Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival

Reprise Records released Historic Performances in the United States on August 26, 1970,^[1] less than a month before Hendrix died. It reached number 16 on the Billboard 200 albums chart^[6] and number 15 on the magazine's Top R&B Albums chart.^[7] The Recording Industry Association of America certified it as a gold album, signifying one million dollars in sales.^[8] The album was not released in the United Kingdom.

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Christgau's Record Guide	A−[9]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[10]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[11]

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In a contemporary review of the album, Jeffrey Drucker of Rolling Stone magazine said "memories are made of sets like this", and "even if you weren't [there], you'll find some very satisfying music by two of our most gifted artists."^[12]

In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), music critic Robert Christgau called the album "as evocative a distillation of the hippie moment in all its hope and contradiction as you'll ever hear." He described Redding and Hendrix as "two radically different black artists showboating at the nativity of the new white rock audience", who had both "performed more subtly and more brilliantly" elsewhere, and were "equally audacious and equally wonderful" at the festival.^[9]

In a lukewarm review, AllMusic's Bruce Eder regarded Historic Performances as a significant album when it was released, but it has become "purely of historic interest as an artifact of the time."^[2]

Before the Monterey Pop performance, Jimi Hendrix was a musician with success in the UK but nowhere else in the world. At Monterey Pop, Hendrix performed in front of an estimated 25,000-90,000 people.^{[citation needed]} At the end of the song ‘Wild thing’—which appears on this recording-- ^[13] Hendrix lit his guitar on fire, smashed it 7 times, and threw its remains into the crowd. This performance gained national attention and made Hendrix famous in the US, and led to the later opportunity to headline at Woodstock, one of the largest rock festivals of all time and a highlight of the 1960s in the US.

Side one

• Jimi Hendrix – electric guitar, vocals
• Noel Redding – bass guitar
• Mitch Mitchell – drums

Side two

• Otis Redding – vocals
• Booker T. Jones – keyboards
• Steve Cropper – electric guitar
• Donald "Duck" Dunn – bass guitar
• Al Jackson Jr. – drums
• Wayne Jackson – trumpet
• Andrew Love – tenor saxophone

Production

• Producers: Lou Adler, John Phillips
• Engineers: Wally Heider, Eric Weinberg
• Photography: Jim Marshall
• Cover Layout: Ed Thrasher