. The song became a major R&B hit and a minor pop hit in early 1961 on the newly form Volt subsidiary of Stax, to which he was quickly signed. Now recording in Memphis with the Stax house band Booker T. and The MGs, Redding had a number of crossover hits for Volt that included "That's What My Heart Needs," "Pain In My Heart," and "Chained and Bound." His first moderate hit was "Mr. Pitiful" in early 1965. Redding toured regularly through 1967, accompanied by Booker T. and The MGs or The Bar-Kays, developing a greater initial following in Europe than in the U.S.

In  the spring of 1965, Redding broke into the pop market with "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)," co-written with Jerry Butler, and his "Respect." His Otis Blue album included two hits, Sam Cooke's "Shake" and "A Change is Gonna Come" and The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" which became a crossover hit. Redding's "I Can't Turn You Lose/"Just One More Day" became a Top 10 two-sided R&B hit at the end of 1965. His Dictionary of Soul album yielded crossover hits "My Lover's Prayer," Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)," and "Try a Little Tenderness."

In 1967 Arthur Conley had a Top 10 hit with the Conley-Redding "Sweet Soul Music" and Aretha Franklin had a Top 10 Pop and R&B hit with Redding's "Respect."   Redding recorded King and Queen with Carla Thomas and the album yielded R&B and Pop hits "Tramp" and "Knock On Wood."

Appearing as the only soul act at The Monterey International Pop Festival gained Redding widespread recognition and began establishing him with pop audiences. However, while touring, Redding's airplane crashed into the icy waters of Lake Monon near Madison, Wisconsin on December 10, 1967 killing him and four members of the Bar-Kays (Jimmy King, Ron Caldwell, Phalin Jones and Carl Cunningha). Trumpet player Ben Cauley was the only person to survive the crash. In early 1968, Redding's recording of "(Sittin' On ) The Dock of the Bay," co-written with Steve Cropper, became a top pop and R&B hit. Posthumously crossover hits continued in to 1969 with "The Happy Song (Dum Dum)," "Amen," "I've Got Dreams to Remember," "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," and "Love Man."

In the late '70s, Redding's sons Dexter and Otis III formed the Reddings with cousin Mark Lockett for recordings on on the Believe in Dream label, distributed by Columbia. They had a Top 10 R&B hit with "Remote Control" in 1980 and eventually switched to Polydor Records in the late 1980s.

Otis Redding was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. [extract from history-of-rock]

Cover Linear Notes
In the sixty-seven years of this century, the blues has gone through many transformations from the old, rural singers and the early city blues men, on through the great individual performers of the 20s and 30s from Bessie Smith to Jimmy Rushing.

The blues burst out into teen-age America in the 50s with performers such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and later with Ray Charles. It is now so deeply embedded in the popular music of America— —which is to say the popular music of the world— that it is almost taken for granted and seldom singled out.
An artist such as Otis Redding—and he was an artist in the broad popular field of music just as Ray Charles and Elvis Presley before him—not only sang the blues but carried over into everything he did some aspects of the blues sound and feeling. But the blues of today, even though it still deals with the fundamentals of life, has a different sound to it (just as life itself does) than characterized by Leadbelly or Bessie Smith.

And the great contribution of Otis Redding was that he made his own sound and his own style not only effective for him, not only a personal success, but a way of singing and performing, that spun off into others.
Otis Redding was a pure example of the immediacy of today's music in the sense that Marshall McLuhan speaks of immediacy. His emotional message, his charisma, his total effect was instantaneous. Furthermore, Otis Redding exemplified the whole new concept of the artist, not being limited to being a singer. Like The Beatles and almost every other important performer in the new literature of sound, Otis Redding could control, not only his own voice, but the medium through which that voice reached the public.

Without ever asking him the question, it was obvious that he manipulated the electronics involved, if only because he had served as a successful producer for other people—Arthur Conley, for one. As a songwriter, he had the touch that shaped a composition to the general need. As a producer, he tailored the sound to the moment. He was the electronic artist, the practitioner of instant communication which involved the intuitive but encompassed knowledge and planning. To take, as he had done, a highly individual hit such as "Satisfaction" and make it into his own vehicle is an example of the performer's art enhanced by the producer's knowledge and ear, to state it plainly, the producer's art as well.

Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays

In person, everything Redding did was an all-out, powerhouse, emotional explosion. He may have started out singing "Try A Little Tenderness" with tenderness, but it always ended up with "sock it to me baby!" Each number was a crescendo of rising emotion because Redding was an expert of a very special mass audience style. He could work his listeners into a frenzy more quickly than anyone I have ever known.

It was not only his ability to do this in person, but his success at sending the same energy bursting through recordings that marked him as unique. An Otis Redding song, even back in his early days as this album indicates, dealt directly in soul. As he expanded his vision, the Memphis sound of his band began to set musical styles. Today, if a phrase had to be used to categorize it, I would suggest "rock and soul" since he created an amalgam while still retaining the characteristics of the originals. The sound was distinctly his own, both instrumentally and vocally, and its effect on American popular music has been fundamental. It always swings, but it is more than just swing; it is a groovy sound which, in fact, defines the word "groovy" as applied to music. He' could be sentimental and he could be ecstatic. He could write his own songs or take others' material and adapt it. He could produce for himself and produce for others.

It is hard, in fact, to find his equivalent anywhere in the music scene which is, of course, the reason he has been the tremendous force that he was. Only a small part of that importance is indicated by the fact that in 1967 he dethroned Elvis Presley as the top male vocalist in the Melody Maker Poll. They really didn't have a category for Otis Redding. [notes by RALPH J. GLEASON]
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This post consists of MP3's (320kps) ripped from my highly treasured vinyl which is in remarkable condition considering it is now 50 years old. I certainly didn't acquire it until later in life when I became fascinated in the derivation of some of my favourite 70's tracks (ie. Jo Jo Zep's cover of "Security", Max Merritt's version of "Try A Little Tenderness" and Jimi Hendrix's posthumous rendition of "Mr.Pitiful") and discovered they were all Otis Redding songs.
This anthology of hits was purchased second hand and still has the original owners name on the Atlantic label - Lee Hill.  So Lee, if you're still out there, thanks for making this gem available for me to purchase.
Full album artwork and label scans are included, along with an array of 45 covers matching the track list on this album. An alternative front cover for the ATCO release is shown above. (Note that this album is a Mono Recording but a Stereo version was also released).
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Track Listing

01 - I've Been Loving You Too Long
02 - Try A Little Tenderness
03 - These Arms Of Mine
04 - Pain In My Heart
05 - My Lover's Prayer
06 - Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)
07 - Respect
08 - Satisfaction
09 - Mr. Pitiful
10 - Security
11 - I Can't Turn You Loose
12 - Shake
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History Of Otis Redding (83Mb)
New Link 11/01/2021