I’m in the thick of it right now with a few different things, but I rediscovered this short Mitch Mitchell/Jimi Hendrix “Foxey Lady” transcription I did back in 2017 — I figured I might as well share it to keep things active.
We’re looking at a live rendition of “Foxey Lady,” and my transcription focuses on the guitar solo, with Mitch playing some aggressive fills behind Jimi. Or, to quote Pop Matters, “Mitchell goes into an almost Keith Moon haze with his wildly thrashing percussion sounds.”
This recording comes from the prototype for Woodstock, the May 1968 Pop and Underground Festival in Miami (this gig should not be confused with the December 1968 Miami Pop Festival, since both shows are often just called “Miami Pop”). This concert was not released until 2013, so, while I did sit on my transcription for a while, at least I didn’t sit on it for nearly 45 years!
The fidelity of this record is pretty good, and parts of Jimi’s set were filmed and included on the Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train a Comin’ documentary, released concurrently with the live album (although the two are not companion pieces):
Mixed in with the footage are still photos and what looks like B‑roll of the crowd, so I guess some frames did not survive into the 21st century. Mitch isn’t shown much, but you can kind of catch one of the fills towards the end when he’s using paradiddles.*
The phrasing is consistent and feels somewhat similar to trading solos, with one bar of timekeeping and then one bar that punctuates the phrase with some sort of fill (although Jimi just shreds throughout). The first two-measure phrase ends with a syncopated groove, while the second has a familiar lick:
It’s one of Mitch’s signature moves — triplets singles with accents on the first, third, and sixth notes. You can hear him play variations of it all over “Hey Joe,” often with rolls and drags mixed in (this one ends with a five-stroke roll).
Next is a little hi-hat bark into a “single stroke ruff” thing, before another one of Mitch’s signatures — 32nd note singles following a dotted 8th note accent pattern:
This is similar to the big fill right before the guitar solo of “Hey Joe,” but the tempo here is a bit faster, so this fill isn’t as dense.
Afterwards is another 32nd note fill, with the accents following 16th notes:
The sixth fill is a paradiddle fill, with all of the accents on the right hand, and most of the accents on the rack tom. Mitch had two floor toms that day, but on this feature, I can only hear a rack tom and a floor tom:
The penultimate fill is another triplet one, and then we wrap up with a final 32nd note fill that also follows six note patterns:
* ^ FYI, the exact timestamps from the album edit won’t quite match up with the video. The video is ahead by about seven seconds, so the solo starts around 2:22 instead.
