Crosstown Traffic
Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
Charles Shaar Murray once asked B.B. King if he considered Jimi Hendrix to be a bluesman. 'I consider him to be a musician, a great, great musician.'
And Charles Shaar Murray has written the book that does justice to that accolade. It is more than a biography. The salient facts of Hendrix's life are summarized but the book's purpose is altogether of a higher order. Through a succession of wide-ranging, richly informed chapters the author describes Hendrix's very individual journey 'to the other side of town.' As Charles Shaar Murray says, Hendrix 'transgressed many boundaries; both arbitrary musical definitions separating blues and soul or jazz and rock, and also those fundamental divides between the archaic and the avant-garde, between individualist and collectivist philosophies, between blacks and whites, between America and Britain, between passive acquiescence and furious resistance, between lust for life and obsession with death.' 'Hendrix was Hendrix' it has been said. Charles Shaar Murray demonstrates the truth of this, compellingly elucidating the 'unique musical formulation' that was Hendrix's art.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twenty years after his death at age 27, Hendrix's stature as an Afro-American musical innovator continues to grow. But until now discussion of his contributions has been limited to either biographical accounts or purely technical analyses. British pop journalist Shaar Murray'scq multifaceted study rectifies this by attempting to unravel the cultural contradictions that the guitarist embodied as a black performer with a white audience, who excelled in a genre that was popularized by whites yet rooted in a black musical tradition. Hendrix's catholicity crossed barriers within black culture as well: his sonic explorations with feedback and distortion paralleled developments in the Free Jazz movement but he could suddenly shift into the deepest, most primitive Delta blues, a language pointedly neglected by his black contemporaries. Clearly, Hendrix's achievements are broad-based and central to his era, as well as a daunting challenge to those wanting to digest his work whole. Shaar Murray (coauthor of David Bowie ) augments solid musical scholarship with astute social and historical commentary, and meets the challenge admirably. Photos not seen by PW .
