User:Charlie Inks/Sandbox/Hendrix/'Work

--- === "The Black Elvis"? === "When I saw him, I knew immediately that he was the real thing..." Eric Clapton said, of the first time he met and jammed with Hendrix in 1966. "If I was black, I'd be this guy." Clapton's racial essentialism, "commodification of suffering," and ideas about blackness, black performers, and the blues  were not untypical of the time He and many other big name white artists of the time - Pete Townshend, the Rolling Stones, [find names of others reffed]  - appeared, at that time, to accept the idea that the blues were "black peoples' music." [b, w, and b] As Caucasian musicians, they were "'white negroes' struggling to find an identity." The irony was especially stark with Clapton given his very public racist statements about black people and immigration to Britain and their relationship to his perhaps unconscious idea idea of racial purity. More than one music journalist has noted Clapton's extensive "borrowings", one even going to far as to put an ironic twist on his moniker, Slowhand, suggesting it be changed to "Secondhand."[guardian ref.][et al]

It was musicologist Arnold Shaw who called Hendrix, "the Black Elvis" in his Dictionary of American Pop/Rock. [ref Race Consciousness 51] Judith Jackson Fossett in her book, Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century, sees a "clear irony" in this "or designating him a black version of a white man, who since the inception of his own career, had been labeled a white version of a black man.[51, Race Consciousness] [dissociation of heavy metal from blackness - several refs]

For some, as a multiracial man who used his sexuality and the mythologies around his race and gender, the perception was that it was something about Hendrix's racial/ethnic identity that formed the basis for his talent - and whatever it was, it was rooted in the "black" part of him. [multiple refs, inc b, w & b, et al] "

"Everybody and his brother in England still sort of think that spades [sic] have big dicks," Clapton elaborated on his perceptions of Hendrix to Rolling Stone in 1968. "And Jimi came over and exploited that to the limit, the fucking tee. Everybody fell for it. Shit. I fell for it."

"Way back when there were fewer clearer signs of being Black on the outside and white on the inside (the classic old stigma of being the 'Oreo' African-American) than declaring love for James Marshall Hendrix," Rebecca Walker writes. "Yet when it comes to evolving the Black identity, rock music's number one guitar god represents on many levels." In the Afro-American communities being ripped apart by social and civil unrest, the appearance on the scene of a black man with all the flair Hendrix had, flanked by two white men, went down like a proverbial lead zeppelin.

As Hendrix's fame grew, he would find himself in increasingly uncomfortable positions, perhaps not out of choice, but as other Afro-American artists of his time, because he could step away from the States - whereas the millions of Afro-Americans he hoped would embrace his music could not escape the civil unrest, riots, assassinations, police brutality, and features of every day life for black Americans. [quote/ref timing that Hendrix decided to transcend racial lines]

An Afro-American artist having a largely white audience was hardly new, even then, but it was the canvas on which Hendrix's genius was drawn that made the realities especially painful for him - and so easy to cash in on for his management. [mutliple refs]

"Hendrix wasn't black or white," Alvin Lee, who also performed at Woodstock said. "Hendrix was Hendrix." Yet perhaps it was the very power of race in Hendrix's world that inspired him to create music that would transcend racial and other boundaries. [ref. predecessors and BoG interview w/ Lenny Kravitz talking about this.]

Hendrix-Handel Connection: two musical geniuses, separated only by time
[add Beeb ref w/ clip, and look for public domain photo of Jimi @ Brooke Street]

After a year based in the US, Hendrix temporarily moved back to London and into the flat his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham had rented for them on Brook Street. The home links Hendrix to its former musical resident some 200 years earlier, George Frideric Handel. Handel lived in 25 Brook Street, long since merged in with number 23 to be one property. The attic where Hendrix lived between 1968-1969 is now the administrative office for the Handel House Museum, in Mayfair, West London.

"This is my first real home of my own," Hendrix told Etchingham. In addition to watching Coronation Street - Etchingham recalls Hendrix was a huge fan of Ena Sharples - the couple enjoyed milky tea - as opposed to harder intoxicants. Since there were no neighbours, Hendrix could set up and "play to his heart's content."

This is the only one of Hendrix's homes officially recognized as such in the world.

It also has a Blue Plaque commemorating Handel's 36-year residence in the building until his death in 1759. He composed Messiah (Handel) in the building. When Hendrix learned of the connection, he headed out to HMV and One Stop Records, and bought all the composers' recordings he could find.

Awards
Asterix in the table indicates the award was for The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

"We were off somewhere on the road, and I was brushing my teeth, thinking about it," Hendrix said of the Melody Maker Pop Musician of the Year Award (1967). "I started to cry because it meant so much, and I ended up washing my face three times to get off this mess of tears and toothpaste." The award was the first of many Hendrix won during his lifetime, but many more were given posthumously. In its March 15, 1968 issue, rock journalist Alfred G. Aronowitz writing in Life Magazine, described Hendrix as "the most spectacular electric guitarist in the world."

Given Hendrix's influence on other major musicians, incredibly, Hendrix did not receive a single Grammy award in his lifetime - not even a nomination. Posthumously, he and The Jimi Hendrix Experience received a collective total of seven Grammy awards (See table above) including one for Lifetime Achievement.

In addition to Rolling Stone, Guitar World and many other magazines and polls have voted Hendrix the best electric guitarist of all time.

Guitar World's readers voted six of Hendrix's solos among the top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time: "Purple Haze" (70), "The Star-Spangled Banner" (52), "Machine Gun" (32), "Little Wing" (18), "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" (11) and "All Along the Watchtower" (5).