Black Gold (Jimi Hendrix recordings)

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In early 1970, Jimi Hendrix recorded an autobiographical song cycle in his Greenwich Village apartment that he titled Black Gold.^[1] The tapes consisted of sixteen songs, all created by a solo Hendrix armed only with his voice and a Martin acoustic guitar. Near the end of the collection lies an embryonic two-part rendition of his now-infamous superhero themed funk-rock tune "Astro Man", in which Hendrix sings lines from the 1950s Mighty Mouse cartoon theme and makes humorous yet derogatory references to Superman. Other songs from the Black Gold sessions were also further developed in the studio and thus have surfaced elsewhere in the Hendrix catalog (namely "Stepping Stone", "Machine Gun", and "Drifting"), but at least nine of the songs are known to be unique to the tapes.

Months later, at the Isle of Wight Festival, Hendrix gave the tapes to his drummer Mitch Mitchell to have him listen and comment on the necessary rhythm section requirements for recording the songs. After Hendrix's untimely death in September 1970, Mitchell simply forgot about the tapes, apparently unaware that they were one-of-a-kind masters. For twenty two years, the Black Gold tapes sat unmolested in a black Ampex tape box that Hendrix himself tied shut with a headband and hand labeled with the letters "BG".

It was not until 1992 that avid Hendrix collector and biographer Tony Brown interviewed Mitchell and learned that the mythical Black Gold tapes, thought to have been stolen from Jimi's apartment by vandals who ransacked it for collectibles upon his death, were in fact lying in Mitchell's home in England. By coincidence, Mitchell also possessed the Martin guitar that was used to create the material. Brown was invited to review the tapes and published a summary of his account, but to date the material has not been released and is not available to Hendrix collectors. There is a bootleg compilation titled "Black Gold", but it is not the real material. Only Brown and a handful of friends close to Mitch Mitchell have listened to the real tapes.

Because of the label markings and conventions used by Hendrix to identify the tapes, and the fact that the themed Black Gold songs were the most embryonic of his late catalog, Hendrix aficionados maintain that this demo represents a proposed fifth studio album and predict that the material will reveal the broadest extensions of Hendrix's intended musical direction. Because of this, many consider Black Gold the 'holy grail' of Hendrix collectibles. Mitch Mitchell's association with Experience Hendrix LLC is an indicator that Black Gold may someday see worldwide release.

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