Jimi Hendrix/Miles Davis: Rainy Day Chillin'

Amid the swirling collateral from the societal and musical fever dream of the late 1960's, one could never tell who would show up at your door bearing gifts. Nor would you know for sure exactly how potent those gifts were. Within its thirty-eight minutes of chemically induced melancholia, magic, and spontaneous genius, Rainy Day Chillin' bears testimony to that and so much more.

The upcoming Netflix doc goes likes this: In a penthouse atop the Hotel Navarro overlooking Central Park, Jimi Hendrix was trying to lay low. The rock god was wiped from touring, from recording, from forgetting the women who welcomed him.

There is a knock on the door. One of his entourage answers it. It is a man from space. It's a man not from here, wherever here was, in whatever state of mind anyone found themselves in. It is another wise man bearing gifts.

"Where's Jimi!!? the alien asks with an indignant roar. "He's sleeping," is the simple reply. "Wake him the @#@!! up!" Miles Davis demands. "And tell that n**^%$ to answer his own #@$in' door! I ain't comin' in till he answers his own mutha#$#@in' door!"

Startled, British singer/guitarist Terry Reid does as he's told. He goes to Jimi's bedroom and rouses him from between two pale blondes "It's Miles Davis and he wants you to answer your own damn door." Jimi, zoned and toasted, throws on one of the women's kimonos and stumbles bewilderingly to the door.

"Next time answer your own God-#@#4ed door!" Miles bosses as he takes Hendrix by the arm, clears the bedroom of all fair maidens, and slams the G-d door behind him.

What happens next has been sworn to under oath by parties for both estates. "Let's cut it" Miles' sinisterly rasps. In response Hendrix, armed only with a beat-up acoustic guitar, churns in a hound dog blues. Miles enters on his mute, the air parting before his notes. Elegant and easy, the four minute and 13 second "Jimi's Room Blues 1" could be considered a gift from God.

"Yeah I got some weed," Hendrix replies, and for the next three minutes we hear him muttering while searching for his stash as Miles antics push the rock star along. "Let's put a band together," Miles enthuses cooly. "O man let's ask McCartney!" Jimi pleads. "I wanna play with that cat!" A spontaneous ballad, "Walking Riverside" cries through the ages. Floating on a Gil Evans type arrangement, the tune is a delicate balance of electric church in 6/8 time while Miles aches for the rainy street. From the lonely, extended fade unfolds: "If 6 Were 9-0" a simple tandem melodic line that surfs on its own beatitudes.

Legendary recording engineer Eddie Kramer is the man responsible for pressing record all those long tall tales ago. Out on the fire-escape recording the sounds of the city, Kramer saw the two men entering the room and immediately slipped his mic through a window and dropped in a blank cassette. "I knew it was somewhere," he writes of the tape in the liners. "You never really forget these things." He found the tape last year, "While going through "things" was all he attests to. Sure the sound is grainy and a bit of a blur, but Rainy Day Chillin' is a gift.

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