BBC Sessions

Some of Jimi Hendrix's live radio broadcasts for the BBC were released by Rykodisc in 1988 on Radio One, but The BBC Sessions, remastered and fleshed out into a two-disc completist's dream, is perhaps the best document of how the Experience sounded live in 1967. From blues stomps such as Muddy Waters's "Catfish Blues" to surly R&B vamps such as the three takes of Curtis Knight's "Driving South," Hendrix explores his roots with hardscrabble passion. Meanwhile, he pushes the psychedelic-pop spectrum with surprisingly rich versions of studio-tweaked numbers like "The Burning of the Midnight Lamp." There's plenty of slop--a stumbling jam with Stevie Wonder on "I Was Made to Love Her"--and lots of horsing around and awkward interview fragments. But in its balance of pop form, interstellar improv, R&B pedigree, and sheer charm, The BBC Sessions is about as accurate and honest a snapshot of the charismatic, still-pimply 24-year-old phenom as you're likely to hear. --James Rotondi