Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced” on NPR’s All Things Considered
In October 2006, eJazzNews reported that the weekend edition of NPR’s All Things Considered would devote a segment to Are You Experienced, the 1967 debut album of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, as part of a series on the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. The original article has not survived in the Internet Archive; its content is known from Blabbermouth.net, which summarized it on October 26, 2006, crediting eJazzNews. The segment aired on November 18, 2006.
What the 2006 report said
According to Blabbermouth’s summary, the staff of All Things Considered Weekend had picked five recordings from the 2005 Registry list for a five-part series starting on Saturday, October 28, 2006. Besides the Hendrix album, the series covered songs by Jerry Lee Lewis and the blues singer Mamie Smith, a performance by a symphony orchestra and a historic boxing match. Independent producer Ben Manilla made the series. The Hendrix segment was scheduled for November 18 with guitarist Vernon Reid of Living Colour, Eddie Kramer, the album’s engineer, and Smithsonian musicologist Reuben Jackson. The report also noted that the Librarian of Congress had named 50 recordings to the Registry in each of its first four years.
What NPR broadcast
NPR aired “The Psychedelic Debut of Jimi Hendrix” on November 18, 2006, as the fourth part of the series produced by Ben Manilla and Media Mechanics. Jackson called the album a landmark that “altered the syntax of the music,” comparing its impact to James Joyce’s Ulysses. Kramer recalled that in the studio “we were experimenting” and had to keep up with whatever Hendrix did. Reid argued that Hendrix’s singing and lyrics had been overshadowed by his guitar playing, and that in his music there was no dividing line between song, improvisation and voice.
The album and the Registry
The Library of Congress added Are You Experienced to the National Recording Registry with its 2005 selections, which also included Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” (1920), Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” (1957) and the radio broadcast of the 1938 fight between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. The album was recorded in London between October 1966 and April 1967, with Chas Chandler producing.
There are two versions because the album came out first in the United Kingdom, in May 1967, and a few months later in the United States, in August 1967. The American edition added the band’s first three singles, “Purple Haze,” “Hey Joe” and “The Wind Cries Mary,” which had been hits in Britain but were left off the British LP, and it had a different cover.
What happened next
The Registry now adds 25 recordings each year rather than 50. Reuben Jackson, who curated the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington Collection from 1989 to 2009 and later hosted jazz radio in Vermont, died on February 16, 2024, at 67. Sony’s Legacy label has since issued a 17-track CD and DVD deluxe edition and an 11-track vinyl edition that follows the August 1967 American release. For the meeting of rock and jazz in the years after the album, see our guide to jazz fusion.
Sources
- “Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? To Be Analyzed on All Things Considered Weekend,” Blabbermouth.net, October 26, 2006.
- “The Psychedelic Debut of Jimi Hendrix,” All Things Considered, NPR, November 18, 2006.
- Library of Congress, “National Recording Registry: 2005” and “National Recording Registry,” accessed October 2026.
- “Are You Experienced,” Wikipedia, accessed October 2026.
- Experience Hendrix, “Are You Experienced CD/DVD Deluxe and Vinyl Editions,” official Jimi Hendrix site, accessed October 2026.
- “Poet, DJ and jazz scholar Reuben Jackson dies at 67,” Vermont Public, February 16, 2024.
- “Reuben Jackson,” “Eddie Kramer” and “Vernon Reid,” Wikipedia, accessed October 2026.
This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here.
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