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The excerpt below is from a book I'm reading called "Hendrix: Setting The Record Straight" by John McDermott with Eddie Kramer. Just to set the stage a bit, by the summer of 1969, the original Jimi Hendrix Experience had broken up. Hendrix had moved out of NYC to upstate New York near Woodstock where he rented a house.

Though Hendrix may have sought a quiet retreat among Woodstock's fabled wilds, he managed to stand out as much as he had in Harlem. 'Jimi used to drive through town in his red Corvette,' recalls Leslie Aday, an employee of Albert Grossman, who became friendly with Hendrix during his extended period upstate. 'He'd have the top down and be dressed in all his glory. Nobody in Woodstock had a red Corvette. These people were into growing organic vegetables and making their own clothes!' 

The musicians Hendrix had invited to the house were no mere motley crew. Hendrix, recalls Aday, had expressed his concept of a band that comprised musicians from a variety of racial backgrounds. The timing for such a concept, he explained, couldn't be better. Aside from Jimi's own celebrated mixture of Cherokee Indian and Negro heritage, percussionist Jerry Velez was an Hispanic from New York's Lower East Side; [Mitch] Mitchell (who would rejoin Hendrix) a white Briton; [Billy] Cox and [Larry] Lee were African Americans steeped in the Delta blues tradition; and Juma Sultan an African American who had embraced Africa's vast cultural heritage. 

Juma Sultan was well known within the Woodstock artistic community, a respected percussionist actively involved with the Aboriginal Music Society, which presented a broad mosaic of musical influences in semiconcert form on Sunday evenings at the Tinker Street Cinema. Sultan introduced Hendrix to the aggregation of local musicians, but when they played together, Hendrix couldn't help plowing through their delicate, polyrhythmic patterns. He had not yet integrated softer elements into his live music, volume and feedback remaining the essential ingredients of his style. Even his rhythm playing, while not as bombastic as his solo work, was still delivered with great force. It would be this simple fact, plus a lack of adequate rehearsal time, that would doom the Gypsys Suns & Rainbow, the moniker he invented for his new band.

A brief summer of spontaneous jamming turned to serious rehearsals after Hendrix was signed to headline the musical festival in August which became Woodstock. Hendrix and his jam buddies closed the event at dawn on a Monday morning, several hours after the festival was supposed to have ended. Only a fraction of the fans actually witnessed his performance. This is how they sounded, playing one of the few original songs not belonging to the Jimi Hendrix Experience; it's called Jam Back at the House:

 

Eddie Kramer, hired to record the entire festival, was not impressed:

Tracks such as "Jam Back at the House" -- born from incessant jamming -- did more to showcase the band's deficiencies than strengths. Larry Lee was a close friend and an accomplished player, but he was not in a league to be trading solos with Jimi Hendrix.

That song has long been my personal favorite from that performance. It's deceptively simple -- seemingly just an endless riff driven over and over. Only a real genius like Hendrix could make that interesting. I especially like how he plugs in and comes back at around 4 min 40sec, puffing his cigarette no handed, breathing like a dragon.  But now I see Kramer's point. Hendrix overwhelmed the other players. Of those on stage, only Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox would stick with him.  Only they could keep up.