Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix (27 November, 1942 – 18 September, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is frequently credited as being the most important electric guitarist in the history of popular music.

Posthumous releases

After Hendrix's death, hundreds of unreleased recordings emerged. Controversy arose when producer Alan Douglas supervised the mixing, overdubbing, and release of two albums' worth of material that Hendrix left in various states of completion. These include the LPs Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning and although they contain several important tracks, the albums are generally considered to be of substandard quality.

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In 1972 British producer Joe Boyd put together a film documentary on Hendrix's life, titled simply Jimi Hendrix, which played in art-house cinemas around the world for many years. The double-album soundtrack to the film, including live performances from Monterey, Berkeley and the Isle of Wight, is considered the best of the posthumous release.

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Another LP to emerge in the 1970s was the live compilation Hendrix In The West, consisting of top-shelf American live recordings from the last two years of his life, including an outstanding rendition of the concert favourite "Red House."

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Although the film Rainbow Bridge is generally regarded as being of minor interest, what was billed as a soundtrack to the film (it is not the soundtrack) includes several superb tracks intended for Hendrix's fourth studio album, First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, the never-completed follow-up to Electric Ladyland. The studio tracks, "Dolly Dagger", "Earth Blues", "Room Full of Mirrors" and the melancholy improvised instrumental "Pali Gap", showed Hendrix advancing his studio technique to new levels, as well as, absorbing influences from contemporary black soul and funk acts such as James Brown and Sly & The Family Stone.

Related Topics:
James Brown - Sly & The Family Stone

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The Rainbow Bridge album is highlighted by the full-length live version of another of Hendrix's concert performances, a tour-de-force 10-minute electric version of the blues standard "Hear My Train A-Comin." He originally recorded the song in 1967 for promotional film, performing it impromptu as a short but engaging Delta-style acoustic blues played on a borrowed 12-string guitar. The 1970 electric version saw the song transformed almost beyond recognition; like Machine Gun it showcased the classic elements of the Hendrix electric sound and featured some of his most inspired improvisation. The track was taped live at a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater in California. An edited filmed segment of this performance was also included in the concert film Jimi Plays Berkeley.

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Interest in Hendrix waned during the 1980s, but with the advent of the compact disc, Polygram and Warner-Reprise reissued many Hendrix recordings on CD in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The earliest Polygram reissues are of a poor standard and Electric Ladyland suffered particularly, being evidently a direct transfer from the existing LP masters, with tracks placed out of their correct order. This reflected the original LP running order, an artifact of the days when double-LPs were pressed with sides 1 and 4 on one LP and sides 2 and 3 on the other, so that the records could be placed on an automatic changer and played in sequence by turning them over only once.

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Polygram subsequently released a superior-quality double boxed set of eight CDs with studio tracks in one four-CD box and the live tracks in the other. This was followed by an excellent four-CD set of live concerts on Reprise. An audio documentary, originally made for radio and later released on four CDs, also appeared around this time, and included previously unreleased material.

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In the late 1990s, after Hendrix's father Al regained control of his son's estate, he and daughter Janie established the Experience Hendrix company to curate and promote Jimi's extensive recorded legacy. Working in collaboration with Jimi's original engineer, Eddie Kramer, the company embarked on an extensive reissue program, including fully remastered editions of the studio albums and compilation CDs of remixed and remastered tracks intended for the First Rays of the New Rising Sun album. To date, the Experience Hendrix company has made more than $44 million from the recordings and associated merchandising.

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