Luke Bryan scores first No. 1 album, Jimi Hendrix follows at No. 2

Rising country singer Luke Bryan has scored his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart with “Spring Break ... Here to Party,” a collection that sold nearly 150,000 copies during its first week.

A safe distance behind at No. 2 is Jimi Hendrix’s “People, Hell and Angels,” a posthumous collection of previously unreleased studio recordings the rock guitar hero made from 1968 to 1970. It sold 72,000 copies and becomes his highest charting album since “Electric Ladyland” went to No. 1 in 1968.

Bryan’s album is an interim offering to fans while the Leesburg, Ga., native is working on the formal follow-up to his 2011 album, “Tailgates and Tanlines,” the new CD compiling four digital-only EP releases he put out over the last four years, plus a couple of new tracks. The previous “Spring Break” EPs collectively have sold 145,000 copies. “Tailgates & Tanlines” peaked at No. 2 and sold 145,000 units during its first week out of the gate.

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The public’s appetitie for unreleased Hendrix material continues to be healthy, given “People, Hell and Angels” outsold 2010’s “Valleys of Neptune,” which also presented Hendrix studio recordings that had not surfaced in official form before. It sold 94,000 copies during its first week and peaked at No. 4.

Billboard notes that the last time a posthumously released album did as well as the new Hendrix album was in 2009, when Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” went to No. 1 in November of that year.

The only other new entry in the Top 20 is Boz Scaggs’ “Memphis,” which enters the chart at No. 17 on sales of nearly 18,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It’s Scaggs’ first album in five years.

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