Filed under: Profiles
It was forty years ago, September 18, that arguably the greatest electric guitarist to ever live, Jimi Hendrix, passed away. His legacy as an innovative genius is not in question. But when Hendrix archivist-author Steven Roby offered me the chance to co-write a biography of Jimi's developmental years, 1962-66, I was surprised what I learned. Becoming Jimi Hendrix, published by Da Capo/Perseus this month, gave me the opportunity to discover how Jimi actually changed the perception of race in popular music, although he lived through the humiliation of institutional racism in the 1960s.
Most fans of Jimi's music are generally unfamiliar with the crushing poverty and uncertainty of Jimi's life when he grew up in Seattle. His mother Lucille was sexually promiscuous, alcoholic and died at 33. Jimi's father Al barely made a living and Jimi was responsible for taking care of his younger brother, Leon. The boys sometimes woke up alone in their home with either no food or no electricity. Jimi and Leon barely survived, relying on the generous donations of neighbors and the parents of their friends.
But one thing Jimi did not have to contend with in Seattle was racism.
The Yesler Terrace Projects were among the most ethnically mixed in the late 50s in the US and the makeup of his Garfield High School class was a balance of white, black, Latino and Asian students. The strangely quiet, painfully shy "Jimmy" who always either carried a guitar or pretended to play one was the target of occasional derision from Garfield High bullies, but not because of his skin color.The anti-black experiences awaited him when he got out of the Army's 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. (Jimi joined after being caught for the second time as a passenger in a stolen car and forced by a Seattle court to choose either the Army or jail.) Jimi and his Army buddy Billy Cox, a bass player who saw Jimi's raw but profound talent, formed their band the King Kasuals. And-unknown to other Hendrix biographers-they purposely got arrested at an early civil rights demonstration in 1962 Nashville, attempting to integrate a lunch counter downtown.
My experience writing 'Becoming Jimi Hendrix' showed me that Jimi living on the razor's edge of starvation and racismtaught him focus and resilience. After he left Nashville in a last, desperate attempt to attain success, he was kept alive in New York City by two very different women, both of whom fell in love with him and his music.
Lithofayne Pridgon, the black devotee of the Apollo Theater, pushed Jimi to continue playing Harlem clubs with his scorching versions of R&B hits. White British teenage model Linda Keith left The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards for Jimi. She simultaneously urged Jimi to begin singing and merge his blues roots with the wildly theatrical guitar that became his trademark.
Jimi found his breakthrough in Greenwich Village, bridging R&B and a new form of rock, financially and emotionally aided by Keith and Pridgon. And when he took London by storm in early 1967, it was with two white band members. The Jimi Hendrix Experience included Noel Redding, a lead guitarist who took over bass and Mitch Mitchell, who was really a jazz drummer.The Who's Pete Townshend once wrote, "Jimi was bigger than acid." It is true. He transcended poverty. He was beyond mere drugs. And without making a political statement, but utilizing the quality of his art and the composition of his first group, he soared above the limitations that racial prejudice in 1960s America tried to place upon him.
Brad Schreiber is a Los Angeles journalist, screenwriter, producer, and author of five books. His latest, co-authored with Steve Roby, is Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius. Read his blog on Red Room.