Intro
When the Mr. Wiggles re-issue cds came out in 2002 and Mr. Wiggles made his claims that Jimi Hendrix is playing on many of his recordings I remained very sceptical. It's now however time to include Mr. Wiggles on this site as I stumbled upon recorded evidence that Jimi & Mr. Wiggles at least definately knew each other. The tape in question is a reel to reel home recording made by Jimi himself at his room in the Drake Hotel located at 440 Park Avenue at 56th Street in New York City.
This tape was recorded sometime in or around March 1968 and is well known in collector circles under various names like "Paul Caruso rag session". It features an apparently quite intoxicated Paul Caruso (Jimi's harmonica playing Greenwich Village friend famous for his "cameo" appearance on Axis: bold as love) exchanging insults with an alternative amused, puzzled or slightly annoyed Mr. Wiggles with Jimi mainly laughing in the background and operating the tape deck. Paul Caruso was interviewed about this tape and other subjects in Jimpress issue 69 and he called it "The Dirty Tape" so that's the name I'm going to use for it.
The tape has been in circulation for years but the identity of the "black" side of this (good humoured) debate was unknown as the name Mr. Wiggles was not familiar to Hendrix collectors, Jimi does however even call him that at one point in the recording.
Below a run down of the entire recording, including for completeness sake the parts that aren't really relevant to this site. A listing of the various recordings made between 1964-1966 under the Sound Of Soul banner is in the works but it's still quite unclear on which (if any) recordings Jimi plays on. The tracks that Mr. Wiggles has listed as having Jimi on them span the whole 3 year period while it's much more likely that if Jimi did work with him in the studio it would have been for a very short period as Jimi didn't really manage to hold any job much longer than 6 months at this time in his life...also the guitar player on some recordings quite obviously isn't Jimi as the playing is nowhere near his style so more on all that at a later date.
The timings given below may vary on your copy of the tape.
The Dirty Tape
All Along The Watchtower
The tape starts with snippets of Jimi playing an (apparently unreleased) Bob Dylan take of the track and Jimi & an unknown second guitarist setting up the microphones. Sounds like the snippets are out of sequence, perhaps the setting up -part was taped over a segment of Jimi playing along with the Bob Dylan recording? This part of the tape probably is unrelated to the following segment and perhaps from an entirely different date.
The Bob Dylan version of the track played at the start is interesting, it isn't the official version released on the John Wesley Harding -lp and would seem to not be in circulation other than the few seconds on this tape. It wasn't known to some Bob Dylan collectors that I asked for comment, they in fact claimed it was a fake which I find highly doubtful...
* cut in tape
Insults
Jimi, Paul Caruso, Mr. Wiggles & an unknown woman. Mr. Wiggles refers to "3 coons in the room and one whitey" at one point on the the tape, he also adresses "Charles" later in the discussion. As the woman sounds caucasian it's possible there's also someone called Charles present but if so then he's not talking much.
At 8.27 Caruso makes a joke about a circus opening up on April 2nd and that he needs to get Mr. Wiggles a job there as a clown. At 10.02 Mr. Wiggles says "let me finish" and Caruso replies with "oh fuck like B.B.King". Could he be referring to the lengthy introductions done by B.B.King during the Generation club jam? On that tape King mentions starting at the club on April 2nd. Both of these date mentions would suggest that this was recorded around end of March / start of April. Though if it was recorded pre-April 2nd like Paul's comment would suggest he couldn't be referring to the April B.B.King jam that Jimi taped.
In any case Paul Caruso's statement in the interview published in Jimpress 69 that the tape was recorded in March 1968 is very likely roughly correct.
link to a short mp3-sample of this tape
At 1.26 in the sample above you can hear Jimi adress Mr. Wiggles by name, asking about who he should get for something (hard to make this part out). This section, even if not fully intelligible, confirms the long lost identity of Paul's sparring partner. For further proof you can for example A/B the vocals on the recording of "Bright Lights, Big City" that follows with "Wash My Back" by Mr. Wiggles.
While this doesn't prove that Jimi actually plays on any of Mr. Wiggles own recordings it certainly add more weight to those claims as they clearly knew each other pretty well.
Bright Lights, Big City
After the exchange of insults is over Jimi, Paul Caruso and Mr. Wiggles perform a short and chaotic version of "Bright Lights, Big City".
