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Hey Joe

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"Hey Joe" is an American popular song from the 1960s that has become a rock standard, and as such has been performed in a multitude of musical styles. Diverse credits and claims have led to confusion as to its authorship and genesis. It tells the story of a man on the run after shooting his wife. It is most widely known for the version recorded by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The song title is sometimes given as "Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go?" or similar variations.

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Authorship

Often erroneously attributed to the pen of American musician Dino Valente (who also went by the names Chester Powers and Jesse Farrow), or as a "traditional" work, "Hey Joe" was registered for copyright in the USA in 1962 by Billy Roberts (William Moses Roberts Jr.). Roberts is the apparent author, and the song may have been written by him earlier. One source (singer Pat Craig), cited at [heyjoe.org], claims that Roberts assigned the rights to the song to his friend Valente, while Valente was in jail, in order to give him some income upon release. 


Apparently, tapes exist of Roberts performing "Hey Joe" (one as early as 1961), but these have never been released. Roberts was a relatively obscure California-based folksinger, guitarist and harmonica player who performed on the West Coast coffee-house circuit. He later recorded the country rock album Thoughts of California with the band Grits in San Francisco in 1975, produced by Hillel Resner.   

Roberts possibly drew inspiration for "Hey Joe" from three earlier works: his girlfriend Niela Miller’s 1955 song "Baby, Please Don’t Go To Town", which had a similar chord progression; Carl Smith’s 1953 US country hit "Hey Joe", which shared the title and the 'question and answer' format; and the early 20th century traditional ballad "Little Sadie", which tells of a man on the run after he has shot his wife. 


Note: under various titles (including "Bad Lee Brown", "Penitentiary Blues", "Cocaine Blues", "Whiskey Blues") variations of "Little Sadie" have been recorded by many artists, including Clarence Ashley (1930), Johnny Cash (1960 & 1968), Slim Dusty (1961), and Bob Dylan (1970).


Claimants that "Hey Joe" is a wholly traditional work have yet to provide any documentary evidence of its existence prior to Roberts' 1962 copyright registration, despite extensive archives of US folk and blues music in the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute and other bodies.


Rights to the song since 1966 have been administered by the music publisher Third Story Music, who list the author as Billy Roberts. After a severe car accident in the 1990s, Roberts was hospitalized in Sonoma County, California for many years.




Roberts’ song gained many fans in the Los Angeles music scene, which led to fast-paced recordings in 1965 and 1966 by The Leaves, The Surfaris, Love and The Byrds, swiftly becoming a garage rock classic. Both Dino Valente and The Byrds' David Crosby have been reported as helping to popularise the song before it was recorded by The Leaves in December 1965. "Hey Joe" has been recorded by hundreds of artists since. 


Folk-rock singer Tim Rose’s slow version, (recorded in 1966 and erroneously claimed to be Rose's arrangement of a wholly traditional song) inspired the first single by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix and his manager Chas Chandler had seen Rose performing at the Cafe Wha? in New York City (Hendrix himself had recently played the same venue).


Some accounts credit the slower version of the song by the British band The Creation as being the inspiration for Hendrix's version; Chandler and Hendrix had both seen the Creation many times around London, although their version was not released until after Hendrix's. It is unclear if the members of the Creation had heard Rose's version. Released in December 1966, Hendrix's version became a worldwide hit in 1967 and remains the best known recording of the song.


Tim Rose re-recorded "Hey Joe" in the 1990s, re-titling it "Blue Steel .44" and again erroneously claiming it as his own work.



Selected list of recorded versions

A long list of versions of Hey Joe can be found at [heyjoe.org])





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