North American syndicated rock radio show and website, InTheStudio With Redbeard: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands, celebrates the 50th anniversary of Electric Ladyland, the final studio album from The Jimi Hendrix Experience in a two-part, two week program special.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience would exist for only two short years and produce three truly revolutionary records. By January of 1968, Hendrix had made the decision to move his band and business from London to New York. For Hendrix it was a bit of a homecoming, complete with the trappings of rock n' roll stardom. For his mentor, manager and producer Chas Chandler, it would signal his departure, leaving Hendrix free to experiment with his sound and career.

Hendrix biographer John McDermott sets the scene with InTheStudio host Redbeard: “By the time you get to Electric Ladyland, the third album, it’s really Jimi having graduated from that education Chas (Chandler) provided him. I think Hendrix saw that he had made two very successful albums based on short compact songs, kind of in that Chandler mindset...The technology change in America with the Record Plant being a 12 track studio fascinated him, and I think Chas was a little too inflexible early on and didn’t give Hendrix the time to experiment.”

Listen to the program via the links below:

- Part 1
- Part 2

Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings recently issued a special Deluxe Edition box set of Electric Ladyland.

Available as either a 3CD/1 Blu-ray set or a 6LP/1 Blu-ray set, both packages include the original double album, now newly remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog tapes. For the LP set, Grundman prepared an all analog direct to disc vinyl transfer of the album, preserving the authenticity. Also included is Electric Ladyland: The Early Takes, which presents demos and studio outtakes from this period in Hendrix’s career, plus a new 5.1 surround sound mix of the entire original album by Hendrix’s original engineer Eddie Kramer. This marks the first and only time this has been done with a Hendrix studio album, and gives listeners the original stereo mixes in uncompressed 24 bit/96 kz high resolution audio.

Order Electric Ladyland Deluxe Edition on: 3CD/Blu-Ray and 6LP/Blu-Ray.

To fete the 50th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s seminal album Electric Ladyland, Authentic Hendrix, the family-run company that maintains the image, music and likeness of the legendary rocker, and Los Angeles brand Libertine have partnered to create a luxury apparel collection for Fred Segal Sunset, reports Marcy Medina of WWD.

Debuting in Spring of 2019, the collection, designed by Johnson Hartig, comprises a luxury men’s and women’s apparel capsule inspired by Hendrix’s singular style.

To kick-start the new collaboration, the partners celebrated on November 12th at Fred Segal’s West Hollywood location, where Hartig unveiled a newly-created, limited-edition Jimi Hendrix unisex shirt, inspired by the photograph Hendrix had originally wanted for the Electric Ladyland album cover. The photo shows the band posing with children and was taken by Linda Eastman, who would later marry Paul McCartney.

“Jimi’s style was part of his persona. Although it was deliberate and not accidental, he didn’t even have to try to be spectacular. He just was,” explained Authentic Hendrix chief executive officer and president Janie Hendrix. “Johnson Hartig’s fashion sense mirrors Jimi’s flair and that’s no accident either. His designs are colorful, bold and electrifying. That’s the spirit of Jimi and it makes the Libertine line that we’ll launch at Fred Segal a perfect fit for the Jimi Hendrix Luxury Capsule Collection.”

Learn more at this location.

(Top photo - Experience Hendrix / Authentic Hendrix; T-shirt photo - Libertine)