What happened to Jimi would have never happened to a white male in that era, Cross says. Jimi was run out of Seattle for being black. Hendrix continued to experience racism as a musician. When he toured the Chitlin Circuit, he couldnt go to the bathroom at gas stations in the South because they closed their doors to blacks. Even after he became a rock star, he was still racially profiled. Cross tells stories of Hendrix being mistaken for a bellhop in a swanky New York hotel, and of New York cabbies refusing to pick him up. Even the rapturous reception Hendrix received when he traveled to London in 1966 for his first big break was tinged with racism. Various biographies of Hendrix noted that many of the white musicians he encountered had little exposure to black people and had difficulty accepting Hendrix as a superior musician.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:19:46 +0000
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