Forty Years Ago: The Most Significant Music Album Ever and Unfortunate Questions of Blackness
August, 1967 was the height of the summer of love. It was, too, the crowning month of an amazing year of music. In sixty-seven Pink Floyd released their first album. The Stones would release their 7th, 8th and 9th albums. The Monterey Pop Festival redefined live concerts. Plus there was a little album from the Beatles that was dropped to, oh, a bit of notice.
Also, the most significant music album ever was released in the US.
On August 23rd of that year America was introduced to the absolutely astounding debut record from 24-year-old Johnny Allen Hendrix. Jimi, to the world. At a time when both musicians as artist, as well as studio recording techniques were evolving at an accelerated pace, Hendrix possessed a singularity. As a self-taught guitarist -- left-handed, no less, on a flipped Fender Stratocaster as opposed to a true left-handed guitar -- he was an unparalleled virtuoso. Beyond his sheer ability, what made Hendrix Hendrix was the absolute fearlessness of a nuke scientist he owned when it came to mixing and blending styles. Rhythm and Blues, free Jazz, Soul, Rock... A cocktail he called the melding of Earth and Space -- Earth being the music itself, Space being a psychedelic approach to phrasing, playing and recording. Added to all that was Hendrix himself -- the hair, the clothes, the casual attitude toward life and the obsession for creating perfect music.
Hendrix's musical philosophy is put on raw display in an album that is track by track nearly flawless. On the US version (the tracks and track order are different on the UK version) the album opens with "Purple Haze," does a hard tumble into "Manic Depression," slips into the most famous rendition of Billy Robert's "Hey Joe" . . . Side Two begins with the soulful "Wind Cries Mary," then launches into what is the greatest straight ahead rock piece ever written: "Fire." The album closes with "Foxy Lady" and "Are You Experienced." In between and among all that is a tour de force by a man who was born to invert expectations of music and who played what how.
And that is the prime significance of Are You Experienced and Jimi Hendrix. There were, of course, no shortage of black music stars particularly at that time when Motown was in full flower. However there were few, if any, prominent black rock stars. To the contrary, the modus operandi of rock had been for white acts -- be it Pat Boone or Elvis, the Beatles, or the Stones -- to lift from black R&B, repurpose the music and sell it to white audiences. Hendrix flipped the script, took the rock format, re-infused it with Soul and Funk and gave a visage of color to Rock and Roll.
The influence of his artistry was powerful and pervasive. A direct line can be drawn from Hendrix to nearly ever guitar icon of the era: Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend and Eric Clapton (who would remain close friends with Jimi for the remainder of his life). It was Paul McCartney who got the Jimi Hendrix Experience -- Jimi's ultra-lean band with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell -- into the Monterey Pop Festival. At the festival it was Stones' Guitarist Brian Jones who introduced The Experience.
Unfortunately, no matter that Hendrix "stole back" black music and openly acknowledged and credited countless R&B legends as being of influence to him, like many blacks who live how they please Hendrix was often accused of not being "authentically" black; of being a sellout for his style of music, for not having black band mates and for dating white chicks. Basically he was given crap for being himself rather than the kind of black that others perceive and dictate black should be.
You'd think in forty years such puerile questions of "authentic" blackness would have been long answered, then consigned to the Potters field of racial identity. Take a look at what nonsense Barack Obama still has to put up with, and you see that sadly they have not.
Perhaps even someone as unique as Hendrix could not change racial politics for all time. We'll all have to be satisfied with his having changed music forever.
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I confess to being over forty and a devout Hendrix fan from his first album on.
One thing is often forgotten is that Hendrix disbanded the Experience in 1969 and formed Band of Gypsies with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, both black. This is reported to have caused great distress among the suits at his record company. Their target audience was white and they felt that this group was too black. Hendrix lost a lot of promotional support at this time in spite of his phenomenal talent.
oldswede
And don't forget the criticism that Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder got when they dared to record music outside of their defined genres - it may have been weird, but Stevie Wonder's 'Secret Life of Plants' has some absolutely _beautiful_ music!
Ray Charles loved all kinds of music, from country to classical.
The most talented musicians (Eric Clapton, Rolling Stones, Beatles [okay, so I are a Baby Boomer] want to explore new genres and not be pigeonholed.
I was just listening to Queen's Platinum set - and there is a butt-kicking combination of Wyclef Jean and Freddie Mercury on 'Another One Bites the Dust'!
I remember being amazed at seeing the Aerosmith/RunDMC video of "Walk This Way".
True genius cannot be contained.
I agree. But unfortunately, when it comes to music, neither can schmaltz: "Feelings -- nothing more than feelings ..."
Since when has Clapton or The Rolling Stones played anything outside "their" genre of blues?
Nothing better than Hendrix interpreting Dylan in All Along The Watchtower. One of the best songs ever.
It is an anthem to me of those years he played for us.
The GREATEST cover of all time. Jimi loved Dylan and made this song his own.
BetterDays105 (See profile | I'm a fan of BetterDays105)
The GREATEST cover of all time. Jimi loved Dylan and made this song his own.
That's utterly absurd -- beginning with the fact that you've not heard all the covers made by others of other's songs.
Buy "Axis: Bold as Love," and get over the idea that his cover of "All along the Watchtower" is somehow "awesome" as compared with his own material
You've not heard/seen his "Like a Rolling Stone" in Monterey Pop.
Excellent point. He does do Dylan's song magnificently. And the Trogs "Wild Thing."
I love how you brought the point about blackness around to the great conclusion you did. I've wondered the same damned thing since this whole idiocy of "Black enough" has been spewed by the press for the last several years.
As for Hendrix's album being the most important?
I don't know if I would go that far, but it definitly is in the top few. Sgt Pepper's is still about the most challenging album I think.
BUT I saw Hendrix Three and A Half times. The half being when he started a show in Hawaii at the Waikiki Shell and stopped after a few songs to apologize and say he just wasn't into it. No riots, no screaming at him. We could all sense it to begin with, so we said no problem and came back 2 days later when he blew the walls out. I saw him in his last U.S. Appearance. And I saw him on his first headline tour.
He is however THE GREATEST GUITAR PLAYER IN HISTORY. No getting around that. I can still remember the first time I heard him on the radio. He and Led Zepplin's first radio appearence are still fresh in my memory. I was simply blown away. Going to see him was a no brainer.
I remember as well the controversy first started, If I remember correctly, by the Black Panthers getting on him for not having enough black players in his band and not being "black enough". Jimi sort of caved to that as shown in Woodstock, but he really didn't want to be anything but a musician, black, white, green or purple, he just wanted to blow our minds.
He succeeded very well.
It is not a new question, especially for any black person who moves in certain circles.
Marian Anderson the opera singer from the 20's and 30's. I am sure there were people who questioned why she wasn't more like Billie Holiday. There were a few other black people from that era, and beyond, who also challenged stereotypes, and who had their identity questioned. Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson, Leotyne Price, etc.
I think the next time it happens the questioner should be grabbed by the throat (figuratively) and be laid into with a thorough public tongue lashing education on American history. Not to be forgotten in that lesson, and this happens today in 2007, addressing black children who pick on other black children for 'acting' white because they want to get good grades.
Like I said it is not a new question, just part of American history, that thread woven though it's fabric, that reminds some our citizens to fight with one another, rather than fight for themselves.
Thanks for the great post.
Funny, no one who appreciated music back then even gave a hoot about Jimi's skin color. Young people loved him for that.. They found he proved their point in several of so many ways that a new day had dawned, and the tired old way was being trashed, whether uptight old farts liked it or not. This was one of the reasons many of us were so crushed to lose him, in what we all know was truly an accident..
Jimi may have gotten high, but he was also an Army veteran who was more into being free, not into getting hung up on drugs, so losing him that way, taking a not well recognized downer so he could get some much needed rest, then getting sick and drowning on the body fluids, really hurt us too. The media largely said he "overdosed", but it wasn't that way, really, at all.
I'm a guitar player, and Stevie Ray Vaughan was a friend of mine before he ever got famous. We worshipped Jimi. One of my comforting thoughts when I'm missing Stevie is knowing he's probably finding a way to jam with the great man. One kick ass jam.
Oh, man- we just lost the Godfather of Soul, too. So much to remember and thank James Brown for, too. Soul Brother number one!! He was the greatest.
Thanks again for your post. Ya got me floatin'- I'm gonna listen to some good jams tonight!
wow! forty years ago. that means i'll have to admit i am over forty now. 'scuse me while i kiss the sky.
Our martyrs define our highest aspirations. The cost is too high. I would have preferred a pretty darn good Hendrix living to tour with pretty darn good Tony Bennett. I'd like to see Obama do his eight as a pretty darn good President.
Our martyrs define our highest aspirations. The cost is too high. I would have preferred a pretty darn good Hendrix living to tour with pretty darn good Tony Bennett. I'd like to see Obama do his eight as a pretty darn good President.
Hendrix was the first American who proved you could rock, play spacey, weird music, and still be a success. He paved the way for so many future players, mostly Brits, who successfully combined rock and other genres.
As for the Barack Obama segue, I disagree with the implication that Obama has to prove that he's black enough to win. Professor West, as influential a thinker as he is, doesn't hold sway over millions of African American voters. Neither does Sharpton or Jackson or Mfume, or any single person. Like most Americans, African Americans think for themselves and have the same needs, desires and goals as other Americans. For this upcoming election, nationalism has no place. We are all Americans now, we're at war, and we have a president who has driven the Constitution, this nation, and this population, into the ground to serve his devils.
Thanks to you (and lizawell) for keepin' it real and bringing it back to something that matters...
Along with Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hendrix could make a Stratocaster sing like only it can do. His guitar work could be soulful ("Wind Cries Mary") or just plain brutal ("Purple Haze"), but you always knew you were listening to a virtuoso.
Check out Joe Bonamassa if you want to hear a blues musician who still carries on in the tradition of SRV, Clapton, BB King ect.
Hendrix had a terrible time getting anywhere in the US he had to cross the big pond for that. Even after becoming famous he still had a lot of difficulty with discrimination.
200 years with the promise of freedom & justice for all - and we still have problems making that concept work.
Instead of a rock & roll history lesson from you all, lets deal with John Ridley's article, folks. And his article proves many blacks by "asking if somebody is 'black enough'" are showing there racist tendencies and are today's new Jim Crow. And every bit as racist as there white counterparts.
well, of course black folks can be as racist as anyone. but if you think this is "today's Jim Crow," I'm not sure you really get what Jim Crow was: systemic, legal, state oppression, not merely peer pressure regarding racial attitudes.
and why don't you climb off your high horse and read the article ridley linked to? as obama said: "That is not, I think, how most black voters are thinking." this nonsense about black authenticity is primarily generated by the media. i've seen this reporting about cornel west's comments over and over again in the media--as if he represents the black community or "many blacks" as you put it. what i haven't seen is reporting about how "many blacks" think this "black enough" talk is nonsense. west was speaking for himself, just as many white a** holes speak for themselves in publc all the time. when they do, other whites don't have to put it with being lumped into the same category as rush limbaugh and ann coulter, for example, just because they share the same color skin.
OK, here's somethign for you. The US is approximately 12% black, by the Census Bureau's count. So anything more than 12% black means Obama would have an excess of blackness for America.
Just crunchin' those numbers...
Really, it's an absurd question, and one that warrants ignoring form here on forward. Let's deal with the rock & roll history - in this case, it's far more interesting.
If you want to get down to it, whites make this an issue just as much as black people do -- if I recall correctly, whites called all black music "race music" at one time, and even more recently (back in the 80s) they wouldn't play Michael Jackson videos on MTV because they considered his music too "black" (yeah, ironic). CBS finally had to threaten to boycott them before they would accept his work on their channel.
And this article doesn't "prove" anything about blacks; its just an article written from one person's perspective.
In fact he was forced to play as the opening "act" to The Monkees for his first U.S. Tour.
Jimmy Paige almost got Mike Nesbitt's job as the
Monkees' lead guitar, but then Don Kirsherner told the network that the Monkees would not play their own instruments on the records, he was going to use studio musicians for the tracks.
Jimi Hendrix was "forced" to open for the Monkees?
I don't think so. No one forced Jimi to do anything. That is why Little Richard fired him.
Jimi was Jimi. The single greatest musical performance I ever saw was "Wild Thing", his opening song at the Monterey Pop Festival. I'll never forget the mouth's of the people in the audience hanging open. It was as if the music just flowed thru him.
Indeed, Seawolf77, the Experience's U.S. debut at Monterey was one of the great iconic performances in rock music history, along with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in '64 and Otis Redding at the same festival in '67.
However, minor point, Jimi CLOSED with "Wild Thing" -- hence setting the guitar on fire -- and it was the only selection shown in the famous D.A. Pennebaker film. In fact, Jimi opened his performance with "Killing Floor."
Jimi opened his Monterey Pop set with "Killing Floor." He CLOSED with "Wild Thing."
In his too-short career, Jimi Hendrix was a true monster player. B.B. King said he was the best. Ernie Isley learned it from Jimi when he played in the Isley Bros. band. Little Richard fired him! (Couldn't stand someone else getting attention.
Johnny Winter, who was no slouch - ask Muddy - was blown away by Hendrix on a noisy, memorable studio bootleg I bought back in the early 70's.
And I wonder if the oft-rumored collections of him jamming with a young John McLaughlin will ever come to light.
The guy could flat-out play. And he became, for his brief moments in the sun, the exemplar of what pop music could have been had it not resegregated itself, seemingly by mutual design, after his demise.
"And I wonder if the oft-rumored collections of him jamming with a young John McLaughlin will ever come to light."
No rumor. In 1976 I saw the vault full of tapes that were the product of Hendrix's habit of going into the studio in "AIR" mode, i.e. "always in record." I looked at the names and dates -- and the sheer enormity of the collection -- and just about fell over. Before his death he was jamming with a wide variety of some very heavy cats, including McLaughlin, and there is tape of it all. Some of it has been released..
The rumors that always killed me were that Jimi was supposed to play on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew album. Jimi had no real peers in the rock world, no band that really pushed him, and I can only wonder what playing with that band would have done to him.
He jams with him on the album, "Nine to the Universe".
Re jamming with McLaughlin, if memory serves me (and it think it does) he does a few tracks with him on the little-known album, "Nine to the Universe". Get it, 'cuz it is HOT.
It's still hard for black rock artists. You have Tina Turner, Prince, and the guy from Hootie, and?? I got nothing.
The riff from Purple Haze is still killer after forty years, even better than Satisfaction. And the album is still on my top five all time favorites.
Lenny Kravitz, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine/Au
I'm adding Michael Franti.
I'm black and I play guitar, but I'm more from the school of My Bloody Valentine and the Foo Fighters than hard rock. I like Soundgarden and Pantera as well, but I don't have any desire to play that kind of rock for a living. I like experimental sounds more than the same old riffs and chords. Lately though, I'm moving more towards mixing in electronics with guitar, like Thom Yorke from Radiohead or Damon Albarn from Blur.
Hip hop took over cause its a lot easier to write lyrics than it is to play an instrument, and it pays a lot more as well these days.
My theory on the matter is that black people create certain kinds of music and then move on right about the time white people start picking it up and making it popular. Jimi basically took blues to the next level right around the time black people were moving on to funk and soul music (James Brown, Funkadelic) and more mainstream stuff like the Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire.
So its not that black people don't like rock music, its just that they got tired of it and moved on right around the time the 60s rolled around.
Most significant band ever: X.
Most significant album ever: Iggy Pop-Zombie Birdhouse.
And that's top secret!
Lenny Kravitz is...ok. Sevendust sucks. Anything else?
Tom Morello isn't black, btw...
The 80's saw a decent little black rock resurgence. I hate name dropping but...
Fishbone (one of the greatest bands in history IMO)
24/7 Spyz
Bad Brains
Living Colour
The Bus Boys
... come to mind. Southern rock favorites Mothers Finest were huge where I come from. There's guitar god Tony MacAlpine as well, and Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott. Oh... Oh the frontman in Kings X (Douglas?) as well
I got in a discussion with some older guys from my block about music once, and the over all thought was that young blacks view Blues and its offspring as slave music.
Yeah. Blacks just hated Prince.
Doug Pinnick.
Everyone should own King's X's "Gretchen Goes To Nebraska" album!
Kings X = Doug Pinnick. Great Singer and lefty bass player
The opening riff to Voodoo Chile Slight Return literally sends chills down my spine.
"Well, I stand up next to a mountain
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand."
Jimi would be proud of SRV's tribute.
There was a band named Pacific Gas & Electric with a black lead singer that had a couple minor hits back in the 60s and early 70s
The guitarist, Glenn Schwartz, played on the same level of SRV -- he was actually invited to play Jimi's birthday party but Jimi passed away before it happened. (Glenn then went on to teach Joe Walsh everything he knows.)
The guy STILL plays at a small bar in Cleveland every Thursday, for free.
Glenn's got to be in his 60s and still jumps up on amps, plays with his teeth, and completely shreds his guitar every week.
Check out the American RnR fireworks:
http://www
best guitarist I've ever seen, hands down, and I'm one of those jaded music journalist types so the compliment doesn't come lightly
How about the opening to Voodoo Chile itself?:
..."Well the night I wuz born...
Lawd, I swear the moon turned a Fire-red.
The niiiiight I wuz born,
I swear the moon turned a fire-red.
Well ma poor mutha cried out Lawd,
the Gypsy wuz right.
An' I seen her fell down right daid."
...Talk about CHILLS. Dem's some BLUES, my friend.
THANK YEW, John Ridley. I am soooooo fed up with Black people being accused of failure to toe whatever American line is de riguere for Blacks in the 2001s.
I don't view Black Americans as separate from me. I don't accept their 'otherness'.
Am I wrong? Am I mad? Am I a fool?
Black Americans -- African Americans -- are my neighbors the way the Asians are. And the Latinos.
I'm not up for a war against them. I don't want to be viewed as if I were. I am proud to be associated with what Black Americans have contributed to my life. They are the bedrock of US culture.
You got that right. There would be NO American
music without the contribution of Blacks--
Louis, Lester Young, Billie, Oh my God!, Ellington and The Duke, Bird, Dizzy, Monk the list goes on and on. Talk about your melting pot -- so many beautiful standards by Jewish
song writers. We Americans should adore our
culture, and we should celebrate America's unique contribution -- JAZZ!
I guess Beyonce is starving then? You listed 3 black artists from the past 4 decades, ignoring all the Jacksons, Lionel Ritchie, James Brown, Diana Ross, Dion Warwick, Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Roberta Flack. Oh, and there's an entire genre of black dominated music called "rap" and "hip hop" that seems to be making a bit of money.
Blacks may have had a hard time 40 years ago making it in music, but there is no dearth of black artists in the entertainment industry, whether it is acting, sports or music.
I think the overall point was comparing blacks in more unconventional roles though. The black rock god persona is a huge rarity. Hendrix was certainly breaking that mold of "do lang, do lang" type Motown familiarity.
Barack does as well in so many ways. Just when you get used to nearly every black leader having "Rev." in front of their name, along comes Obama.
I welcome it whole heartedly. And kinda felt all along if a black man/woman were ever to be seen as a leader of people and not "black leader" they were gonna have to drop the religious nonsense.
I think the point was that Hendrix was not only a bridge, he was a true melding point as well as a pioneer. He forged roots blues with the Brit invasion influence, added his own modern attitude, and played some of the most influential modern music ever. Too bad it didn't continue to reflect society's direction. In the end, it doesn't matter what color Hendrix was to me, he was just brilliant.
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