November 4 - Little Wing

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't have any official versions of Little Wing, but I did find an early live version of this Jimi Hendrix classic. It is also absolutely the mother of yesterday's Yellow Ledbetter - although it's easier to understand what Hendrix is singing. The link between the Seattle scene of the early 90s and Jimi Hendrix crystallized for me when watching the movie Singles, which still is one of my favorite romantic movies of all time. Yeah, the fact that it has a lot of great music in it by most of the "grunge" bands at the time did help my interest in the movie, which was one of Cameron Crowe's early movies (he went on to direct Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous amongst others), helped a lot - but I also enjoy the scene where Campbell Scott's character Steve Dunne is heartbroken and pulls out Blue Train by John Coltrane and plays it. The scene hit very close to home and spurred me to explore Coltrane some more. But there is one scene in the movie, where the lead singer of the fictitious band Citizen Dick (played by Matt Dillon) lays down on Jimi Hendrix's gravesite. Listening to both Hendrix' music and at least Pearl Jam and Soundgarden (especially from Superunknown and out), it is very easy to detect a kinship that goes beyond the fact that they all use distorted guitars. There is no doubt that Hendrix had a direct influence on the later Seattle bands - just listen to Little Wing...