Product Description

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Track Listing

1. Hear My Train a Comin' [Acoustic]
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]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2882 in Music
• Brand: MCA
• Released on: 1994-04-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Amazon.com
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, making the case that--on top of everything else--Jimi Hendrix was one fine blues guitarist. Combining the fluid lines of B.B. King with the spikiness of Hubert Sumlin and the crying tone of Elmore James with his usual synapse-frying intensity, Hendrix manages to both honor the music tradition while remaining uniquely himself. These studio outtakes and warm-ups (plus one previously released track, the magnificent "Hear My Train a Comin'") include a playful "Mannish Boy," the slow burn of "Once I Had A Woman," and a metallic "Bleeding Heart." --Steven Mirkin

Customer Reviews

Absolutely worth it
Very simply put, I got this cd as a gift and expected it to be good, but not nearly this good. It really lets light shine on Jimi's personality and at points makes you grin. At other points it haunts you with his memory, and at others it just puts you in awe. The beginning song is incredibly genuine Hendrix with a 12 string acoustic and the Voodoo Chile blues is a freaky blues song that is not a lyrical take off on Voodoo chile slight return. The most of the songs show a quirky funloving Hendrix that is just getting into the music the way it should be, and Born Under a Bad Sign shows up and shows off Jimi's talent for melody and never ending notes that ride halfway across songs. This is an album full of brilliant and vivid long blues progressions and ends with the best I've ever heard Hendrix play, doing Electric and live version of Hear My Train a'comin and it is utterly awesome. And as an added bonus, the booklet that comes inside the cd cover is literally a booklet as in a mini-book. It's a Hendrix bio that is worth the price of the cd itself, and you'll probably read it a few times. This is an amazing cd, and shows The Hendrix style of real blues, the way blues should be played. It's an amazing wave of Jimi's best and most heartfelt sounds.

Not bad for an Alan Douglas release
It is ironic that Steven Mirkin would begin his review with:

"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 - Blues: Like Thor with an additional hammer
Its bittersweet that Jimi Hendrix's music is continuing to be released over 30 years after his sudden death. I'm not going to go into the arguments others are about who released this under what label and when. This album means a lot to me because it is Jimi Hendrix, and they are all tracks I am listening to for the first time. Jimi's style, imagination, and overall vision was coupled with his extreme gift at playing the guitar with such magic that anything I can hear that he played is truly "music to my ears". Though a guitar is a tool for which a musician can express ones self, Jimi made it talk, scream, shiver, and shout. There are sounds that one can hear, and then there are sounds that you FEEL. This is how I feel about his music, its something for the soul. Though he was not known primarily as a blues guitarist, every great guitarist has some base with the genre of blues, and its here on the album "Blues" that we get to hear Jimi play the blues With those awesome electric licks that only his guitar can really do. Again, it sounds like magic when the man plays.

Eleven tracks in all, there isn't one on here that does not, in my mind, garner repeated listening. Blues is usually a music you play either during a certain mood, or to invoke that mood. Kick back, down on your luck, heavy and groovy all at the same time. Track three is "Red House" and has some classic solos on here that are trademark Hendrix. The vocal performance on here drones on with eclectic fun and brings back some memories from tracks I like on "The ultimate experience". Track four is "Catfish Blues" and has a great rocking beat to it. Despite what I've seen others say, I don't find the sound quality bad at all. This is a guy who died in 1970, so anything from the studio archives that is re-released may not be your bread and butter, but its Hendrix, and that's good enough for me.

Track eight is a slower paced song along the lines of true traditional Blues sound. What is eerie with that is that you don't think of it maybe as a "blues song" but something that just got left off of one of his studio releases from earlier times. Before I go, I have to mention that track one is "Hear My Train Comin'" and is done by Jimi on an acoustic guitar. It's a truly magical sound (I use that word a lot, but how else do you describe his sound?) that is epic in feeling. This is true art, my friends, and as always with Jimi's songs, he can be a true storyteller with his vocals and imagery just as much as he was skilled on the six string. Jimi is gone but millions around the world still enjoy his music, and I am glad that his family was able to get back the rights to his music and re-release much of it, whether heard before or undiscovered up to now. If you like Blues, Electric guitar, or Hendrix in general, you might take a chance and check out this album, I did and will never regret it, nor forget it.