Jimi Hendrix isn't an icon for me-- so consequently, I never had any preconceptions about "The House That Jimi Built." I've seen countless interviews with gobs of famous rock and roll musicians who put him on a pedestal and who speak of him in hushed worshipful tones. His lionization has always annoyed me. I am very leery of anyone that does that to us. It seems that whenever we express genius or beauty or greatness, eventually we are no longer human. We are turned into these exotic supernatural beings. We are magic negroes. Of course, The Magic Negro is a term that film critics use but trust me, s/he's everywhere. In music and in sports, we are so incapable of greatness that it has to be explained away into the ether when it happens. They still talk that way about Louis Armstrong. Exactly where did Michael Jordan get the nickname of "Air"? Robert Johnson met Ol' Slewfoot at the crossroads and bargained his soul away to sound like that. Didn't he? What we've worked hard and sacrificed to accomplish as artists and individuals of merit is so unbelievable, so impossible for mere (white) mortals to achieve that it can't be of this world. We got an wraithlike leg up somewhere down the line, that's what we did. We must be working some kind of elfin magic. We made a deal with the Devil. We must have. How else could it possibly have happened?

Clearly, the entertainment industry is so racist that they're incapable of seeing us/portraying us as human beings. And that feeds into all kinds of stereotypes that inform what the world thinks when they look at an African-American. We're either God-like or we're scum. We hardly ever get to be ourselves.

Why can't Jimi Hendrix be this brilliant black man that expressed himself with his guitar and his music as fully and as completely as he knew how? Why does he have to be a freak of nature? Why can't he be a genius? Like it's a fluke that he's great.

It certainly looks that way when they only let one of us in at a time.

When Vernon Reid (The Other One They Let In) asked me to sing on James "Blood" Ulmer's next blues record at Electric Ladyland, my first thought was, how apropos. Vernon Reid, the rock and roll guitar icon is producing a second blues CD for Blood, the inveterate jazz guitar icon in the ultimate guitar icon's hallowed recording studio-- and they're all black men. The first effort-- Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions-- was nominated for a Grammy last year. Vernon says he wants to tell the story of black people in 20^th century America through the blues idiom. He wants to record in famous studios as a kind of backdrop. He thinks that Blood is the perfect conduit for this idea. I think he's right. Electric Ladyland was definitely the perfect place to make the transition from small town southern country life to big city living. Besides, the place is haunted by the ghost of Jimi-- or so everyone says.

I showed up in the afternoon and left the concrete behind me as I was buzzed into a dimly lit foyer, carpeted and strangely silent. As I headed down the stairs, I came face to face with Jimi in the form of a picture/painting that glowed ominously under black lights with a sign that said "The House That Jimi Built." I stopped and took it in for a moment. I wondered what was on his mind when that image was taken, if he was hungry or impatient or upset. I remembered a story I'd read somewhere, about his father yelling at him on the phone and making him cry when Jimi called from London to tell him about his record deal. A grown man, bursting into tears like that, over his father's disapproval. I thought about all the photos of Jimi that I hardly ever saw: Jimi with his hair in an Afro. Jimi, wearing a colorful dashiki. Jimi with a beautiful black woman on each arm, smiling beatifically. His eyes seemed to follow me as I walked into what felt like an inner sanctum, replete with psychedelic murals of aliens, spaceships and UFOs flying along the curved walls.

How much of this house was still Jimi's? I was about to find out...