Jimi Hendrix

Both Sides Of The Sky

legacy recordings

Fresh light shines in a room full of mirrors With the release of People, Hell and Angels in 2013, Eddie Kramer – Jimi’s studio engineer who now oversees the restoration and release of recordings from the archives – indicated that the well of unreleased studio work had pretty much run dry and henceforth the only ‘new’ Jimi material to see official release would be live recordings.

So Both Sides Of The Sky came as a bit of a surprise, more so that it contains some of the strongest previously unheard material to date. The album covers studio sessions between January 1968 and February 1970 as well as some new tracks that, while hardly turning the established canon of Hendrix work on its head, certainly shine a more revealing light on where Jimi was heading creatively, such as the UniVibe-washed, melancholy balladry of

Jungle. We also get some electrifyingly energetic versions of familiar tracks such as Stepping Stone and vital, rootsy covers of blues standards such as Guitar Slim’s

Things I Used To Do, on which Jimi duets with Johnny Winter, which shows how Jimi could be a sympathetic, unselfish accompanist to other players as well as a flamboyant focal point. There are poignant insights into Jimi’s own soul too, such as the world-weary, lovelorn lament of Send My Love To Linda. Likewise, we are powerfully reminded of Jimi’s former days as a sideman on the R&B circuit by Jimi’s collaboration with vocalist Lonnie Youngblood, a friend from his Curtis Knight days, on Georgia Blues, which has genuine stature as an R&B recording, not merely an off-piste experiment.

Varied, patchy at points, but always engrossing, Both Sides Of The Sky is a fitting coda to Jimi’s existing recorded works and is available on CD and digital formats, as well as a mouthwatering twoplatter 180-gram vinyl edition. [JD]

Standout track: Things I Used To Do For fans of: Curtis Mayfield, Robin Trower