1967-06-30 Houston Studios

[Lord Summerisle]

The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice
Burning Of The Midnight Lamp
.....

Musicians

Jimi Hendrix
Noel Redding
Mitch Mitchell

Notes

[kdion11]

More on Jimi Hendrix Experience Sessions: Houston Studios
Los Angeles, CA June 28-29-30 1967.

From Jimi Hendrix: A Visual Documentary by Tony Brown:

More on the Houston Studio sessions. I will follow this up with
an email interview I did with the session engineer "Brian" who fills
in a lot of the gaps. KD


"The Experience record demos for Stars That Play With Laughing
Sam's Dice, and possibly and early version of The Burning of The
Midnight Lamp at TTG Studios Hollywood CA 1441 McCadden Place."


From Eye Witness: Jimi Hendrix Day to Day By Johnny Black

June 28-30 1967: Recording Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice
And others at Houston Studios, Hollywood CA. Chas Chandler: "I had
Never recorded there myself. I booked 3 days because I had been told it was
A state of the art studio, but it was dire. The place was like a rehearsal studio
Compared to Olympic Studios in London. Los Angeles was so far behind
At the time".


From Jimi Hendrix: Sessions. By John McDermott, Eddie Kramer and Billy Cox

June 28-29-30 1967. Eager to continue recording, Chas Chandler booked 3 days at
Houston Studios - a small facility in LA CA. Despite the studios poor sound quality,
The group developed 2 new songs, Burning of the Midnight Lamp and Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice. Unfortunately all the recordings made there were scrapped as the technical quality did not meet Chandler's standards. "I had spoken to Jimi about ideas for Burning of the Midnight Lamp up in SF. One of my ideas we spoke of was using female vocalists again. I even lined up 3 girls from LA who had been groupies of The Animals to sing." They weren't eventually used, as the group simply used the time they had booked to hone the arrangements for both new songs.

While "Stars" came to life during these LA sessions, the first traces of "Lamp" had come together during the May 1967 session at Olympic Studios in London, where Hendrix toyed with the song's melody using the harpsichord stored in Studio A. A demo recording was made there, and Jimi took away a reel to reel copy for further study. In Los Angeles, Redding took credit for inspiring the song's intro, as he remembers being intrigued by the sounds he made using a 12 acoustic guitar hooked up to a wha wha pedal. The balance of "Lamp" came to life under Chandler's watchful eye as he steered Jimi and the group toward completing an acceptable basic track. Despite this work, no masters were achieved in LA and "Lamp" was eventually finished in Mayfair Studios in NYC using engineer Gary Kellegren who came highly recommended by Chandler's friendship with Tom Wilson.

[kdion11]

From:
to: Kdion
Sent: Thu, 4 May 2006 4:43 PM
Subject: Fwd: JHE At Houston Studios LA CA
Somewhere, then, there are probably more Hendrix tapes than we suspected gathering dust somewhere, that only a few people have heard. Unlikely they would have been destroyed or recorded over because Jimi was pretty well known. It's not impossible though that he could have been careless with them himself. Maybe they are sitting on a shelf at Experience Evil Hendrix?

Very interesting article. First time I had heard of Houston Studios. TTG and Houston were 4 track at max. in '67. There was no 8-track audio tape recorder manufacturer at that time. Mine was a one time custom order built by Audio Industries and took one year to deliver. A wide walnut rolling cabinet housed an Ampex MR-70 deck with Scully 280 electronics. I was getting calls from engineers such as Bruce Botnick and Stan Ross asking, "What the hell do you use eight tracks for?"

Let's count those tracks on the Hendrix sessions:

1 - Bass track
2 - Stereo drum tracks (I usually used 3 tracks then)
1 - Guitar track
1 - Overdubbed guitar track
1 - Harpsichord track track
1 - Vocal track
7 tracks

I left one spare track to ping-pong down to for future overdubs. The recording quality on that master was clear and I printed the tracks flat with no e.q. on it. The release mix probably took a hit from subsequent ping pong generations.

Chandler wasn't on these dates and Hendrix directed the mix. It would have been frustrating to him to have to step down to using a 4 track to continue the project.

Hendrix played the harpsichord part without practicing it first, so it would seem that wasn't his first shot at it since he was a keyboard novice. That would imply that he arrived at the Paramount sessions with at least some of the lyrics in his head. It would be interesting to find out what Mayfair's track capacity was at that time. Maybe they synced a pair of 4 tracks although I hadn't heard of that being done then.
Record Plant was probably where they overdubbed the background singers and the Mellotron.

I did a search on Google using the below phrase, "engineer Gary Kellegren who came highly recommended by" and nothing showed up. I guess that info came from a book.

We should open up a detective agency. The three of us are narrowing this thing down pretty well. I pasted in some fresh web finds below from an Amazon Hendrix video review. It mentions bad vibes with Chandler which may explain his absence on the Paramount dates. Although we worked long hours for two days, the three of them were relaxed and productive. I hadn't heard of "singing through a Mellotron" back then. It was more likely the voice track was remixed while multed through a Leslie, which some studios were set up to do.

Brian

[Chris M]

Very interesting article. First time I had heard of Houston Studios. TTG and Houston were 4 track at max. in '67. There was no 8-track audio tape recorder manufacturer at that time.

FWIW Columbia and Motown were 8-track in 1965. The UK studios were a couple years behind for some reason. What is odd is there is almost no record of a "Houston Studios" in Los Angeles in the 1960's. I'm almost positive it isn't an early/alternate name for TTG Studios. These sessions are one of my holy grails, second only the missing Dec. 1966 CBS session tapes. The idea of the JHE recording in LA right after Monterey is tantalizing.

Also, the acetate instrumental version of STP with LSD is often attributed to Houston Studios but I think it dates from Mayfair in NYC..

[kdion11]

FWIW Columbia and Motown were 8-track in 1965. The UK studios were a couple years behind for some reason. What is odd is there is almost no record of a "Houston Studios" in Los Angeles in the 1960's. I'm almost positive it isn't an early/alternate name for TTG Studios. These sessions are one of my holy grails, second only the missing Dec. 1966 CBS session tapes. The idea of the JHE recording in LA right after Monterey is tantalizing.

Also, the acetate instrumental version of STP with LSD is often attributed to Houston Studios but I think it dates from Mayfair in NYC..

KD: Hey Chris. You are right. Houston Studios in LA had nothing what so ever to do with TTG