Over the weekend, an unidentified bidder paid $US15,000,000 to buy control of Jimi Hendrix songs including 'Voodoo Child', 'Hey Joe' and 'Purple Haze' from the estate of Hendrix's former manager, Michael Jeffery (who died in 1973).
The catalogue still generates around 600,000 sales per year and if placed in the hands of a third party could see original Hendrix recordings plastered all over TV ads and film.The Hendrix estate own a Seattle based company called Experience Hendrix, which as has been proven in previous court cases, is the owner of the original master tapes and the mechanical copyright (i.e. the copyright of the actual recording, rather than the song itself).
Jeffery's estate also owns a company called Purple Haze Records. Both Purple Haze Records and Experience Hendrix have released reissues of Hendrix material, and while Purple Haze Records reissues are often packed with bonus tracks, the actual recordings are often from 2nd generation tapes that Jeffery had in his possession at the time of death.
Hendrix died of a drug overdose in London in 1970, he was 27 years old.
