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Midnight Lightning is a posthumous album by Jimi Hendrix released in November 1975 by Reprise Records. It was the second Hendrix album by producer Alan Douglas for Reprise Records who "created" new Jimi Hendrix material. As he had done in Crash Landing, Douglas created the new material by reviewing hundreds of hours of old Hendrix tapes from the vaults of Reprise Records. Douglas took unfinished songs and completed them using studio musicians to overdub Hendrix' original tapes. In response to the outcry from fans and critics, Douglas did not claim co-writer credit for the Hendrix material on Midnight Lightning as he had on Crash Landing. The album was not as well received as Crash Landing and peaked at number 43 on Billboard's album chart, and number 46 on the U.K. album chart. It was a dramatic fall from Crash Landing which peaked at number 5 on the U.S. chart. Fans and critics complained it was one of the worst releases with Hendrix's name on it, "the producers of this jerk-puppet series are perhaps of the family Frankenstein,"[1] "[this album] shows that in the eyes of Douglas and Warner Records, Jimi Hendrix is still not an artist. He remains a commodity to be exploited."[2] Reprise Records shelved plans for Douglas to produce a third Hendrix album of "new" material.
[edit] Track listing
- Side 1
- "Trashman" (also called "Midnight") – 3:16
- "Midnight Lightning" – 3:52
- "Here My Train A Coming" – 5:18
- "Gypsy Boy (New Rising Sun)" (also called "Hey Baby (The Land of the New Rising Sun)" – 3:51
- Side 2
- "Blue Suede Shoes" (Carl Perkins) – 3:28
- "Machine Gun" – 7:27
- "Once I Had a Woman" – 5:44
- "Beginnings" (also called "Beginning" and "Jam Back at the House") (Mitch Mitchell) – 3:02
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Stereo Review, March 1976
- ^ The Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec 7, 1975