"Gypsy Eyes" or "Gipsy Eyes" is a song written by Jimi Hendrix and performed by

the Jimi Hendrix Experience James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most ...

for the 1968 album ''

Electric Ladyland ''Electric Ladyland'' is the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the final studio album released before Hendrix's death in 1970. A double album, it was the only record from the Experience produced by Hendrix. The ba ...

''. Subsequently, it was released as the B-side of the " Crosstown Traffic" single, which reached number 52 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and number 37 on the UK ''

Official Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

''.

Style and composition

In a review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

, Matthew Greenwald calls it "a great slice of blues/psychedelia". He adds: Richard MiddletonMiddleton, Richard (1990/2002). ''Studying Popular Music'', p.137. Philadelphia: Open University Press. . notes that licks in

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...

are often used through a formula and variations technique and that "Gypsy Eyes" "is put together from variants of five stock ideas...familiar from other recordings in the same style." #"Drum lick A" #"Drum lick B" #"A complex of riffs on guitar and bass guitar" #"A basic melodic falling pattern, using the notes of the pentatonic scale" #"A characteristic guitar effect, the attacked single note with long decay and glissando fall" He concludes that "the combination and variations of these formulae are many and highly imaginative. But the basic formulae are so simple that the recording could well have been worked out 'in performance.'"

References

{{authority control The Jimi Hendrix Experience songs Songs written by Jimi Hendrix 1968 songs Song recordings produced by Jimi Hendrix Reprise Records singles Track Records singles