“Talked with Joni Mitchell on the phone,” Jimi Hendrix’s diary entry from March 19th, 1968 reads. “I think I’ll record her tonight with my excellent tape recorder (knock on wood).”
A previously unreleased live performance of The Dawntreader, recorded by Jimi Hendrix, has been released by Joni Mitchell from her forthcoming Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971) album.
Nearly six hours of live, home and studio recordings have been compiled, this song taken from a set in Ottawa. “They came and told me, ‘Jimi Hendrix is here, and he’s at the front door’,” Mitchell recalls in the LP’s liner notes.
“I went to meet him. He had a large box. He said to me, ‘My name is Jimi Hendrix. I’m on the same label as you. Reprise Records’. We were both signed about the same time. He said, ‘I’d like to record your show. Do you mind?’ I said, ‘no, not at all.’ There was a large reel-to-reel tape recorder in the box.”
“The stage was only about a foot off the ground. He knelt at edge of the stage, with a microphone, at my feet. All during the show, he kept twisting knobs. He was engineering it, I don’t know what he was controlling, volume?”
“He was watching the needles or something, messing with knobs. He beautifully recorded this tape. Of course I played part of the show to him. He was right below me.”