I have mixed feelings about the Kronos Quartet arrangement of “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix. On the one hand, it’s cool that they even attempted it. On the other hand, is the attempt successful?
It’s great that they’re taking advantage of the violin’s pitch continuum to do all the blue notes and guitaristic bends and slides and such. I’d love to hear more of that in string quartet writing. However, the point of Jimi Hendrix’s music is the groove. All the noise and chaos is built on a rock steady rhythmic foundation. Don’t be fooled by Jimi’s casual pitch control when singing; his time is always razor sharp and exact. The Kronos Quartet subvert the groove annoyingly with their “clever” tempo changes. They get at the rhythmic urgency within each section, but their time is a little too “classical” and interpretive, when it’s supposed to be motoric and focused. Classical musicians are awesome at pitch control, at tone, at delicacies of interpretation. But they do not seem to value groove very highly, and it shows.
It’s interesting that Jimi’s time is so much more exact than the other two musicians in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding. Those two are perfectly fine 1960s rock musicians, but you can see why Jimi went in a more funk/R&B direction with Band of Gypsies. Buddy Miles’ drumming is way closer to Hendrix’s level than Mitch Mitchell’s.
Anyway, the Kronos Quartet is not the only group of string players to want to take on Hendrix. Ryan Herr pointed me to Darol Anger’s version of “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)”. This is more like it! Darol Anger is a fiddler, coming out of a dance music tradition, so while his groove may be a little square, you can feel it clearly.
Meanwhile, “Purple Haze” is not the Kronos Quartet’s only take on the blues. Here is their version of “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson. Once again, they get at the timbral and pitch nuances, but they are missing the groove at the heart of this tune.
There is no reason why a string quartet shouldn’t be able to play the blues and play it well. There’s a rich tradition of blues fiddle. That tradition ended up shaping country music more than the blues per se, but in the early days there wasn’t much daylight between “country” and “blues” anyway. There have been some great jazz fiddle players too. I have special warmth in my heart for Ray Nance’s playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, it’s not virtuosic but it has all of the soul.
Bowed instruments are perfect for the vocalistic nuances of the blues! We just need some classical musicians who are willing to learn how to groove.
Update: Wenatchee the Hatchet has some additional thoughts and musical examples
So pleased you included those two Kronos covers to painfully drive your point home!
This is a great collection of clips. I’ve long been a fan of Blind Willie Johnson and this song in particular. Didn’t know Kronos had done it. You make a good point about the groove. Classical musicians sound rather awkward when attempting other genres. There is a really stiff and uncomfortable recording of John Williams (the classical guitarist) doing three pieces that are a jazz homage. But I think it goes both ways: when non-classical musicians take up someone like Bach, they put the groove in perhaps when it is inappropriate. I think the fundamental truth is that different kinds of musicians FEEL rhythm very differently. This was brought home to me when I had a professional dancer study guitar with me. She obviously had a great sense of rhythm, but it did not come through in her guitar playing. Just one of those many musical mysteries…
Really interesting to hearing groove pointed to as a factor in a covers success. Makes me think of Greensky Bluegrass’s version of Time/Breathe by Pink Floyd, which is a cover that is surprising (at least to me) in its success. They “bluegrass” the tempo up, but I think they are nailing the groove.