Welcome to the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced, perhaps the greatest debut album in rock history, containing some of Hendrix’s best known songs (“Purple Haze,” “Foxy Lady,” “The Wind Cries Mary” and his version of the Billy Robertson song “Hey Joe”). Recorded over five months and in three London studios, the album was released in May of 1967 in the UK and stayed on the charts for 33 weeks. It was released in August in the US where it remained on the charts for 106 weeks. The original UK release led with “Foxy Lady,” but it didn’t actually include any of the other hits listed above. The US release kicks off with “Purple Haze,” often thought to be about LSD, though Hendrix claims “Purple Haze” is actually about a dream he had of walking under the sea. The album and its singles are fixtures on best-of lists, and music writer Reuben Jackson of the Smithsonian Institution wrote, it’s still a landmark recording because it is of the rock, R&B, blues… musical tradition. It altered the syntax of the music … in a way I compare to James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Lineup

• Weisshund
• Roosevelt Collier
• Fontez Brooks
• Black Linen