Jimi Hendrix - First Rays of the New Rising Sun

Posthumous reconstructions of unfinished works are inherently dangerous, principally because even the most capable scholar or producer can only make, at best, an educated guess as to how the work in question would have been completed. Indeed, in dealing with some such pieces, you're sometimes lucky to get the work of the artist claimed (the Mozart Symphony No. 37 is a case in point -- it doesn't exist; the piece once labeled Symphony No. 37 and attributed to Mozart is now known to have been authored by Michael Haydn); and while there's no question that the songs on this CD were recorded by Jimi Hendrix, even the people who worked on the sides with him can't say which songs would have ended up on the finished version of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (assuming that he even ended up using that title for the album), or what embellishments he would have added to any of them in the course of completing them, or even if he might not have totally reconsidered such matters as tempo and approach to any of them. Read More