The Cry of Love by Jimi Hendrix

The Cry of Love, Jimi Hendrix's first posthumous album, came out on March 5, 1971, half a year after Hendrix died in September 1970, through Reprise in the US and Track in the UK. Most of it was cut in 1970, songs he was shaping for a planned fourth studio album, and after he died engineer Eddie Kramer and drummer Mitch Mitchell picked the final tracks, with manager Michael Jeffery weighing in. Hendrix, Kramer and Mitchell share the production credit.

What you hear is a man in mid-stride: the guitar still bending, howling and feeding back like nobody else's, but also turning softer and more soulful, with "Angel" as tender as anything he ever recorded. It sold well on both sides of the Atlantic, critics heard it as a fitting tribute, and it finally went platinum in 1998. Several of its songs later turned up on Voodoo Soup in 1995 and First Rays of the New Rising Sun in 1997, two more attempts to rebuild the album he never finished.

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