synopsis:

British pop journalist Shaar Murray's 'crosstown traffic' attempts to unravel the cultural contradictions that jimi hendrix 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.

on this book:

this book goes futher than just describing the facts of hendrix's life. it is an insightful and poignant book about the music of Jimi Hendrix and how rock culture and its influence defined an era.