pickett released "fire & water" in 1971. i'd just met philip & was trying to wean him off grand funk railroad. he showed great promise by being a die-hard bee-gees & led zeppelin fan. when we heard the pickett single, we both went ape-shit. cathecting to it & then presley's "burning love" the next year cemented our music friendship. i forgave him grand funk railroad.
rock music has such an odd history. defining moments, like otis at monterrey or cohen at isle of wight, happened totally out of context or expectation. weird moments of collaboration(the white guys at muscle shoals, sun records, the brill building )happened simply by happenstance & serendipity. what adds to the strangeness is that in retrospect it all seems to make sense.
this pic makes perfect sense to me. white folks sure tried to carry hendrix over into THEIR history of rock music but hendrix was firmly based in r&b & blues WAY before he got to the psychedelic stuff. there's a good chance his psychedelia was simply the result of his fast learning curve & his ability to form it all into a new but vaguely recognizable expression. in the pic, he seems to just be grooving on pickett's inimitable soul shouting. beyond that, i have to say i cathected to the pic when i first saw it in much the same way i did when i heard "fire & water" way back when. luckily, some things never change & we have pics to prove it.
1 comment:
Excellent points about Jimi - even his "pyschedelic" material was rooted in R&B and the Blues - and Coltrane's later avant garde period. In some ways, JH could even be thought of as rock's Coltrane. As you know though, before his death, his music was moving closer to his R&B roots - the Band of Gypsies band was significantly "blacker" than the Experience (and I'm not talking about the skin tones of the supporting musicians). I wonder if he might not have been a part of the 70's Funk movement had he lived.
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