1327 - Jimi Hendrix Little Wing 1968

"Little Wing" is a song written by Jimi Hendrix. It was first recorded by The Jimi Hendrix Experience on their 1967 album "Axis: Bold as Love". Hendrix spoke to a Swedish journalist about the song in January 1968, saying "Well, that was one song on there we did a lot of sound on, you know. We put the guitar through the Leslie speaker of an organ, and it sounds like jelly bread, you know….It’s based on a very, very simple American Indian style, you know, very simple. I got the idea like, when we was in Monterey, and I just happened to…just looking at everything around. So I figured that I take everything I see around and put it maybe in the form of a girl maybe, something like that, you know, and call it 'Little Wing', in other words, just fly away. Everybody really flying and they’s really in a nice mood, like the police and everybody was really great out there. So I just took all these things an put them in one very, very small little matchbox, you know, into a girl and then do it. It was very simple, you know. That’s one of the very few ones I like". While on the initial studio track Hendrix played his guitar through a Leslie speaker, which was normally used with Hammond organs, the simultaneous use of a distortion effect gave the guitar a unique sound. During live shows and on later recordings, Hendrix "used the 'Univibe' effect pedal to get a simulated Leslie sound, instead of using a real speaker."