LOOKIN' SHARP GUYS

That's Curtis Knight and the Squires above, with a spit shined Jimi Hendrix (then Jimmy James) on the left. The pre-fame Hendrix only played with him for a short time, but if he hadn't, chances are that most people would never have heard of Knight. It's not that Knight necessarily exploited their association (though it could be argued that he did), it was a producer named Ed Chalpin that did the major exploiting.  Chalpin had signed Hendrix as a backing musician for Knight, and even though Knight's records didn't sell well initially, after Hendrix died Chalpin cashed in. He raided the tapes and released just about everything they recorded, much of it for the first time, credited to Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix. But we're not here to talk about blood sucking opportunists.

The song that really got me going is "Fancy Meeting You Here", which doesn't even have Hendrix on it. It was recorded by Knight a few years after they parted ways, but I dig it for a totally unrelated reason. You might not hear it, but the first band I thought of when I listen to it was the Velvet Underground. Then, when the vocals kick in, it sounds like Knight's almost trying to imitate Hendrix's phrasing. So, if you really give it some wiggle room, you could almost imagine it as a Hendrix/Velvets collaboration.  Yes, of course that's a stretch. That's what we do here.

The earlier cut, "Oddball", is a Knight/Hendrix thing, and what I dig is that Hendrix isn't playing the lead, he's playing a secondary role, and whatever it is he's playing is so distorted it almost sounds like a fuzzed out bass, but the Hendrix licks are there, there's no mistaking that. The "Voodoo Woman" thing is really just to give you an idea of what Knight's voice sounds like when he's not aping Hendrix. It's actually pretty swanky.

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Listen:
Curtis Kinight - Fancy Meeting You Here mp3 (via DivShare) at Studio del Sonido Esnob 
Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix - Oddbball mp3 at Probe is Turning-On the People 
Curtis Knight - Voodoo Woman mp3 at Exotica Project 
Curtis Knight - Lost Memory mp3 at Studio del Sonido Esnob 
Visit: 
Curtis Knight at Wikipedia