Purple Haze Releases and charts Where was Purple Haze released? On March 17, 1967, "Purple Haze" was released in the UK How did the song do on the music charts? The single entered the charts at number 39 on Record Mirror and at number 43 on Melody Maker. It peaked at number three When was the song released in the US? It was released on June 19, 1967,
What record company was Hendrix with when he released it in the US?
What record company was Hendrix with when he released the song Purple Haze in the US?
On March 17, 1967, "Purple Haze" was released in the UK as the first single on Track Records. Another Hendrix composition, the R&B-influenced "51st Anniversary" was included as the B-side. Paul McCartney, who was an early Hendrix supporter, gave the record an enthusiastic pre-release review in Melody Maker. The single entered the charts at number 39 on Record Mirror and at number 43 on Melody Maker. It peaked at number three and spent 14 weeks on the chart. During March 1967, several performances of "Purple Haze" were filmed to promote the song and used for television programs, such as Beat-Club, Dee Time, and Top of the Pops. Live performances were also broadcast on German NDR and BBC Radio's Saturday Club. For the American single, Reprise Records paired the song with "The Wind Cries Mary". It was released on June 19, 1967, the day following the Experience's performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart on August 26, where it spent eight weeks and reached number 65. "Purple Haze" was included as the opening track on the American release of Are You Experienced on August 23, 1967. Because of the song's airplay on underground FM radio, the album became more popular than Hendrix's singles. One of Hendrix's most popular songs, "Purple Haze" appears on numerous compilation albums. Some of these include Smash Hits, The Essential Jimi Hendrix, The Singles Album, Kiss the Sky, Cornerstones: 1967-1970, The Ultimate Experience, Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child: The Jimi Hendrix Collection, and The Singles Collection. An alternative version recorded at the same time, but with different vocal and guitar overdubs, is the first song on The Jimi Hendrix Experience 2000 box set. Live recordings of "Purple Haze" as performed by each of the different Hendrix lineups have been released. These include Live at Monterey (the Experience), Live at Woodstock (Gypsy Sun and Rainbows), Live at the Fillmore East (Band of Gypsys), and Live at Berkeley (the Cry of Love touring group). Additional live recordings with the Experience appear on Winterland (2011 Billboard number 49 album) and Miami Pop Festival (2013 Billboard number 39 album). CANNOTANSWER
Reprise Records
"Purple Haze" is a song written by Jimi Hendrix and released as the second single by the Jimi Hendrix Experience on March 17, 1967.
The song features his inventive guitar playing, which uses the signature Hendrix chord and a mix of blues and Eastern modalities, shaped by novel sound processing techniques.  Because of ambiguities in the lyrics, listeners often interpret the song as referring to a psychedelic experience, although Hendrix described it as a love song.

"Purple Haze" is one of Hendrix's best-known songs and appears on many Hendrix compilation albums.  The song featured regularly in concerts and each of Hendrix's group configurations issued live recordings. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and is included on lists of the greatest guitar songs, including at number two by Rolling Stone and number one by Q magazine.

Background and recording
By January 5, 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience's first single, "Hey Joe", backed with "Stone Free", had peaked at number six on the UK record chart. "Hey Joe" was not a Hendrix composition – it was written by Billy Roberts and recorded by several groups prior to the Experience. Hendrix commented, "That record isn't us. The next one's gonna be different.  We're working on an LP which will mainly be our stuff." The group recorded several demos of original material at studios in London, including "Can You See Me", "Foxy Lady", "Third Stone from the Sun", "Red House", and "Remember".  In the middle of December, producer Chas Chandler heard Hendrix toying around with a new guitar riff. "I heard him playing it at the flat and was knocked out. I told him to keep working on that, saying, 'That's the next single!  Chandler claimed that after some more urging, Hendrix wrote the rest of "Purple Haze" in the dressing room of a London club during the afternoon of December 26, 1966, before a gig. In several interviews, Hendrix spoke about writing the song, but did not mention where or when he wrote it.

The Experience began recording "Purple Haze" on January 11, 1967, at De Lane Lea Studios in London. According to drummer Mitch Mitchell, he and bassist Noel Redding learned the song in the studio: "Hendrix came in and kind of hummed us the riff and showed Noel the chords and the changes. I listened to it and we went, 'OK, let's do it.' We got it on the third take as I recall." The basic track was recorded in four hours, according to Chandler.  Multitrack recording technology allowed engineers to record and complete additional parts on the final master.  After the basic track was finished, Chandler explained that he and Hendrix developed the song:
  Redding and Mitchell were not included in the process because Chandler felt that it was more efficient for him and Hendrix to do it alone. To get a better quality recording, Chandler took the four-track tape recorded at De Lane Lea to Olympic Studios for overdubbing (although Hendrix had worked with eight-track recording in the US, it was not yet available in the UK). At Olympic, they were assigned Eddie Kramer, who, as a sound engineer, played an important role in subsequent Hendrix recordings. Hendrix added new vocals and guitar parts between February 3 and 8, 1967.  Unlike the conventional techniques used by the Experience to record previous songs, Chandler decided to try out new effects and sounds for "Purple Haze". He enhanced background sounds (some contributed by Redding) by playing them back through headphones, which were moved around the recording microphone, creating "a weird echo". Chandler also used sped-up guitar parts recorded at half-speed (which also raises the pitch) and panning to create novel effects. The guitar solo features the first use of the Octavia guitar effects unit.  Acoustical and electronics engineer Roger Mayer developed the unit with input from Hendrix. The Octavia doubles the frequency of the sound it is fed, essentially adding an upper octave.

Lyrics and interpretation
In interviews, Hendrix usually gave different answers about the development of the song's lyrics.  Biographer Harry Shapiro points out that "Purple Haze" is most likely "a pot-pourri of ideas" which Hendrix developed over time.  As a fan of science fiction, he frequently incorporated its imagery in his songwriting.  Hendrix read Night of Light, a 1966 novel by Philip José Farmer, that expanded on a short story published in 1957.  In the story set on a distant planet, sunspots produce a "purplish haze" which has a disorienting effect on the inhabitants.  An early handwritten draft by Hendrix, titled "Purple Haze – Jesus Saves", uses dream-like imagery where the sense of direction and time is distorted.  In an interview on January 28, 1967, before the song was completed, Hendrix was asked how he wrote songs; he responded, "I dream a lot and I put my dreams down as songs. I wrote one called 'First Look Around the Corner' and another called 'The Purple Haze,' which was about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea."  He later expressed frustration that he was unable to more fully develop his ideas for the song:

So far, only a crumpled single sheet of ruled yellow tablet paper is on exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and does not include any of the lyrics used in the Experience song.  Chandler admitted that in the early stages, he helped Hendrix shape the songs and lyrics to radio single length.  Biographer Keith Shadwick comments that although much of the complexity may have been sacrificed, it resulted in verses that are "simple, focused and striking".
 
After its release, Hendrix offered another explanation: "He [the song's protagonist] likes this girl so much, that he doesn't know what [state] he's in, ya know.  A sort of daze, I suppose.  That's what the song is all about."  This draws on an experience Hendrix had while still in New York, where he felt that a girl was attempting to use voodoo to trap him and he became ill.  Shapiro believes that this is reflected in most of the first two verses:

Many fans and the press interpret the song as referring to a psychedelic experience due to lines such as "purple haze all in my brain" and "'scuse me while I kiss the sky".  However, Hendrix and those closest to him never discussed any connection between psychedelic drugs and the song, although Shapiro admits that, at the time, to do so would have been "professional suicide". Chandler, who claimed he was present when Hendrix wrote it, later denied suggestions that Hendrix did so while under the influence of psychedelics.  Commenting on the lyrics, Shadwick concludes "the music [was allowed] to tell the larger story.  Poised effectively between the twin intoxicants of drugs and desire, they could be interpreted to the listener's taste".  In concert, Hendrix sometimes substituted lyrics for comic effect; "'scuse me while I kiss the sky" was rendered "'scuse me while I kiss this guy" (while gesturing towards Mitchell), "'scuse me while I kiss that policeman" (at a near riot in Los Angeles), or "'scuse me while I fuck the sky" (during a downpour in Seattle).

Composition

Music critic William Ruhlmann describes "Purple Haze" as having "relentlessly driving, if relatively slow-paced underlying music, which provides a good platform for some of Hendrix's inventive guitar playing".  Beginning with its dissonant opening and heavy use of distortion, Hendrix's techniques "all contributed to the dirty, raw, metallic, [and] angular sounds" heard in the song, according to Shapiro.  The intro consists of the melodic interval of a tritone or diminished (sometimes called flattened) fifth.  Historically, this dissonant interval has been referred to as diabolus in musica (literally "Devil in music"). It is sounded during the first two measures by Hendrix playing a B on guitar against an E played by Redding on bass, followed by the respective octaves.  Mitchell on drums comes in for the third measure, when Hendrix introduces the riff that piqued Chandler's interest, and Redding continues playing the octaves in E.

After the riff, the verse sections begin, which Shadwick describe as "simplicity itself, consisting of just three chords": E79, G, and A.  The E79, or dominant seventh sharp ninth chord, has come to be called the "Hendrix chord" by guitarists and was used primarily in rhythm and blues and jazz before Hendrix helped popularize it.  He also used an unconventional fingering technique for the G and A chords.  Because Hendrix used his thumb to fret the roots of the G and A chords on the sixth string, his fingers were left in a position to create different chord voicings.  Instead of the usual G barre chord (G–D–G–B–D–G), a G5 (G–X–G–G–D–G) is sometimes played with the major third (B) being muted on the fifth string and replaced by the open third string (G).  Redding follows the chord changes mostly by playing the root with occasional passing notes, while Mitchell heightens the tension with drum flourishes that accentuate Hendrix's vocal and guitar.

Biographer David Henderson describes Hendrix's guitar tone as "at the razor edge of distort".  However, individual notes are still clear, as well as the harmonically more complex chords, even with the use of extreme overdrive for the time.  The tension is maintained until the guitar solo, which "arrives as something of a release rather than a further racking up of the atmosphere."  It is also when Hendrix first introduces the Octavia, coupled with a Fuzz Face distortion unit.  Whitehill describes the solo as "almost sound[ing] likes he's playing a blues raga.  He starts out playing in the Mixolydian mode and then he goes right into the blues side.  The Octavia has the effect of a sitar, kind of like Ravi Shankar meets B.B. King."  During the song's outro, the guitar part recorded at 7½ inches per second (ips) played back at 15 ips, is combined with the Octavia, further extending the guitar's upper frequency range.  Henderson describes it as "an uncanny piercing tone that takes off, Eastern-sounding beyond the range of the guitar" and, according to Shadwick, "gives the impression that the guitar notes are flying off into the ether."

Releases and charts

On March 17, 1967, "Purple Haze" was released in the UK as the first single on Track Records.  Another Hendrix composition, the R&B-influenced "51st Anniversary" was included as the B-side.  Paul McCartney, who was an early Hendrix supporter, gave the record an enthusiastic pre-release review in Melody Maker.  The single entered the charts at number 39 on Record Mirror and at number 43 on Melody Maker. It peaked at number three and spent 14 weeks on the chart.  During March 1967, several performances of "Purple Haze" were filmed to promote the song and used for television programs, such as Beat-Club, Dee Time, and Top of the Pops.  Live performances were also broadcast on German NDR and BBC Radio's Saturday Club.

For the American single, Reprise Records paired the song with "The Wind Cries Mary".  It was released on June 19, 1967, the day following the Experience's performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart on August 26, where it spent eight weeks and reached number 65.  "Purple Haze" was included as the opening track on the American release of Are You Experienced on August 23, 1967.  Because of the song's airplay on underground FM radio, the album became more popular than Hendrix's singles.

One of Hendrix's most popular songs, "Purple Haze" appears on numerous compilation albums.  Some of these include Smash Hits, The Essential Jimi Hendrix, The Singles Album, Kiss the Sky, Cornerstones: 1967–1970, The Ultimate Experience, Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child: The Jimi Hendrix Collection, and The Singles Collection.  An alternative version recorded at the same time, but with different vocal and guitar overdubs, is the first song on The Jimi Hendrix Experience 2000 box set.  Live recordings of "Purple Haze" as performed by each of the different Hendrix lineups have been released. These include Live at Monterey (the Experience), Live at Woodstock (Gypsy Sun and Rainbows), Live at the Fillmore East (Band of Gypsys), and Live at Berkeley (the Cry of Love touring group).  Additional live recordings with the Experience appear on Winterland (2011 Billboard number 49 album) and Miami Pop Festival (2013 Billboard number 39 album).

Recognition and influence
In March 2005, Q magazine ranked "Purple Haze" at number one in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Tracks Ever!" The song placed at number two on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" list, which noted that the song "unveiled a new guitar language charged with spiritual hunger and the poetry possible in electricity and studio technology". It also appeared at number 17 on the magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2004, with the comment that "it launched not one but two revolutions: late-Sixties psychedelia and the unprecedented genius of Jimi Hendrix". Author and music critic Dave Marsh called it the "debut single of the Album Rock Era".  In 1995, "Purple Haze" was included as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".  NPR named the song to its list of the "100 Most Important American Musical Works of the 20th Century" in 2000.  In 2000, it was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, which "honor[s] recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance".

Many musicians have recorded their interpretations of the song, making it one of Hendrix's most covered songs.  Dion DiMucci included an acoustic version with strings on his 1968 comeback album Dion. Released as a single in 1969, it appeared at number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100, which was two positions higher than Hendrix' single in 1967.  Also with a new arrangement, the Cure recorded it for the various artist's Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix in 1993. Their rendition reached number two on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks alternative rock chart. "Purple Haze" has achieved an unusual level of interest among classical musicians. The Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Hampton String Quartet, and Nigel Kennedy have recorded their interpretations and the Kronos Quartet often play it as an encore.

See also 
 Album era

Notes
Footnotes

Citations

References

External links
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoDaYjdfSg "Purple Haze" (official audio) on Vevo]

1967 songs
Songs written by Jimi Hendrix
1967 singles
The Jimi Hendrix Experience songs
Track Records singles
Reprise Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Dion DiMucci songs
The Cure songs
Song recordings produced by Chas Chandler
American hard rock songs
American psychedelic rock songs
Mondegreens
Ed Chalpin (January 16, 1935 in NYC – October 1, 2019 in Boca Raton, FL) was a record executive and producer. He is probably remembered for his association with Curtis Knight and the Squires which caused problems for Jimi Hendrix throughout his career. Chalpin is responsible for the recordings from that period, some of which appear on You Can't Use My Name: The RSVP/PPX Sessions.

Background
Chalpin was pusher of cover-versions, mainly covers of Top-40 hits, released under the "Twin Hits" label. Today these would be regarded as Exploito releases.
During the 1960s and leading up to 1966, a good deal of the records that his PPX Enterprises produced were cover versions. Around 25% of his cover recordings  were overseas hits. "Memphis" by Bernd Spier was released on CBS and made it to no.1 in Germany.

As of 1980, Chalpin was the owner of Dimensional Sound and Echo Studios, a 24 track facility in New York.

Career

1960s
Chalpin formed PPX Enterprises in 1961. In 1962, he had signed contracts with RCA Mexicana and Gamma Records to promote his pre-recorded tapes catalogue.

In 1964, "Summer In Sweden (Sabeline)" bw "Endless Sleep" by The Spotnicks. Chalpin was the producer for both tracks. In 1965, he was the producer on "She Can Make Me Cry" bw "I'll Be There" by Mark Richards. The PPX Studio single was released on ABC-Paramount 45-10654.

In October 1965, Jimi Hendrix was introduced to Ed Chalpin by Curtis Knight. They recorded for Chalpin and 9 days later. Despite Hendrix already signing a two-year deal with Sue Records in July 1965, Chalpin signed Hendrix to a 3-year recording contract and was given one dollar to make the contract legal. During the 1960s and leading up to 1966, a good amount of material was recorded and gave Hendrix his first credit on a recorded release. The act of signing the contract with Chalpin would be a cause of concern for Hendrix when he found fame as he was still actually contracted to Chalpin. In 1966, Billboard announced that Chalpin in partnership with Douglas "Jocko" Henderson from Philly radio station WHAT, was launching a new label called Chalco Records. The first release was to be "Suey" which featured Jayne Mansfield. The recording was made at Studio 76 aka Dimensional Sound, and it featured Jimi Hendrix on the instrumental backing.

1970s 
Chalpin produced the Curtis Knight solo album Down in the Village which was released in 1971 on Paramount Records PAS 5023. Some 47 years later Dave Segal of the Portland Mercury said that the album deserved "its own damn reissue".
In 1971, Chalpin worked with Chubby Checker who recorded a psychedelic styled album for his production company PPX. The album was released under a variety of titles including Slow Twistin' . In addition to the budget labels it was released on, the 10 track LP also was released on London Records in 1971. In 2007 a CD of the album was released on the Underground Masters label. It was given the title, Chubby Checker Goes Psychedelic!!. In addition to crediting Chalpin as the producer, it included an extra track called "The Ballad of Jimi". "The Ballad of Jimi" was also a track on an earlier Chalpin production, the Jimi Hendrix & Curtis Knight album, Get That Feeling.

It was announced in the May 12, 1973 edition of Billboard that Chalpin was now the manager of singer Jimmy Cliff and had signed deals with Warner Brothers, and EMI.
Ed Chalpin passed away in 2019.

References

American record producers
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
1935 births Alan Douglas Rubenstein (July 20, 1931 – June 7, 2014) was an American record producer from Boston, who worked with Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Lenny Bruce and the Last Poets. He ran his own record label, Douglas Records.

Early life
Douglas was born Alan Douglas Rubenstein in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of Rose (Silbert) and William Rubenstein, a junk seller and later mattress manufacturer. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. His brother was actor Jerry Douglas.

Jazz record producer
In 1962, Douglas took charge of United Artists Records' jazz division. One of his first projects was Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' Three Blind Mice albums, recorded live at the Renaissance Club in Hollywood. He also coaxed trumpeter Kenny Dorham into the studio for Matador, a soul-jazz classic shared with Jackie McLean and Bobby Timmons. Douglas's qualities as a producer were already evident. He encouraged musicians to express themselves and push the boundaries, as when he teamed Duke Ellington with Max Roach and Charles Mingus for Money Jungle, which George Wein has described as “one of the greatest piano trio recordings in jazz history."

Douglas produced other memorable releases during his short tenure with UA, including albums by Oliver Nelson, Ken McIntyre, King Pleasure, Herbie Mann, and Betty Carter. The  Bill Evans and Jim Hall LP Undercurrent was the first of their collaborations. Highlights from these albums can be found on Douglas On Blue Note, issued in 2009.

Connection with Jimi Hendrix and others
Douglas first crossed paths with Hendrix shortly after the latter's performance at Woodstock in 1969, and it was supposedly through Douglas that Hendrix met and began jamming with jazz musicians, including Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, and Gil Evans, as well as rap trailblazers the Last Poets. 
In the book Ultimate Hendrix: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Live Concerts and Sessions, Buddy Miles credits Douglas with helping put together the Band of Gypsys band, as he was quoted as saying, "The Band of Gypsys were put together in Douglas's office, between Alan and [concert promoter] Bill Graham, who gave us the dates at the Fillmore East." However, in the book Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight, former Hendrix producer Chas Chandler is quoted as saying, "Hendrix said to me – and I remember the sentence . . . 'He [Douglas] can help [in business matters] . . . but I don’t want that guy to have anything to do with my music'." Douglas attended Hendrix's funeral in 1970, and four years after Hendrix's death, Douglas acquired the rights to produce music that Hendrix had never released.

Douglas's production work on a few of Hendrix's posthumous releases is controversial.  This is primarily due to tracks on the Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning LP releases in 1975. On these releases Douglas replaced the original drum and bass tracks and added guitar overdubs newly recorded by session musicians. He added female backing singers to one track, and claimed co-composer credit on several tracks that he had altered.  On the much later Voodoo Soup compilation album Douglas is known to have wiped original drum tracks on two songs and replaced them with The Knack's Bruce Gary. Second, on the 1993 CD releases of Hendrix's three studio albums, the original album artwork and packaging were scrapped in favour of new renderings of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Douglas's work on Hendrix releases was defended by rock journalist and critic John Masouri, who in 2001 called him "one of the last great musical visionaries", and said he had been right to try to improve the original tracks: "wisely he'd also edited out passages where Jimi had toyed with a riff repeatedly, searching for just the right phrase... All things considered, it's highly unlikely that Hendrix would have sanctioned the release of poorly executed material, yet the die was cast, and the producer has been branded a controversial figure ever since." Supposedly, Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell also approved of Douglas's decision to utilize sessions musicians on Hendrix releases, because "some of the original playing had been sub-standard."

However, in interviews, guitarist John McLaughlin has criticized Douglas's handling of his own LP Devotion (1970), as well, closely related to Hendrix's Band of Gypsys sessions. But Umar Bin Hassan, a member of the Last Poets, said following Douglas's death that "whether you liked him or didn't, you had to admit that he was one of the giants in what he did, which was to put out responsible, intelligent and remarkable music." Douglas was credited with being the first record producer to record a rap album.

In 1995 Douglas lost control of the Hendrix archive to Hendrix's father, Al. After years of legal wrangling, Douglas was able to obtain the right to compile Hendrix's writings into a book, Starting At Zero, which was published in late 2013. He was also planning a documentary film of the same title which remained unreleased at the time of his death.

Death
Douglas died at his home in Paris, France, on June 7, 2014, of complications after a fall. He was married four times, and had two daughters and a stepson.

References

External links
 
 

1931 births
2014 deaths
Record producers from Massachusetts
Businesspeople from Boston
20th-century American businesspeople
21st-century American businesspeople
American expatriates in France
Accidental deaths from falls
Accidental deaths in France