OLD ROCK, NEW LIFE

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

WHEN A.B. QUINTANILLA talks about his sister Selena, the Tex-Mex music star murdered last March, allegedly by the former president of her fan club, his voice breaks with emotion. "I produced all of Selena's Latin stuff, all her successful stuff, and I'll never run into a vocalist like her ever again, or have a sister like her," he says. "That's what gives me an empty feeling--losing her first as a sister and then as a vocalist."

But we haven't lost her as a vocalist. On July 18, EMI Records will release Dreaming of You, a half English, half Spanish pop album that was completed after Selena's death. The CD will undoubtedly bring her music to a far wider audience than she ever had when she was alive. That should not be surprising. The music world has long been fascinated with performers cut off in their prime; death, the old saying goes, is frequently a good career move.

Today, advances in recording technology have given record producers an even greater ability to finish up the work of deceased performers, to remix, remaster and rejigger unfinished recordings with digital precision, and, via aggressive '90s marketing, to sell them to the public as authentic. In December, EMI will issue a Beatles boxed set with several new tunes, at least one featuring the voice of John Lennon, who died in 1980. Previously unreleased tracks of Lennon's singing are being combined with newly recorded vocals from the three surviving Beatles. On one cut of Selena's new album, her Spanish vocals have been lifted from a song released years earlier and mixed with new English-language vocals by the group Barrio Boyzz. Meanwhile, a posthumous "new" album by Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Soup (MCA), recently arrived in stores. It features Hendrix, the guitar genius who died in 1970, jamming with freshly recorded drumming by Bruce Gary, a former member of the defunct '70s band the Knack. Would he have been Jimi's first choice? Some fans say no, but the dead can't pick sidemen.

Posthumous albums can mean big money. The grunge band Nirvana sold more than 7 million copies of its Unplugged CD, released after the group's lead singer, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide last year. Selena's Spanish-language albums have sold 2.5 million copies since her death. Then there's the inevitable merchandising. The new retrospective album of reggae great Bob Marley, Natural Mystic, contains three full pages in the liner notes plugging "Bob Marley Official Merchandise," such as T shirts and knit caps. And continuing enthusiasm for Hendrix--he sold 3.5 million albums last year--has spawned a virtual cottage industry. A documentary about the guitarist by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker is currently in the works; an interactive Hendrix kiosk is on tour; and a $60 million Jimi Hendrix Museum is under construction in Seattle.

Posthumous popularity, however, can lead to conflicts, both financial and artistic. Hendrix's father Al is suing Jim's former lawyer, Leo Branton Jr., and Hendrix acquaintance Alan Douglas, claiming he was duped into selling them the rights to his son's music and image. Douglas, who has produced many of Hendrix's posthumously released records, contends it was his business sense and creative choices that made the Hendrix legacy so profitable in the first place. "It's been a long, difficult trip to revive Hendrix," he says. "But I'd say we have in fact rescued him, and he's selling more than he ever did."

Distinguishing between resurrection and ripoff can be a highly subjective matter. Performers are often fiercely possessive of their work and protective of their vision; such artists might be troubled at the thought of record-company executives altering their unfinished work after their death. In life Marvin Gaye fought Motown Records to release his classic, risk-taking soul album What's Going On just the way he wanted it. But in September, Motown will bring out a promising Gaye tribute CD on which other performers, from Madonna to Lisa Stansfield, offer renditions of his greatest songs, many drawn from that album. One track features Bono (of the Irish rock group U2), singing Save the Children as a haunting, elegiac duet with Gaye, whose vocals have been culled from an old recording.

This rather macabre technique has become familiar to listeners ever since Natalie Cole's Grammy-winning album Unforgettable, in which she sang a duet with her dead father, Nat King Cole. The technology, a record company executive speculates, may one day allow individual notes sung by dead musicians to be reassembled into entirely new songs. Tasteful? True to the artist's vision? It is difficult to say.

Of course, there is no way of knowing exactly how a musician would have wanted his or her unfinished work presented or polished after death. For all we know, the performer in life might have moved along an unexpected path, changed directions in a manner unimaginable to fans. After all, it is that sort of artistic unpredictability that often makes them interesting in life.

Much depends on the credibility and good faith of the people doing the resurrecting. In the case of the new Selena CD, her brother worked with Nancy Brennan, a vice president at EMI, in picking every song on the album and in selecting the producers who helped to complete them. "[Selena's] family members were her best friends," says Brennan. "Your legacy is much more protected when your family is in charge of it."

Selena, just 23 when she died, was the most popular singer of Tejano music, a style of Latin pop that mixes pretty, Mariah Carey-like melodies with Lawrence Welk-style polka beats, often spiced with throbbing dance grooves and pumping accordions. Although she began working on her first English CD several years ago, she finished only a few songs before her death. The new album is a mix of new and old material. Several of the Spanish tracks--such as Bidi Bidi Bom Bom--are remixed versions of songs that were already hits in the Latin market. Some of the best new tracks--the spirited mariachi song Tu Solo Tu and a soulfully giddy duet with David Byrne called God's Child--were recorded for, then dropped from, the sound track for the movie Don Juan DeMarco. Says Brennan: "I bet the producers of that movie regret that now."

Dreaming of You contains some of Selena's finest, most enjoyable work; it's a commendable but sorrowful accomplishment, since it comes after her passing. Her Tejano music was sometimes clumsy; but the English pop songs on this new album are sweet, pure and clear, and on the mariachi numbers, Selena shows off a voice that is sexy, strong and gracefully maturing. Says her brother Quintanilla: "I'm very pleased with the way the album came out. But to be honest, it's not a quarter of what the album might have been if she had been able to finish it." How good could the CD have been? As with all postmortem music, it is a question without an answer.

--With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles

With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles