These lists started on index cards in about 1980 to keep straight the tracks on the various Jimi releases that had appeared at that time. They were based on what I owned, as well as the material listed in Jimi Hendrix: A Discography by Ken Matesich and Dave Armstrong (a condensed version of this appeared in Jerry Hopkins' book Hit and Run in 1983).
In 1983 (13 years after Jimi's death), approximately 30 Jimi bootlegs had been released. By 1996, another 13 years, over 300 distinct bootlegs had been released (not including clones). The boom started in the late 1980's, just as the CD format was taking off. The reason for the boom was probably the rise in availability of European releases and the "protection gap" phenomenon that made the manufacture of many of these releases legal in the countries of their origin.
When Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy by Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek came out in 1990, the listings there greatly expanded these lists. Caesar Glebbeek also began publishing Univibes magazine in 1991, which continued the listings from that book.
Jimpress magazine, by Steve Rodham and Gary Geldeart, appeared in 1992 and has also devoted considerable space to reviews of releases, and in 1995 they published From the Benjamin Franklin Studios, supplemented and updated by The Studio Log in 1996. As of 2019 the Ben Franklin reference has grown to five hefty volumes and includes the material originally included in The Studio Log.
Another valuable resource appeared in 1993, Plug Your Ears by Kees de Lange and Ben Valkhoff, which catalogued all known audio and video sources. This was supplemented at the end of 1997 with an edited, but updated, online edition. Finally, John McDermott, Eddie Kramer, and Billy Cox published Sessions in 1995, providing authoritative (although incomplete) coverage to date on Jimi's studio output. This was updated by Ultimate Hendrix in 2009. All of these publications provided tremendous input for these listings.
The release list is divided into 7 sections:
The section covering my tapes and trader CD-Rs is of less general use, since it is specific to my own stuff, but perhaps there is information there that is useful also.
For each release, I give track listings, my own track timings (for the releases that I have), and venue/date for each track. The timings are all personal timings, not taken from labels or CD index times. For the studio tracks, recording information is synthesized from the sources listed below.
The track list organizes the material from the first list by track, with chronological ordering for different versions of each track. For studio listings, studio and date are often uncertain, so there I have given four opinions:
Electric Gypsy index numbers and Jimpress version numbers are also listed for each version. Again, track timings are my own, and are given only for material that I have. All timings in both lists are figured from first note to last note.