Alan Frederick Parker (born 26 August 1944) is an English guitarist and composer.
Parker was born in Matlock, Derbyshire, and was trained by Julian Bream at London’s Royal Academy of Music. He had a successful career as session guitarist starting in the late 1960s, and played with Blue Mink, [1] The Congregation, CCS and Serge Gainsbourg, together with his own studio session bands Hungry Wolf and Ugly Custard.
Much of his session work has gone uncredited, but he has been named as the electric guitarist on Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man", the Walker Brothers' "No Regrets", [2] David Bowie's "Holy Holy" and "1984", [3] Mike Batt's "The Ride to Agadir" and the Top of the Pops theme music version of "Whole Lotta Love". [4] He has also recorded a number of albums for the De Wolfe Music [5] and KPM Music [6] libraries.
Parker's later work comprised compositions for film and television. His television work includes Angels , Minder , One Summer , The Glory Boys , Dempsey and Makepeace , French Fields , Room at the Bottom , Red Fox , ITN's News At Ten , and the BBC series Walking with Cavemen and Coast . His film scores include Jaws 3-D (1983), American Gothic (1988), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Alex Rider: Stormbreaker (2006). He also contributed music for three children's series; Gideon , Teetime and Claudia and Snowy and the Buttercup Buskers.
Parker is also known to have owned Jimi Hendrix's Epiphone acoustic guitar, which was given to him by Hendrix in March 1970. [7] He is also the father in law of the comedian and actor Ben Miller.
Jimmy James and the Blue Flames was an American rock group that was fronted by Jimi Hendrix, who was then going by the name "Jimmy James". The band was Hendrix's first extended foray into the 1966 Greenwich Village music scene and included future Spirit guitarist Randy California. At various New York clubs, they played a mix of rock, blues, and rhythm and blues songs as well as early versions of songs that became part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience repertoire. It was at such a performance that the Animals' bassist Chas Chandler first heard their rendition of "Hey Joe" and decided to invite Hendrix to England and become his producer.
Audio feedback is a positive feedback situation that may occur when an acoustic path exists between an audio output and its audio input. In this example, a signal received by the microphone is amplified and passed out of the loudspeaker. The sound from the loudspeaker can then be received by the microphone again, amplified further, and then passed out through the loudspeaker again. The frequency of the resulting howl is determined by resonance frequencies in the microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker, the acoustics of the room, the directional pick-up and emission patterns of the microphone and loudspeaker, and the distance between them. The principles of audio feedback were first discovered by Danish scientist Søren Absalon Larsen, hence it is also known as the Larsen effect.
John Graham "Mitch" Mitchell was an English drummer and child actor, best known for his work in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2016, Mitchell was ranked number 8 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Drummers of All Time".
Paul Francis Kossoff was an English guitarist, best known as the co-founder and guitarist of the rock band Free. He was ranked number 51 in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Are You Experienced is the debut studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in May 1967. The album was an immediate critical and commercial success, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. It features Jimi Hendrix's innovative approach to songwriting and electric guitar playing, which soon established a new direction in psychedelic and rock music as a whole.
Bryan James "Chas" Chandler was an English musician, record producer and manager, best known as the original bassist in The Animals, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He also managed the band Slade, and Jimi Hendrix, about whom he was regularly interviewed until Chandler's death in 1996.
Edwin H. Kramer is a South African-born recording producer and engineer. He has collaborated with several artists now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Kinks, Kiss, John Mellencamp, GRODD and Carlos Santana, as well as records for other well-known artists in various genres.
Axis: Bold as Love is the second studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was first released by Track Records in the United Kingdom on December 1, 1967, only seven months after the release of the group's highly successful debut album, Are You Experienced. In the United States, Reprise Records delayed the release until the following month. The album reached the top ten in the album charts in both countries.
Roger Mayer is an electrical engineer who developed several electric guitar effects, including the Octavia, a fuzz effects pedal which also doubled signal frequency, with a sound that was not attainable by simply connecting an octave pedal and a fuzz pedal together. The effect was popularized by Jimi Hendrix, and can be heard during the solos on the song "Purple Haze".
Blues is a compilation album of blues songs recorded by American singer/songwriter/musician Jimi Hendrix. Compiled by interim Hendrix producer Alan Douglas, it was released April 26, 1994, by MCA Records. The album contains eleven songs recorded by Hendrix between 1966 and 1970, six of which were previously unreleased. Hendrix wrote seven of the pieces; other writers include Muddy Waters, Booker T. Jones, and Elmore James. Most are demos, jams, and live recordings, which Hendrix may or may not have completed for release.
"Hurdy Gurdy Man" is a song by the Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. It was recorded in April 1968 and released the following month as a single. The song gave its name to the album The Hurdy Gurdy Man, which was released in October of that year in the United States. The single reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and number 4 on the UK Singles Chart.
The Epiphone Texan is an acoustic flattop guitar of the (advanced) Jumbo type. Recent models have an integrated light-weight internal electric pickup fitted; the original model was acoustic only.
Crash Landing is a posthumous compilation album by American guitarist Jimi Hendrix. It was released in March and August 1975 in the US and the UK respectively. It was the first Hendrix album to be produced by Alan Douglas.
Midnight Lightning is a posthumous compilation album by American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix. It was released in November 1975 by Reprise Records in the US and Polydor Records in the UK. It was the second to be produced by Alan Douglas and Tony Bongiovi and contains demo-type recordings that were overdubbed with musicians who had never played with Hendrix. Despite including reworkings of the popular live songs "Hear My Train" and "Machine Gun", the album was not as well received as its predecessor, peaking at numbers 43 in the US and 46 in the UK.
Sam Gopal were an underground British psychedelic rock band who formed in 1966 and released their first album, Escalator, in 1969.
Bleeding Heart is one of several names given to albums of a 1968 jam session with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and others. The albums were fashioned from an informal two-track tape recording made by Hendrix which was subsequently stolen from his apartment. The jam took place at the Scene, a nightclub in New York City, and various dates and participants have been suggested. Although it presents a unique setting, critics and biographers have generally found fault with the sound quality and Morrison's performance.
Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends is the debut album of English rock singer Screaming Lord Sutch. Recording began in May 1969 at Mystic Studios in Hollywood and it was released on Cotillion Records in 1970. The album featured an all-star line-up with contributions from Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and John Bonham, guitarist Jeff Beck, session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, session guitarist Deniel Edwards and Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding. Rick Brown and Carlo Little were previously with the Savages.
Black Gold is an unreleased song cycle by Jimi Hendrix, recorded shortly before his death in 1970. Some consider Black Gold to be the "holy grail" of Hendrix collectibles. The themed songs, plus the label markings and conventions used by Hendrix to identify the tapes, led fans to believe that this demo represents a proposed fifth studio album, and predicted that the material will reveal the broadest extensions of Hendrix's intended musical direction. The tapes are currently in the possession of Hendrix's step-sister Janie.
Alan Douglas Rubenstein was an American record producer from Boston, who worked with Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Lenny Bruce and the Last Poets. He ran his own record label, Douglas Records.
Holy Moses was an American rock band based in Woodstock, New York. They released one album on RCA Victor Records in 1971.