Early Jimi Hendrix Curtis Knight sessions due for March 2015 release

After decades of legal wrangling, Hendrix estate acquires rights to release recordings from mid-1960s Curtis Knight and the Squires sessions

Fans eager to hear guitar legend Jimi Hendrix’s early work as a 1960s R&B session guitarist can celebrate at last. Experience Hendrix, the company representing his estate, have acquired the rights to release Curtis Knight and the Squires recordings that feature Hendrix on guitar, before he found fame as the Jimi Hendrix Experience frontman.

You Can’t Use My Name: Curtis Knight & The Squires (featuring Jimi Hendrix) – The RSVP/PPX Sessions is the wordily titled 14-track album, and pegged for a March 2015 release on Legacy Recordings.

“We are extremely delighted to now be in a position to offer these rare, historic recordings,” said Janie Hendrix, Experience Hendrix president and CEO and Jimi Hendrix’s sister, in a statement. “They are more than just recordings, they represent a significant segment in the timeline of Jimi’s musical existence.”

The recordings have been at the centre of a decades-long legal battle. In October 1965, Producer Ed Chalpin and his company PPX signed Hendrix to a three-year recording deal for $1 and 1% in royalties. The Curtis Knight sessions, recorded in 1965, 1966 and 1967 fell under the remit of this deal, though they also included songs licensed to Knight’s RSVP Records label.

Midway through his deal with PPX, Hendrix relocated from New York to London and started the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966, recording and releasing single Hey Joe later that year.

Complications arose from Hendrix’s work with the Jimi Hendrix Experience appearing to violate his exclusive contract with Chalpin and PPX. In 2002, a London high court order finally settled the matter, laying out PPX’s ownership of 33 specific recordings and allowing Experience Hendrix to begin acquiring the rights to Hendrix’s other recordings as a sideman.

You Can’t Use My Name is due out on CD and 150-gram vinyl. See its full tracklisting below:

1. How Would You Feel
2. Gotta Have a New Dress
3. Don’t Accuse Me
4. Fool for You Baby
5. No Such Animal
6. Welcome Home
7. Knock Yourself Out [Flying on Instruments]
8. Simon Says
9. Station Break
10. Strange Things
11. Hornet’s Nest
12. You Don’t Want Me
13. You Can’t Use My Name
14. Gloomy Monday

Thanks to the Guardian for this article

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