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Dan DeLuca’s Mix Picks: Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Musiq Soulchild, and Warren Storm

New Jim Hendrix and Elvis Presley box sets, plus Musiq Soulchild and a Louisiana Swamp Pop legend.

This is a 1970 photo of rock and roll guitarist Jimi Hendrix at an unknown location.
This is a 1970 photo of rock and roll guitarist Jimi Hendrix at an unknown location.Read moreAP Photo
    by Dan DeLuca
    Published 

Jimi Hendrix, Songs For Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts. A half century on, the Hendrix industry keeps chugging along. This five-disc set gathers four concerts recorded 50 years ago — two on New Year’s Eve 1969, and two more the next day — with Hendrix moving in a funk-rock direction with bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. The 1970 album Band of Gypsys, the last released in Hendrix’s lifetime, was culled from the Jan. 1 show. Groovy Children presents a fuller picture, in all its unrestrained brilliance.

Musiq Soulchild. Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of Aijuswanaseing, the debut album by the Philadelphia R&B vocalist born Taalib Johnson. The silky soul man — most recently heard from with 2017’s Grammy-nominated Feel the Real — is playing two shows (at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.) on the day after Christmas at City Winery Philadelphia.

Elvis Presley, Live 1969. Las Vegas Elvis was born in 1969, the year after his Comeback Special and the beginning, really, of the end. This 11-disc box — which can also be streamed — contains 11 complete sets from his run that year at the International Hotel, backed by an orchestra, the TCB Band, and two sets of backup singers. The shows are repetitive — lots of “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” — but also full of fascinating asides and strange stage patter. “I started out training to be an electrician,” Elvis says. “But I got wired the wrong way, baby.”

Warren Storm, Taking the World, By Storm. Warren “Storm” Schexnider is an 82-year-old Louisiana music legend, a drummer and singer who scored his first hit in 1958. Taking The World, By Storm features guest appearances by John Fogerty and Sonny Landreth. It’s produced by Cajun singer-guitarist and author Yvette Landry — check out her 2018 album Louisiana Lovin‘ — who also published a highly entertaining book, Taking The World, By Storm: A Conversation with Warren “Storm” Schexnider, the Godfather of Swamp Pop, published this month by UL Press.