“This is indeed a window into a simpler time when the music truly was everything” is how Jorma Kaukonen described the recording that he laid down at home with Janis Joplin on June 25th 1964 and that has just seen the light of day as “The Legendary Typewriter Tape” – titled so because the future JEFFERSON AIRPLANE and HOT TUNA player’s wife can be heard typing, on and off, in the background. Janis and Jorma had met about two years earlier and the singer used to invite the guitarist to accompany her on stage, which required rehearsals, and rolling the machine during one of those resulted in the historic document.
Available for a long time as a low-quality bootleg, this collection of Joplin originals and blues classics was restored and mastered now by Grammy-winning engineer Michael Graves who previously worked on tapes by the likes of Hank Williams to be eventually released officially. The value of the package containing rare photos and Kaukonen’s liner notes seems impossible to overestimate.
1. “Are We Taping Now?” (dialog)
2. Trouble in Mind
3. Long Black Train
4. Kansas City Blues
5. Hesitation Blues
6. Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
7. “How ‘Bout This?” (dialog)
8. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy