Aural Fixations
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Power of Soul: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix
(Experience Hendrix/Image)
Why is it that when musicians convene for a tribute album to someone as innovative as Jimi Hendrix most of them ignore the risk-taking that made that artist so important in the first place? Sting collaborates with John McLaughlin on "The Wind Cries Mary" while Carlos Santana recruits Living Colour's Corey Glover and jazz greats Tony Williams and Stanley Clarke (must be an old track, since Williams is long dead) for "Spanish Castle Magic," and the best they can conjure up are faithful but second-rate versions of Hendrix's original arrangements. It doesn't matter that McLaughlin and Santana have completely different soloing styles than Hendrix; they still play the main riffs and melodies as if they were woodshedding to the records. R&B star Musiq replaces guitars with turntables on "Are You Experienced?" and STILL manages to sound unimaginative. Chaka Khan, in collaboration with Kid Rock guitarist Kenny Olson, abandons restraint on an otherwise straight version of "Little Wing," but her caterwauling isn't enough to make it matter. (She tries, though, god help us.) In contrast, Eric Clapton gets backing from Chic (this also has to be an older recording, since Chicsters Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson have joined Hendrix in the great beyond), turning "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" into a bland slice of his now-patented yuppie soul. Just what we needed. Robert Randolph sounds like he's starting to take "Purple Haze" somewhere other than Hendrix Clone Land, but the cut fades out before he gets there. Cee-Lo and his overdubs put a different vocal spin on "Foxey Lady," but the arrangement is too faithful to the original for this version to stand out. The late Stevie Ray Vaughan's instrumental medley of "Little Wing" and "Third Stone From the Sun" is all well and good, but any fan of either Vaughan or Hendrix has heard it a million times already. Hendrix had seemingly no limits to his musical imagination; it's a shame that this record's compilers and so many other musical icons feel themselves constrained by what he already accomplished.
Unsurprisingly, the best cuts here come from artists who interpret the songs in their own way. Earth, Wind & Fire seriously funks up "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," while Bootsy Collins and George Clinton turn "Power of Soul" into a typically grooving, bizarre and irresistible P-Funk track. Lenny Kravitz nearly redeems his miserable career by turning "Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)" into a sweet soul ballad; guitarist Eric Gales, who's been such a slavish Hendrix acolyte in the past, does the same with a tender "May This Be Love." Sounds of Blackness gives "Castles Made of Sand" a contemporary gospel/R&B spin with help from EWF's Sheldon Reynolds, who also collaborates with bandmate Larry Dunn and keyboard star George Duke on an amazingly successful fusion instrumental version of "Who Knows" as Devoted Spirits. Joined by Charles Brown's jazzy guitar genius Danny Caron, John Lee Hooker does what he does best on "Red House" (i.e. makes it sound like he wrote it). Prince, showing off both his guitar and arranging skills, simply rewrites "Red House" as "Purple House" and, shockingly, gets away with it . Methinks Jimi would have approved of these sometimes thoughtful, sometimes near-blasphemous reinterpretations more than the well-meaning but bloodless remakes on the rest of the record. After all, what's more important on a project like this—proving you can duplicate an artist's ideas or capturing his explorative spirit? I'd argue the latter, but Power of Soul leans most heavily towards the former. Like most tribute albums, this one makes me wish I had CD burning capabilities. Michael Toland [buy it]
