It
is one of American music’s most tantalizing what’s if’s. Shortly before his death, Jimi Hendrix and
Miles Davis were seriously pursuing some form of musical collaboration. Sadly,
it would not come to pass and therefore never factors in a new profile produced
for PBS. Dead at the tragically youthful
age of twenty-seven, Hendrix’s career as a headliner only spanned four short
years, but Bob Smeaton lovingly documents his every musical milestone in Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train a Comin’ (promo here), which airs this
Tuesday as part of the current season of American Masters.
Hendrix
fans only need to know Smeaton turned up some previously unseen footage of the
guitar legend absolutely tearing it up at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival to sign
on for this Train. For everyone else, Smeaton (the director of
the Beatles Anthology network
documentary mini-series and several installments of the Classic Albums series) gives Hendrix the proper American Masters treatment. Hendrix was a veteran of the Army 101st
Airborne and the chitlin’ circuit. A
broken ankle led to an honorable discharge and years of sideman work with
performers like Little Richard. Most
tried to contain him, but the Isley Brothers understood what they had and
turned him loose. They were the
exceptions, but eventually Chas Chandler, the former Animals bassist looking to
get into the management business, also heard what others just couldn’t get.
Train decently
explores the contradiction between the personally conservative Hendrix, the
veteran and shy son devoted to his working class father, and Hendrix the flamboyant
showman, who shrewdly appealed to emerging hippie market. Smeaton deliberately downplays the sex and
drugs, focusing instead on the personal and the musical, including his
formative blues influences. Of course, the
Monterey and Woodstock episodes loom large, understandably given the exposure
that resulted from both. However, the sequences chronicling his expatriate
period are considerably more engaging, particularly since they feature Sir Paul
McCartney and Chandler as the primary talking heads.