Jimi Hendrix The Cry Of Love & Rainbow Bridge To Be Reissued

Over the last few years of Jimi Hendrix’s life he recorded a number of songs that explored new musical ground, which he wasn’t able to release before his tragic death. In 1971, Hendrix’s longtime engineer Eddie Kramer and Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell assembled some of the material from those sessions into a pair of posthumous studio albums –The Cry Of Love and Rainbow Bridge. On September 16 Experience Hendrix in conjunction with Legacy Recordings will reissue the two long-out-of-print studio albums on CD, vinyl and digital.

The Cry Of Love contains such classics as “Angel,” “Freedom” and “Ezy Ryder” and the bulk of its tracks were recorded between December 1969 and the summer of 1970 at Electric Lady Studios in New York. The album was a massive success reaching #3 in the U.S. and #2 in the UK. Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox comprise the rhythm section that backed Jimi on the bulk of the tracks, though Buddy Miles played drums on “Ezy Ryder” and Noel Redding played bass on “My Friend” (recorded in 1968, before his departure from the Jimi Hendrix Experience). Steve Winwood, Chris Wood and Buzzy Linhart are among the other notable musicians who make cameos on the album.

Most of the Rainbow Bridge tracks were recorded in 1969 and 1970, during the same sessions that spawned The Cry Of Love. Rainbow Bridge includes a studio rendition of “Star Spangled Banner” as well as studio versions of “Dolly Dagger,” “Room Full Of Mirrors” and many other tracks that showed Hendrix’s creative direction. The one live track on the album is Hendrix’s original blues composition “Hear My Train A Comin’,” recorded at Berkeley Community Theatre in May of 1970.

Both albums have been remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog masters. The Cry Of Love was last issued on CD in 1992, while Rainbow Bridge has never before seen an official CD release.

The Cry Of Love track list:

1) Freedom
2) Drifting
3) Ezy Ryder
4) Night Bird Flying
5) My Friend
6) Straight Ahead
7) Astro Man
8) Angel
9) In From the Storm
10) Belly Button Window

Rainbow Bridge track list:

1) Dolly Dagger
2) Earth Blues
3) Pali Gap
4) Room Full of Mirrors
5) Star Spangled Banner (studio version)
6) Look Over Yonder
7) Hear My Train A Comin’ (live)
8) Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)