[...] What's interesting is that Hendrix had a huge influence on young African Americans, making them realize they didn't have to necessarily play traditional R&B. That's a huge lasting legacy. A larger thing was the idea that an African American could own his own studio, [call] his own shots, and have some level of power in the industry—that was maybe even more influential than Jimi's music.
Two weeks after Woodstock, Jimi played a free concert at 133rd and Lenox in Harlem. It was put together by his friends, the Aleves, and it was literally on the back of a flatbed truck, primarily to an African-American crowd, and he was booed and upstaged by a bad R&B singer. Jimi came on with a white pair of pants, and people didn't like that. He was with a Puerto Rican girlfriend—people thought she was white and yelled at her. In today's world, we can't even begin to understand how hot things were with the racial divide in this country at that point. And Hendrix was at the forefront of that. No matter what he did, it was a controversy. He was always too white for the black audience and too black for the white audience. He really wanted to be played on black radio. I mean, Funkadelic wasn't necessarily played on black radio. [...]
| I humbly submit that you really ought to get with Michelangelo Matos' "Ain't No Tellin' ," a Jukebox Jury sit-down with "Roomful of Mirrors" and "Heavier than Heaven" author Charles R. Cross
posted in articles on October 5, 2005 12:39 AM | t (0)
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