Early recordings of Jimi Hendrix as a session guitarist are to be released next month

After 40 Years of legal wrangling, the Hendrix estate acquires rights to release recordings from mid-1960s Curtis Knight and the Squires sessions. Fans eager to hear the guitar legend Jimi Hendrix’s early work as a 1960s R&B session guitarist can celebrate. Experience Hendrix, the company that manages his estate, has acquired the rights to release Curtis Knight and the Squires recordings that feature Hendrix on guitar, from before he found fame as the Jimi Hendrix Experience frontman.

You Can’t Use My Name: Curtis Knight & The Squires (featuring Jimi Hendrix) – The RSVP/PPX Sessions is the resultant wordily titled 14-track album, pegged for a March 2015 release on Legacy Recordings. “We are extremely delighted to now be in a position to offer these rare, historic recordings,” said Janie Hendrix, the president and CEO of Experience Hendrix and Jimi’s sister, in a statement. “They are more than just recordings. They represent a significant segment in the timeline of Jimi’s musical existence.”

The recordings had been at the centre of a decades-long legal battle. In October 1965, producer Ed Chalpin and his company PPX signed Hendrix to a three-year recording deal for $1 and 1% in royalties. The Curtis Knight sessions, recorded in 1965, 1966 and 1967, fell under the remit of this deal, though they also included songs licensed to Knight’s RSVP Records label.

Midway through his deal with PPX, Hendrix relocated from New York to London and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966, recording and releasing the single Hey Joe later that year. This violation of Hendrix’s exclusive contract with Chalpin and PPX resulted in legal complications that were only resolved in 2002, when a London high court order finally settled the matter, laying out PPX’s ownership of 33 specific recordings and allowing Experience Hendrix to begin acquiring the rights to Hendrix’s other recordings as a sideman.

You Can’t Use My Name is due out on CD and 150-gram vinyl. See its full tracklisting below:

How Would You Feel

Gotta Have a New Dress

Don’t Accuse Me

Fool for You Baby

No Such Animal

Welcome Home

Knock Yourself Out [Flying on Instruments]

Simon Says

Station Break

Strange Things

Hornet’s Nest

You Don’t Want Me

You Can’t Use My Name

Gloomy Monday