New Hendrix recordings to be released

If there were any doubts about the lingering force of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, just look at his new single Somewhere.

Almost 43 years after his death, Somewhere went to No.1 on the Billboard Hot Singles sales in February, boding well for the latest posthumous album plucked from a Hendrix musical vault that producers say has survived the test of time.

People, Hell and Angels, to be released on Tuesday, is billed as a collection of twelve previously unreleased studio performances by Hendrix, although fans note that some of the music has emerged in other forms since his death at age 27 in 1970 of an accidental drug overdose.

The album arrives with the simultaneous release of newly-struck mono vinyl editions of early Hendrix classics Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love.

The tracks on People, Hell and Angels, were planned as a follow-up to the influential guitar player’s 1968 chart-topping album Electric Ladyland.

Feeling constrained by the limitations of the Jimi Hendrix Experience trio (which included drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding), the guitarist had already started working with an eclectic group of musicians.

They included the Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills, drummer Buddy Miles, saxophonist Lonnie Youngblood and bassist Billy Cox, with whom Hendrix had served in the U.S. military.

The resulting sessions, culled from 1968 and 1969, form the basis of People, Hell and Angels, which is co-produced by Janie Hendrix, original engineer and mixer Eddie Kramer, and long-time Hendrix historian John McDermott.

The new album is just the latest in a slew of albums, films, tribute tours and books following Hendrix’s death in London that far outnumber the three studio albums he released in his four-year career at the top.