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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American culture is one that is all encompassing. There is not one group of Americans who have not contributed to the present american culture. Americans, albeit slowly, come around to accepting others as diffenent cultures make their way into their lives.
When I heard people saying that Barack Obama was "not Black enough," I couldn't believe what I heard and who was saying it!.
My parents, now both deceased, marched, demonstrated, rode buses, ivested family vacations and even time from our family to champion the cause of equal rights for Blacks. My siblings and I continued by working in and with the Black community as teachers, counselors, and volunteers.
I feel this statement hurts many Americans. I am White and I can't help that. Blacks are Black and they can't help that. But the idea of people saying that someone is not "Black enough," is the most ignorant, disgusting, and racially inappropriate thing I have ever heard.
When I think of the sacrifices made by Blacks and Whites in the '50's, '60's, and '70's, and the lives that were lost, I can only ask if it was all done in vain.
scuse me while I kiss the sky! Thanks JR
As much as I marvel at Hendrix's guitar work, to me he was simply the best, most original composer of the late 20th century. He worked within a popular, folk form (rock/blues) but transended it with almost symphonic dimension. Not symphonic in the self-conciously contrived sense of Moody Blues or some of the Beatles, but in the purely musical sense of a Beethoven string quartet. I guess that's why I so love his studio albums more than is live work - where his astonishing musical vision, meticulously realized, is center stage, not his astonishing virtuosity. I guess it's the classical in me.
Anyone who isn't familiar with Jimi Hendrix's debut album simply doesn't know music. Forty years later, he still sets the standard for guitar work.
Love Hendricks & Marley.
Think Obama's the best candidate, black or white, 'cause he represents change, especially in the way we think.
I refuse to vote for anyone who's first name is Reverend -- black or white.
Neither Marley nor Hendrix claimed to be white like Obama.
Based on songs like "Get up, stand up, for your rights" and "Along the Watchtower" I do not think either man would support a war on Islam.
Flavor-Flav for President.
Oh, Jimi Hendrix, couldn't be any better. Funny thing, just like some other "black" singers, I never thought of him as black, or anything other than music until, much later, somebody pointed it out..there
I remember finding Sgt Pepper to be just a cute vaudeville record… all because I had listen to Are You EXP! Jimi established how guitarist would be jugged for ages. Jaco Pastorius did the same for the bass. Somehow all the important 60’s musicians unexpectedly died to pave the way for disco to take over and let whities get back to dancing to 4/4 military beats. Funk and psychedelia was way to dangerous for the powers that be… Luckily we still had Zappa, James Brown and a few other luminaries to pass on the torch of what good soul and intelligent music is supposed to be. Now we are stuck with American Idol and hip-hop, two degenerate forms that pleases no bound corporate America and the stay dumb & dumber culture we bake in. "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs... There’s also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson
George Clinton's group(s) play very rock like funk. So does Bootsy Collins. Parliament Funkadelic still does a lot of campus work and have been churning out the p funk since, well around 1967. Check out any of their live stuff.
John we have not made any gains in any of the realms of human equality. Apparently people must decide if Obama is black enough because they've have refused to acknowledge that he might just be white enough to win. Black , white, purple why are we still discussing this issue. Why because much like Hillary's ( we're making progress in Iraq) we have be lulled by our "lefties" who have told us we should be happy with the crumbles we are thrown by the establishment - the same establishment they 'rallied' in the 60's& 70's against, but which they are the 'leaders ' of now.
All those 'idealists' of the summer of love are the people sending our troops in to the "summer of the surge" in 140 degree heat.
Screw the Boomer generation- they have done nothing but played Judas horses to our societal progression, leading us right in to the same mental traps we thought we were running away from.
But I sure miss the great artists of that time and the illusion of a social conscious.
It's in my CD player in the car, as we speak and sounds just as good , if not better, than it did 40 years ago...
The issue of Obama's blackness is a non-issue. I would like to know who really cares about such a thing. The same people who care what Paris Hilton does, instead of what is happening in Iraq?
Saw Jimi Hendrix in concert twice. My friends and I loved his recorded music, but his concerts (that I attended) were a big letdown. Perhaps one can most kindly say that he was experimenting. The volume was so high that there was little perception of music, only a volume of noise so loud that there were no highs and lows, not much of anything other than the ability to hear his words.
Meaning no disrespect, but he was so high on drugs he couldn't make music.
I remember sitting at friend's house that August (I was 12). He had told me words to the effect of "You gotta listen to this LP my brother picked up". And I sat, slack jawed.
I know race is huge in this society, but to me, he was a fucking genius. Oh, yeah, and he was black. The contents of his soul were far more important, and made the lasting impact.
Have you ever seen a costume Hendrix used at the Hard Rock or the Hall of Fame in Cleveland?
He was about the size of a cub scout.
I've met Jagger, Clapton, Jon Anderson, Mellencamp, Ian Anderson, Pete Best - all the same size.
Yet they make you near faint with their persona.
Check out Jim Morrison in Paris.
The Swiss hippies got out of the way with their joints and Heinikens when my sister and me showed up in 1984 at the Pere whatever cemetary.
We took a few pictures with the bust on the tablet at that time.
It was ripped off and another one came along to replace it.
I'd have been more rapt at Hendrix grave.
But ya'know? Both those cats rocked.
And you should have seen the French, Swiss and German hippies around Jimbo's grave.
They held vigil like nothing else mattered.
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