MINNEAPOLIS — Prince fans are furious once again with his Estate, this time for misleading them about the recording of the new retrospective album, “Timeless.”

The Prince Estate claimed these 10 tracks were original recordings, spanning 1977 to 2016. However, trombonist Greg Boyer posted on Facebook that he added his part this year to “Calabama,” a heretofore hornless track from 2003. That revelation prompted Charles Spicer Jr., co-principal of Prince Legacy LLC, to apologize.

“I want to correct something I stated earlier,” Spicer posted Tuesday on X. “I stated that nothing had been edited or added to ‘Calabama.’ I’ve since confirmed that the released version includes additional horns, so that statement was not accurate, and I will take responsibility for what I stated.”

Fans are in an uproar over this deception.

“I am, as many of my fellow fans online, absolutely appalled and heartbroken to learn that contrary to the official communiqué, possibly all the tracks on ‘Timeless’ were altered in one way or another — and this, coupled with a total lack of transparency, is something that will not ever be tolerated by many of us,” said Kares Balogh, a Prince fan in Hungary who has started a petition this week calling for Spicer and Londell McMillan to step down from the Prince Estate.

Spicer did not return a call seeking comment.

“This is unforgivable,” Balogh said via email. “It is by now a widely shared notion amongst us fans about McMillan that he doesn’t truly respect Prince and his legacy, he lacks the skillset and creativity (or the motivation) to come up with a concept for the legacy, therefore he should be gone.”

Balogh’s petition has garnered more than 250 signatures.

“[Prince] created the music, we should be able to hear what was left for us and not tampered, altered, changed, mishandled,” a signer named Nichole commented on the petition on change.org. “Who would you paint over the Mona Lisa?!”

McMillan could not be reached for comment but late on Thursday, the management team posted on Prince’s Instagram:

“At the bridge of ‘Calabama,’ Prince’s vocal calls out twice for ‘horns,’ but the archived multitrack featured a synthesizer filling that space, which horn players (who played with Prince) later dubbed... This version was released on ‘Timeless.’”

‘Upset for right reasons’

Chris James, an engineer and producer who worked with Prince late in his career, was enlisted to produce “Timeless.”

He called different musicians, including Adrian Crutchfield and Michael B. Nelson, to recently add overdubs to old Prince recordings.

Trombonist Nelson declined the invitation. He did perform on “Bestest Friend,” a song on “Timeless,” in 2012, he confirmed to the Star Tribune.

Saxophonist Crutchfield said in an interview that he has been contacted by James and Spicer in the past couple of years to add to previous recordings.

He hasn’t listened to “Timeless” so he doesn’t know if his saxophone appears on “Calabama,” a 2003 song on which he is credited in the liner notes. He didn’t join Prince’s New Power Generation until 2012.

Crutchfield understands the concern in the Prince world.

“People are upset for the right reasons,” he said Thursday. “It’s one thing to add these boosts. But it’s another thing to be saying ‘it’s all original.’ You can’t say that.”

Donny English, a Baltimore lawyer who visits Minneapolis regularly, has been outspoken about the Estate on social media.

“They breached this trust with fans,” he said in an interview Thursday. “I don’t know how they recover.”

Saying fans are “the greatest promoters of Prince and want [the Prince Estate] to be successful,” English talked about the disappointment over the quality of “Timeless.”

“It’s the first [Prince] album I haven’t bought since 1978,” he said. “It’s not a reflection of his artistry. ‘Timeless’ is a debacle.”

He pointed out that this is one of a series of “debacles” since Prince Legacy LLC took over co-management of the Prince Estate with Primary Wave four years ago.

English pointed to the failure of the $26.5 million “Purple Rain” musical in Minneapolis that is being revamped by a new creative team for a spring opening on Broadway. He mentioned the Estate putting the kibosh on an Ezra Edelman-directed Netflix documentary and failing to deliver its own promised documentary.

The new album has been savaged by critics.

“There’s almost no dynamism or flair in ‘Timeless,’ a new collection of old outtakes that plays like it was slapped together in about 15 minutes,” wrote St. Paul-based Michaelangelo Matos in Rolling Stone. “It is simply flat, like a club soda left out in the sun.”

Writing that the album “isn’t even interesting as a collection of outtakes,” he concluded: “If somebody were to tell you who he was, and then played ‘Timeless’ for you as proof, you’d never listen to Prince — or that person — again.”

Andrea Swensson, who previously hosted the official Prince podcast tied to his posthumous releases, reviewed “Timeless” for the Current radio station.

“At the risk of sounding like one of those spoiled Prince fans — who the current management of his estate seems to resent — when the album ended,” she wrote, “I couldn’t help but think, ‘Is that all there is?’”

In his So It Goes column on Substack, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, longtime editor at allmusic.com, thought the unthinkable.

“With this compilation by committee, scrubbed of the eccentricities that gave even his half-hearted latter-day efforts personality, the Prince estate has achieved the impossible: They’ve made Prince seem boring.”

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