Track Listing

1. Freedom
2. Izabella
3. Night Bird Flying
4. Angel
5. Room Full of Mirrors
6. Dolly Dagger
7. Ezy Ryder
8. Drifting
9. Beginnings
10. Stepping Stone
11. My Friend
12. Straight Ahead
13. Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
14. Earth Blues
15. Astro Man
16. In from the Storm
17. Belly Button Window

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9694 in Music
• Released on: 1997-04-22
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Amazon.com
The guy was damn ingenious with a guitar, but not half as industrious as the folks who've packaged and repackaged his posthumous material. First Rays of the New Rising Sun, however, is an attractive assortment of "spiritual, very earthy" late recordings that surfaced in the '70s via The Cry of Love, Crash Landing, Rainbow Bridge, and War Heroes. Hendrix appeared to be in transition between flamboyant showman and serious musician personas at the time (meaning his work, had he lived, might have been twice as meritorious and half as fun), and that makes many of these tracks all the more interesting. --Steven Stolder

Customer Reviews

Jimi's Version
"In 1994, Hendrix's own handwritten track selection for First Ray surfaced and was reprinted in the french magazine Folk & Rock (November 1994). Surprisingly it was never used when attempts were made to complete the unfinished project in the years that followed. Hendrix only completed a song list for three sides of the double LP, and wasn't sure where to place the track "Night Bird Flying". With a darker-colored pen, he seemed to indicate that it should be the second song on side A. Hendrix's track selection for First Ray of the New Rising Sun was:

Side A: Dolly Dagger, Night Bird Flying, Room Full of Mirrors, Belly Button Window, Freedom.

Side B: Easy Rider, Astro Man, Drifting, Straight Ahead.

Side C: Drifter's Escape, Comin' Down Hard On Me, Beginnings, Cherokee Mist, Angel."

The above and any other quotes in this post are taken from the book, "Black Gold the Lost Archives of Jimi Hendrix" by Steven Roby.

The album is refered to above as First Ray instead of First Rays because Jimi at first was going to call it First Ray of the New Rising Sun. Another quote from Black Gold:

"Billy Cox worked on the unfinished album, and recalled the time when Hendrix asked him about the correct wording: "He asked me, 'Is it the first ray, or the rays?' I said, 'I don't know. He said, 'What do you see when you get up in the morning? When you look over the horizon do you see one ray or rays?' I said, 'I'd have to check that out.'

Hendrix would seem to have had a cover for the album in mind too...another quote:

"There is also evidence that Hendrix may have had a cover in mind for the release. On September 17th, 1970, he sketched out various faces to form the shape of a cross, with his own face in the middle. The right arm of the cross had faces of white people, including J.F.K. and Hitler and two women and a baby. On the left arm of the cross was Martin Luther King, Jr., a black woman with a crown, an African woman, and a baby. On the bottom shaft, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Cochise, two women and a baby represented Native Americans. Above Hendrix's head, the top shaft of the cross showed Buddha, Genghis Khan, a Japanese woman, and a Chinese baby, representing the Asian Peoples."

I like this CD and gave it 4/5 stars. But knowing that there are existing track listings by Hendrix out there I tend to wish they had tried to stay closer to the song orders he had chosen (Of course Jimi might have made many changes to those song orders before the album was completed).

Since these days most people can make their own CDs I would probably arrange a version (for my own listening pleasure) to look something like this:

Dolly Dagger
Night Bird Flying
Room Full of Mirrors
Belly Button Window
Freedom
Easy Rider
Astro Man
Drifting
Straight Ahead
Drifter's Escape (Can be found on the CD South Saturn Delta)
Comin' Down Hard On Me (Can be found on the Hendrix box set)
Beginnings
Here He Comes (Lover Man) (Can be found on South Saturn Delta)
Angel
Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
Stepping Stone
Izabella
Earth Blues
In From The Storm

Approximate CD time = 79 minutes

Since the only version of Cherokee Mist I have heard is on the Box Set and has simliar patterns to that of In From The Storm I left it off. I left off My Friend since it was a leftover track from 1968. For those who are into having an instrumental open the album there is a spacey guitar instrumental called The New Rising Sun on the now deleted Hendrix CD compilation Voodoo Soup...I just wasn't sure how to fit it in due to space limitations. Pali Gap is also a track that could have been on the album as it was recorded during the same time period. Of course everyone's version of this album would probably be different (including Jimi's).

I could go on and on about this but I guess the bottom line is I like the music on this album very much I just wish it could have somehow stayed closer to Jimi's vision...

Poetry in Motion - An Evolving Beauty Frozen in Time
The 5 stars I've given to this disc must be understood in context. These are not the same kind of 5 stars I gave to Are You Experienced. Then again, Jimi was alive and involved in the mixing and production of AYE and he wasn't for First Rays. As a long time Hendrix devotee, I knew he'd considered naming his next LP with this disc's title. I knew all about what was going on in his life at the time he died and how he wanted his music to evolve. The reason this disc warrants 5 stars is because the people involved in bringing this project to completion did the best they could to make Jimi's vision a reality. This is love, pure and simple.

A stripped-down, analytical view of this disc, song by song may not arrive at the conclusion above. Clearly, the studio work was not finished on many of these songs. The story of the making of these songs is a tragic tale. Jimi's last album of original studio recordings had been released in 1968 on Electric Ladyland. Since that LP, a compilation entitled Smash Hits had been released, as had Band of Gypsys, a live recording of new tunes as part of a legal settlement with one of Jimi's former business partners. Band of Gypsys, although excellent music in my opinion, was not what the majority of the record-buying public wanted to hear from Jimi. They wanted Purple Haze II, or something similarly familiar and comfortably psychedelically rocking. But Jimi had been around that block too many times and was in need of change. First Rays was to be the answer as he saw it.

Now, don't get me wrong here - I love this music. But not all of it was finished to Jimi's normal standard. He certainly planned to get it done and was considering a change of management and producers as solutions to get past the barriers he saw in his way. But lack of completeness can't hide the brilliance of his vision. Just consider two cuts as examples - Hey Baby (effectively the title track) and Ezy Ryder. Hey Baby shows both lyrically and in its arrangement where Jimi was headed. The opening section is one of the most beautiful guitar lines he ever wrote, combining so many of his roots into a statement so uniquely Jimi, it's immediately recognizable. The words tell me just how badly he needed to move beyond the constraints that had imprisoned him for all too long. Ezy Ryder shows that Jimi was still a rocker. But he was changed. Since taking over the production of his music, the orchestration had become more complex and synergistic. The lyrics show, as do the lyrics of other songs on this disc, that Jimi was struggling to make the message fit the rythym. But that's nit picking - these are great tunes. I am hugely appreciative that the Hendrix family got the right people together to make this happen. It's a must-have.

"Riding down the highway of desire..."
It should not be expected that compilations of unreleased material should live up to an artist's fundamental body of work, but the posthumous Jimi Hendrix collection, First Rays a New Rising Sun, comes pretty close. Most of its material was compiled from work meant for the guitar-slinging hippie hero's forth studio album, which he was in the midst of recording at the time of his unfortunate death in 1970. The LP was meant to be a return to the highway-roaming, rapid-fire rock of his debut, 1967's Are You Experienced. If songs such as the rollicking "Dolly Dagger," the impassioned "Ezy Rider," the Vietnam-inspired "Izabella," the epic title track and the anthems, "Earth Blues" and "Freedom" are any indications, Hendrix had a good chance at topping himself. Of coarse, First Rays does include a few tracks that may have been improved or deleted if Hendrix had completed this work, such as the half-baked "Astro Man" and the ironically meandering "Straight Ahead." But for a collection of unreleased work, First Rays of a New Rising Sun is absolutely as good as they come.