The Authentic PPX Studio Recordings Vol.2 - Flashing

Reviews

THE COMPLETE PPX RECORDINGS (?) Germany
Get That Feeling/How Would You Feel/Hush Now/No Business/Simon Says/Gotta Have A New Dress/Strange Things/Welcome Home/Love, Love/Day Tripper/Gloomy Monday/Fool For You Baby/Don't Accuse Me/Hornet's Nest/Flashing/Oddball/Happy Birthday/UFO/You Don't Want Me (instrumental)/Better Times Ahead/Future Trip/Wah Wah (instrumental)/Everybody Knew But Me/Mercy Lady Day (instrumental)/If You Gonna Make A Fool Of Somebody/My Best Friend (instrumental)/Ballad Of Jimi/Second Time Around (instrumental)/Drivin' South (instrumental)/Ain't That Peculiar/I'll Be Doggone/I've Got A Sweet Little Angel/Bright Light, Big City/Get Out Of My Life Woman/Last Night (instrumental)/Sugar Pue Honey Bunch/What'd I Say/Shotgun/California Night (live)/Level (studio instrumental)/Feel Good (live)/Left Alone (live)/Knock Yourself Out (studio instrumental)/Something On Your Mind (live)/I Should've Quit You (live)/Hard Night (live instrumental)/I'm A Man (live)/Instrumental (studio)/On The Killing Floor (live)/Money (live)/Nobody Loves Me (live)/Love (studio instrumental)/You Got Me Running (live)/Mr. Pitiful (live)/Torture Me Honey (studio instrumental)/Sleepy Fate (studio instrumental)/Satisfaction (live)
Just about every Pre-Experience w/Curtis Knight track available. CD; 6-CD Set. +
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The Authentic PPX Studio Recordings
Nippon Crown CRCL 4729 34
Released: 1999
Running Time: 31:20
This page is a Web-page version of a message sent by Ken Voss to the Hey Joe mailing list, Volume 19991119. It was originally published in Voodoo Child #43 Summer, 1997. It's put here with Ken Voss's permission.


THE COMPLETE & AUTHENTIC PPX STUDIO RECORDINGS...
In 1997, SPV Records in Germany released six volumes titled The Authentic PPX Studio Recordings. Now, here in 1999, Nippon Crown of Japan is offering that same set a 6CD box set as Jimi Hendrix: The Complete PPX Recordings (CRCL-4729-34).

During two studio sessions in 1965 and 1967, plus a live set at George's Club in Hackensack, New Jersey, Jimi Hendrix recorded tracks with Curtis Knight. Under contract to, and under the direction of producer Ed Chalpin, these studio sessions at PPX Studios in New York became infamous. Not only for being one of the earliest known studio sessions featuring Hendrix as a lead performer, but for the legal embattlement the sessions created.

The tapes have been released on various album combinations over three dozen times, as Chalpin continuously licenses them to record companies throughout the world. "As long as there are record companies who want to distribute this material in their market, I will license it to them accordingly," Chalpin once indicated, noting that each of those companies is only supposed to distribute the product in the country they are licensed.

But, according to CBH, the Knight material has never before been officially licensed on compact disc. That is, until now. Of course, we can document numerous pseudo-legitimate releases with some of the Hendrix- Knight material included, but certainly, this is the most comprehensive compilation of such material to date.

Chalpin has licensed the tapes to CBH Records in Germany. Engineers Kalle Trapp and Rainer Hansel went in and recut, re-edited and remastered the material into a six volume set. Some songs have been remixed, some mixed down to only include Jimi's guitar and vocals. Others have been completely re-edited, cut and spliced in such a way that choruses are repeated, verses are re-arranged, and guitar parts are extended. "Butchered," say some; "creative" argue others. Either way, we do get some new material. We get plenty of old material that's been cleaned up and made more presentable and listenable. And, we get the doctored tracks, which will always get challenged in the Hendrix circles.

Hopes ran high when news came of the official German release of The Authentic PPX Studio Recordings that maybe this time we'd have these Hendrix-Knight sessions presented in a sympathetic context with perhaps some detailed liner notes and new information to shed light on these sessions. Dream on!

Let's start with the liner notes, claiming these recordings are available for the first time on CD. Well, what about Historic Hendrix and Prologue, amongst others, which have been around for ages. The liner notes by Gitti Gulden may as well have been written by Chalpin himself as yet again we have a very rose-tinted version of events where he appears to be the innocent part who has been badly done to over the years.

The most interested part is the line-up details which lists: "Drums: Johnny Star. All other instruments played by Jimi Hendrix. Lead Vocals: Curtis Knight. Additional Vocals: Jimi Hendrix." Johnny Star's name has only appeared in historical references previously as a suggested engineer. Noted session drummer Bernard Purdie has made claim he was involved with some of these sessions. And, as far as Jimi playing all instruments on all the tracks, there's enough historical evidence to discount this statement as total rubbish. Even the photos included in some of the booklets show additional musicians in the studio.

In the original SPV releases, each disc comes with an eight page booklet. Graphic continuity brings this six volume set into a unified perspective. The six covers feature different photos from the Gered Mankowitz photo archives. Each inside cover features two different rare (some never before published) photos of Hendrix during the Curtis Knight period and sessions. On the Nippon Crown box set, the SPV covers are re-used on the individual discs. Each disc comes in a cardboard slipsleeve. A 16-page booklet, encapsulating the same pictures and text that appeared in the SPV releases, is included. The six discs are then encased in a thin cardboard "box", another Mankowitz shot used on the metallic-ink four-color cover.

Most of the material has been previously released on numerous titles, the German Astan and Babylon labels providing in vinyl versions the prominent portion of the material presented here.