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 noticed a message regarding the fact the Jimi's race, among whites who liked him was never an issue. It was kind of a side issue, it was like, "oh yeah, he's black..."
I remember a lot of black schoolmates who took particular pride in this but for all the white people i know it was no big deal. That's not to say rascism didn't exist. The real rascists didn't like rock music anyway so j
Jimi was just icing on the cake of their general socialogic displeasure with everything that was going down in the late sixties.
I remember white guys at a concert in West Palm Beach Fl. making fun of Mother's Finest when they took the stage before REO Speedwagon headlined (and MAN, did REO take a nose dive while Mother's Finest ROCKED!).
Living Colour in the late eighties saw the righting on the wall when black radio refused to play their tunes and the white stations would rather put on tunes screeched out by Axl Rose and his crew, heavy with misogynistic and borderline rascist rants.
Today we have incredibly the gifted Ben Harper and I've yet to hear him on the radio at all. "Both Sides of the Gun" is a killer album with some very poignant social observations and is like almost nothing else in the rock/folk/
And as far as Obama goes, well, is there really any other choice for our next president? Even when I don't agree with him he's still the biggest breath of fresh air I've seen in so long that it's amazing more potential leaders of his stripe aren't the front runners all the time. It has nothing to do with him being black. That whole "blackness" garbage is the media's dirge, not mine.
Anyone questioning his blackness has no clue that their being manipulated and should really refrain from ever voting at all.
I visited Electric Ladyland and heard Hendrix.
Barack Obama is no Jommy Hendrix. This is a transparent campaign ad, very slick, saying Hendrix was not black enough.
One thing Hendrix didn't do was say the Vietnam
war was right or that we made progress to help
his career.
Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
to get out of the draft.
Ummm well, I'm happy Obama is married to a Black woman ;)
DH Peligro - Dead Kennedys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nailbomb, etc...
Chaka Malik - Orange 9mm, Burn
Brandon Simpson - Shift
Shawn Brown - Dag Nasty, Swiz
Many other African Americans have been involved in punk and hardcore for years.
One of the incredibly great things about the music of Jimi Hendrix is that his sonic energies blow away the veils of earthly concerns. The power of his music is that it takes the listener so far beyond the mundane world that arguements about "black vs. white" or "rock vs. rap" finally appear as what they really are, trivial machinations of primitive minds who can't let go of their hate and fear. Listen to his music, I mean really experience it, and leave all that societal blather in the past where it belongs. Jimi, in his own mind, wasn't black or white, he was a child of god, a soul, marveling at the power and majesty of the universe. He channeled this vision into his music in a way that no other human being has ever done. Check out the DVD of Rainbow Bridge.
Stone Free!
Jimi wasn't black or white or brown or red.
He was purple.
I like that, micdago!
One of my favorite things about my own personal history is that I served in the same company in the same batallion in the 82d Airborne as Jimi Hendrix (I served in the 80's, JH during Viet Nam. A little-known fact about this great artist: he was a paratrooper before he found musical fame.
Stories circulated in our unit about how he would play guitar in the barracks. I don't know if that is true or not, but it certainly stands to reason.
This will blow your mind: Jerry Garcia, also a paratrooper in the 82d! There are (or were) handwriting in the concrete of the sidewalk in front of the barracks I was in. Some claimed they belonged to JH, although I never could make anything intelligible out of the writing. It made for a certain sense of pride in us enlistees.
See what airborne training does for you?
I wish I could understand why certain people, black, white, Creole, yellow, whatever, seem to think that "Black" is a racial monolith. The idea that "Blacks" must always have each others' backs for the same causes and pass a "black" test, is beyond my comprehension.
In the first place, this idea of a definition of "black" right away stereotypes people of African descent. And it tends to put those people of all economic levels into the same pigeonhole. Certainly those who came from Africa originally have a certain degree of common culture, but ther is no cultural monolith in Africa- just as in other parts of the world, each culture has its own ways & language.
I believe that those who want to define what is black and what is not, are racists. They are seeking to exclude those who don't fit that definition from a privileged circle. This is almost like the New Orleans' Creoles' "Paper bag test" - you aren't a Creole if your skin is darker than a paper bag.
African culture, in all its variations, should be honored as European culture, in all its variations, should be. And creative cross pollination, as Jimi did, should be enjoyed for what it produces, and not subject to some sort of pointy headed cultural litmus test.
Many black people in this country are defined by their color -- both from within and without. The original goal of segregation is still alive and well in America, but that is to be expected given that it has only been about 50 years since it was ended.
In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head when you point out that those who want to define (and constrain) the definition of "blackness" are racist -- realistically, how can you define what is "black" without being racist in doing so?
Its a fortunate reality that music crosses these man-made boundaries with ease. I can enjoy certain songs The Cure, Orbital, or Alex De Grassi just as much as I can enjoy certain songs by Ludacris, Earth Wind and Fire, or Alicia Keyes. I know quite a few white people who love hip hop more than I do, but I don't feel this makes them any more "black" than I am, nor am I any more "white" for preferring 311 to Bob Marley (which many would consider sacreligious, but that's just how it is).
For all this talk of division, its likewise good to know that there is something out there that can unify all of our respective cultures, if only we let go of our prejudices and keep open minds and ears.
Surely Jimi is 'mainstream' now. I don't remember him being mainstream before his death. He was so 'out there' I don't think the majority of people understood his music. Also popular at the time were the now elevator/grocery store standards of the Mamas and the Papas, The Lovin' Spoonful, and Simon and Garfunkle. We have come a long way since 1967... certainly not far enough, but "Obama Girl," and the Obama presidential candidacy would never have existed in 1967 when some states were still figuring out that blacks really did have a right to attend school (with national guard intervention).
Hooray! Chris Rock once said that if someone told Bryant Gumbel he was black he would have a heart attack.
Gumbel's response was something like why is it a crime for a black person to speak well?
I am white and I find it completely odd we question blackness based on how low you wear your pants or your use of ebonics. So you can be successful but if you don't have a gold tooth you are a sellout to your race? On the other side we have white kids talking and dressing as if they came straight out of their vision of the ghetto and we say they are acting black.
The same stereotype exists on both sides, and is glorified on TV, movies, music and video games. And isn't that stereotype the minority within the African American race?
Malcolm X explained it. It is not how well you speak. It is if you identify with the master.
Hendrix did not. Obama does.
Let's be real here -- Obama has done more for the black community than any other black person I know directly. Questioning his "blackness" is both dishonest and misleading given his political history.
"As the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama had his pick of top law firms. He chose Miner's Chicago civil rights firm, where he represented community organizers, discrimination victims and black voters trying to force a redrawing of city ward boundaries.
"It's a real do-good firm," says Fay Clayton, lead counsel for the National Organization for Women in a landmark lawsuit aimed at stopping abortion clinic violence. "Barack and that firm were a perfect fit. He wasn't going to make as much money there as he would at a LaSalle Street firm or in New York, but money was never Barack's first priority anyway."
Obama was part of a team of attorneys who represented the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois in 1995 for failing to implement a federal law designed to make it easier for the poor and others to register as voters.
A federal court ordered the state to implement the law.
And Obama was part of a team of lawyers representing black voters and aldermen that forced Chicago to redraw ward boundaries that the City Council drew up after the 1990 census. They said the boundaries were discriminatory.
After an appeals court ruled the map violated the federal Voting Rights Act, attorneys for both sides drew up a new set of ward boundaries.
Public records at the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission — which handles ethical questions concerning the state's lawyers — indicate there were no complaints against attorney Obama.
Obama's legal work fell off sharply in 1997 after his election to the Illinois Senate."
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Thanks John for the post. It brings back great memories. In 1968, when I was 6 years old, I bought by first albums from a teenage neighbor.
Four for a dollar. They were Jimi Hendrix's Are you Experienced, Bar-Kay's Soul Finger, Rolling Stone's Aftermath and Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
And thus began my lifelong love affair with music.
There has not been a period of music like 1967-1970 since. Prolific, diverse, great!
Black, White, Whatever! Great music touches the soul and stands the test of time.
racetoinfinity - ignore acanthus. You are absolutely correct.
staggerlee, even Dylan said that "Watchtower"was Hendrix' song
Hendrix raised the musical consciousness of the entire human species up a notch. That's a pretty neat trick. Like no one before or since
He would not have been able to do that if he was self-conscious about his race, or what he was 'supposed' to sound like
Hendrix is an apt metaphor for the vexing question of "racial authentici
Ridley's article is one of many that meditate on what constitutes racial authenticity, or perhaps, more importantly why it matters, or "what work does it do" for us--especially in the case of Obama. Let me suggest that those for whom this is an important issue listen to or read the interviews , posts, and articles of Princeton scholar Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the same topic--particularly on Bill Moyers Journal. Perhaps this question will lead us to another task: to examine if, why, and how race matters not just for Obama in this presidential race, but also for all the candidates and for us a voters.
First real rock album I ever scored was 'Are you Experience
Just don't get the bit about color or race though..Fo
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