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Product Details
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| 1. Hear My Train A Comin' |
| 2. Born Under A Bad Sign |
| 3. Red House |
| 4. Catfish Blues |
| 5. Voodoo Chile Blues |
| 6. Mannish Boy |
| 7. Once I Had A Woman |
| 8. Bleeding Heart |
| 9. Jelly 292 |
| 10. Electric Church Red House |
| 11. Hear My Train A Comin' (Electric) |
"After the disorganized and often unlistenable Alan Douglas-produced reissues in the '70s and '80s, MCA has been releasing the vast Hendrix archives in an intelligent and methodical manner. Blues is a perfect example..."
Why is this ironic? Because Blues is very much an Alan Douglas production and, while he had at least temporarily overcome his habit of overdubbing Hendrix's sidemen (he would backslide on the next MCA release, Voodoo Soup), there are still plenty of Douglas-isms on the album. I give the album three stars in spite of Douglas' tampering, which I would never grace with adjectives like "intelligent" or "methodical." Douglas was a butcher and he lives up to that title here.
Examples: "Voodoo Chile Blues" is a composite of three different takes sewn together with the usual Douglas subtlety (think nails on a chalkboard.) The following cut, "Mannish Boy", is likewise stitched together from various takes. That leads into "Once I Had A Woman" which, while at least only one take is used, has had its section order completely (and needlessly) altered.
There are other examples (the spoken intro preceding "Electric Church Red House" comes from a recording of "Electric Church" done eight days before the take of "Red House" it segues into here; the "Electric Church" jam is omitted altogether) that serve to show that this album was not the Douglas-free zone Mr. Mirkin believes it to be. Also, the fantastic live version of "Hear My Train" suffers from an embarrassing burden of posthumous studio effects. Compare it to the version Eddie Kramer prepared for "Rainbow Bridge" and you'll see why people hate Douglas so much. Luckily, the earlier version is once again available on "Voodoo Child: The Jimi Hendrix Collection."
It's worth a listen (and nowhere near as bad as the out-of-print Midnight Lightning), but hopefully Experience Hendrix will soon pull this album in favor of a more accurate representation of Jimi's blues playing. This should be the last of the currently available titles on anyone's Hendrix list.
Jimi Hendrix had many talents and could play in many different styles. He is as good of a blues player as he is anything else. Here he takes blues standards and updates them in his own style.
It should be noted that the sound quality isn't perfect throughout and there are some pretty rough mixes to some of the songs. There is some background noise and hissing in some songs, and one song sounds like it was spliced together. This was material that wasn't originally intended for commercial release, but has been remastered well enough to make an amazing CD. Afterall, it's the Blues, it isn't supposed to be pretty.
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