I wish they’d had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would’ve been straightened out.

Hendrix imagines modern musical power—specifically the electrified guitar associated with volume, distortion, and cultural disruption—transplanted into the era of Southern cotton fields, an allusive shorthand for slavery and racial oppression. The remark suggests that amplified Black artistic expression (and the solidarity, confidence, and public attention it can generate) might have challenged the old order sooner or more forcefully—“straightened out” meaning confronted, exposed, or overturned injustices. It also reflects a broader 1960s belief in music as a tool of social change: sound as protest, visibility, and psychological liberation. The line’s irony (“good old days”) undercuts nostalgia for a past built on exploitation.