A BIT CLOSER TO HENDRIX : REISSUES BOAST CLEARER SOUND AND OK OF GUITARIST'S FAMILY.

Byline: Fred Shuster Daily News Music Writer

Two years ago, a quarter-century after Jimi Hendrix's death in London, a legal settlement gave ownership of the guitarist's work to his survivors.

It seemed like business as usual at the time. The Hendrix catalog had gone through several owners, and CD releases had been forthcoming over the years with varying degrees of success. Hendrix was 27 when he died in 1970, leaving just four albums completed, one of which was a live set. The discs - ``Are You Experienced'' (1967), ``Axis: Bold as Love'' (1967), ``Electric Ladyland'' (1968) and ``Band of Gypsies'' (with Buddy Miles on drums, 1970) - all stand as rock landmarks.

At the time of his death, Hendrix - voted the greatest guitarist of all time in Britain's Mojo magazine - was working on a fifth album at Electric Lady, his Greenwich Village recording studio. That material was released over the course of three posthumous albums - ``The Cry of Love'' (1971), ``Rainbow Bridge'' (1971) and ``War Heroes'' (1972) - but with filler added to pad out the records.

Tuesday, newly remastered and restored versions of the first three official Hendrix albums, plus the fifth, ``First Rays of the New Rising Sun,'' will be issued. ``First Rays'' features the strongest of the last tracks Hendrix completed, including ``Dolly Dagger,'' ``Freedom,'' ``Earth Blues'' and ``Izabella,'' minus the filler.

The reissue program is the result of an agreement between MCA Records and the Hendrix family-owned Experience Hendrix company that further establishes a joint venture record label allowing the company to sign and develop acts under the Experience Hendrix imprint.

The deal marks the first time Hendrix's timeless recordings will be released under the authority and direction of the Hendrix family. All CDs have been remastered by Eddie Kramer, the original engineer on Hendrix's recording dates.

``The main problem (with previous compact disc releases on Reprise and MCA) was the discs were taken from fifth-generation masters, so the quality was simply horrendous,'' said Jimi's stepsister, Janie Hendrix-Wright, president and CEO of Experience Hendrix. ``The clarity wasn't there. I refer to it as multiplicity, where a copy of a copy of a copy loses its translation. I think that's what happened.

``With these albums, you hear the excitement and clarity in his voice. There are songs you can actually hear him chewing gum. At the end of `Foxey Lady,' you hear him blow a kiss into the microphone. The words, the lyrics, are so clear.''

It's true that all the new reissues sound superb, with a clarity and presence missing from previous reissues.

``Revisiting these tapes 27 years later was like discovering Tutankhamen's tomb, but with a very funny twist,'' Kramer said the other day from his upstate New York home. ``It was like an archeological dig, cleaning up and revealing something that hadn't been heard before. There's a wider stereo picture, a much more accurate presentation of the material.''

Once the Hendrix family was granted rights to the recordings, the first thing Al Hendrix, Jimi's father, and Hendrix-Wright did was ask Kramer and Hendrix archivist John McDermott to track down and recover the original master tapes. They were found spread all over the world, in New York, London, Los Angeles and Massachusetts.

``Comparing those tapes with what had been previously released was like lifting a curtain from in front of the speakers,'' Kramer said. ``The earlier tapes were a bit more difficult to get more out of. But with `Axis' into `Electric Ladyland' into `First Rays,' you really hear the difference. I mean, the beginning of `Voodoo Chile' is just menacing. It overwhelms you when the rhythm section kicks in. You really feel you're in the room with Jimi.''

Today, cable music channel VH1 will twice broadcast a well-regarded British documentary on the making of Hendrix's influential ``Electric Ladyland'' album.

As for ``First Rays,'' the CD release marks the first time the material has been presented in this particular running order.

``We have Jimi's notes - and these songs do belong together,'' Kramer said. ``Musically, the tracks fit and compliment one another.''

Kramer said the reason the ``First Rays'' material was spread out over three posthumous albums had to do with the need for the record company to cash in on the legendary Seattle-born guitarist's death.

``When he died, we were in the middle of doing this album, and we had to release something,'' Kramer said. ``The company said, `This is what you have to put out.' But, to be fair, it was representative of what Jimi was working on at the time.''

Not representative were such posthumous Reprise albums as ``Crash Landing'' (1975) and ``Midnight Lightnin' '' (1976), in which Hendrix curator Alan Douglas hired studio players to overdub new tracks atop late-period Hendrix originals.

During MCA's Hendrix reissue program of a few years ago, the company put together two compilation CDs, ``Blues,'' a collection of Hendrix blues tracks, and ``Woodstock,'' ostensibly containing the guitarist's entire performance at the 1969 festival.

``If these discs are actually authentically correct, we'll put them out again,'' Hendrix-Wright said from her Seattle office. ``But we are pulling them off the market and going back in the studio with Kramer so we can go through them with a fine-toothed comb. Our goal is that the fans get the very best the way Jimi intended it to be.''

The four restored albums - ``Are You Experienced,'' ``Axis: Bold as Love,'' ``Electric Ladyland'' and ``First Rays of the New Rising Sun'' - have also been issued on vinyl in a limited, numbered edition of 5,000 copies each.

``Is it about the money? Honest to God, it's not,'' Hendrix-Wright maintains. ``If it were about the money, I was offered millions and millions to sell. After all the work we put in, it would have been easier, I'll tell you.''

Will a generation raised on Nirvana and neurosis respond to Hendrix? Kramer believes there's no question.

``As far as great guitarists go, there have been noble attempts in the last 20 years, some brilliant guitar players like Stevie Ray Vaughan, who I think was the closest in terms of feel to Hendrix,'' Kramer said. ``But even he pales in comparison. Hendrix was the boss, the man, he's what everyone aspires to and every generation gets turned on to. Think about his compositions, lyrics, the fact that he played from the heart. He was the consummate guitar player, musician and all-around genius. You get visited maybe once in a lifetime with someone like that.''

THE FACTS

What: ``Classic Albums: Electric Ladyland.''

Channel: VH1.

When: 5 and 11 p.m. today.

Background: A British-made look at Jimi Hendrix's influential double album, ``Electric Ladyland'' (1968), includes interviews with engineer Eddie Kramer and musicians that played on the sessions.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--2) Jimi Hendrix's albums are being reissued under the supervision of the late guitarist's family.