Not-so-psyched-up Hendrix

When Buddy Guy, the great Chicago blues innovator, is deep into a six-string conversation with Howlin’ Wolf sideman Hubert Sumlin, who’s going to have the nerve to tell them to stop?

At DAR Constitution Hall on Tuesday night, there indeed came a loud heckle: “Play some Hendrix.”

The heckler wasn’t committing one of those venial concert sins like requesting “Free Bird.” This was a tribute, after all, to the music of the late Jimi Hendrix.

And Mr. Guy did play an overgenerous selection of his own repertoire — slow and dirty numbers such as “Five Long Years,” “Drowning on Dry Land” and “My Time After While.”

“What — you don’t like the blues?” Mr. Guy asked, sensing some impatience or, perhaps, channeling the observing spirit of Mr. Hendrix, who was a fanatical interpreter of the blues.

Over its nearly three-hour arc, the “Experience Hendrix” performance — the premiere gig of a tour that has been sanctioned by the guitar demigod’s estate — was short on psychedelia and really, really, really long on blues.

There was not a permutation of the three-chord, 12-bar turnaround that was not deeply explored or meditated upon — either by Mr. Guy or a host of axmen, including Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robbie Krieger of the Doors and Mick Taylor, the genius of midperiod Rolling Stones.

I say this as a guitar freak and devotee of the blues: A little tie-dye wouldn’t have hurt.

Tuesday’s Hendrix extravaganza had all the hiccups you’d expect from the first night of a multiact bill: There were annoying sound lapses, such as microphones that weren’t turned on in the house, and a general state of disorder: What key is this in? What are we playing next? Whose turn is it?

Transitions were smoothest, and the arrangements tightest, when bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton — known as Double Trouble when they played with the late Stevie Ray Vaughn — handled rhythm-section duties.

Bassist Billy Cox and drummer Mitch Mitchell, erstwhile Hendrix band mates both, flirted with meltdown on underrehearsed renditions of “All Along the Watchtower” and “Red House.”

But when the performers found a groove, they were mind-alteringly good. Mr. Shepherd and pedal-steel phenom Robert Randolph dazzled as they dueled on “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” and the latter handled “Purple Haze” with ease.

On “Manic Depression” and, later, “Hey Joe,” Mr. Krieger displayed stylish jazz-blues chops that, in his heyday, were overshadowed by the Doors’ busy keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, and a certain spotlight-hogging lead singer who resides in the dead-at-27 club along with Mr. Hendrix.

Mr. Taylor, who has ballooned in size since his days with Mick and Keith, has for years languished in semianonymity, playing pickup gigs with no-name blues acts in Scandinavia.

Yet on his take on the mean “Catfish Blues” — found on Mr. Hendrix’s posthumous “Jimi Blues” compilation and, as it happens, a widely circulated and cherished Stones bootleg — and as sideman to Mr. Guy, Mr. Taylor reminded those in the audience with red-tongue logos on their T-shirts of what’s missing from the latter-day Stones: his silky, melodic expansion of basic blues guitar and, most impressive, a technique that seamlessly combined slide and finger-fretting.

Story Continues →