Jimi Hendrix – The Mike Jefferies Years

It was only after competing my retrospective look at the Hendrix related discs Alan Douglas put out that I though I really should have produced one of the best tracks from the Mike Jeffereis years. These were the years between Hendrix’s death in 1970 and 1974 even though Jefferies himself died in a plane accident in 1973. What I learned from listening to these albums (and this was also noted in my previous post), is that this could be the best example of the law of diminishing returns. ‘The Cry Of Love’ and ‘Rainbow Bridge’ are very good records. However, the two that followed are not. ‘War Heroes’ has some good material but the majority is pretty substandard. It is even worse on ‘Loose Ends’ which was so bad, that Reprise who represented Hendrix in the USA refused to release it. You can tell how bad it is that when the Hendrix family took over the catalogue in the 1990’s and seem to have release every recording Hendrix made bar him blowing his nose (even though it has felt as though they may as well have done), there is still one song from ‘Loose Ends’ that has so far failed to see a re-release.

As you can see from this double album, the majority of the cuts come from the first two releases of the Mike Jefferies era and there is some crossover with the Alan Douglas LP, but where as those tracks have session musicians on them, the Jefferies releases did keep the original players on there. Still a good album though but apart from ‘The Cry Of Love’, the Hendrix family have seen to it that these records were deleted from the Hendrix catalogue and I will surprised if they ever see the light of day again. It is not as though they are rare through as most were in production for over twenty years.

Side 1