Despite the displeasure and apocryphal menace of his white management, this latter-day period of his career is when Hendrix seems to have effected the most overt connection to his folk. Certainly, he always had a bevy of bronze beauties – including Electric Ladies Devon Wilson, Betty Davis, Emmaretta Marks, Jenni Dean, and Pat Hartley - surrounding him in private hours, as well as old Army buddies/musicians like Gypsy S&M’s Larry Lee and the Band of Gypsys’ bassist Billy Cox. Yet this was the time when Hendrix made a gesture more viscerally important to the race than Monterey Pop’s iconic immolation of his guitar was to white rock audiences: his fabled appearance playing in the street before le tout Harlem (preceded by a press conference at legendary Lenox Avenue soul food joint Sylvia’s). He also rescued the Band of Gypsys from the poorly regarded experiment of his multiracial big band, and jammed with Miles Davis, inspiring the previous primetime genre’s titan to produce Bitches Brew. As the live Band of Gypsys LP, recorded at San Francisco rock promoter Bill Graham’s Fillmore East, tended to be deemed inferior to Hendrix’s previously recorded work and the trio itself viewed as suspect with cries for a return to the Experience, it’s difficult now to speculate what the master was really about. Everyone has their theories, and will continue to formulate them till kingdom come, most like.

As a black rock critic, I take the jaundiced view that the predominantly white rock audiences and critics of that era were limited in their knowledge of the black experience and lacked the faculties to perceive the scope of Hendrix – the man and the art. So they devalued this all-black band in their midst, running down Band of Gypsy's aesthetic approaches as inscrutable to them as the Congolese rainforest, and reverting to the “Wild Man of Pop” and “Uncle Tom” (per even late San Francisco Chronicle critic Ralph Gleason, who was smarter than that) visions of their black guitar god. For they loved him and hated him at the same time, time has revealed – and they feared him in their love.

For Hendrix to front a black band with his level of power made a lie of many still dearly held '60s myths and troubled stereotypes (“scareotypes,” per Stew) they were invested in. Whatever the ultimate reception of Band of Gypsys in the canon, the recording is significant for the inclusion of the funky “Changes,” written by singing, powerhouse drummer Buddy Miles.

Aside from his relationship with the surviving Aleem twins, the presence of and collaboration with the late George Allen “Buddy” Miles (Sept. 5, 1947-Feb. 26, 2008) appears to have temporarily helped Hendrix shape and conceive a more earthbound Africana sound he could live with. Miles’ “Changes” was also recorded as “Them Changes” with his own Buddy Miles Express – one of the few bona fide black rock hits most black kids of my age and milieu ever heard in the pre-crossover years.

The BMEx’s debut, Expressway to Your Skull, was produced by Hendrix and anointed with his own liners. Miles’s funky drumming carried over to Band of Gypsys from touring with soul revues such as that of Stax superstar Wilson Pickett and his own rock tenure in blues-rock outfit Electric Flag (which debuted at Monterey Pop, too) gave a sort of timely swing to Hendrix’s sound that might well have carried his new direction as far as Soul Train in time, had Hendrix lived. Who knows?

Yet it’s ironic that Miles hailed from a place seemingly even devoid of funk than Hendrix’s hometown of Seattle: Omaha, Neb. That he managed to make rock blackfolks could dance to and cherish as their own decades later – including stunning covers of Neil Young’s “Down by the River” and the Allman Brothers Band’s “Dreams” – was a great feat, pointing to a pathway towards resolution of the constricting racial laws that continue to govern listening.

Yes, Miles was an adolescent prodigy in Omaha, honing his particular aesthetic blend well before he partnered with local hero Carlos Santana on a 1972 recording done live in an Hawaiian volcano – and became the subject of tall tales: The Uncensored History of Rolling Stone Magazine relates the anecdote of the magazine panning a Miles album, prompting him to storm the offices and threaten to beatdown Jann Wenner.

Angel dust aside, Miles’s brand of electric soul obviously had legs, carrying him through the ‘80s and ‘90s and what some might see as corporate rock filthy lucre derived from the hit California Raisins adverts. It also presaged the punk-funk stylings of Fishbone and their heirs Red Hot Chili Peppers and flamboyant skins aesthetic that makes Earl Greyhound’s later incarnation work. However, his friends and peers just recall Miles as a winning, gifted artist whose spirit will long outlast his felling by ill health.

One such friend is my Santa Barbara-based play-uncle Bobby Jones, a fellow rock ‘n’ soul musician and Omaha native, who remembers Buddy Miles – whom he called Sugar Dumplin -- thusly:

“It was about 1966, and I was off the road for minute, so I was in Omaha having an r&r and seeing my Mom for few weeks. When Garry Lewis and the Playboys played Omaha, (at a lovely old ballroom, Peony Park), I made a point to meet those guys because three of them were from Tulsa, and I knew they grew up with all of the guys that I knew from there.

"So when it was time to set up before their appearance, I walked up to Carl Radle and Tommy Tripplehorn and said, "[Tulsa Soundster] Larry Bell says 'Hello.'

"They looked at each other, and looked at me and said, 'So who are you?' Once I'd introduced myself, they jumped up and started laughin' and said, 'C'mon and meet [Jimmy] Karstein!' […]

“After their gig, I brought them across town to see a slammin’ organ trio, the Mike Lewis Soul Brothers, with Carolyn Rich singing and this other huge guy out front singing his ass off. He had a version of "Summertime" that even today, Billy Stewart's version couldn't even touch - or anybody else's for that matter. It was slow-slow-slow, so slow that there was almost no tempo at all. But man, by the middle of the second verse, that was your ass. And of course, by the end of that tune, you could just go home. It was incredible. (Lester Abrams on drums, King Richard on guitar, Andre Lewis on B3 - all three of them were solid ice. And Carolyn Rich is my heart, even today and forever.)

“Some years later, I reminded Tommy Tripplehorn of that evening, and I told him that was Buddy Miles singing that night and he couldn't believe it. But that's who it was.

I couldn't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that it was that same evening, after they'd done such a killer set, Buddy told me that he said, 'I'm getting the hell out of this town, and I'm gonna make it.' I smiled and told him that 'I'll be pulling for' - or I believe you will - words to that effect. I can't vouch for my own exact reply, but many, many times I've recalled his exact words to me.”

And make it he did – all the way to his brother Jimi Hendrix’s eternal great gig in the electric sky church now.