SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

WINTER, 2014

VOLUME ONE NUMBER ONE

MILES DAVIS

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

ANTHONY BRAXTON
November 1-7

CECIL TAYLOR
November 8-14

STEVIE WONDER
November 15-21

JIMI HENDRIX
November 22-28

GERI ALLEN
November 29-December 5

HERBIE HANCOCK
December 6-12

SONNY ROLLINS
December 13-19

JANELLE MONAE
December 20-26

GARY CLARK, JR.
December 27-January 2

NINA SIMONE
January 3-January 9

ORNETTE COLEMAN
January 10-January 16

WAYNE SHORTER
January 17-23

*[Special bonus feature: A celebration of the centennial year of musician, composer, orchestra leader, and philosopher SUN RA, 1914-1993]
January 24-30

JIMI HENDRIX

(b. November 27, 1942--d. September 18, 1970)

LYRIC # 5
(For Jimi Hendrix)

A million fingers ago
you set the air on fire
and tho you 'fret like mad'
the hollow wooden ship you sail
rides the eternal crest of sound
(in thousands of spiraling waves flying...)

Brother. Safecracker.
You are the submerged marauder
attacking the edge of light
splitting sunclouds
with dancing digital decoders
(stripped layers of interior lovesongs gone)
into the hazy realm of smoke

Those bittersweet mythologies
wrapped in working thumbs and
bleeding
fingernails...

Poem by Kofi Natambu
from the book INTERVALS
Post Aesthetic Press, 1983

THE MUSIC OF JIMI HENDRIX: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, ESSAYS AND ARTICLES PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. HENDRIX

http://www.jimihendrix.com/us/home

http://volume.revues.org/3384?lang=en

The Jimi Hendrix Companion: Three Decades of Commentary by Chris Potash

New York: Schirmer Books; Simon and Schuster Macmillan. 1996, ISBN: 0028646096

Few icons of the 20th century have carved and retain as distinct and influential a presence on the cultural landscape as James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix. As a creative performance musician, he not only made incalculable contributions to defining the voice and presence of the electric guitar in popular styles, but he also defined new possibilities for blues, rock, jazz, soul and folk music during a meteoric rise to prominence at the end of the 1960s. Hendrix is, as Franco Fabbri would indicate, “a musical event” that impacts not only his own time, but resonates forward into the present day. This event is presented here as refracted through the prism of personal experience, reportage and the scrutiny of the academy.

The Jimi Hendrix Companion profiles the life and career of this seminal musician through original reviews of Hendrix's music from the British and American press, provides insights into his guitar techniques and recording styles, and invites the reader to construct their own 4-dimensional vision through interviews and scholarly exploration of the Jimi Hendrix phenomenon. Drawing on the work of well-known writers, including Jon Pareles, John Rockwell, Dave Marsh, P.J. O’Rourke, and Lester Bangs, this text provides a perfect introduction to Hendrix, his music, and his times.

3The 57 pieces collected here are arranged in seven evenly-weighted chapters. As in Henry James’ evocation of the House of Fiction, each writer layers their view through press reports, two sections of criticism, periodical journalism, a breath-taking section of academic scholarship and a touching final and forward-looking memorial in order to build a panoptic view of their subject.

Potash seeks to "…document and illuminate the phenomenon of Jimi Hendrix as it was and is being played out", and to "…create a charged pastiche of more and less complex verbal constellations that conducts feeling - much like Hendrix’s approach to recording, layering sounds to build a heavy composition - as well as simply to collect some essential writings about Jimi into one volume". Evoked via inspiring, intriguing and multi-layered texts, Hendrix defies reduction to a cipher; as one layer or perspective is revealed, further dimensions unfold.

The strength of the collection is its breadth of scope: each section compliments and contextualises the next, allowing not only Jimi Hendrix but his circumstances to be illustrated from multiple viewpoints. Each chapter opens with a quotation from Jimi himself and, where appropriate, pieces are followed by a bibliography. The whole is supported by a comprehensive index. There is, however, a near-total absence of illustrations or diagrams - the exception to this being the graphic scores that accompany Sheila Whiteley’s brilliant and evocative essay. The text would benefit from imagery as intimate and intricate as some of the pen-portraits and explorations contained here.

From Dawn James’ tentative flirting with Jimi, to frankly baffling evocations of what might-have-been from Lester Bangs and Tom Gogola, the collection is challenging and informative in equal measure. The limitations of language to describe music are evidenced in Paul Suave’s 1968 work, whilst the heady excitement and regal power of Jimi’s presence is sensitively illustrated by Albert Goldman.

Jimi Hendrix emerges from this room full of mirrors remarkably fully-formed, and it is a tribute to Potash’s ability as an editor - and to the skill of the contributing writers - that their subject remains mercurially enigmatic yet engaging throughout. Ultimately, the companion is exactly that: a text which guides and informs the reader and drives them back to the greatest source of primary communion and reference; the music itself. Although out of print, the breadth and finesse of this 1996 volume demonstrates the necessity for an updated second edition that takes into account the influence of the Internet and 21st-century modalities on the Jimi Hendrix legacy. Recent years have seen the release of newly edited films, freshly discovered audio material and the marketing of innumerable digital tools, instruments, musical effects processors and clothing branded with the Hendrix name. As the Companion indicates, Jimi Hendrix is placed in human experience not as a time-locked artefact - but as a nexus of possibilities, and as an axis from which to embark on our own artistic and critical endeavours.

This text is recommended for any scholar or fan with even a passing interest in this remarkable musician and his incalculably influential music. In addition, those researching post-modern notions of intertextuality, identity and the continuing inter-disciplinary and mythological effect of seminal performers by way of posthumous performance and semiological influence will find much to consider and digest within these pages. As with Jimi’s music, this particular collection stands up to repeated reading and extended consultation over time.

References

Bibliographical reference

Thomas Attah, « Chris Potash, The Jimi Hendrix Companion: Three Decades of Commentary », Volume !, 9 : 2 | 2012, 160-161.

Electronic reference

Thomas Attah, « Chris Potash, The Jimi Hendrix Companion: Three Decades of Commentary », Volume ! [Online], 9 : 2 | 2012, Online since 15 May 2015, connection on 21 November 2014.

URL : http://volume.revues.org/3384

About the author

Thomas Attah

Tom Attah is a Ph.D. student at the University of Salford. His thesis examines the effects of technological mediation in the Blues. As a guitarist and singer, Tom performs solo, with an acoustic duo and as part of an electric band. Tom's solo acoustic work includes his own original Blues compositions and has lead to performances at major music festivals around Europe, including the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, the Great British Rhythm & Blues Festival, Blues Autour Du Zinc and multiple national and local radio appearances. Tom is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Salford, and his blues advocacy includes workshops, seminars, lectures and recitals delivered at secondary school and community level. Tom's writing is regularly featured in Blues In Britain magazine. At present Tom is preparing his original conference papers and book reviews for publication in several international peer-reviewed journals.

https://rockhall.com/inductees/the-jimi-hendrix-experience/bio/

Jimi Hendrix Experience
Biography
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum

Jimi Hendrix was arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. He expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. His boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll. Hendrix helped usher in the age of psychedelia with his 1967 debut, Are You Experienced?, and the impact of his brief but meteoric career on popular music continues to be felt.

More than any other musician, Jimi Hendrix realized the fullest range of sound that could be obtained from an amplified instrument. Many musical currents came together in his playing. Free jazz, Delta blues, acid rock, R&B, soul, hardcore funk, and the songwriting of Bob Dylan and the Beatles all figured as influences. Yet the songs and sounds generated by Hendrix were original, otherworldly and virtually indescribable. In essence, Hendrix channeled the music of the cosmos, anchoring it to the earthy beat of rock and roll.

Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27th, 1942, in Seattle. His mother was 17-year-old Lucille Jeter. His father, James “Al” Hendrix, was in the U.S. Army, stationed in Camp Rucker, Alabama, at the time of his son’s birth. Once out of the service, Al would take primary responsibility for raising him. “My dad was very strict and taught me that I must respect my elders always,” Hendrix said of his childhood. “I couldn’t speak unless I was spoken to first by grownups, so I’ve always been very quiet.” Al also formally changed his son’s name to James Marshall Hendrix at age four.

Al Hendrix father bought his son his first guitar, a secondhand acoustic that cost five dollars, when he was 16. “Jimi told me about it and I said, ‘Okay,’ and gave him the money,” Al recalled. “He strummed away on that, working away all the time, any spare time he had.” A year later, he bought Jimi an electric guitar, a Supro Ozark 1560 S, and he joined the Rocking Kings. “My first gig with them was at a National Guard armory,” Hendrix recalled. “We earned like 35 cents apiece. We used to play stuff by people like the Coasters.” Hendrix, a left-hander, played a right-handed guitar without restringing it, a unique stylistic quirk.

In the summer of 1961, Hendrix enlisted in the Army. Stationed at Fort Ord, California, he wrote home: “The Army’s not too bad, so far. . . . All, I mean, all my hair’s cut off and I have to shave. . . .” That fall, he was shipped Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he trained to become a paratrooper. On the side he formed a band, the King Kasuals, with a fellow soldier, bassist Billy Cox. Hendrix’s personality made it difficult for him to adapt to the regimented life of a soldier, and in 1962 he was given an honorable discharge.

Following his abortive stint in the Army, Hendrix hit the road with a succession of club bands and as a backup musician for such rhythm & blues artists as Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Jackie Wilson, the Impressions, Ike and Tina Turner, and Sam Cooke. In 1965, Hendrix went to New York with Little Richard’s band and over the next several months, he’d play with a variety of musicians, including saxophonist King Curtis. He also took a job with a club band called Curtis Knight and the Squires. Recordings with that group would later be issued on Capitol Records after he achieved fame with the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

In 1966, Hendrix formed a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. It included 15-year-old Randy Wolfe on guitar. Renamed Randy California by Hendrix, this budding prodigy would later form the group Spirit back home in Los Angeles. Hendrix wrangled a residency lasting several months at Café Wha? in Greenwich Village. In 1966, former Animals bassist Chas Chandler caught Jimmy James and the Blue Flames at Café Wha? Chandler quickly became Hendrix’s manager and convinced him to relocate to London. There, Hendrix absorbed the nascent British psychedelic movement, altered the spelling of his first name to “Jimi,” and formed a trio with two British musicians, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. The Jimi Hendrix Experience held its first rehearsal on October 6, 1966 – coincidentally, the very day that possession of LSD became illegal in the U.S. The following week, the Experience undertook a four-day French tour, supporting French pop singer Johnny Hallyday.

Hendrix was an instant sensation in Britain, where he was befriended by such admiring colleagues as Eric Clapton (then playing with Cream). The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first three singles – “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary” – all made the British Top ten, with “Purple Haze” peaking at #3. Their May 1967 debut album, Are You Experienced?, became one of the defining releases of the psychedelic movement, reaching #2 in the U.K. and remaining on the British charts for eight months. Released three months later in the U.S. with a slightly amended track lineup, Are You Experienced? proved hugely influential, peaking at #5 and remaining on Billboard’s album chart for two years. The very title of the album posed a challenge – not unlike that issued on the West Coast by Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankers (“Can YOU Pass the Acid Test?) - implicitly acknowledging the notion of enlightenment through psychedelic drugs, with which Hendrix was experimenting.

After conquering Britain, Hendrix found fame in his homeland as a result of a memorable performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival – in Monterey, California – on June 18, 1967. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s virtuosity and mastery of the emerging psychedelic style, delivered with flair and theatricality by an exotically attired Hendrix, made him one of the breakout artists of the festival (along with Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and the Who). The Jimi Hendrix Experience played only eight songs at Monterey, but the force of their performance would quickly propel him to fame in this country – thanks, in large part, to his inclusion in D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop film documentary, which included Hendrix’s incendiary finale. After a highly sexualized performance of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” Hendrix set fire to his Fender Stratocaster. “It was like a sacrifice,” Hendrix later explained. “You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar. I’d just finished painting it that day and was really into it.”

Remarkably, the Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded its three landmark albums - Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland - in a two-year period. Wheras Are You Experienced? was an album of discreet songs, Axis: Bold As Love was constructed as an album-length experience, and it carried Hendrix’s fascination with alien intelligence and otherworldly sounds even further. Both albums were recorded in England, with Chas Chandler producing. For Electric Ladyland, the Jimi Hendrix Experience did most of their work in New York at the Record Plant, with Hendrix largely self-producing. Engineer Eddie Kramer, however, was again involved, as he had been for the first two albums.

Electric Ladyland upped the ante yet again, being conceived as a double album with longer tracks divided between earthy blues (such as the nearly 15-minute “Voodoo Chile”) and psychedelic fantasias (such as 1983…A Merman I Should Turn to Be”). Hendrix’s rhythm & blues roots surfaced in “Crosstown Traffic,” which reached Number 52 on the pop chart. One of the highlights of Electric Ladyland was Hendrix’s electric reworking of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” (from John Wesley Harding). “Before I came to England, I was digging a lot of the things Bob Dylan was doing,” Hendrix said. “He is giving me inspiration.” Hendrix’s dynamic new arrangement brought to the fore the portents of apolcalypse in Dylan’s lyrics, and Dylan himself would ultimately perform it much like Hendrix did.

In 1968, Smash Hits, a greatest-hits compendium, was released in Britain; a year later, it appeared in America with an altered track lineup. Meanwhile, a long-simmering schism between Redding and Hendrix, further fueled by Hendrix’s desire to explore other musical areas, led to the disbanding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience after a final performance at the Denver Pop Festival in June 1969. With the Experience defunct, Hendrix debuted a short-lived experimental band called Gypsy Sun & Rainbows at the Woodstock music festival. The group included his old army buddy, Billy Cox, on bass; the Experience’s Mitch Mitchell on drums; Larry Lee on rhythm guitar; and Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez on percussion. He took the stage on 7:30 a.m. on August 18th, 1969. It was the festival’s aftermath, and Hendrix performed a heavily jammed-out set to those stragglers who hadn’t yet left the muddy, garbage-filled site. Hendrix’s freedback-drenched version of “The Star Spangled Banner” was a highlight of the two-hour Woodstock film documentary, as Hendrix evoked the pyrotechnic sounds of war in the jungles of Vietnam as he interpreted the National Anthem for a young and increasingly war-weary generation.

Hendrix’s performances at Monterey and Woodstock have become part of rock and roll legend. What is often overlooked is how hard he worked – or how hard he was worked by his management company – as a touring artist. In the spring of 1968, for instance, the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed 63 shows in 66 days. Hendrix commenced work on a projected double album and performed with a new trio, Band of Gypsys – which included bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles - at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve 1969 and New Year’s Day 1970. The shows were recorded and culled for relase on Capitol Records as Band of Gypsys, thereby resolving an old contractual debt to the label (dating back to pre-Experience days). Band of Gypsys was the last Hendrix-approved album released in his lifetime.

Under extreme pressure from a combination of hears of nonstop work, sudden celebrity, creative demands and drug-taking, Hendrix was beginning to show signs of exhaustion by 1970. It was evident in his relatively lackluster performance at the Isle of Wight Festival that August. He performed his last concert in Germany on September 6. On September 18, he died from suffocation, having inhaled vomit due to barbiturate intoxication. He was 27 years old.

In the wake of Hendrix’s death, a flood of posthumous albums - everything from old jams from his days as an R&B journeyman to live recordings from his 1967-1970 prime to previously unreleased or unfinished studio work - hit the market. There have been an estimated 100 of them, including The Cry of Love (1971), Rainbow Bridge (1971), War Heroes (1972) and Crash Landing (1975). The best attempt to reconstruct First Rays of the New Rising Sun, and the album Hendrix was working on at the time of his death, came decades later. Assembled from tapes, notes, interviews and song lists by Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer and Hendrix historian John McDermott, it was released on compact disc in 1997.

First Rays of the New Rising Sun appeared on MCA Records in cooperation with Experience Hendrix, the company that was formed by his father, Al Hendrix, and half-sister, Janie Hendrix, after control of his catalog was granted to them in an out-of-court settlement. The 1997 appearance of that disc coincided with remasters of the original studio albums – Are You Experiencd?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland – prepared for CD using the original two-track master tapes. There have subsequently been numerous reissues and newly issued archival works by Hendrix, including concert recordings, by Experience Hendrix.

- See more at: https://rockhall.com/inductees/the-jimi-hendrix-experience/bio/#sthash.2yzlBRfj.dpuf

Jimi Hendrix's Greatest Hits - The Best Of Jimi Hendrix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1DPKbrANF4

Jimi Hendrix - Live At The LA Forum 1970:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVN9-Q2pjBE&list=PLq6rYir1crFnR4dajvIdwZtEtbkI6u0FH&index=2

POET AND HISTORIAN DAVID HENDERSON INTERVIEWED ABOUT HIS BOOK ON HENDRIX "S'CUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY" on CACE INTERNATIONAL TV:

David Henderson wrote the best selling Jimi Hendrix biography, S'CUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY. His was the 2nd show in the CACE INTL TV Jimi Hendrix Series and was filmed before the Hendrix family gained control of his estate. David has written an up-dated version that deals in details the last days of Jimi in London and what happened.
We plan to interview Mr. Henderson again.

CACE INT'L TV, a 30 minute show, airs online weekly on Wednesday @ www.BRICartsmedia.org (MEDIA / Brooklyn Public Network, channel 1) , on BPN Cable in Brooklyn,NY, on Verizon Fios in all of NYC @ 1:30 pm & 9:30 pm (New York time). As cultural historians, CACE INT'L TV showcases the art , music and culture of our international creative artists, continuing to bring the best to our international audience.
"Together", the theme music for the CACE INT'L TV Show, is composed and performed specifically for the show by Harry Whitaker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTNDtiIyQMs

David Henderson,author of Jimi Hendrix biography Part 2 (Hendrix Series part 22) on CACE INT'L TV:

This is part two of the Jan. 25, 2014 interview with David Henderson the best selling author of the book; 'Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky; Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child. Here he talks about people in Jimi's life and his final day on the planet. This show will air in the spring of 2014.

CACE INT'L TV, a 30 minute show, airs online weekly on Wednesday @ www.BRICartsmedia.org (MEDIA / Brooklyn Public Network, channel 1) , on BPN 1 Cable in Brooklyn,NY, on Verizon Fios in all of NYC @ 1:30 pm & 9:30 pm (New York time). As cultural historians, CACE INT'L TV showcases the art , music and culture of our international creative artists, continuing to bring the best to our international audience.
"Together", the theme music for the CACE INT'L TV Show, is composed and performed specifically for the show by Harry Whitaker.

For more information: WWW.CACEINTERNATIONAL.COM

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/CACEINT'LTVSHOW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BO_Y358W5I

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2012/09/jimi-hendrix-drifting.html

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Jimi Hendrix Drifting

When Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, over forty years ago this month, I was in high school. It was a time when a number of key pop figures – all in their twenties – never got to see thirty. A year earlier, it was Brian Jones of The Stones, and Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison would soon follow Hendrix to the grave. Besides sobering you with a taste of death's final victory (right at that moment when you saw nothing but life straight ahead), you also realized that a person's genius, their gifts, even their youth, could do nothing to protect them.

Hendrix's death hit me harder than the others because I came to truly love the paradoxical nature of his music. (In a song that fundamentally came out of the blues like "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," he combined a harpsichord with a wah-wah electric guitar and a chorale section to create a powerfully intense emotional soundscape.) Although Jimi Hendrix was always fully recognized as a virtuoso and theatrical guitar stylist, he was rarely discussed in any great depth in terms of his gifts as a poet, singer and music innovator. (For those insights, it's best to read David Henderson's 1978 biography 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky which still hasn't been equalled.) But John Morthland, writing in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, captured key aspects of those many gifts that Henderson elaborates on. "As a guitarist, Hendrix quite simply redefined the instrument, in the same way that Cecil Taylor redefined the piano or John Coltrane the tenor sax," he wrote. "As a songwriter, Hendrix was capable of startling, mystical imagery as well as the down-to-earth sexual allusions of the bluesman." Those sexual allusions though also led to a particular kind of theatricality that the artist himself was growing tired of indulging. Joni Mitchell, who met Hendrix in Ottawa towards the end of his life, recognized immediately his frustration about the public and critical perception of him based on those sexual allusions. "He made his reputation by setting his guitar on fire, but that eventually became repugnant to him," Mitchell told The Guardian in 1970. "'I can't stand to do that anymore,' he said, 'but they've come to expect it. I'd like to just stand still'."

The last album he was preparing when he died, which first came out posthumously in 1971 as The Cry of Love, features plenty of songs where he is indeed 'standing still.' The material on it draws essentially from tracks he had been recording between March 1968 and August 1970. While he was then preparing a visionary double-album work to be titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun (which would eventually come out on CD in 1997 with additional tracks not included on The Cry of Love), his death and various contractual issues prevented the release at that time. John McDermott in his liner notes for the First Rays CD, acknowledging the unfinished state of the album, clearly outlines Hendrix's intent. "With full faith in his music, Hendrix was primed to introduce his audience to a new frontier, where the triumphs of his past would merge freely with his unique blending of rock with rhythm and blues." As McDermott states, the work from these sessions were split up among three albums: The Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge (1971) and War Heroes (1972). Of the three albums, The Cry of Love is the more sustained and satisfying work.

Although The Cry of Love remains a somewhat uneven record, the working out of his own personal isolation resonates in many of its best tracks like the ripping "Ezy Ryder," the lilting "Angel," the gospel fury of "In From the Storm," his Dylanesque "My Friend," and his tip of the hat to Skip James in the country blues demo of "Belly Button Window." "Ezy Ryder," which was recorded in December 1969, was obviously inspired by the hit counter-culture film (Easy Rider) from earlier that summer. But the song, the only one on the record recorded by Hendrix's funk trio known as the Band of Gypsys (including Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums), strips away the underlying masochism and paranoia that inspired the picture's theme (and made it such a hit) to arrive at something far more poignant. "There goes ezy ryder," Hendrix cries out as Buddy Miles attacks his drum kit as if firing heavy nails into it with a machine gun as he rides wave after wave of Billy Cox's pulsing bass line runs. "Riding down the highway of desire/He says the free wind takes him higher/Searchin' for his Heaven above/But he's dyin' to be loved." While "Ezy Ryder" has all the full-out propulsion of earlier songs like "Manic Depression," "Spanish Castle Magic," or "Crosstown Traffic," the recognition of death isn't brought on by resignation, or the failure of values (as in Peter Fonda's fatalistic proclamation of "We blew it" in the movie), but the desire instead to transcend earthly chains. Martin Luther King would also proclaim recognition of the Promised Land in his final speech a year earlier, a vision that allowed him to face the death he saw coming, so Jimi Hendrix also reaches for the sky in "Ezy Ryder." "He's gonna be livin' so magic," Hendrix sings. "Today is forever so he claims/He's talkin' about dyin' it's so tragic baby/But don't worry about it today/We've got freedom comin' our way."

"Angel" with its more blatant recognition of death's final victory ("Angel came down from Heaven yesterday/She stayed with me just long enough to rescue me") became the biggest hit from the album, especially when Rod Stewart covered it in 1972. But the track, as lovely as it is, is too obvious in its meaning, the metaphors too easy to read: the pop song as obit. The tune that left me wondering if he indeed saw it all coming was the exquisite "Drifting." He'd written beautiful ballads before like "May This Be Love" and "Little Wing," but "Drifting" was essentially a spiritual, a contemporary interpretation of one that offered a poignant reckoning of the fact that he knew he was moving on. "Drifting on a sea of forgotten tear-drops," he sings with a delicate lilt, a soft crooning that anchors the watery texture of the various guitar melodies keeping him afloat, "On a lifeboat sailing for your love." No doubt the wistful qualities within this spiritual were borne out of its tonal resemblance to Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready." In the song's last moments, where his guitar loops sound like seagulls taking flight over the water, they echo the cries of liberation those same loops once called out for in the conclusion of "If Six Was Nine." But to a different effect. In "Drifting," you can practically see him waving goodbye as he flies away. Liberated.

John Morthland concludes his piece on Jimi Hendrix contemplating not only his continuing influence, but also the endless albums and repackages of both finished and unfinished tunes. "[A]s the years go by, it also becomes increasingly apparent that Hendrix created a branch on the pop tree that nobody else has ventured too far out on. None has actually extended the directions he pursued, but perhaps that is because he took them, in his painfully short time on earth, as far as they could go." It also may be true that he took those innovations with him to the Promised Land.

– Kevin Courrier is a writer/broadcaster, film critic, teacher and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa). His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism. With John Corcelli, Courrier is currently working on another radio documentary for CBC Radio's Inside the Music called The Other Me: The Avant-Garde Music of Paul McCartney.

Jimi Hendrix was arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. He expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. His boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll. Hendrix helped usher in the age of psychedelia with his 1967 debut, Are You Experienced?, and the impact of his brief but meteoric career on popular music continues to be felt.
More than any other musician, Jimi Hendrix realized the fullest range of sound that could be obtained from an amplified instrument. Many musical currents came together in his playing. Free jazz, Delta blues, acid rock, R&B, soul, hardcore funk, and the songwriting of Bob Dylan and the Beatles all figured as influences. Yet the songs and sounds generated by Hendrix were original, otherworldly and virtually indescribable. In essence, Hendrix channeled the music of the cosmos, anchoring it to the earthy beat of rock and roll.
Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27th, 1942, in Seattle. His mother was 17-year-old Lucille Jeter. His father, James “Al” Hendrix, was in the U.S. Army, stationed in Camp Rucker, Alabama, at the time of his son’s birth. Once out of the service, Al would take primary responsibility for raising him. “My dad was very strict and taught me that I must respect my elders always,” Hendrix said of his childhood. “I couldn’t speak unless I was spoken to first by grownups, so I’ve always been very quiet.” Al also formally changed his son’s name to James Marshall Hendrix at age four.
Al Hendrix father bought his son his first guitar, a secondhand acoustic that cost five dollars, when he was 16. “Jimi told me about it and I said, ‘Okay,’ and gave him the money,” Al recalled. “He strummed away on that, working away all the time, any spare time he had.” A year later, he bought Jimi an electric guitar, a Supro Ozark 1560 S, and he joined the Rocking Kings. “My first gig with them was at a National Guard armory,” Hendrix recalled. “We earned like 35 cents apiece. We used to play stuff by people like the Coasters.” Hendrix, a left-hander, played a right-handed guitar without restringing it, a unique stylistic quirk.
In the summer of 1961, Hendrix enlisted in the Army. Stationed at Fort Ord, California, he wrote home: “The Army’s not too bad, so far. . . . All, I mean, all my hair’s cut off and I have to shave. . . .” That fall, he was shipped Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he trained to become a paratrooper. On the side he formed a band, the King Kasuals, with a fellow soldier, bassist Billy Cox. Hendrix’s personality made it difficult for him to adapt to the regimented life of a soldier, and in 1962 he was given an honorable discharge.
Following his abortive stint in the Army, Hendrix hit the road with a succession of club bands and as a backup musician for such rhythm & blues artists as Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Jackie Wilson, the Impressions, Ike and Tina Turner, and Sam Cooke. In 1965, Hendrix went to New York with Little Richard’s band and over the next several months, he’d play with a variety of musicians, including saxophonist King Curtis. He also took a job with a club band called Curtis Knight and the Squires. Recordings with that group would later be issued on Capitol Records after he achieved fame with the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
In 1966, Hendrix formed a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. It included 15-year-old Randy Wolfe on guitar. Renamed Randy California by Hendrix, this budding prodigy would later form the group Spirit back home in Los Angeles. Hendrix wrangled a residency lasting several months at Café Wha? in Greenwich Village. In 1966, former Animals bassist Chas Chandler caught Jimmy James and the Blue Flames at Café Wha? Chandler quickly became Hendrix’s manager and convinced him to relocate to London. There, Hendrix absorbed the nascent British psychedelic movement, altered the spelling of his first name to “Jimi,” and formed a trio with two British musicians, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. The Jimi Hendrix Experience held its first rehearsal on October 6, 1966 – coincidentally, the very day that possession of LSD became illegal in the U.S. The following week, the Experience undertook a four-day French tour, supporting French pop singer Johnny Hallyday.
Hendrix was an instant sensation in Britain, where he was befriended by such admiring colleagues as Eric Clapton (then playing with Cream). The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first three singles – “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary” – all made the British Top ten, with “Purple Haze” peaking at #3. Their May 1967 debut album, Are You Experienced?, became one of the defining releases of the psychedelic movement, reaching #2 in the U.K. and remaining on the British charts for eight months. Released three months later in the U.S. with a slightly amended track lineup, Are You Experienced? proved hugely influential, peaking at #5 and remaining on Billboard’s album chart for two years. The very title of the album posed a challenge – not unlike that issued on the West Coast by Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankers (“Can YOU Pass the Acid Test?) - implicitly acknowledging the notion of enlightenment through psychedelic drugs, with which Hendrix was experimenting.
After conquering Britain, Hendrix found fame in his homeland as a result of a memorable performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival – in Monterey, California – on June 18, 1967. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s virtuosity and mastery of the emerging psychedelic style, delivered with flair and theatricality by an exotically attired Hendrix, made him one of the breakout artists of the festival (along with Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and the Who). The Jimi Hendrix Experience played only eight songs at Monterey, but the force of their performance would quickly propel him to fame in this country – thanks, in large part, to his inclusion in D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop film documentary, which included Hendrix’s incendiary finale. After a highly sexualized performance of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” Hendrix set fire to his Fender Stratocaster. “It was like a sacrifice,” Hendrix later explained. “You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar. I’d just finished painting it that day and was really into it.”
Remarkably, the Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded its three landmark albums - Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland - in a two-year period. Wheras Are You Experienced? was an album of discreet songs, Axis: Bold As Love was constructed as an album-length experience, and it carried Hendrix’s fascination with alien intelligence and otherworldly sounds even further. Both albums were recorded in England, with Chas Chandler producing. For Electric Ladyland, the Jimi Hendrix Experience did most of their work in New York at the Record Plant, with Hendrix largely self-producing. Engineer Eddie Kramer, however, was again involved, as he had been for the first two albums.
Electric Ladyland upped the ante yet again, being conceived as a double album with longer tracks divided between earthy blues (such as the nearly 15-minute “Voodoo Chile”) and psychedelic fantasias (such as 1983…A Merman I Should Turn to Be”). Hendrix’s rhythm & blues roots surfaced in “Crosstown Traffic,” which reached Number 52 on the pop chart. One of the highlights of Electric Ladyland was Hendrix’s electric reworking of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” (from John Wesley Harding). “Before I came to England, I was digging a lot of the things Bob Dylan was doing,” Hendrix said. “He is giving me inspiration.” Hendrix’s dynamic new arrangement brought to the fore the portents of apolcalypse in Dylan’s lyrics, and Dylan himself would ultimately perform it much like Hendrix did.
In 1968, Smash Hits, a greatest-hits compendium, was released in Britain; a year later, it appeared in America with an altered track lineup. Meanwhile, a long-simmering schism between Redding and Hendrix, further fueled by Hendrix’s desire to explore other musical areas, led to the disbanding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience after a final performance at the Denver Pop Festival in June 1969. With the Experience defunct, Hendrix debuted a short-lived experimental band called Gypsy Sun & Rainbows at the Woodstock music festival. The group included his old army buddy, Billy Cox, on bass; the Experience’s Mitch Mitchell on drums; Larry Lee on rhythm guitar; and Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez on percussion. He took the stage on 7:30 a.m. on August 18th, 1969. It was the festival’s aftermath, and Hendrix performed a heavily jammed-out set to those stragglers who hadn’t yet left the muddy, garbage-filled site. Hendrix’s freedback-drenched version of “The Star Spangled Banner” was a highlight of the two-hour Woodstock film documentary, as Hendrix evoked the pyrotechnic sounds of war in the jungles of Vietnam as he interpreted the National Anthem for a young and increasingly war-weary generation.
Hendrix’s performances at Monterey and Woodstock have become part of rock and roll legend. What is often overlooked is how hard he worked – or how hard he was worked by his management company – as a touring artist. In the spring of 1968, for instance, the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed 63 shows in 66 days. Hendrix commenced work on a projected double album and performed with a new trio, Band of Gypsys – which included bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles - at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve 1969 and New Year’s Day 1970. The shows were recorded and culled for relase on Capitol Records as Band of Gypsys, thereby resolving an old contractual debt to the label (dating back to pre-Experience days). Band of Gypsys was the last Hendrix-approved album released in his lifetime.
Under extreme pressure from a combination of hears of nonstop work, sudden celebrity, creative demands and drug-taking, Hendrix was beginning to show signs of exhaustion by 1970. It was evident in his relatively lackluster performance at the Isle of Wight Festival that August. He performed his last concert in Germany on September 6. On September 18, he died from suffocation, having inhaled vomit due to barbiturate intoxication. He was 27 years old.
In the wake of Hendrix’s death, a flood of posthumous albums - everything from old jams from his days as an R&B journeyman to live recordings from his 1967-1970 prime to previously unreleased or unfinished studio work - hit the market. There have been an estimated 100 of them, including The Cry of Love (1971), Rainbow Bridge (1971), War Heroes (1972) and Crash Landing (1975). The best attempt to reconstruct First Rays of the New Rising Sun, and the album Hendrix was working on at the time of his death, came decades later. Assembled from tapes, notes, interviews and song lists by Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer and Hendrix historian John McDermott, it was released on compact disc in 1997.
First Rays of the New Rising Sun appeared on MCA Records in cooperation with Experience Hendrix, the company that was formed by his father, Al Hendrix, and half-sister, Janie Hendrix, after control of his catalog was granted to them in an out-of-court settlement. The 1997 appearance of that disc coincided with remasters of the original studio albums – Are You Experiencd?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland – prepared for CD using the original two-track master tapes. There have subsequently been numerous reissues and newly issued archival works by Hendrix, including concert recordings, by Experience Hendrix.
- See more at: https://rockhall.com/inductees/the-jimi-hendrix-experience/bio/#sthash.DYylS3x3.dpuf

Jimi Hendrix -- "Voodoo Child", Live 1969

An incredible live performance of Voodoo Child (Slight Return) by Jimmy and his band in Stockholm, 1969:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9irsg1vBmq0

LYRICS
by Jimi Hendrix

"I stand up next to a mountain . . .
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I stand up next to a mountain
I chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island
Might even raise a little sand

'Cause I'm a voodoo child
Voodoo child

I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time
I'll give it right back one of these days
I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time
I'll give it right back one of these days

If I'll see you no more in this world
I'll meet ya on the next one
Don't be late
Don't be late

Well, I'm a voodoo child
Lord knows I'm a voodoo child, baby
Voodoo Child, Voodoo child, Voodoo child”

A SAMPLING OF THE MUSIC OF JIMI HENDRIX (1942-1970) ONE OF THE GREATEST MUSICIANS AND FINEST ARTISTS OF THE 20th CENTURY:

JIMI HENDRIX 12 STRING BLUES: Mr. Jimi Hendrix with his 12 string acoustic guitar. Filmed in widescreen. A very clear image of Jimi and his guitar work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAWtuxhdUDE

The Jimi Hendrix Experience -Electric Ladyland [Full Album]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRg9h-XCHKs

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (Audio)

Music video by The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing All Along The Watchtower. (C) 2009 Experience Hendrix L.L.C., under exclusive license to Sony Music Entertainment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY

Jimi Hendrix Documentary, Superbly Put Together
Published on Apr 9, 2013

Excellent documentary about the life of Jimi Hendrix featuring live performances and interviews with Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, Little Richard, Al Hendrix and Dick Cavett. Featuring Purple Haze, Wild Thing, Like A Rolling Stone, Voodoo Chile, Hey Joe and Johnny B. Goode. Originally broadcast by the BBC during Rock Around The Clock in the late 70's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZkjnB9OYxk

JIMI HENDRIX'S BAND OF GYPSYS PLAY "MACHINE GUN" (Composition by Jimi Hendrix).
Live performance in NYC
January 1, 1970

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR4MEEC5RSU

Music video by The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing "All Along The Watchtower". (C) 2009 Experience Hendrix L.L.C., under exclusive license to Sony Music Entertainment:

Jimi Hendrix plays "All Along The Watchtower" by Bob Dylan-- Bobby D said Hendrix's version of his song was by far the best he ever heard...

Jimi Hendrix plays The Star Spangled Banner [American Anthem] Live at Woodstock, August 19, 1969:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjzZh6-h9fM

Jimi Hendrix - Best Guitar Solo Ever (1970):

Audio January 1, 1970 Band of Gypsys "Stone Free" Billy Cox on Bass, Buddy Miles on Drums.

Video synched in is from 1969 Newport Jazz Festival:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6meMBtTgKQ

Jimi Hendrix - "Hey Joe" (1967)

(The Jimi Hendrix Experience:

Jimi Hendrix--Guitar

Noel Redding--Bass

Mitch Mitchell--Drums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpkDdLZGg30

Jimi Hendrix live in Stockholm, Sweden 1969; rare colour video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co0Mc5CrMcc

Part 1) Jimi Hendrix Experience Live on television!
Mitch Mitchell, Drums, Billy Cox, Bass, Juma Sultan, Congas Compositions "Izabella" and "Machine Gun" by Jimi Hendrix (Dick Cavett Show 1969)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRg9h-XCHKs&list=RDFNsPt5T4aZE&index=3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsPt5T4aZE&index=1&list=RDFNsPt5T4aZE

PART 2: Interview of Jimi Hendrix on Dick Cavett show, September 9, 1969

His life on the guitar from first note to its end was less than 12 years. His career as a top billed soloist lasted less than five years.

Certainly no one who ever played in the rock genre could hold a candle to him.

Hendrix studied Blues avidly and his heroes were B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker, and Muddy Waters.

His favorite musician? Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

- See more at: http://www.jazzonthetube.com/videos/jimi-hendrix/red-house-.html#sthash.0OaWgQBc.dpuf

Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing (Original music & Video)

Lyric:

Well she's walking through the clouds
With a circus mind that's running round
Butterflies and zebras And moonbeams and fairy tales
That's all she ever thinks about Riding with the wind.
When I'm sad, she comes to me With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free
It's alright she says it's alright Take anything you want from me,anything....
Fly on little wing, Yeah yeah, yeah, little wing

Released 1 December 1967 (UK)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03yPUlBE5OU

Jimi Hendrix Red House--Live performance in Stockholm Sweden in 1969:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koxpJ7nhz2Y

http://www.bassistbillycox.com/biography2.html

Left to Right: Billy Cox, Jimi Hendrix, and
Buddy Miles. Band of Gypsys

Along with fellow friend and star in his own right, drummer Buddy Miles, the friendship of Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox would forever be etched in music history with the Band of Gypsys. The Band of Gypsys was a power trio that fused blues and hard rock. Rolling Stone Magazine in its 20th anniversary issue in 1987 cited the Band of Gypsys concert as one of the ten greatest concerts of all time.

Band of Gypsys recording cover, 1969

"Freedom" by Jimi Hendrix (1970):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56vSBu2oW2w

Jimi Hendrix and Band of Gypsys with Billy Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. Composition: "Hear My Train A-comin'" by Jimi Hendrix. Recorded live in concert in Maui, Hawaii 1970:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gTLsPPN104&list=PL94gOvpr5yt2VO9n6fJSJEAtJWqCpG5Ay&index=7

"Freedom" (Behind the Scenes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjOViXpa7Ns

"Dolly Dagger" (Behind the Scenes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiz7u1aNinY

Jimi Hendrix interviewed by Nancy Carter in Los Angeles, California on June 15, 1969:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGtNzZSAs84

Final Interview with Jimi Hendrix:
September 11, 1970:
London, England:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0cJhQ1200

http://carrollbryant.blogspot.com/2012/11/legends-jimi-hendrix.html

Sunday, November 4, 2012
Legends: Jimi Hendrix
by Carroll Bryant

“Excuse me, while I kiss the sky ….”

Jimi was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27th, 1942. He died James Marshall Hendrix on September 18th, 1970. The world knew him as Jimi Hendrix.

He was an American musician and singer-songwriter. He is widely considered to be the greatest electric guitarist in music history, and one of the most influential musicians of his era despite his mainstream exposure being limited to a meager four years. He achieved fame in the United States following his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival after initial success in Europe with his group The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Later, he headlined the iconic 1969 Woodstock Festival and the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. He favored raw overdriven amplifiers with high gain and treble and was instrumental in developing the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback.

Hendrix helped to popularize use of the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock, which he often used to deliver tonal exaggerations in his solos, particularly with high bends, complex guitar playing, and use of legato. Hendrix was a pioneer in experimentation with stereophonic phasing effects in rock music recordings. He was influenced by electric blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and many more. Hendrix even began dressing and wearing a moustache like Little Richard when he performed and recorded in his band from March 1, 1964, through to the spring of 1965.

Hendrix won several prestigious rock music awards during his lifetime, and many more posthumously. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the US Rock and Roll hall of Fame in 1992. The award's biography noted that Jimi Hendrix “expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. His boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll.” Hendrix was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. An English Heritage blue plaque was erected to identify his former residence on Brook Street, London, in September 1997. A star for Hendrix on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated on November 14, 1991 at 6627 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2005, his debut US album, “Are You Experienced”, was one of 50 recordings added that year to the United States National Recording registry to be preserved for all time in the Library of Congress as part of the nation's audio legacy. Rolling Stone named Hendrix the top guitarist on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all-time in 2003.

Hendrix was of mixed African American, European, and Cherokee ancestry. His paternal great-great grandmother was a Cherokee from Georgia. Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, his paternal grandfather, a wealthy white grain dealer from Urbana Ohio, was of Irish, German, and English descent. Bertran P. Ross Hendrix and Zenora Moore, who may have worked in the grain mill owned by Bertram, and had been a slave, had a son out of wedlock, Al Hendrix (Jimi Hendrix's father) and three other children. Mulatto son of slaves Preston Jeter, Hendrix's maternal grandfather, left Richmond, Virginia in his early manhood after he witnessed a man being lynched. He began a new life in Seattle and, in 1915, he married Clarice Lawson of Arkansas. Half his age, Lawson was mixed Cherokee and African-American.

As stated earlier, Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington, the first of five children born to Lucille Jeter, only three of them have been publicly stated to have been registered by James Allen Hendrix. He much later denied fathering all but Jimi and Leon in his autobiography, where he strongly hinted that Leon was the product of a Filipino friend of Lucille's, that she briefly cohabited with. His parents met at a dance in Seattle in 1941 when Lucille Jeter was 16. When she married Al Hendrix on March 31, 1942, she was pregnant. Al had been drafted into the United States Army due to World War II and was shipped out three days later. He completed his basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma but was stationed in Alabama when his son was born. The commanding officer thought he would go AWOL to Seattle to see his new son and had him locked up as a preventative measure. It was in the stockade that Al Hendrix received the telegram announcing his son's birth. He spent most of the war in the South Pacific Theater in Fiji.

During his three year absence, Lucille struggled to raise her infant son, neglecting him in favor of the nightlife. Hendrix was mostly cared for by family members and friends during this period, notably Lucille's sister, Delores Hall, and her friend Dorothy Harding. Another key member of the family circle was Nora Hendrix, his paternal grandmother. A former vaudeville dancer, she moved to Vancouver, Canada, from Tennessee after meeting her husband, former special police officer Bertram Philander Ross Hendrix, on the Dixieland circuit. Nora Hendrix shared a love for theatrical clothing and adornment, music, and performance with Jimi Hendrix. She also imbued him with the stories, rituals and music that had been part of her own Afro-Cherokee heritage and her former life on the stage. Along with his attendance at black Pentecostal church services, writers have suggested these experiences may later have informed Hendrix's thinking about the connections between emotions, spirituality and music.

Hendrix's father received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army on September 1st, 1945. Unable to find Lucille, he went to the Berkeley home of a family friend who had taken care of Jimi Hendrix, Mrs. Champ. Almost three years old, it was the first time Hendrix met his father. According to those that were adults at the time. Jimi Hendrix was known as Buster to friends and family from birth. Only Leon claims Jimi chose the nickname himself after watching Buster Crabbe in Flash Gordon which he claims he first watched with Jimi when he was three. He had three other younger siblings, Joseph, Kathy & Pamela. With serious health issues in childhood (e.g. Kathy was blind) all three were surrendered into foster care when very young. Later Hendrix's sisters were given up for adoption. Hendrix's relationship with his brother Leon was close but precarious. Leon was in and out of foster care, and the threat of fraternal separation was an ongoing and very present possibility. When Leon died, Al legally changed his son's name to James Marshall Hendrix in memory of his late brother. After his return, Al reunited with Lucille. He found it difficult to get steady work, and the family was impoverished. Both he and Lucille struggled with alcohol and fought frequently. At one point a pimp named John Page who had a history with Lucille even tried to commandeer her out of a movie theater while she was with Al. Al objected and a fight ensued, spilling out into the street. Al had been an amateur boxer and stunned the pimp with a first punch, eventually winning the brawl and they never saw the pimp again.

His parents' fighting sometimes made Hendrix withdraw and hide in a closet in their home. The family moved often, staying in cheap hotels and apartments around Seattle. On occasion Hendrix was taken to Vancouver to stay at his grandmother's and sometimes his uncle Frank's family. A shy, sensitive boy, all these experiences deeply and irrevocably affected Hendrix. In addition to the instability of his home life, in later years he confided to one girlfriend that he had been the victim of sexual abuse, although he did not go into detail other than to say that the perpetrator had been a man who wore a uniform. In one instance while he was living in Harlem, Hendrix broke down crying as his girlfriend related the sexual abuse she had suffered as a child, telling her that the same thing had happened to him.

On December 17th, 1951, when Hendrix was nine years old, his parents divorced; Al got custody of Jimi and Leon. At thirty-three, his mother developed cirrhosis of the liver and died on February 2nd, 1958 when her spleen ruptured. Instead of letting his boys attend their mother's funeral, Al Hendrix instructed them on how men dealt with their grief, by giving them shots of whiskey. Some of Hendrix's feelings about his mother's death were revealed in a survey he took for the British publication, “New Musical Express” in 1967 stating that his personal ambition was to have his own style of music, and to see his mother again.

At Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle, Hendrix's habit of carrying a broom with him everywhere, to imitate a guitar, got the attention of the school's social worker (he destroyed several brooms in the process of fashioning a guitar). After a year of this pitiable behavior where he clung to each broom like a blanket, she insisted in her letter to Hendrix's father that leaving him without a guitar may result in psychological damage. Her efforts to either get school funding for needy children or his father to buy Hendrix a guitar failed.

At age 15, around the time his mother died, Hendrix acquired his first acoustic guitar for $5 from an acquaintance of his father. This guitar replaced the ukulele his father had found in a basement when cleaning it out. Al is talking about Jimi when he was quite small when says he found an old ukelele when cleaning out a basement and took it home for Jimi, and got a set of strings for it, he doesn't mention Leon. Leon tells it that he and Jimi were helping Al on one of his odd jobs, and Jimi found the ukulele. Learning by ear by spending hours and hours with the one-string instrument, playing single notes, Hendrix still followed along to a couple of Elvis Presley songs on the radio. He learned to play guitar by continuing to apply himself. Daily, he practiced for several hours, watched others, got tips from more experienced guitarists, and listened to Ernestine Benson's blues records by Muddy Waters, B.B. King and other artists. In mid-1959, his father bought him a white Supro Ozark, his first electric guitar, but there was no available amplifier. According to Hendrix's Seattle band mates, he learned most of his acrobatic stage moves, including playing with his teeth, behind his back, and Chuck Berry’s trademark duck walk, from a fellow young musician, Raleigh Snipes. Hendrix played in local bands, occasionally playing outlying gigs in Washington State and at least once over the border in Vancouver, British Columbia. His first gig was with an unnamed band in the basement of a synagogue, Seattle's Temple De Hirsch. After too much wild playing and showing off, he was fired between sets. The first formal band he played in was The Velvetones, who performed regularly at the Yesler Terrace Neighborhood House without pay. He later joined the Rocking Kings, who played professionally at such venues as the Birdland. When his guitar was stolen (after he left it backstage overnight), Al bought him a white Silvertone Danelectro. He painted it red and had the name Betty Jean emblazoned on it - the name of his high school girlfriend at the time. Hendrix was particularly fond of Elvis Presley, whom he saw perform in Seattle in 1957.

Hendrix completed junior high at Washington Junior High School with little trouble but did not graduate from Garfield High School. Unusual for his era, the school had a relatively even ethnic mix of African, European, and Asian Americans. Later he was awarded an honorary diploma, and in the 1990s a bust of him was placed in the school library. After he became famous in the late 1960s, Hendrix told reporters that he had been expelled from Garfield by racist faculty for holding hands with a white girlfriend in study hall. Principal Frank Hanawalt says that it was due to poor grades and attendance problems.

Hendrix got into trouble with the law twice for riding in stolen cars. He was given a choice between spending two years in prison or joining the Army. Hendrix chose the latter and enlisted on May 31st, 1961. After completing basic training at Fort Ord near Monterey in California, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. His commanding officers and fellow soldiers considered him to be a sub-par soldier because he slept while on duty, had little regard for regulations, required constant supervision, and showed no skill as a marksman. When Hendrix also began to sleep with his guitar to keep it safe he was bullied and, on one occasion, beaten. Two fellow soldiers had befriended the “outsider.” Raymond Ross, a heavyweight boxer, stood up for him, and Billy Cox, a bass player, understood him. Cox and Hendrix often performed with other musicians on and off the base in a loosely organized band called “The Casuals“. This was a loyal friendship that Hendrix called upon from April 1969 until shortly before his death.

After he had served only one year, Captain Gilbert Batchman requested that Hendrix be discharged. Hendrix did not challenge the discharge request. The National Personnel Records Centre contain 98 pages documenting Hendrix's army service, including all his infractions. Private Hendrix received an honorable discharge on the basis of “unsuitability” on June 29th, 1962.

Later in the UK, Hendrix spoke about his military service in three interviews. In the 1967 film “See My Music Talking” (later released as “Experience) which was made for TV to promote his recently released “Axis: Bold As Love” LP, he spoke about his first parachuting experience: “...once you get out there everything is so quiet, all you hear is the breezes-s-s-s..…” In interviews with Melody Maker in 1967 and 1969, he spoke of his dislike of the army. He claimed to reporters that he received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump. In U.S. interviews, seminal TV host and interviewer Dick Cavett asked Hendrix about his time in the 101st Airborne more than once. On one such occasion, Hendrix's only response was to confirm that he was stationed at Fort Campbell.

After his Army discharge, Hendrix and Army friend Billy Cox moved to nearby Clarksville, Tennessee and undertook in earnest to earn a living with their existing band. They played mainly in low-paying gigs at obscure venues. The band eventually moved to Nashville’s Jefferson Street, the traditional heart of Nashville's black community and home to a lively rhythm and blues scene. After they moved to Nashville, upon learning there was already an established band by the name “The Casuals“, they amended their name to the “King Kasuals“. While in Nashville, according to Cox and Larry Lee, who replaced Alphonso Young on guitar, they were basically the house band at Club del Morocco. Hendrix and Cox shared a flat above Joyce's House of Glamour. Hendrix's girlfriend at this time was Joyce Lucas.

Bobby Taylor gave an interview in which he claimed that in December 1962, Hendrix left Nashville and traveled to his grandmother's in Vancouver, Canada (a journey of 2,582 miles, for no apparent reason). Taylor claimed that while there, Hendrix performed with future members of the Motown band Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers, including Tommy Chong (of later Cheech and Chong fame). his story has often been repeated as a fact. However, Chong, later, disputed this ever happened and that any such appearance was a product of Taylor's “imagination“. On hearing this story Leon accepted it as a fact and was apparently surprised Jimi didn't visit, as Seattle is near en route. None of Jimi's Nashville friends that he was regularly playing with in their small band noticed his absence, strangely. For the next two years, Hendrix made a living performing in and around and on a circuit of venues throughout the South and up to New York catering to black audiences. These were venues affiliated with the Theater Owners' Booking Association (TOBA), sarcastically known as “Tough on Black Asses” because the audiences were very demanding. The TOBA circuit was also widely known as the Chitlin Circuit. In addition to performing in his own band, Hendrix performed with Bob Fisher and the Bonnevilles, and in backing bands for various soul, R&B, and blues musicians. The Chitlin' Circuit was where Hendrix refined his style.

Feeling he had artistically outgrown the circuit and frustrated at following the rules of bandleaders, Hendrix decided to try his luck in New York City and in January 1964 moved into the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where he soon befriended Lithofayne Pridgeon (known as “Faye“, who became his girlfriend) and the Allen twins, Arthur and Albert (now known as Taharqa and Tunde-Ra Aleem). The Allen twins became friends and kept Hendrix out of trouble in New York. The twins also performed as backup singers (under the name Ghetto Fighters) on some of his recordings, most notably the song “Freedom“. Pridgeon, a Harlem native with connections throughout the area's music scene, provided Hendrix with shelter, support, and encouragement. In February 1964, Hendrix won first prize in the Apollo Theater amateur contest. Hoping to land a gig, Hendrix made the club circuit and sat in with various bands. Eventually, Hendrix was offered the guitarist position with The Isley Brother’s back-up band and he readily accepted.

Hendrix' first studio recording occurred in March 1964, when the Isley Brothers, with Hendrix as a member of the band, recorded the two-part single “Testify”. Hendrix then went on tour with the Isley Brothers. “Testify” was released in June 1964, but did not make an impact on the charts. After touring as a member of the Isley Brothers until mid-late 1964, Hendrix grew dissatisfied and left the band in Nashville. There, he found work with the tour's MC “Gorgeous” George Odell. On March 1st, 1964, Hendrix (then calling himself Maurice James) began recording and performing with Little Richard. During a stop in Los Angeles while touring with Little Richard in 1965, Hendrix played a session for Rosa Lee Brooks on her single “My Diary“. This was his first recorded involvement with Arthur Lee of the band “Love” While in L.A., he also played on the session for Little Richard's final single for Vee-Jay, “I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me“. He later made his first recorded TV appearance on Nashville's Channel 5 Night Train with “The Royal Company” backing up “Buddy and Stacy” on “Shotgun“. Hendrix clashed with Richard, over tardiness, wardrobe, and, above all, Hendrix's stage antics. On tour they shared billing a couple of times with Ike and Tina Turner. It has been suggested that Hendrix left Richard and played with the Turners briefly before returning to Richard, but there is no firm evidence to support this. Hendrix mentioned playing with them, and Ike Turner shortly before his death claimed that he did, but this is emphatically denied by Tina. Months later, he was either fired or he left after missing the tour bus in Washington, D.C. He then rejoined the Isley Brothers in the summer of 1965 and recorded a second single with them.

Later in 1965, Hendrix joined a New York based R&B band, Curtis Knight and the Squires, after meeting Knight in the lobby of the Hotel America, off Times Square, where both men were living at the time. He performed on and off with them for eight months. In October 1965, Hendrix recorded a single with Curtis Knight. On October 15 he signed a three-year recording contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin, receiving 1% royalty. While the relationship with Chalpin was short-lived, his contract remained in force, which caused considerable problems for Hendrix later on in his career. The legal dispute has continued to the present day. (Several songs (and demos) from the 1965-1966 Curtis Knight recording sessions, deemed not worth releasing at the time, were marketed as “Jimi Hendrix” recordings after he became famous.) Aside from Curtis Knight and the Squires, Hendrix then toured for two months with Joey Dee and the Starliters.

In between performing with Curtis Knight in 1966, Hendrix toured and recorded with King Curtis. Also around this time in 1966, Hendrix got his first composer credits for two instrumentals. Hendrix, now going by the name Jimmy James, formed his own band, “The Blue Flame”. Hendrix and his new band played at several places in New York, but their primary venue was a residency at the Café Wha? on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Their last concerts were at the Café au Go Go, as John Hammond Jr.’s backing group, billed as “The Blue Flame“.

Early in 1966 at the Cheetah Club on Broadway at 53rd Street, Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, befriended Hendrix and recommended him to Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham and later, producer Seymour Stein. Neither man took a liking to Hendrix's music, and they both passed. She then referred Hendrix to Chas Chandler, who was ending his tenure as bassist in “The Animals” and looking for talent to manage and produce. Chandler liked the song “Hey Joe” and was convinced he could create a hit single with the right artist.

Impressed with Hendrix's version, Chandler brought him to London in September 1966 and signed him to a management and production contract with himself and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffry. It was Chandler who came up with the spelling change of “Jimmy” to “Jimi“. Chandler then helped Hendrix form a new band, “The Jimi Hendrix Experience”, with guitarist-turned-bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, both English musicians. Shortly before the Experience was formed, Chandler introduced Hendrix to Brian Auger, Eric Burdon, Pete Townsend and to Eric Clapton, who had only recently helped put together the band “Cream”. At Chandler's request, Cream let Hendrix join them on stage for a jam. Hendrix and Clapton remained friends up until Hendrix's death. The first night Hendrix arrived in London, he began a relationship with Kathy Etchingham that lasted until February 1969. She later wrote an autobiographical book about their relationship and the sixties London scene in general.

Hendrix sometimes had a camp sense of humor, specifically with the song “Purple Haze“. A mondegreen had appeared, in which the line “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky” was misheard as “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy“. In a few performances, Hendrix humorously used this, deliberately singing “kiss this guy” while pointing to Mitch or Noel, as he did at Monterey. In the Woodstock DVD he deliberately points to the sky at this point, to make it clear. A volume of misheard lyrics has been published, using this mondegreen itself as the title, with Hendrix on the cover. After his enthusiastically received performance at France's No. 1 venue, the Olympia Theatre in Paris on the Johnny Hallyday tour, an on-stage jam with Cream a showcase gig at the newly opened, pop-celebrity oriented nightclub Bag O’Nails and the all important appearances on the top UK TV pop shows Ready Steady Go! and the BBC's Top of the Pops, word of Hendrix spread throughout the London music community in late 1966. His showmanship and virtuosity made instant fans of reigning guitar heroes Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, as well as members of The Beatles and The Who, whose managers signed Hendrix to their new record label, Track Records.

The first Jimi Hendrix Experience album, “Are You Experienced” was released in the United Kingdom on May 12, 1967, and shortly thereafter internationally, outside of the United States and Canada. It contained none of the previously released (outside the United States and Canada) singles or their B sides. At this time, the Experience extensively toured the United Kingdom and parts of Europe. This allowed Hendrix to develop his stage presence, which reached a high point on March 31, 1967, when, booked to appear as one of the opening acts on the Walker Brothers farewell tour, he set his guitar on fire at the end of his first performance, as a publicity stunt. This guitar has now been identified as the guitar “found” and later restored by Frank Zappa. He used it to record his album, “Zoot Allures” (1971). When Zappa's son, Dweezil, found the guitar some twenty years later, Zappa gave it to him. Although very popular in Europe at this time, The Jimi Hendrix Experience had yet to crack the United States. Their chance came when Paul McCartney recommended the group to the organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival. This proved to be a great opportunity for Hendrix, not only because of the large audience present at the event, but also because of the many journalists covering the event who wrote about him. The performances were filmed and later shown in some movie theaters around the country in early 1969 as the concert documentary “Monterey Pop”, which immortalized Hendrix's iconic burning and smashing of his guitar at the finale of his performance.

After a year based in the US, Hendrix temporarily moved back to London and into his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham's rented Brook Street flat in the West End of London. During this time The Jimi Hendrix Experience toured Scandinavia, Germany, and included a final French concert. They later performed two sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall on February 18th and 24th, 1969, which were the last European appearances of this line-up of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The last Experience concert took place on June 29th, 1969 at Barry Fey's Denver Pop Festival, a three-day event held at Denver’s Mile High Stadium that was marked by police firing tear gas into the audience as they played “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)”. The band escaped from the venue in the back of a rental truck which was partly crushed by fans trying to escape the tear gas. The next day, Noel Redding announced that he had quit the Experience.

Hendrix was advertised to play the Woodstock Music Festival, along with many of the other biggest rock groups of the time. It was to take place on rented farmland in Upper State New York from August 15th to the 18th in 1969. Although Hendrix's music had been written for a power trio of guitar, bass, and drums, he wanted to expand his sound so he added rhythm guitarist Larry Lee (another old friend from his R&B days), and Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez to play congas. After drummer Mitch Mitchell arrived, this new lineup rehearsed for less than two weeks before the festival and according to Mitchell never really meshed. In addition, although Woodstock would become famous and mythologized through the documentary film of the same name, by the time of his performance, Hendrix had been up for three days, and his band was short on sleep as well, contributing a rawness to their filmed performance.

After Woodstock, this particular lineup of the band appeared on only two more occasions. The first was a street benefit in Harlem where, in a scenario similar to the festival, most of the audience had left and only a fraction remained by the time Hendrix took the stage. Within seconds of Hendrix arriving at the site two youths had stolen his guitar from the back seat of his car, although it was later recovered. The band's only other appearance was at the Salvation club in Greenwich Village, New York. After some studio recordings, Hendrix disbanded the group.

Hendrix is widely known for and associated with the use of psychedelic drugs, most notably lysergic diethylamide (LSD), as were many other famous musicians and celebrities of that time. He supposedly had never taken psychedelic drugs until the night he met Linda Keith, but had smoked cannabis and drank alcohol previously. Amphetamines are also recorded as being used by Hendrix during tours. Hendrix was notorious among friends and band-mates for sometimes becoming angry and violent when he drank too much alcohol.

Early on September 18th, 1970, Jimi Hendrix died in London. He had spent the latter part of the previous evening at a party and was picked up at close to 3:00 by girlfriend Monika Dannemann and driven to her flat at the Samarkand Hotel. From autopsy data and statements by friends about the evening of September 17th, it has been estimated that he died sometime after 3:00, possibly before 4:00, but also possibly as late as 11:30, though no estimate was made at the autopsy, or inquest.

JIMI HENDRIX SPEAKING:

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."

"I have this little saying. When things get too heavy just call me HELIUM, the lightest gas known to man.

"Music does not lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music."

"Music is my religion."

"In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first."

"KNOWLEDGE TALKS BUT WISDOM LISTENS"

"Even castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually."

"You have to go on and be crazy, Craziness is like heaven."

"If I am free it's because I am always running."

"You have to give people something to dream on."

"The story of life is quicker than the blink of an eye. The story of love is hello and goodbye until we meet again..."

"SEE THAT WHITE COLLAR CONSERVATIVE POINTING HIS FINGER AT ME? HE'S HOPING THAT MY KIND WILL SOON DROP AND DIE BUT I'M GONNA WAVE MY FREAK FLAG HIGH...HIGH!"

"The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar."

"To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?"

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

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to."

"Scuse me while I kiss the sky!"

"It's funny how most people love the dead. Once you're dead you're made for life."

"I feel guilty when people say I'm the greatest on the scene. what's good or bad doesn't matter to me; what does matter is feeling and no feeling."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the guitarist. For the band, see the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Jimi Hendrix
*Hendrix performing on the Dutch television show Hoepla* in 1967**
Background information
Birth name	Johnny Allen Hendrix
Born	November 27, 1942 Seattle, Washington, US
Died	September 18, 1970 (aged 27) Kensington, London, England
Genres	Psychedelic rock, hard rock, blues, rhythm and blues
Occupation(s)	Musician, singer, songwriter
Instruments	Guitar, vocals
Years active	1963–1970
Labels	Vee-Jay, RSVP, Track, Barclay, Polydor, Reprise, Capitol, MCA
Associated acts	The Isley Brothers, Little Richard, Curtis Knight and the Squires, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Band of Gypsys
Website	jimihendrix.com
Notable instruments
Fender Stratocaster Gibson Flying V

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music".^[1]

Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army; he was granted an honorable discharge the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US. The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27.

Hendrix was inspired musically by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in developing the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback. He helped to popularize the use of a wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock, and was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."^[2]

Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time.

Ancestry and childhood

Hendrix's paternal grandparents, Ross and Nora Hendrix, pre-1912

Jimi Hendrix was primarily of African American descent, with Irish and Cherokee ancestors. His paternal great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee from Georgia who married an Irishman named Moore. They had a son Robert, who married an African-American woman named Fanny. In 1883, Robert and Fanny had a daughter whom they named Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, Hendrix's paternal grandmother.^[3]^{[nb 1]} Hendrix's paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix (born 1866), was the result of an extramarital affair between a black slave woman, also named Fanny, and her white overseer, a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, and one of the wealthiest white men in the area at that time.^[6] On June 10, 1919, Hendrix and Moore had a son they named James Allen Ross Hendrix; people called him Al.^[7]

In 1941, Al met Lucille Jeter (1925–1958) at a dance in Seattle; they married on March 31, 1942.^[8] Al, who had been drafted by the United States Army to serve in World War II, left to begin his basic training three days after the wedding.^[9] Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington; he was the first of Lucille's five children. In 1946, Johnny's parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix, in honor of Al and his late brother Leon Marshall.^[10]^{[nb 2]}

Stationed in Alabama at the time of Hendrix's birth, Al was denied the standard military furlough afforded servicemen for childbirth; his commanding officer placed him in the stockade to prevent him from going AWOL to see his infant son in Seattle. He spent two months locked up without trial, and while in the stockade received a telegram announcing his son's birth.^[12]^{[nb 3]} During Al's three-year absence, Lucille struggled to raise their son, often neglecting him in favor of nightlife.^[14] When Al was away, Hendrix was mostly cared for by family members and friends, especially Lucille's sister Delores Hall and her friend Dorothy Harding.^[15] Al received an honorable discharge from the US Army on September 1, 1945. Two months later, unable to find Lucille, Al went to the Berkeley, California home of a family friend named Mrs. Champ, who had taken care of and had attempted to adopt Hendrix. There Al saw his son for the first time.^[16]

After returning from service, Al reunited with Lucille, but his inability to find steady work left the family impoverished. They both struggled with alcohol abuse, and often fought when intoxicated. The violence sometimes drove Hendrix to withdraw and hide in a closet in their home.^[17] His relationship with his brother Leon (born 1948) was close but precarious; with Leon in and out of foster care, they lived with an almost constant threat of fraternal separation.^[18] In addition to Leon, Hendrix had three younger siblings: Joseph, born in 1949, Kathy in 1950, and Pamela, 1951, all of whom Al and Lucille gave up to foster care and adoption.^[19] The family frequently moved, staying in cheap hotels and apartments around Seattle. On occasion, family members would take Hendrix to Vancouver to stay at his grandmother's. A shy and sensitive boy, he was deeply affected by his life experiences.^[20] In later years, he confided to a girlfriend that he had been the victim of sexual abuse by a man in uniform.^[21] On December 17, 1951, when Hendrix was nine years old, his parents divorced; the court granted Al custody of him and Leon.^[22]

First instruments

At Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle during the mid-1950s, Hendrix's habit of carrying a broom with him to emulate a guitar gained the attention of the school's social worker. After more than a year of his clinging to a broom like a security blanket, she wrote a letter requesting school funding intended for underprivileged children, insisting that leaving him without a guitar might result in psychological damage.^[23] Her efforts failed, and Al refused to buy him a guitar.^[23]^{[nb 4]}

In 1957, while helping his father with a side-job, Hendrix found a ukulele amongst the garbage that they were removing from an older woman's home. She told him that he could keep the instrument, which had only one string.^[25] Learning by ear, he played single notes, following along to Elvis Presley songs, particularly Presley's cover of Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog".^[26]^{[nb 5]} By the age of thirty-three, Hendrix's mother Lucille had developed cirrhosis of the liver, and on February 2, 1958, she died when her spleen ruptured.^[28] Al refused to take James and Leon to attend their mother's funeral; he instead gave them shots of whiskey and instructed them that was how men were supposed to deal with loss.^[28]^{[nb 6]} In mid-1958, at age 15, Hendrix acquired his first acoustic guitar, for $5.^[29] Hendrix earnestly applied himself, playing the instrument for several hours daily, watching others and getting tips from more experienced guitarists, and listening to blues artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson.^[30] The first tune Hendrix learned how to play was the theme from Peter Gunn.^[31]

Soon after he acquired the acoustic guitar, Hendrix formed his first band, the Velvetones. Without an electric guitar, he could barely be heard over the sound of the group. After about three months, he realized that he needed an electric guitar in order to continue.^[32] In mid-1959, his father relented and bought him a white Supro Ozark.^[32] Hendrix's first gig was with an unnamed band in the basement of a synagogue, Seattle's Temple De Hirsch, but after too much showing off, the band fired him between sets.^[33] He later joined the Rocking Kings, which played professionally at venues such as the Birdland club. When someone stole his guitar after he left it backstage overnight, Al bought him a red Silvertone Danelectro.^[34] In 1958, Hendrix completed his studies at Washington Junior High School, though he did not graduate from Garfield High School.^[35]^{[nb 7]}

Military service

Hendrix in the US Army, 1961

Before Hendrix was 19 years old, law enforcement authorities had twice caught him riding in stolen cars. When given a choice between spending time in prison or joining the Army, he chose the latter and enlisted on May 31, 1961.^[38] After completing eight weeks of basic training at Fort Ord, California, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.^[39] He arrived there on November 8, and soon afterward he wrote to his father: "There's nothing but physical training and harassment here for two weeks, then when you go to jump school ... you get hell. They work you to death, fussing and fighting."^[40] In his next letter home, Hendrix, who had left his guitar at his girlfriend Betty Jean Morgan's house in Seattle, asked his father to send it to him as soon as possible, stating: "I really need it now."^[40] His father obliged and sent the red Silvertone Danelectro on which Hendrix had hand-painted the words "Betty Jean", to Fort Campbell.^[41] His apparent obsession with the instrument contributed to his neglect of his duties, which led to verbal taunting and physical abuse from his peers, who at least once hid the guitar from him until he had begged for its return.^[42]

In November 1961, fellow serviceman Billy Cox walked past an army club and heard Hendrix playing guitar.^[43] Intrigued by the proficient playing, which he described as a combination of "John Lee Hooker and Beethoven", Cox borrowed a bass guitar and the two jammed.^[44] Within a few weeks, they began performing at base clubs on the weekends with other musicians in a loosely organized band called the Casuals.^[45]

Hendrix completed his paratrooper training in just over eight months, and Major General C.W.G. Rich awarded him the prestigious Screaming Eagles patch on January 11, 1962.^[40] By February, his personal conduct had begun to draw criticism from his superiors. They labeled him an unqualified marksman and often caught him napping while on duty and failing to report for bed checks.^[46] On May 24, Hendrix's platoon sergeant, James C. Spears filed a report in which he stated: "He has no interest whatsoever in the Army ... It is my opinion that Private Hendrix will never come up to the standards required of a soldier. I feel that the military service will benefit if he is discharged as soon as possible."^[47] On June 29, 1962, Captain Gilbert Batchman granted Hendrix an honorable discharge on the basis of unsuitability.^[48] Hendrix later spoke of his dislike of the army and falsely stated that he had received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump.^[49]^{[nb 8]}

Music career

Early years

In September 1963, after Cox was discharged from the Army, he and Hendrix moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and formed a band called the King Kasuals.^[51] Hendrix had watched Butch Snipes play with his teeth in Seattle and by now Alphonso 'Baby Boo' Young, the other guitarist in the band, was performing this guitar gimmick.^[52] Not to be upstaged, Hendrix learned to play with his teeth, he commented: "The idea of doing that came to me ... in Tennessee. Down there you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot. There's a trail of broken teeth all over the stage."^[53] Although they began playing low-paying gigs at obscure venues, the band eventually moved to Nashville's Jefferson Street, which was the traditional heart of the city's black community and home to a thriving rhythm and blues music scene.^[54] They earned a brief residency playing at a popular venue in town, the Club del Morocco, and for the next two years Hendrix made a living performing at a circuit of venues throughout the South who were affiliated with the Theater Owners' Booking Association (TOBA), widely known as the Chitlin' Circuit.^[55] In addition to playing in his own band, Hendrix performed as a backing musician for various soul, R&B, and blues musicians, including Wilson Pickett, Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, and Jackie Wilson.^[56]

In January 1964, feeling he had outgrown the circuit artistically, and frustrated by having to follow the rules of bandleaders, Hendrix decided to venture out on his own. He moved into the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where he befriended Lithofayne Pridgeon, known as "Faye", who became his girlfriend.^[57] A Harlem native with connections throughout the area's music scene, Pridgeon provided him with shelter, support, and encouragement.^[58] Hendrix also met the Allen twins, Arthur and Albert.^[59]^{[nb 9]} In February 1964, Hendrix won first prize in the Apollo Theater amateur contest.^[61] Hoping to secure a career opportunity, he played the Harlem club circuit and sat in with various bands. At the recommendation of a former associate of Joe Tex, Ronnie Isley granted Hendrix an audition that led to an offer to become the guitarist with the Isley Brothers' back-up band, the I.B. Specials, which he readily accepted.^[62]

First recordings

In March 1964, Hendrix recorded the two-part single "Testify" with the Isley Brothers. Released in June, it failed to chart.^[63] In May, he provided guitar instrumentation for the Don Covay song, "Mercy Mercy". Issued in August by Rosemart Records and distributed by Atlantic, the track reached number 35 on the Billboard chart.^[64]

Hendrix toured with the Isleys during much of 1964, but near the end of October, after growing tired of playing the same set every night, he left the band.^[65]^{[nb 10]} Soon afterward, Hendrix joined Little Richard's touring band, the Upsetters.^[67] During a stop in Los Angeles in February 1965, he recorded his first and only single with Richard, "I Don't Know What You Got (But It's Got Me)", written by Don Covay and released by Vee-Jay Records.^[68] Richard's popularity was waning at the time, and the single peaked at number 92, where it remained for one week before dropping off the chart.^[69]^{[nb 11]} Hendrix met singer Rosa Lee Brooks while staying at the Wilcox Hotel in Hollywood, and she invited him to participate in a recording session for her single, which included "My Diary" as the A-side, and "Utee" as the B-side.^[71] He played guitar on both tracks, which also included background vocals by Arthur Lee. The single failed to chart, but Hendrix and Lee began a friendship that lasted several years; Hendrix later became an ardent supporter of Lee's band, Love.^[71]

In July 1965, on Nashville's Channel 5 Night Train, Hendrix made his first television appearance. Performing in Little Richard's ensemble band, he backed up vocalists Buddy and Stacy on "Shotgun". The video recording of the show marks the earliest known footage of Hendrix performing.^[67] Richard and Hendrix often clashed over tardiness, wardrobe, and Hendrix's stage antics, and in late July, Richard's brother Robert fired him.^[72] He then briefly rejoined the Isley Brothers, and recorded a second single with them, "Move Over and Let Me Dance" backed with "Have You Ever Been Disappointed".^[73] Later that year, he joined a New York-based R&B band, Curtis Knight and the Squires, after meeting Knight in the lobby of a hotel where both men were staying.^[74] Hendrix performed with them for eight months.^[75] In October 1965, he and Knight recorded the single, "How Would You Feel" backed with "Welcome Home" and on October 15, Hendrix signed a three-year recording contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin.^[76] While the relationship with Chalpin was short-lived, his contract remained in force, which later caused legal and career problems for Hendrix.^[77]^{[nb 12]} During his time with Knight, Hendrix briefly toured with Joey Dee and the Starliters, and worked with King Curtis on several recordings including Ray Sharpe's two-part single, "Help Me".^[79] Hendrix earned his first composer credits for two instrumentals, "Hornets Nest" and "Knock Yourself Out", released as a Curtis Knight and the Squires single in 1966.^[80]^{[nb 14]}

Feeling restricted by his experiences as an R&B sideman, Hendrix moved to New York City's Greenwich Village in 1966, which had a vibrant and diverse music scene.^[85] There, he was offered a residency at the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street and formed his own band that June, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, which included future Spirit guitarist Randy California.^[86]^{[nb 15]} The Blue Flames played at several clubs in New York and Hendrix began developing his guitar style and material that he would soon use with the Experience.^[88]^[89] In September, they gave some of their last concerts at the Cafe au Go Go, as John Hammond Jr.'s backing group.^[90]^{[nb 16]}

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Main article: The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Experience in 1968

By May 1966, Hendrix was struggling to earn a living wage playing the R&B circuit, so he briefly rejoined Curtis Knight and the Squires for an engagement at one of New York City's most popular nightspots, the Cheetah Club.^[91] During a performance, Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards noticed Hendrix. She remembered: "[His] playing mesmerised me".^[91] She invited him to join her for a drink; he accepted and the two became friends.^[91]

Keith recommended Hendrix to Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and producer Seymour Stein. They failed to see Hendrix's musical potential, and rejected him.^[92] She then referred him to Chas Chandler, who was leaving the Animals and interested in managing and producing artists. Chandler liked the Billy Roberts song "Hey Joe", and was convinced he could create a hit single with the right artist.^[93] Impressed with Hendrix's version of the song, he brought him to London on September 24, 1966,^[94] and signed him to a management and production contract with himself and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery.^[95] On September 24, Hendrix gave an impromptu solo performance at the Scotch-Club, and later that night he began a relationship with Kathy Etchingham that lasted for two and a half years.^[96]^{[nb 17]}

Following Hendrix's arrival in London, Chandler began recruiting members for a band designed to highlight the guitarist's talents, the Jimi Hendrix Experience.^[98] Hendrix met guitarist Noel Redding at an audition for the New Animals, where Redding's knowledge of blues progressions impressed Hendrix, who stated that he also liked Redding's hairstyle.^[99] Chandler asked Redding if he wanted to play bass guitar in Hendrix's band; Redding agreed.^[99] Chandler then began looking for a drummer and soon after, he contacted Mitch Mitchell through a mutual friend. Mitchell, who had recently been fired from Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, participated in a rehearsal with Redding and Hendrix where they found common ground in their shared interest in rhythm and blues. When Chandler phoned Mitchell later that day to offer him the position, he readily accepted.^[100] Chandler also convinced Hendrix to change the spelling of his first name from Jimmy to the exotic looking Jimi.^[101]

On September 30, Chandler brought Hendrix to the London Polytechnic at Regent Street, where Cream was scheduled to perform, and where Hendrix and Eric Clapton met. Clapton later commented: "He asked if he could play a couple of numbers. I said, 'Of course', but I had a funny feeling about him."^[98] Halfway through Cream's set, Hendrix took the stage and performed a frantic version of the Howlin' Wolf song "Killing Floor".^[98] In 1989, Clapton described the performance: "He played just about every style you could think of, and not in a flashy way. I mean he did a few of his tricks, like playing with his teeth and behind his back, but it wasn't in an upstaging sense at all, and that was it ... He walked off, and my life was never the same again".^[98]

UK success

In mid-October 1966, Chandler arranged an engagement for the Experience as Johnny Hallyday's supporting act during a brief tour of France.^[101] Their enthusiastically received 15-minute performance at the Olympia theatre in Paris on October 18 marks the earliest known recording of the band.^[101] In late October, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, managers of the Who, signed the Experience to their newly formed label, Track Records, which released the Experience's first single on October 23.^[102] "Hey Joe", which included a female chorus provided by the Breakaways, was backed by Hendrix's first songwriting effort after arriving in England, "Stone Free".^[103]

Hendrix on stage in 1967

In mid-November, they performed at the Bag O'Nails nightclub in London, with Clapton, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Kevin Ayers in attendance.^[104] Ayers described the crowd's reaction as stunned disbelief: "All the stars were there, and I heard serious comments, you know 'shit', 'Jesus', 'damn' and other words worse than that."^[104] The successful performance earned Hendrix his first interview, published in Record Mirror with the headline: "Mr. Phenomenon".^[104] "Now hear this ... we predict that [Hendrix] is going to whirl around the business like a tornado", wrote Bill Harry, who asked the rhetorical question: "Is that full, big, swinging sound really being created by only three people?"^[105] Hendrix commented: "We don't want to be classed in any category ... If it must have a tag, I'd like it to be called, 'Free Feeling'. It's a mixture of rock, freak-out, rave and blues".^[106] After appearances on the UK television shows Ready Steady Go! and the Top of the Pops, "Hey Joe" entered the UK charts on December 29, 1966, peaking at number six.^[107] Further success came in March 1967 with the UK number three hit "Purple Haze", and in May with "The Wind Cries Mary", which remained on the UK charts for eleven weeks, peaking at number six.^[108]

On March 31, 1967, while the Experience waited to perform at the London Astoria, Hendrix and Chandler discussed ways in which they could increase the band's media exposure. When Chandler asked journalist Keith Altham for advice, Altham suggested that they needed to do something more dramatic than the stage show of the Who, which involved the smashing of instruments. Hendrix joked: "Maybe I can smash up an elephant", to which Altham replied: "Well, it's a pity you can't set fire to your guitar".^[109] Chandler then asked road manager Gerry Stickells to procure some lighter fluid. During the show, Hendrix gave an especially dynamic performance before setting his guitar on fire at the end of a 45-minute set. In the wake of the stunt, members of London's press labeled Hendrix the "Black Elvis" and the "Wild Man of Borneo".^[110]^{[nb 18]}

Are You Experienced

Main article: Are You Experienced

The cover of the US edition by graphic designer Karl Ferris

After the moderate UK chart success of their first two singles, "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze", the Experience began assembling material for a full-length LP.^[112] Recording began at De Lane Lea Studios and later moved to the prestigious Olympic Studios.^[112] The album, Are You Experienced, features a diversity of musical styles, including blues tracks such as "Red House" and "Highway Chile", and the R&B song "Remember".^[113] It also included the experimental science fiction piece, "Third Stone from the Sun" and the post-modern soundscapes of the title track, with prominent backwards guitar and drums.^[114] "I Don't Live Today" served as a medium for Hendrix's guitar feedback improvisation and "Fire" was driven by Mitchell's drumming.^[112]

Released in the UK on May 12, 1967, Are You Experienced spent 33 weeks on the charts, peaking at number two.^[115]^{[nb 19]} It was prevented from reaching the top spot by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.^[117]^{[nb 20]} On June 4, 1967, Hendrix opened a show at the Saville Theatre in London with his rendition of Sgt. Pepper 's title track, which was released just three days previous. Beatles manager Brian Epstein owned the Saville at the time, and both George Harrison and Paul McCartney attended the performance. McCartney described the moment: "The curtains flew back and he came walking forward playing 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's a pretty major compliment in anyone's book. I put that down as one of the great honors of my career."^[118] Released in the US on August 23 by Reprise Records, Are You Experienced reached number five on the Billboard 200.^[119]^{[nb 21]}

In 1989, Noe Goldwasser, the founding editor of Guitar World magazine, described Are You Experienced as "the album that shook the world ... leaving it forever changed".^[121]^{[nb 22]} In 2005, Rolling Stone called the double-platinum LP Hendrix's "epochal debut", and they ranked it the 15th greatest album of all time, noting his "exploitation of amp howl", and characterizing his guitar playing as "incendiary ... historic in itself".^[123]

Monterey Pop Festival

Main article: Monterey Pop Festival

Author Michael Heatley wrote: "The iconic image by Ed Caraeff of Hendrix summoning the flames higher with his fingers will forever conjure up memories of Monterey for those who were there and the majority of us who weren't."^[124]

Although popular in Europe at the time, the Experience's first US single, "Hey Joe", failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its release on May 1, 1967.^[125] The group's fortunes improved when McCartney recommended them to the organizers of the Monterey Pop Festival. He insisted that the event would be incomplete without Hendrix, whom he called "an absolute ace on the guitar", and he agreed to join the board of organizers on the condition that the Experience perform at the festival in mid-June.^[126]

Introduced by Brian Jones as "the most exciting performer [he had] ever heard", Hendrix opened with a fast arrangement of Howlin' Wolf's song "Killing Floor", wearing what author Keith Shadwick described as "clothes as exotic as any on display elsewhere."^[127] Shadwick wrote: "[Hendrix] was not only something utterly new musically, but an entirely original vision of what a black American entertainer should and could look like."^[128] The Experience went on to perform renditions of "Hey Joe", B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby", Chip Taylor's "Wild Thing", and Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", as well as four original compositions: "Foxy Lady", "Can You See Me", "The Wind Cries Mary", and "Purple Haze".^[118] The set ended with Hendrix destroying his guitar and tossing pieces of it out to the audience.^[129] Rolling Stone 's Alex Vadukul wrote:

When Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival he created one of rock's most perfect moments. Standing in the front row of that concert was a 17-year-old boy named Ed Caraeff. Caraeff had never seen Hendrix before nor heard his music, but he had a camera with him and there was one shot left in his roll of film. As Hendrix lit his guitar, Caraeff took a final photo. It would become one of the most famous images in rock and roll.^[130]^{[nb 23]}

Caraeff stood on a chair next to the edge of the stage while taking a series of four monochrome pictures of Hendrix burning his guitar.^[133]^{[nb 24]} Caraeff was close enough to the fire that he had to use his camera as a shield to protect his face from the heat. Rolling Stone later colorized the image, matching it with other pictures taken at the festival before using the shot for a 1987 magazine cover.^[133] According to author Gail Buckland, the fourth and final frame of "Hendrix kneeling in front of his burning guitar, hands raised, is one of the most famous images in rock."^[133] Author and historian Matthew C. Whitaker wrote: "Hendrix's burning of his guitar became an iconic image in rock history and brought him national attention."^[134] The Los Angeles Times asserted that, upon leaving the stage, Hendrix "graduated from rumor to legend".^[135] Author John McDermott commented: "Hendrix left the Monterey audience stunned and in disbelief at what they'd just heard and seen."^[136]

According to Hendrix: "I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of a song as a sacrifice. You sacrifice things you love. I love my guitar."^[137] The performance was filmed by D. A. Pennebaker, and later included in the concert documentary Monterey Pop, which helped Hendrix gain popularity with the US public.^[138]

Immediately after the festival, the Experience were booked for a series of five concerts at Bill Graham's Fillmore, with Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane. The Experience outperformed Jefferson Airplane during the first two nights, and replaced them at the top of the bill on the fifth.^[139] Following their successful West Coast introduction, which included a free open air concert at Golden Gate Park and a concert at the Whisky a Go Go, the Experience were booked as the opening act for the first American tour of the Monkees.^[140] They requested Hendrix as a supporting act because they were fans, but their young audience disliked the Experience, who left the tour after six shows.^[141] Chandler later admitted that he engineered the tour in an effort to gain publicity for Hendrix.^[142]

Axis: Bold as Love

Main article: Axis: Bold as Love

	"Bold as Love" Menu 0:00 An excerpt from the outro guitar solo. The sample demonstrates the first recording of stereo phasing.
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The second Experience album, Axis: Bold as Love, opens with the track "EXP", which innovatively utilized microphonic and harmonic feedback.^[143] It also showcased an experimental stereo panning effect in which sounds emanating from Hendrix's guitar move through the stereo image, revolving around the listener.^[144] The piece reflected his growing interest in science fiction and outer space.^[145] He composed the album's title track and finale around two verses and two choruses, during which he pairs emotions with personas, comparing them to colors.^[146] The song's coda features the first recording of stereo phasing.^[147]^{[nb 25]} Shadwick described the composition as "possibly the most ambitious piece on Axis, the extravagant metaphors of the lyrics suggesting a growing confidence" in Hendrix's songwriting.^[149] His guitar playing throughout the song is marked by chordal arpeggios and contrapuntal motion, with tremolo-picked partial chords providing the musical foundation for the chorus, which culminates in what musicologist Andy Aledort described as "simply one of the greatest electric guitar solos ever played".^[150] The track fades out on tremolo-picked thirty-second note double stops.^[151]

The scheduled release date for Axis was almost delayed when Hendrix lost the master tape of side one of the LP, leaving it in the back seat of a London taxi.^[152] With the deadline looming, Hendrix, Chandler, and engineer Eddie Kramer remixed most of side one in a single overnight session, but they could not match the quality of the lost mix of "If 6 Was 9". Bassist Noel Redding had a tape recording of this mix, which had to be smoothed out with an iron as it had gotten wrinkled.^[153] During the verses, Hendrix doubled his singing with a guitar line which he played one octave lower than his vocals.^[154] Hendrix voiced his disappointment about having re-mixed the album so quickly, and he felt that it could have been better had they been given more time.^[152]

A color photograph of the Experience painted in Hindustani style

The cover of Axis: Bold as Love

Axis featured psychedelic cover art that depicts Hendrix and the Experience as various forms of Vishnu, incorporating a painting of them by Roger Law, from a photo-portrait by Karl Ferris.^[155] The painting was then superimposed on a copy of a mass produced religious poster.^[156] Hendrix stated that the cover, which Track spent $5,000 producing, would have been more appropriate had it highlighted his American Indian heritage.^[157] He commented: "You got it wrong ... I'm not that kind of Indian."^[157] Track released the album in the UK on December 1, 1967, where it peaked at number five, spending 16 weeks on the charts.^[158] In February 1968, Axis: Bold as Love reached number three in the US.^[159]

While author and journalist Richie Unterberger described Axis as the least impressive Experience album, according to author Peter Doggett, the release "heralded a new subtlety in Hendrix's work".^[160] Mitchell commented: "Axis was the first time that it became apparent that Jimi was pretty good working behind the mixing board, as well as playing, and had some positive ideas of how he wanted things recorded. It could have been the start of any potential conflict between him and Chas in the studio."^[161]

Electric Ladyland

Main article: Electric Ladyland

Recording for the Experience's third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, began at the newly opened Record Plant Studios, with Chandler as producer and engineers Eddie Kramer and Gary Kellgren.^[162] As the sessions progressed, Chandler became increasingly frustrated with Hendrix's perfectionism and his demands for repeated takes.^[163] Hendrix also allowed numerous friends and guests to join them in the studio, which contributed to a chaotic and crowded environment in the control room and led Chandler to sever his professional relationship with Hendrix.^[163] Redding later recalled: "There were tons of people in the studio; you couldn't move. It was a party, not a session."^[164] Redding, who had formed his own band in mid-1968, Fat Mattress, found it increasingly difficult to fulfill his commitments with the Experience, so Hendrix played many of the bass parts on Electric Ladyland.^[163] The album's cover stated that it was "produced and directed by Jimi Hendrix".^[163]^{[nb 26]}

During the Electric Ladyland recording sessions, Hendrix began experimenting with other combinations of musicians, including Jefferson Airplane's Jack Casady and Traffic's Steve Winwood, who played bass and organ respectively on the fifteen-minute slow-blues jam, "Voodoo Chile".^[163] During the album's production, Hendrix appeared at an impromptu jam with B.B. King, Al Kooper, and Elvin Bishop.^[166]^{[nb 27]} Electric Ladyland was released on October 25, and by mid-November it had reached number one in the US, spending two weeks at the top spot.^[168] The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his only number one album.^[169] It peaked at number six in the UK, spending 12 weeks on the chart.^[108] Electric Ladyland included Hendrix's cover of Bob Dylan's song, "All Along the Watchtower", which became Hendrix's highest-selling single and his only US top 40 hit, peaking at number 20; the single reached number five in the UK.^[170] The album also included his first recorded song to feature the use of a wah-wah pedal, "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", which reached number 18 in the UK charts.^[171]

In 1989, Noe Goldwasser, the founding editor of Guitar World magazine, described Electric Ladyland as "Hendrix's masterpiece".^[172] According to author Michael Heatley, "most critics agree" that the album is "the fullest realization of Jimi's far-reaching ambitions."^[163] In 2004, author Peter Doggett commented: "For pure experimental genius, melodic flair, conceptual vision and instrumental brilliance, Electric Ladyland remains a prime contender for the status of rock's greatest album."^[173] Doggett described the LP as "a display of musical virtuosity never surpassed by any rock musician."^[173]

Break-up of the Experience

The white building (left) is 23 Brook Street; the building on the right is the Handel House Museum.

In January 1969, after an absence of more than six months, Hendrix briefly moved back into his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham's Brook Street apartment, which was next door to the Handel House Museum in the West End of London.^[174]^{[nb 28]} During this time, the Experience toured Scandinavia, Germany, and gave their final two performances in France.^[176] On February 18 and 24, they played sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, which were the last European appearances of this line-up.^[177]^{[nb 29]}

By February 1969, Redding had grown weary of Hendrix's unpredictable work ethic and his creative control over the Experience's music.^[178] During the previous month's European tour, interpersonal relations within the group had deteriorated, particularly between Hendrix and Redding.^[179] In his diary, Redding documented the building frustration during early 1969 recording sessions: "On the first day, as I nearly expected, there was nothing doing ... On the second it was no show at all. I went to the pub for three hours, came back, and it was still ages before Jimi ambled in. Then we argued ... On the last day, I just watched it happen for a while, and then went back to my flat."^[179] The last Experience sessions that included Redding—a re-recording of "Stone Free" for use as a possible single release—took place on April 14 at Olmstead and the Record Plant in New York.^[180] Hendrix then flew bassist Billy Cox to New York; they started recording and rehearsing together on April 21.^[181]

The last performance of the original Experience line-up took place on June 29, 1969, at Barry Fey's Denver Pop Festival, a three-day event held at Denver's Mile High Stadium that was marked by police using tear gas to control the audience.^[182] The band narrowly escaped from the venue in the back of a rental truck, which was partly crushed by fans who had climbed on top of the vehicle.^[183] Before the show, a journalist angered Redding by asking why he was there; the reporter then informed him that two weeks earlier Hendrix announced that he had been replaced with Billy Cox.^[184] The next day, Redding quit the Experience and returned to London.^[182] He announced that he had left the band and intended to pursue a solo career, blaming Hendrix's plans to expand the group without allowing for his input as a primary reason for leaving.^[185] Redding later commented: "Mitch and I hung out a lot together, but we're English. If we'd go out, Jimi would stay in his room. But any bad feelings came from us being three guys who were traveling too hard, getting too tired, and taking too many drugs ... I liked Hendrix. I don't like Mitchell."^[186]

Soon after Redding's departure, Hendrix began lodging at the eight-bedroom Ashokan House, in the hamlet of Boiceville near Woodstock in upstate New York, where he had spent some time vacationing in mid-1969.^[187] Manager Michael Jeffery arranged the accommodations in the hope that the respite might encourage Hendrix to write material for a new album. During this time, Mitchell was unavailable for commitments made by Jeffery, which included Hendrix's first appearance on US TV—on The Dick Cavett Show—where he was backed by the studio orchestra, and an appearance on The Tonight Show where he appeared with Cox and session drummer Ed Shaughnessy.^[184]

Woodstock

Main article: Woodstock

Hendrix flashed a peace sign at the start of his performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, August 18, 1969.^[188]

By 1969, Hendrix was the world's highest-paid rock musician.^[189] In August, he headlined the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that included many of the most popular bands of the time.^[190] For the concert, he added rhythm guitarist Larry Lee and conga players Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez. The band rehearsed for less than two weeks before the performance, and according to Mitchell, they never connected musically.^[191] Before arriving at the engagement, he heard reports that the size of the audience had grown to epic proportions, which gave him cause for concern as he did not enjoy performing for large crowds.^[192] He was an important draw for the event, and although he accepted substantially less money for the appearance than his usual fee he was the festival's highest-paid performer.^[193]^{[nb 30]} As his scheduled time slot of midnight on Sunday drew closer, he indicated that he preferred to wait and close the show in the morning; the band took the stage around 8:00 a.m. on Monday.^[195] By the time of their set, Hendrix had been awake for more than three days.^[196] The audience, which peaked at an estimated 400,000 people, was now reduced to 30–40,000, many of whom had waited to catch a glimpse of Hendrix before leaving during his performance.^[192] The festival MC, Chip Monck, introduced the group as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but Hendrix clarified: "We decided to change the whole thing around and call it Gypsy Sun and Rainbows.

For short, it's nothin' but a Band of Gypsys".^[197]

	"The Star Spangled Banner" Menu 0:00 An excerpt from the beginning of "The Star Spangled Banner", at Woodstock, August 18, 1969. The sample demonstrates Hendrix's cutting-edge use of feedback.
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Hendrix's performance featured a rendition of the US national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", during which he used copious amounts of amplifier feedback, distortion, and sustain to replicate the sounds made by rockets and bombs.^[198] Although contemporary political pundits described his interpretation as a statement against the Vietnam War, three weeks later Hendrix explained its meaning: "We're all Americans ... it was like 'Go America!'... We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, see".^[199] Immortalized in the 1970 documentary film, Woodstock, his guitar-driven version would become part of the sixties Zeitgeist.^[200] Pop critic Al Aronowitz of The New York Post wrote: "It was the most electrifying moment of Woodstock, and it was probably the single greatest moment of the sixties."^[199] Images of the performance showing Hendrix wearing a blue-beaded white leather jacket with fringe, a red head-scarf, and blue jeans are widely regarded as iconic pictures that capture a defining moment of the era.^[201]^{[nb 31]} He played "Hey Joe" during the encore, concluding the 3½-day festival. Upon leaving the stage, he collapsed from exhaustion.^[200]^{[nb 32]} In 2011, the editors of Guitar World placed his rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock at number one in their list of his 100 greatest performances.^[204]

Band of Gypsys

Main article: Band of Gypsys

A legal dispute arose in 1966 regarding a record contract that Hendrix had entered into the previous year with producer Ed Chalpin.^[205] After two years of litigation, the parties agreed to a resolution that granted Chalpin the distribution rights to an album of original Hendrix material. Hendrix decided that they would record the LP, Band of Gypsys, during two live appearances.^[206] In preparation for the shows he formed an all-black power-trio with Cox and drummer Buddy Miles, formerly with Wilson Pickett, the Electric Flag, and the Buddy Miles Express.^[207] Critic John Rockwell described Hendrix and Miles as jazz-rock fusionists, and their collaboration as pioneering.^[208] Others identified a funk and soul influence in their music.^[209] Concert promoter Bill Graham called the shows "the most brilliant, emotional display of virtuoso electric guitar" that he had ever heard.^[210] Biographers have speculated that Hendrix formed the band in an effort to appease members of the Black Power movement and others in the black communities who called for him to use his fame to speak-up for civil rights.^[211]

	"Machine Gun" Menu 0:00 An excerpt from the first guitar solo that demonstrates Hendrix's innovative use of high gain and overdrive to achieve an aggressive, sustained tone.
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Hendrix had been recording with Cox since April and jamming with Miles since September, and the trio wrote and rehearsed material which they performed at a series of four shows over two nights on December 31 and January 1, at the Fillmore East. They used recordings of these concerts to assemble the LP, which was produced by Hendrix.^[212] The album includes the track "Machine Gun", which musicologist Andy Aledort described as the pinnacle of Hendrix's career, and "the premiere example of [his] unparalleled genius as a rock guitarist ... In this performance, Jimi transcended the medium of rock music, and set an entirely new standard for the potential of electric guitar."^[213] During the song's extended instrumental breaks, Hendrix created sounds with his guitar that sonically represented warfare, including rockets, bombs, and diving planes.^[214]

The Band of Gypsys album was the only official live Hendrix LP made commercially available during his lifetime; several tracks from the Woodstock and Monterey shows were released later that year.^[215] The album was released in April 1970 by Capitol Records; it reached the top ten in both the US and the UK.^[210] That same month a single was issued with "Stepping Stone" as the A-side and "Izabella" as the B-side, but Hendrix was dissatisfied with the quality of the mastering and he demanded that it be withdrawn and re-mixed, preventing the songs from charting and resulting in Hendrix's least successful single; it was also his last.^[216]

On January 28, 1970, a third and final Band of Gypsys appearance took place; they performed during a music festival at Madison Square Garden benefiting the anti-Vietnam War Moratorium Committee titled the "Winter Festival for Peace".^[217] American blues guitarist Johnny Winter was backstage before the concert; he recalled: "[Hendrix] came in with his head down, sat on the couch alone, and put his head in his hands ... He didn't move until it was time for the show."^[218] Minutes after taking the stage he snapped a vulgar response at a woman who had shouted a request for "Foxy Lady". He then began playing "Earth Blues" before telling the audience: "That's what happens when earth fucks with space".^[218] Moments later, he briefly sat down on the drum riser before leaving the stage.^[219] Both Miles and Redding later stated that Jeffery had given Hendrix LSD before the performance.^[220] Miles believed that Jeffery gave Hendrix the drugs in an effort to sabotage the current band and bring about the return of the original Experience lineup.^[219] Jeffery fired Miles after the show and Cox quit, ending the Band of Gypsys.^[221]

Cry of Love Tour

Main article: The Cry of Love Tour

Soon after the abruptly ended Band of Gypsys performance and their subsequent dissolution, Jeffery made arrangements to reunite the original Experience line-up.^[222] Although Hendrix, Mitchell, and Redding were interviewed by Rolling Stone in February 1970 as a united group, Hendrix never intended to work with Redding.^[223] When Redding returned to New York in anticipation of rehearsals with a reformed Experience, he was told that he had been replaced with Cox.^[224] During an interview with Rolling Stone 's Keith Altham, Hendrix defended the decision: "It's nothing personal against Noel, but we finished what we were doing with the Experience and Billy's style of playing suits the new group better."^[222] Although the lineup of Hendrix, Mitchell, and Cox became known as the Cry of Love band, after their accompanying tour, billing, advertisements, and tickets were printed with the New Jimi Hendrix Experience or occasionally just Jimi Hendrix.^[225]

During the first half of 1970, Hendrix sporadically worked on material for what would have been his next LP.^[216] Many of the tracks were posthumously released in 1971 as The Cry of Love.^[226] He had started writing songs for the album in 1968, but in April 1970 he told Keith Altham that the project had been abandoned.^[216] Soon afterward, he and his band took a break from recording and began the Cry of Love tour at the L.A. Forum, performing for 20,000 people.^[227] Set-lists during the tour included numerous Experience tracks as well as a selection of newer material.^[227] Several shows were recorded, and they produced some of Hendrix's most memorable live performances. At one of them, the second Atlanta International Pop Festival, on July 4, he played to the largest American audience of his career.^[228] According to authors Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz, as many as 500,000 people attended the concert.^[228] On July 17, they appeared at the New York Pop Festival; Hendrix had again consumed too many drugs before the show, and the set was considered a disaster.^[229] The American leg of the tour, which included 32 performances, ended at Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 1, 1970.^[230] This would be Hendrix's final concert appearance in the US.^[231]

Electric Lady Studios

Main article: Electric Lady Studios

In 1968, Hendrix and Jeffery jointly invested in the purchase of the Generation Club in Greenwich Village.^[175] They had initially planned to reopen the establishment, but after an audit revealed that Hendrix had incurred exorbitant fees by block-booking lengthy sessions at peak rates they decided that the building would better serve them as a recording studio.^[232] With a facility of his own, Hendrix could work as much as he wanted while also reducing his recording expenditures, which had reached a reported $300,000 annually.^[233] Architect and acoustician John Storyk designed Electric Lady Studios for Hendrix, who requested that they avoid right angles where possible. With round windows, an ambient lighting machine, and a psychedelic mural, Storyk wanted the studio to have a relaxing environment that would encourage Hendrix's creativity.^[233] The project took twice as long as planned and cost twice as much as Hendrix and Jeffery had budgeted, with their total investment estimated at $1 million.^[234]^{[nb 33]} Electric Lady was the first artist owned and operated recording studio.^[234]

Hendrix first used Electric Lady on June 15, 1970, when he jammed with Steve Winwood and Chris Wood of Traffic; the next day, he recorded his first track there, "Night Bird Flying".^[235] The studio officially opened for business on August 25, and a grand opening party was held the following day.^[235] Immediately afterwards, Hendrix left for England; he never returned to the States.^[236] He boarded an Air India flight for London with Cox, joining Mitchell for a performance as the headlining act of the Isle of Wight Festival.^[237]

European tour

When the European leg of the Cry of Love tour began, Hendrix was longing for his new studio and creative outlet, and was not eager to fulfill the commitment. On September 2, 1970, he abandoned a performance in Aarhus after three songs, stating: "I've been dead a long time".^[238] Four days later, he gave his final concert appearance, at the Isle of Fehmarn Festival in Germany.^[239] He was met with booing and jeering from fans in response to his cancellation of a show slated for the end of the previous night's bill due to torrential rain and risk of electrocution.^[240]^{[nb 34]} Immediately following the festival, Hendrix, Mitchell, and Cox travelled to London.^[242]

Three days after the performance, Cox, who was suffering from severe paranoia after either taking LSD or being given it unknowingly, quit the tour and went to stay with his parents in Pennsylvania.^[243] Within days of Hendrix's arrival in England, he had spoken with Chas Chandler, Alan Douglas, and others about leaving his manager, Michael Jeffery.^[244] On September 16, Hendrix performed in public for the last time during an informal jam at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho with Eric Burdon and his latest band, War.^[245] They began by playing a few of their recent hits, and after a brief intermission Hendrix joined them during "Mother Earth" and "Tobacco Road". His performance was uncharacteristically subdued; he quietly played backing guitar, and refrained from the histrionics that people had come to expect from him.^[246] He died less than 48 hours later.^[247]

Drugs and alcohol

In July 1962, after Hendrix was discharged from the US Army, he entered a small club in Clarksville, Tennessee. Drawn in by live music, he stopped for a drink and ended up spending most of the $400 he had saved. He explained: "I went in this jazz joint and had a drink. I liked it and I stayed. People tell me I get foolish, good-natured sometimes. Anyway, I guess I felt real benevolent that day. I must have been handing out bills to anyone that asked me.

I came out of that place with sixteen dollars left."^[248] According to the authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber: "Alcohol would later be the scourge of his existence, driving him to fits of pique, even rare bursts of atypical, physical violence."^[249]

Like most acid-heads, Jimi had visions and he wanted to create music to express what he saw. He would try to explain this to people, but it didn't make sense because it was not linked to reality in any way.^[250]

—Kathy Etchingham

While Roby and Schreiber assert that Hendrix first used LSD when he met Linda Keith in late 1966, according to the authors Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek, the earliest that Hendrix is known to have ingested the drug was in June 1967, while attending the Monterey Pop Festival.^[251] According to Hendrix biographer Charles Cross, the subject of drugs came up one evening in 1966 at Keith's New York apartment; when one of Keith's friends offered Hendrix acid, which is the street name for lysergic acid diethylamide, Hendrix declined, asking instead for LSD, showing what Cross described as "his naivete and his complete inexperience with psychedelics".^[252] Before that, Hendrix had only sporadically used drugs, his experimentation was significantly limited by his dire financial circumstances to cannabis, hashish, amphetamines, and occasionally cocaine.^[252] After 1967, he regularly smoked cannabis and hashish, and used LSD and amphetamines, particularly while touring.^[253] According to Cross, by the time of his death in September 1970, "few stars were as closely associated with the drug culture as Jimi."^[254]

Substance abuse and violence

Hendrix would often become angry and violent when he drank too much alcohol, or when he mixed alcohol with illicit drugs.^[255] His friend Herbie Worthington explained: "You wouldn't expect somebody with that kind of love to be that violent ... He just couldn't drink ... he simply turned into a bastard."^[256] According to journalist and friend Sharon Lawrence, Hendrix "admitted he could not handle hard liquor, which set off a bottled-up anger, a destructive fury he almost never displayed otherwise."^[257]

In January 1968, the Experience travelled to Sweden for a one-week tour of Europe. During the early morning hours of the first day, Hendrix became engaged in a drunken brawl in the Hotel Opalen, in Gothenburg, smashing a plate-glass window and injuring his right hand, for which he received medical treatment.^[256] The incident culminated in his arrest and release, pending a court appearance that resulted in a large fine.^[258] After the 1969 burglary of a house Hendrix was renting in Benedict Canyon, California, and while he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, he punched his friend Paul Caruso and accused him of the theft. He then chased Caruso away from the residence while throwing stones at him.^[259] A few days later, one of Hendrix's girlfriends, Carmen Borrero, required stitches after he hit her above her eye with a vodka bottle during a drunken, jealous rage.^[256]

Canadian drug charges and trial

Main article: Canadian drug charges and trial of Jimi Hendrix

On May 3, 1969, while Hendrix was passing through customs at Toronto International Airport, authorities detained him after finding a small amount of what they suspected to be heroin and hashish in his luggage.^[260] Four hours later, he was formally charged with drug possession and released on $10,000 bail. He was required to return on May 5 for an arraignment hearing.^[261] The incident proved stressful for Hendrix, and it weighed heavily on his mind during the seven months that he awaited trial.^[260]

In order for the Crown to prove possession they had to show that Hendrix knew the drugs were there.^[262] During the jury trial, which took place in December, he testified that a fan had given him a vial of what he thought was legal medication, which he put in his bag without knowledge of the illegal substances contained therein.^[263] He was acquitted of the charges.^[264] Both Mitchell and Redding later revealed that everyone had been warned about a planned drug bust the day before flying to Toronto; both men also stated that they believed that the drugs had been planted in Hendrix's bag.^[265]

Death, post-mortem, and burial

Main article: Death of Jimi Hendrix

A color photograph of a white, multi-story building.

The Samarkand Hotel, where Hendrix spent his final hours

Although the details of Hendrix's last day and death are widely disputed, he spent much of September 17, 1970, in London with Monika Dannemann, the only witness to his final hours.^[266] Dannemann said that she prepared a meal for them at her apartment in the Samarkand Hotel, 22 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill, sometime around 11 p.m., when they shared a bottle of wine.^[267] She drove Hendrix to the residence of an acquaintance at approximately 1:45 a.m., where he remained for about an hour before she picked him up and drove them back to her flat at 3 a.m.^[268] Dannemann said they talked until around 7 a.m., when they went to sleep. She awoke around 11 a.m., and found Hendrix breathing, but unconscious and unresponsive. She called for an ambulance at 11:18 a.m.; they arrived on the scene at 11:27 a.m.^[269] Paramedics then transported Hendrix to St Mary Abbot's Hospital where Dr. John Bannister pronounced him dead at 12:45 p.m. on September 18, 1970.^[270]

To determine the cause of death, coroner Gavin Thurston ordered a post-mortem examination on Hendrix's body, which was performed on September 21 by Professor Robert Donald Teare, a forensic pathologist.^[271] Thurston completed the inquest on September 28, and concluded that Hendrix aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates.^[272] Citing "insufficient evidence of the circumstances", he declared an open verdict.^[273] Dannemann later revealed that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage.^[274]

After Hendrix's body had been embalmed by Desmond Henley,^[275] it was flown to Seattle, Washington, on September 29, 1970.^[276] After a service at Dunlop Baptist Church on October 1, he was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Renton, Washington, the location of his mother's gravesite.^[277] Hendrix's family and friends traveled in twenty-four limousines and more than two hundred people attended the funeral, including several notable musicians such as original Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, as well as Miles Davis, John Hammond, and Johnny Winter.^[278]^{[nb 35]}

Unauthorized and posthumous releases

By 1967, as Hendrix was gaining in popularity, many of his pre-Experience recordings were marketed to an unsuspecting public as Jimi Hendrix albums, sometimes with misleading later images of Hendrix.^[280] The recordings, which came under the control of producer Ed Chalpin of PPX, with whom Hendrix had signed a recording contract in 1965, were often re-mixed between their repeated reissues, and licensed to record companies such as Decca and Capitol.^[281] Hendrix publicly denounced the releases, describing them as "malicious" and "greatly inferior", stating: "At PPX, we spent on average about one hour recording a song. Today I spend at least twelve hours on each song."^[282] These unauthorized releases have long constituted a substantial part of his recording catalogue, amounting to hundreds of albums.^[283]

Some of Hendrix's unfinished material was released as the 1971 title The Cry of Love.^[226] Although the album reached number three in the US and number two in the UK, producers Mitchell and Kramer later complained that they were unable to make use of all the available songs because some tracks were used for 1971's Rainbow Bridge; still others were issued on 1972's War Heroes.^[284] Material from The Cry of Love was re-released in 1997 as First Rays of the New Rising Sun, along with the other tracks that Mitchell and Kramer had wanted to include.^[285]^{[nb 36]}

In 1993, MCA Records delayed a multi-million dollar sale of Hendrix's publishing copyrights because Al Hendrix was unhappy about the arrangement.^[287] He acknowledged that he had sold distribution rights to a foreign corporation in 1974, but stated that it did not include copyrights and argued that he had retained veto power of the sale of the catalogue.^[287] Under a settlement reached in July 1995, Al Hendrix prevailed in his legal battle and regained control of his son's song and image rights.^[288] He subsequently licensed the recordings to MCA through the family-run company Experience Hendrix LLC, formed in 1995.^[289] In August 2009, Experience Hendrix announced that it had entered a new licensing agreement with Sony Music Entertainment's Legacy Recordings division which would take effect in 2010.^[290] Legacy and Experience Hendrix launched the 2010 Jimi Hendrix Catalog Project, starting with the release of Valleys of Neptune in March of that year.^[291] In the months before his death, Hendrix recorded demos for a concept album tentatively titled Black Gold, which are now in the possession of Experience Hendrix LLC; as of 2013 no official release date has been announced.^[292]^{[nb 37]}

Equipment

Guitars and amplifiers

The Fender Stratocaster Hendrix played at Woodstock

Hendrix's Gibson Flying V guitar

Hendrix played a variety of guitars throughout his career, but the instrument that became most associated with him was the Fender Stratocaster.^[294] He acquired his first Stratocaster in 1966, when a girlfriend loaned him enough money to purchase a used one that had been built around 1964.^[295] He thereafter used the model prevalently during performances and recordings.^[296] In 1967, he described the instrument as "the best all-around guitar for the stuff we're doing"; he praised its "bright treble and deep bass sounds".^[297]

With few exceptions, Hendrix played right-handed guitars that were turned upside down and restrung for left-hand playing.^[298] This had an important effect on the sound of his guitar; because of the slant of the bridge pickup, his lowest string had a brighter sound while his highest string had a darker sound, which was the opposite of the Stratocaster's intended design.^[299] In addition to Stratocasters, Hendrix also used Fender Jazzmasters, Duosonics, two different Gibson Flying Vs, a Gibson Les Paul, three Gibson SGs, a Gretsch Corvette, and a Fender Jaguar.^[300] He used a white Gibson SG Custom for his performances on The Dick Cavett Show in September 1969, and a black Gibson Flying V during the Isle of Wight festival in 1970.^[301]^{[nb 38]}

During 1965 and 1966, while Hendrix was playing back-up for soul and R&B acts in the US, he used an 85-watt Fender Twin Reverb amplifier.^[303] When Chandler brought Hendrix to England in October 1966, he supplied him with 30-watt Burns amps, which Hendrix thought were too small for his needs.^[304]^{[nb 39]} After an early London gig when he was unable to use his preferred Fender Twin, he asked about the Marshall amps that he had noticed other groups using.^[304] Years earlier, Mitch Mitchell had taken drum lessons from the amp builder, Jim Marshall, and he introduced Hendrix to Marshall.^[305] At their initial meeting, Hendrix bought four speaker cabinets and three 100-watt Super Lead amplifiers; he would grow accustomed to using all three in unison.^[304] The equipment arrived on October 11, 1966, and the Experience used the new gear during their first tour.^[304] Marshall amps were well-suited for Hendrix's needs, and they were paramount in the evolution of his heavily overdriven sound, enabling him to master the use of feedback as a musical effect, creating what author Paul Trynka described as a "definitive vocabulary for rock guitar".^[306] Hendrix usually turned all of the amplifier's control knobs to the maximum level, which became known as the Hendrix setting.^[307] During the four years prior to his death, he purchased between 50 and 100 Marshall amplifiers.^[308] Jim Marshall said that he was "the greatest ambassador" his company ever had.^[309]

Effects

A 1968 King Vox-Wah pedal similar to one that was owned by Hendrix^[310]

One of Hendrix's signature effects was the wah-wah pedal, which he first heard used with an electric guitar in Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses", released in May 1967.^[311] In July of that year, while playing gigs at the Scene club in New York City, Hendrix met Frank Zappa, whose band, the Mothers of Invention were performing at the adjacent Garrick Theater. Hendrix was fascinated by Zappa's application of the pedal, and he experimented with one later that evening.^[312]^{[nb 40]} He used a wah pedal during the opening to "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", creating one of the best-known wah-wah riffs of the classic rock era.^[314] He can also be heard using the effect on "Up from the Skies", "Little Miss Lover", and "Still Raining, Still Dreaming".^[313]

Hendrix consistently used a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face and a Vox wah pedal during recording sessions and live performances, but he also experimented with other guitar effects.^[315] He enjoyed a fruitful long-term collaboration with electronics enthusiast Roger Mayer, whom he once called "the secret" of his sound.^[316] Mayer introduced him to the Octavia, an octave doubling effect pedal, in December 1966, and he first recorded with the effect during the guitar solo to "Purple Haze".^[317]

Hendrix also utilized the Uni-Vibe, which was designed to simulate the modulation effects of a rotating Leslie speaker by providing a rich phasing sound that could be manipulated with a speed control pedal. He can be heard using the effect during his performance at Woodstock and on the Band of Gypsys track "Machine Gun", which prominently features the Uni-vibe along with an Octavia and a Fuzz Face.^[318] His signal flow for live performance involved first plugging his guitar into a wah-wah pedal, then connecting the wah-wah pedal to a Fuzz Face, which was then linked to a Uni-Vibe, before connecting to a Marshall amplifier.^[319]

Influences

As an adolescent during the 1950s, Hendrix became interested in rock and roll artists such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry.^[320] In 1968, he told Guitar Player magazine that electric blues artists Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and B.B. King inspired him during the beginning of his career; he also cited Eddie Cochran as an early influence.^[321] Of Muddy Waters, the first electric guitarist of which Hendrix became aware, he said: "I heard one of his records when I was a little boy and it scared me to death because I heard all of these sounds."^[322] In 1970, he told Rolling Stone that he was a fan of western swing artist Bob Wills and while he lived in Nashville, the television show the Grand Ole Opry.^[323]

I don't happen to know much about jazz. I know that most of those cats are playing nothing but blues, though—I know that much. ^[324]

—Hendrix on jazz music

Cox stated that during their time serving in the US military he and Hendrix primarily listened to southern blues artists such as Jimmy Reed and Albert King. According to Cox, "King was a very, very powerful influence".^[321] Howlin' Wolf also inspired Hendrix, who performed Wolf's "Killing Floor" as the opening song of his US debut at the Monterey Pop Festival.^[325] The influence of soul artist Curtis Mayfield can be heard in Hendrix's guitar playing, and the influence of Bob Dylan can be heard in Hendrix's songwriting; he was known to play Dylan's records repeatedly, particularly Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.^[326]

Legacy

"He changed everything. What don't we owe Jimi Hendrix? For his monumental rebooting of guitar culture "standards of tone", technique, gear, signal processing, rhythm playing, soloing, stage presence, chord voicings, charisma, fashion, and composition? ... He is guitar hero number one."^[327]

—Guitar Player magazine, May 2012

The Experience's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography states: "Jimi Hendrix was arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. Hendrix expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. His boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll."^[328] Musicologist Andy Aledort described Hendrix as "one of the most creative" and "influential musicians that has ever lived".^[329] Music journalist Chuck Philips wrote: "In a field almost exclusively populated by white musicians, Hendrix has served as a role model for a cadre of young black rockers. His achievement was to reclaim title to a musical form pioneered by black innovators like Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the 1950s."^[330]

Hendrix favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain.^[106] He was instrumental in developing the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback, and helped to popularize use of the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock.^[331] He rejected the standard barre chord fretting technique used by most guitarists in favor of fretting the low 6th string root notes with his thumb.^[332] He applied this technique during the beginning bars of "Little Wing", which allowed him to sustain the root note of chords while also playing melody. This method has been described as piano style, with the thumb playing what a pianist's left hand would play and the other fingers playing melody as a right hand.^[333] Having spent several years fronting a trio, he developed an ability to play rhythm chords and lead lines together, giving the audio impression that more than one guitarist was performing.^[334]^{[nb 41]} He was the first artist to incorporate stereophonic phasing effects in rock music recordings.^[337] Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."^[2]^{[nb 42]} Aledort wrote: "In rock guitar, there are but two eras—before Hendrix and after Hendrix.

While creating his unique musical voice and guitar style, Hendrix synthesized diverse genres, including blues, R&B, soul, British rock, American folk music, 1950s rock and roll, and jazz.^[339] Musicologist David Moskowitz emphasized the importance of blues music in Hendrix's playing style, and according to authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, "[He] explored the outer reaches of psychedelic rock".^[340] His influence is evident in a variety of popular music formats, and he has contributed significantly to the development of hard rock, heavy metal, funk, post-punk, and hip hop music.^[341] His lasting influence on modern guitar players is difficult to overstate; his techniques and delivery have been abundantly imitated by others.^[342] Despite his hectic touring schedule and notorious perfectionism, he was a prolific recording artist who left behind numerous unreleased recordings.^[343] More than 40 years after his death, Hendrix remains as popular as ever, with annual album sales exceeding that of any year during his lifetime.^[344]

Hendrix has influenced numerous funk and funk rock artists, including Prince, George Clinton, John Frusciante, formerly of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic, and Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers.^[345] Hendrix's influence also extends to many hip hop artists, including De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Digital Underground, Beastie Boys, and Run–D.M.C.^[346] Miles Davis was deeply impressed by Hendrix, and he compared Hendrix's improvisational abilities with those of saxophonist John Coltrane.^[347]^{[nb 43]} Hendrix influenced blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan, Metallica 's Kirk Hammett, instrumental rock guitarist Joe Satriani, and heavy metal virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen, who said: "[Hendrix] created modern electric playing, without question ... He was the first. He started it all. The rest is history."^[349]

Recognition and awards

Hendrix statue outside Dimbola Lodge, Isle of Wight

Hendrix received several prestigious rock music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year.^[350] In 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year.^[350] Also in 1968, the City of Seattle gave him the Keys to the City.^[351] Disc & Music Echo newspaper honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player magazine named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year.^[352]

Rolling Stone ranked his three non-posthumous studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968) among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.^[353] They ranked Hendrix number one on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, and number six on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.^[354] Guitar World's readers voted six of Hendrix's solos among the top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time: "Purple Haze" (70), "The Star-Spangled Banner" (52; from Live at Woodstock), "Machine Gun" (32; from Band of Gypsys), "Little Wing" (18), "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" (11), and "All Along the Watchtower" (5).^[355] Rolling Stone placed seven of his recordings in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (17), "All Along the Watchtower" (47) "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" (102), "Foxy Lady" (153), "Hey Joe" (201), "Little Wing" (366), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (379).^[356] They also included three of Hendrix's songs in their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (2), "Voodoo Child" (12), and "Machine Gun" (49).^[357]

A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated to Hendrix on November 14, 1991, at 6627 Hollywood Boulevard.^[358] The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.^[359] In 1999, readers of Rolling Stone and Guitar World ranked Hendrix among the most important musicians of the 20th century.^[360] In 2005, his debut album, Are You Experienced, was one of 50 recordings added that year to the United States National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress, "[to] be preserved for all time ... [as] part of the nation's audio legacy".^[361]

The English Heritage blue plaque that identifies his former residence at 23 Brook Street, London, which is one door down from the former residence of George Frideric Handel, was the first the organization ever granted to a pop star.^[362] A memorial statue of Hendrix playing a Stratocaster stands near the corner of Broadway and Pine Streets in Seattle. In May 2006, the city renamed a park near its Central District, Jimi Hendrix Park, in his honor.^[363] In 2012, an official historic marker was erected on the site of the July 1970 Second Atlanta International Pop Festival near Byron, Georgia. The marker text reads, in part: “Over thirty musical acts performed, including rock icon Jimi Hendrix playing to the largest American audience of his career.”^[364]

Hendrix's music has received a number of Hall of Fame Grammy awards, starting with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, followed by two Grammys in 1999 for his albums Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland; Axis: Bold as Love received a Grammy in 2006.^[365]^[366] In 2000, he received a Hall of Fame Grammy award for his original composition, "Purple Haze", and in 2001 for his recording of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". Hendrix's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was honored with a Grammy in 2009.^[365]

Discography

Main articles: Jimi Hendrix discography and Jimi Hendrix posthumous discography

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsys

Band of Gypsys (1970; recorded live)

Posthumous albums

The Cry of Love (1971)
Rainbow Bridge (1971)
War Heroes (1972)
Loose Ends (1974)
Crash Landing (1975)
Midnight Lightning (1975)
Nine to the Universe (1980)
Radio One (1988)
First Rays of the New Rising Sun (1997)
South Saturn Delta (1997)
Valleys of Neptune (2010)
People, Hell and Angels (2013)

Notes

Hendrix's paternal grandmother, Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, was a former vaudeville dancer who moved to Vancouver, Canada, from Tennessee after meeting her husband, former special police officer Bertram Philander Ross Hendrix, on the Dixieland circuit.^[4] Nora shared a love for theatrical clothing and adornment, music, and performance with Hendrix. She also imbued him with the stories, rituals, and music that had been part of her Afro-Cherokee heritage and her former life on the stage. Along with his attendance at black Pentecostal church services, writers have suggested these experiences may later have informed his thinking about the connections between emotions, spirituality, and music.^[5]
Authors Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek speculate that the change from Johnny to James may have been a response to Al's knowledge of an affair Lucille had with a man who called himself John Williams.^[10] As a young child, friends and family called Hendrix "Buster". His brother Leon claims that Jimi chose the nickname after his hero Buster Crabbe, of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers fame.^[11]
Al Hendrix completed his basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.^[12] He spent most of his time in the service in the South Pacific Theater, in Fiji.^[13]
According to Hendrix's cousin, Diane Hendrix, in August 1956, when Jimi stayed with her family, he put on shows for her, using a broom to mimic a guitar while listening to Elvis Presley records.^[24]
Hendrix saw Presley perform in Seattle on September 1, 1957.^[27]
In 1967, Hendrix revealed his feelings in regard to his mother's death during a survey he took for the UK publication, New Musical Express. Hendrix stated: "Personal ambition: Have my own style of music. See my mother again."^[23]
In the late 1960s, after he had become famous, Hendrix told reporters that racist faculty expelled him from Garfield for holding hands with a white girlfriend during study hall. Principal Frank Hanawalt says that it was due to poor grades and attendance problems.^[36] The school had a relatively even ethnic mix of African, European, and Asian-Americans.^[37]
According to authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber: "It has been erroneously reported that Captain John Halbert, a medical officer, recommended that Jimi be discharged primarily for admitting to having homosexual desires for an unnamed soldier."^[50] However, in the National Personnel Records Center, which contains 98 pages documenting Hendrix's army service, including his numerous infractions, the word "homosexual" is not mentioned.^[50]
The Allen twins performed as backup singers under the name Ghetto Fighters on Hendrix's song "Freedom".^[60]
According to authors Steve Roby and Brad Schreiber, Hendrix was fired from the Isleys in August 1964.^[66]
Three other songs were recorded during the sessions—"Dancin' All Over the World", "You Better Stop", and "Every Time I Think About You"—but Vee Jay did not release them at the time due to their poor quality.^[70]
Several songs and demos from the Knight recording sessions were later marketed as "Jimi Hendrix" recordings after he had become famous.^[78]
As with the King Curtis recordings, backing tracks and alternate takes for the Youngblood sessions would be overdubbed and otherwise manipulated to create many "new" tracks.^[84] Many Youngblood tracks without any Hendrix involvement would later be marketed as "Jimi Hendrix" recordings.^[82]
In mid-1966, Hendrix recorded with Lonnie Youngblood, a saxophone player who occasionally performed with Curtis Knight.^[81] The sessions produced two singles for Youngblood: "Go Go Shoes"/"Go Go Place" and "Soul Food (That's What I Like)"/"Goodbye Bessie Mae".^[82] Singles for other artists also came out of the sessions, including the Icemen's "(My Girl) She's a Fox"/ "(I Wonder) What It Takes" and Jimmy Norman's "That Little Old Groove Maker"/"You're Only Hurting Yourself".^[83]^{[nb 13]}
So as to differentiate the two Randys in the band, Hendrix dubbed Randy Wolfe "Randy California" and Randy Palmer "Randy Texas".^[86] Randy California later co-founded the band Spirit with his stepfather, drummer Ed Cassidy.^[87]
Singer-guitarist Ellen McIlwaine and guitarist Jeff Baxter also briefly worked with Hendrix during this period.^[90]
Etchingham later wrote an autobiographical book about their relationship and the London music scene during the 1960s.^[97]
This guitar has now been identified as the guitar acquired and later restored by Frank Zappa. He used it to record his album Zoot Allures (1971). When Zappa's son, Dweezil Zappa, found the guitar some twenty years later, Zappa gave it to him.^[111]
The original version of the LP contained none of the previously released singles or their B-sides.^[116]
As with Sgt. Pepper, Are You Experienced was recorded using four-track technology.^[112]
The US and Canadian versions of Are You Experienced had a new cover by Karl Ferris and a new song list, with Reprise removing "Red House", "Remember" and "Can You See Me" to make room for the first three single A-sides omitted from the UK release: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary".^[120] "Red House" is the only original twelve-bar blues written by Hendrix.^[120]
When Track records sent the master tapes for "Purple Haze" to Reprise for remastering, they wrote the following words on the tape box: "Deliberate distortion. Do not correct."^[122]
According to author Bob Gula, "When Jimi torched his guitar onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival, it became one of, if not the single greatest iconic moment in the first half-century of rock; his image as the psychedelic voodoo child conjuring uncontrollable forces is a rock archetype."^[131] Musicologist David Moskowitz wrote: "The image of Jimi kneeling over his burning guitar at Monterey became one of the most iconic pictures of the era."^[132]
Earlier in the festival, a German photographer advised Caraeff, who was taking pictures of performers, to save film for Hendrix.^[133]
As with their previous LP, the band had to schedule recording sessions in between performances.^[148]
The double LP was the only Experience album to be mixed entirely in stereo.^[165]
In March 1968, Jim Morrison of the Doors joined Hendrix onstage at the Scene Club in New York.^[167]
Hendrix and Etchingham ended their relationship in early 1969.^[175]
Gold and Goldstein filmed the Royal Albert Hall shows, but as of 2013 they have not been officially released.^[177]
Hendrix agreed to receive $18,000 in compensation for his set, but was eventually paid $32,000 for the performance and $12,000 for the rights to film him.^[194]
In 2010, when a federal court of appeals decided on whether online sharing of a music recording constituted a performance, they cited Hendrix in their decision stating: "Hendrix memorably (or not, depending on one's sensibility) offered a 'rendition' of the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock when he performed it aloud in 1969".^[202]
The Woodstock lineup appeared together on two subsequent occasions, and on September 16 they jammed for one last time; soon afterward, Lee and Velez left the band.^[203]
In an effort to finance the studio, Hendrix and Jeffrey secured a $300,000 loan from Warner Bros. As part of the agreement, Hendrix was required to provide Warner Bros. with another album, resulting in a soundtrack for the film Rainbow Bridge.^[234]
A live recording of the concert was later released as Live at the Isle of Fehmarn.^[241]
Hendrix performed in Sweden frequently throughout his career, and his only son, James Daniel Sundquist, was born there in 1969 to a Swede, Eva Sundquist. The relation has been recognized by the Swedish courts and Sundquist received a monetary settlement from Experience Hendrix LLC.^[279]
Two of Hendrix's final recordings included the lead guitar parts on "Old Times Good Times" from Stephen Stills' eponymous album (1970) and on "The Everlasting First" from Arthur Lee's new incarnation of Love. Both tracks were recorded during a brief visit to London in March 1970, following Kathy Etchingham's marriage.^[286]
Many of Hendrix's personal items, tapes, and many pages of lyrics and poems are now in the hands of private collectors and have attracted considerable sums at occasional auctions. These materials surfaced after two employees, under the instructions of Mike Jeffery, removed items from Hendrix's Greenwich Village apartment following his death.^[293]
While Hendrix had previously owned a 1967 Flying V that he hand-painted in a psychedelic design, the Flying V used at the Isle of Wight was a unique custom left-handed guitar with gold plated hardware, a bound fingerboard and "split-diamond" fret markers that were not found on other 1960s-era Flying Vs.^[302]
During their second rehearsal, the Experience attempted to destroy the Burns amps that Chandler had given them by throwing the equipment down a flight of stairs.^[304]
The wah pedals that Hendrix owned were designed by the Thomas Organ Company and manufactured in Italy by JEN Elettronica Pescara for Vox.^[313]
His heavy use of the tremolo bar often detuned his guitar strings, necessitating frequent tunings.^[335] During the last three years of his life, he abandoned the standard concert pitch and instead tuned his guitar down one minor second, or a half step to E♭. This not only made string bending easier, but it also dropped the guitar's pitch, making it easier to accompany himself vocally.^[336]
Hendrix also played keyboard instruments on several recordings, including piano on "Are You Experienced?", "Spanish Castle Magic", and "Crosstown Traffic", and harpsichord on "Bold as Love" and "Burning of the Midnight Lamp".^[338]
Davis would later request that guitarists in his bands emulate Hendrix.^[348]

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Moskowitz 2010, p. 73.
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Aledort, Andy (1995). Tolinski, Brad, ed. "Jimi Hendrix Lesson: Message to Love". Guitar School 7 (3).
Aledort, Andy (1991). Pollock, Bruce; Stix, John, eds. "Performance notes: Jimi Hendrix, 'All Along the Watchtower'". Guitar Classics IV by Guitar: For the Practicing Musician.
Black, Johnny (1999). Jimi Hendrix: The Ultimate Experience. Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 978-1-56025-240-5.
Brown, Tony (1997). Jimi Hendrix: The Final Days. Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-5238-6.
Cross, Charles R. (2005). Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix. Hyperion. ISBN 978-0-7868-8841-2.
Davis, Miles; Troupe, Quincy (1989). Miles: The Autobiography. Picador. ISBN 978-0-330-31382-7.
Doggett, Peter (2004). Jimi Hendrix: The Complete Guide to his Music. Omnibus. ISBN 978-1-84449-424-8.
Fairchild, Michael (April 1991). "The Experience of a Lifetime". Guitar: For the Practicing Musician 8 (6).
George-Warren, Holly, ed. (2001). The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (2005 revised and updated ed.). Fireside. ISBN 978-0-7432-9201-6.
GP staff (May 2012). "Hendrix at 70". Guitar Player 46 (5).
Green, Raleigh (2008). The Versatile Guitarist. Alfred Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7390-4805-4.
Gula, Bob (2008). Guitar Gods: The 25 Players Who Made Rock History. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-35806-7.
Guitar World (December 2011). "Jimi Hendrix's 100 Greatest Performances". Guitar World 32 (12).
Handyside, Christopher (2005). Soul and R&B. Heinemann-Raintree. ISBN 978-1-4034-8153-5.
Heatley, Michael (2009). Jimi Hendrix Gear: The Guitars, Amps & Effects that Revolutionized Rock 'n' Roll. Voyageur Press. ISBN 978-0-7603-3639-7.
Hendrix, James A. (1999). My Son Jimi. AlJas Enterprises. ISBN 978-0-9667857-0-8.
Hendrix, Janie L.; McDermott, John (2007). Jimi Hendrix: An Illustrated Experience. Atria. ISBN 978-0-7432-9769-1.
Hendrix, Leon; Mitchell, Adam (2012). Jimi Hendrix: A Brother's Story. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-66881-5.
Inglis, Ian (2006). Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-4056-1.
Larkin, Colin (1998). Virgin All-time Top 1000 Albums. Virgin. ISBN 978-0-7535-0258-7.
Lawrence, Sharon (2005). Jimi Hendrix: The Intimate Story of a Betrayed Musical Legend. Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-056301-1.
Levy, Joe, ed. (2005). Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (First Paperback ed.). Wenner Books. ISBN 978-1-932958-61-4.
Mayer, John (2011). "Jimi Hendrix". In Brackett, Nathan. Rolling Stone: The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Rolling Stone.
McDermott, John (2009). Ultimate Hendrix: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Live Concerts and Sessions. BackBeat Books. ISBN 978-0-87930-938-1.
McDermott, John (1992). Lewisohn, Mark, ed. Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight. Grand Central. ISBN 978-0-446-39431-4.
Mitchell, Mitch; Platt, John (1990). Jimi Hendrix: Inside the Experience. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-10098-8.
Morello, Tom (December 8, 2011). "Jimi Hendrix". In Wenner, Jann. "Rolling Stone: The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Rolling Stone (1145).
Moskowitz, David (2010). The Words and Music of Jimi Hendrix. Praeger. ISBN 978-0-313-37592-7.
Murray, Charles Shaar (1989). Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and the Rock 'n' Roll Revolution (First US ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-04288-2.
Owen, Frank; Reynolds, Simon (April 1991). "Hendrix Lives! Why Jimi still matters". Spin 7 (1).
Potash, Chris, ed. (1996). The Jimi Hendrix Companion. Omnibus. ISBN 978-0-7119-6635-2.
Redding, Noel; Appleby, Carol (1996). Are You Experienced?. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80681-0.
Roberts, David, ed. (2005). British Hit Singles & Albums (18 ed.). Guinness World Records Limited. ISBN 978-1-904994-00-8.
Roby, Steven (2002). Black Gold: The Lost Archives of Jimi Hendrix. Billboad Books. ISBN 978-0-8230-7854-7.
Roby, Steven; Schreiber, Brad (2010). Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius. Da Capo. ISBN 978-0-306-81910-0.
Rosen, Craig (1996). The Billboard Book of Number One Albums. Billboard. ISBN 978-0-8230-7586-7.
Schinder, Scott; Schwartz, Andy (2007). Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever, Volume 1. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-33846-5.
Shadwick, Keith (2003). Jimi Hendrix: Musician. Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-0-87930-764-6.
Shapiro, Harry; Glebbeek, Caesar (1995) [1990]. Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy (New and Improved ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-13062-6.
Stix, John (1992). "Eddie Kramer: Off the Record". In Stix, John. "Jimi Hendix/Stevie Ray Vaughan". Guitar Presents (57).
Stubbs, David (2003). Voodoo Child: Jimi Hendrix, the Stories Behind Every Song. Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 978-1-56025-537-6.
Trynka, Paul (1996). Rock Hardware. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-0-87930-428-7.
Unterberger, Richie (2009). The Rough Guide to Jimi Hendrix. Rough Guides. ISBN 978-1-84836-002-0.
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Whitehill, Dave (1989a). Hendrix: Are You Experienced. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-0-7119-3654-6.
Whitehill, Dave (1989b). Hendrix: Axis: Bold As Love. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-0-7935-2391-7.
Whitehill, Dave (1989c). Hendrix: Electric Ladyland. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-0-7935-3385-5.
Wilkerson, Mark; Townshend, Pete (2006). Amazing Journey: The Life of Pete Townshend. Bad News Press. ISBN 978-1-4116-7700-5.

External links

Book: Jimi Hendrix

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jimi Hendrix.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Jimi Hendrix

Official website
All Jimi Hendrix's concerts. hendrix.free.fr
The Jimi Hendrix Foundation
Jimi Hendrix Memorial Project
Jimi Hendrix at Find a Grave
"Jimi Hendrix: 'You never told me he was that good'" Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian
Jimi Hendrix collected news and commentary at The New York Times
Works by or about Jimi Hendrix in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Articles concerning disputes about rights to the Hendrix musical publishing estate. Los Angeles Times

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jimi_Hendrix_Experience

"IT TOOK ONE BLACK MAN TO MAKE TWO WHITE BOYS PLAY THEIR ASS OFF"

--Miles Davis, 1969

(Upon being asked what he thought of the trio led by Hendrix called 'The Jimi Hendrix Experience')

The Jimi Hendrix Experience
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Origin London, United Kingdom Genres Psychedelic rock, acid rock, blues rock, hard rock Years active 1966–1970 Labels Track (United Kingdom) Reprise (North America) Polydor (Europe) Barclay (France) MCA (post-breakup) Associated acts Gypsy Sun and Rainbows Website www.jimihendrix.com Past members Jimi Hendrix Mitch Mitchell Noel Redding Billy Cox

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was an English-American rock band that formed in Westminster, London, in October 1966. Composed of eponymous singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding, and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969. In this time they released three successful studio albums. After Redding left in mid-1969, Hendrix and Mitchell stayed together through other projects. The Experience reunited in 1970 with Billy Cox, until Hendrix's death in September 1970. Redding died in 2003, and Mitchell became the last original member of the band to die, in November 2008.

Widely recognized as hugely influential on the development of hard rock and heavy metal in the late-1960s and beyond, the Experience was best known for the skill, style and charisma of frontman Hendrix, who has been voted one of the greatest guitarists by various music publications and writers. All three of the band's studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967) and Electric Ladyland (1968), were featured in the top 100 of the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at positions 15, 82 and 54 respectively. In 1992, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Contents 1 History 2 Members 3 Discography 4 Notes 5 Sources 6 References 7 External links History

Jimi Hendrix arrived in England in September 1966[1] and with his new manager Chas Chandler formed a backing band with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell.[2] Mitchell was a seasoned London drummer formerly with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames who brought jazz chops and a lead style of playing to the band. He would prove to be Hendrix's most valuable musical partner. Redding was chosen because Hendrix liked his attitude towards music and hairstyle. It was the first time that he had ever played bass in a band, as he was a guitarist. The name "the Jimi Hendrix Experience" was coined by their business manager Mike Jeffery.[3] The first official appearance of "the Jimi Hendrix Experience" (invited by French singer Johnny Hallyday) was at the Novelty in Évreux, France, on October 13, 1966.[4] Six days later the band played their first UK gig as a private showcase at Scotch of St James.

Though initially conceived as Hendrix's backing band, the Experience soon became much more than that. Following the lead of Cream, they were one of the first groups to popularize the "power trio" format, which stripped a rock band line-up down to guitar, bass and drums.[5] This smaller format also encouraged more extroverted playing from the band members, often at very high volumes. In the case of the Experience, Hendrix combined lead and rhythm guitar duties into one, while also making use of guitar effects such as feedback, and later the wah-wah pedal, to an extent that had never been heard before. Mitchell played hard-hitting jazz-influenced grooves that often served a melodic role as much as they did timekeeping. Redding played deceptively simple bass lines that helped to anchor the band's sound. Visually, they set the trend in psychedelic clothes and, following his band-mates' Bob Dylan 1966-style hairdos, Mitchell got himself a permed copy. On January 11, 1967, the band conquered London when they appeared at The Bag O'Nails nightclub. In attendance that night were John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Brian Epstein, Lulu, the Hollies, Small Faces, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Donovan, Georgie Fame, Denny Laine, Terry Reid, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, who rarely missed any of Hendrix's London gigs. Townshend admitted, "[Jimi] changed the whole sound of electric guitar and turned the rock world upside down". Clapton agreed: "after Pete Townshend and I went to see him play, I thought that was it, the game was up for all of us, we may as well pack it in."[6] The group came to prominence in the US only after the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival,[7] one of the first major rock music festivals.[2] The band's performance ended with Hendrix famously setting his psychedelically painted Fender Stratocaster on fire.[8] After the festival they were asked to go on tour with the Monkees. They joined the tour on July 8, 1967, in Jacksonville, Florida, the second act on a three-band bill, opened by the Sundowners. Less than two weeks later, and after only a handful of engagements, they left the tour, reportedly frustrated by audience response. The last Hendrix/Monkees concert was performed at Flushing Meadows in Queens, New York – Chas Chandler later said that it was all a publicity stunt.[9]

With the Experience, Hendrix recorded his five hit singles "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze",[7] "The Wind Cries Mary", "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" and "All Along the Watchtower", and his three most successful albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland. By April 1969, however, the band was beginning to splinter. Hendrix's deteriorating relations with Redding were coming to a head, and Hendrix also felt his musical development was hampered by the trio format. Hendrix had also begun to experiment with depressants and psychedelic drugs. He was prone to mood swings, which created conflicts within the band.[10] The original group held together long enough to fulfill their existing engagements, culminating in the Denver Pop Festival on June 29, 1969. From the stage, Hendrix made the infamous announcement: "This is the last gig we'll be playing together". The original Experience was dissolved.

Hendrix experimented with a larger band line-up known as Gypsy Sun and Rainbows for his Woodstock concert in August 1969, but reverted to the trio format with the Band of Gypsys. But by 1970, Hendrix had disbanded the Band of Gypsys – it has been claimed this was due to the desire of Michael Jeffery (now Hendrix's only manager) to reform the original Experience line-up, but as Trixie Sullivan, Jeffery's assistant, testified, Hendrix did exactly as he felt musically and Jeffery just handled the business side, as usual. Also, according to Gypsys bassist Billy Cox, the all-black power trio was mainly a one-off to help Hendrix fulfill an outstanding obligation to Ed Chaplin by recording a one-off live LP. Jeffery called Redding and Mitchell about reforming the Experience. Both agreed to participate in what would seem to be a great money-maker of a tour: Mitchell and Redding could use the cash, and the tour would also get Hendrix out of the financial problems he was in at the time partly due to the building of Electric Lady Studios. Hendrix was open to have Mitchell rejoin, but reluctant to bring Redding back into the fold.

In early February 1970, it seemed as if the original Experience was reformed. Manager Michael Jeffery even set up an interview with Rolling Stone magazine to announce the return of the group, published on 19 March 1970 in Rolling Stone as "J.H.: The End of a Beginning Maybe" (and reprinted in Guitar Player magazine five years after Hendrix's death). While the interview gave the impression that the old wounds were healed and the future seemingly bright for the Experience, it was far from the truth. Redding was waiting for weeks to hear back about rehearsals for the upcoming tour, and when he finally spoke with Mitchell's girlfriend, he learned that he had been replaced by Billy Cox. Before it started, Hendrix "called this tour The Cry of Love, because that's what it is" in an interview; this is the only mention of that name, prior to the posthumous LP of that name (1971), and the group itself was still referred to in all ads, articles, promos, bookings, introductions, etc. as the "Jimi Hendrix Experience" or just "Jimi Hendrix". So after a break of nearly ten months (during which he only played six dates) the "Jimi Hendrix Experience" hit the road for one last tour. Hendrix felt the band should stay in America and record for the next LP, while Mike Jeffery wanted a tour of Europe. The European tour was a bad decision from the start. Hendrix had a cold, was not getting rest, and was still affected by the change of climate. His disdain for the management and his financial situation accumulated stress, and by the European leg it was evident Hendrix was unhappy and unfit to tour. Mitchell reported that Hendrix was not even doing sound checks before the performances.

During this period, before the Isle of Wight festival, Hendrix spoke to his friend Richie Havens about his troubles. Havens recollects, "He was terribly unhappy, extremely depressed, and asked for my help. 'I'm having a real bad time with my managers and lawyers' Jimi said. 'They're killing me; everything is wired against me and it's getting so bad I can't eat or sleep...'". There is an interview with Havens (produced by Will Scally), where Havens discusses this very same meeting with Hendrix. The filmed interview has not as yet been broadcast. Any further information can be obtained from Barry Levene.

During a break in the tour later that year, Hendrix died on September 18, 1970, in controversial circumstances.[2] In 1992, the Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[1]

Noel Redding was found dead in his home in Ireland on May 11, 2003.[11] Will Scally produced and directed the DVD The Redding Experience (MNVDISCS), on which Redding discusses the history of the band in detail.[citation needed] While touring in the US, Mitch Mitchell was found dead on November 12, 2008 in his room at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon.[12] He was the last surviving member of the original Jimi Hendrix Experience, while Billy Cox remains the only surviving additional member.

Members:

Jimi Hendrix – lead vocals, guitar[1] (1966–1970; died 1970) Mitch Mitchell – drums (1966–1970; died 2008) Noel Redding – bass guitar, backing vocals[2] (1966–1969; died 2003) Billy Cox – bass guitar, backing vocals

(1969–1970) Discography

Main article: Jimi Hendrix discography Are You Experienced (1967) Axis: Bold as Love (1967) Electric Ladyland (1968) Notes

1. ^ As well as his regular position on lead vocals and guitar, Jimi Hendrix also played bass on Electric Ladyland; backing vocals on "Foxy Lady", "She's So Fine", "Long Hot Summer Night", "Mastermind", "Changes" and "We Gotta Live Together"; piano on "Are You Experienced?", "Spanish Castle Magic" and "Crosstown Traffic"; glockenspiel on "Little Wing"; flute on "If 6 Was 9"; harpsichord on "Bold as Love" and "Burning of the Midnight Lamp"; mellotron on "Burning of the Midnight Lamp"; and percussion on "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)".

2. ^ As well as his regular position on bass and backing vocals, Noel Redding also played electric guitar and acoustic guitar on "Little Miss Strange" and lead vocals on "She's So Fine" and "Little Miss Strange". Sources[edit]
Lawrence, Sharon (2005). Jimi Hendrix: The Intimate Story of a Betrayed Musical Legend (2006 ed.). New York, N.Y.: Harper. ISBN 0-06-056301-X.
References

^ Jump up to: a b "The Jimi Hendrix Experience". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-19. ^ Jump up to: a b c Unterberger, Richie; Westergaard, Sean. "Jimi Hendrix > Biography". allmusic. Retrieved 2009-03-19. Jump up ^ Lawrence 2005, p. 56 Jump up ^ A plaque in Évreux, France commemorating Jimi Hendrix and the Experience's first official show October 13, 1966. Jump up ^ Saunders, William (2010) Jimi Hendrix London Roaring Forties Press ISBN 978-0-9843165-1-9 Jump up ^ '3 is the Magic Number' by Matt Snow for Mojo Magazine (Nov 2006), pp. 81–82 ^ Jump up to: a b Gilliland, John (1969). "Show 53 – String Man. : UNT Digital Library" (audio). Pop Chronicles. Digital.library.unt.edu. Jump up ^ Lawrence 2005, p. 78 Jump up ^ Lawrence 2005, p. 84 Jump up ^ Mitch Mitchell and John Platt, the Hendrix Experience,(London: Hamlyn, 1990), pp. 88–96, 48–149. Jump up ^ Vintage Amps Bulletin Board • View topic – Hendrix Bassist Noel Redding Dead At 57 Jump up ^ Jimi Hendrix drummer dies at 61 just days after tribute tour. Daily Mail. Retrieved 16 June 2012

External links

Jimi Hendrix official website The Jimi Hendrix Experience discography at MusicBrainz The Jimi Hendrix Experience – slideshow by Life magazine Works by or about The Jimi Hendrix Experience in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/08/jimi-hendrix-40th-anniversary-death

Jimi Hendrix: 'You never told me he was that good'

On the the 40th anniversary of the great guitarist's death, Ed Vulliamy speaks to the people who knew him best and unearths a funny, if driven, superstar

by Ed Vulliamy

The 'extraordinary' Jimi Hendrix with the Experience at Olympia, London, on 22 December 1967. Photograph: Ray Stevenson/Rex Features

Saturday 7 August 2010

On the morning of 21 September 1966, a Pan Am airliner from New York landed at Heathrow, carrying among its passengers a black American musician from a poor home. Barely known in his own country and a complete stranger to England, he had just flown first class for the first time in his life. His name was James Marshall Hendrix.

On 18 September 1970, four years later, I picked up a copy of London's Evening Standard on my way home from school, something I never usually did. There was a story of extreme urgency on the front page and a picture of Hendrix playing at a concert – still ringing in my ears – at the Isle of Wight festival, only 18 days earlier. The text reported how Hendrix had died that morning in a hotel in the street, Lansdowne Crescent in Notting Hill, in which I had been born, and a block away from where I now lived.

During those three years and 362 days living in London, Hendrix had conjured – with his vision and sense of sound, his personality and genius – the most extraordinary guitar music ever played, the most remarkable sound-scape ever created; of that there is little argument. Opinion varies only over the effect his music has on people: elation, fear, sexual stimulation, sublimation, disgust – all or none of these – but always drop-jawed amazement.

The 40th anniversary of Hendrix's death next month will be marked by the opening of an exhibition of curios and memorabilia at the only place he ever called home – a flat diagonally above that once occupied by the composer George Frideric Handel, on Brook Street in central London, in the double building now known as Handel House. The flat will be opened to the public for 12 days in September and there is talk about plans for a joint museum, adding Hendrix's presence to that already established in the museum devoted to Handel. Involved in the discussions is the woman with whom Hendrix furnished the top flat of 23 Brook St, and with whom he lived: the only woman he ever really loved, Kathy Etchingham.

In a rare interview by telephone, (she has moved abroad), Ms Etchingham explains: "I want him to be remembered for what he was – not this tragic figure he has been turned into by nit-pickers and people who used to stalk us and collect photographs and 'evidence' of what we were doing on a certain day. He could be grumpy, and he could be terrible in the studio, getting exactly what he wanted – but he was fun, he was charming. I want people to remember the man I knew."
When she met Hendrix (the same night he landed in London), he had already lived an interesting, if frustrating, 23 years. He was born to a father who cared, but not greatly, and a mother he barely knew – she died when he was 15 – but adored (she's said to be the focus of two of his three great ballads, "Little Wing" and "Angel"). He had always been enthralled by guitar playing – a "natural", immersed in R&B on the radio and the music of blues giants Albert King and Muddy Waters. When he was 18, he was offered the chance to avoid jail for a minor misdemeanour by joining the army, which he did, training for the 101st Airborne Division.
His military career was marked by friendship with a bass player called Billy Cox from West Virginia, with whom he would play his last concerts, and a report which read: "Individual is unable to conform to military rules and regulations. Misses bed check: sleeps while supposed to be working: unsatisfactory duty performance."

Hendrix engineered his discharge in time to avoid being mobilised to Vietnam and worked hard as a backing guitarist for Little Richard, Curtis Knight, the Isley Brothers and others. But, arriving in New York to try and establish himself in his own right, Hendrix found he did not fit. The writer Paul Gilroy, in his recent book Darker Than Blue, makes the point that Hendrix's life and music were propelled by two important factors: his being an "ex-paratrooper who gradually became an advocate of peace" and his "transgressions of redundant musical and racial rules".

Hendrix didn't fit because he wasn't black enough for Harlem, nor white enough for Greenwich Village. His music was closer to the blues than any other genre; the Delta and Chicago blues which had captivated a generation of musicians, not so much in the US as in London, musicians such as John Mayall and Alexis Korner, and thereafter Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page among many others.

As luck would have it, the Brits were in town and Linda Keith, girlfriend of the Stones' Keith Richards, persuaded Chas Chandler, bass player of the Animals, to go and listen to Hendrix play at the Cafe Wha? club in the Village. Chandler wanted to move into management and happened to be fixated by a song, "Hey Joe", by Tim Rose.

"It was a song Chas knew would be a hit if only he could find the right person to play it," says Keith Altham, then of the New Musical Express, who would later become a kind of embedded reporter with the Hendrix London entourage. "There he was, this incredible man, playing a wild version of that very song. It was like an epiphany for Chas – it was meant to be."

"To be honest," remembers Tappy Wright, the Animals' roadie who came to Cafe Wha? with Chandler that night, "I wasn't too impressed at first, but when he started playing with his teeth, and behind his head, it was obvious that here was someone different."
Before long, Hendrix was aboard the plane to London with Chandler and the Animals' manager, Michael Jeffery, to be met by Tony Garland, who would end up being general factotum for Hendrix's management company, Anim. "When he arrived," recalls Garland now, sitting on his barge beside the canal in Maida Vale, west London, where he now lives, "I filled out the customs form. We couldn't say he'd come to work because he didn't have a permit, so I told them he was a famous American star coming to collect his royalties."

It is strange, tracking down Hendrix's inner circle in London. His own musicians in his great band, the Experience – Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell – are dead. Likewise, his two managers, Chandler and Jeffery, and one of his closest musician friends, the Rolling Stone Brian Jones; the other, Eric Burdon of the Animals, declined to be interviewed. But some members of the close-knit entourage are still around, such as Kathy Etchingham and Keith Altham, wearing a flaming orange jacket befitting the time of which he agrees to speak, in defiance of a heart attack only a few days before.

Music in London had reached a tumultuously creative moment when Hendrix arrived and was perfectly poised to receive him. "The performers were just your mates who played guitars," recalls Altham. "It was tight – everyone knew everyone else. It was just Pete from the Who, Eric of Cream, or Brian and Mick of the Stones, all going to each other's gigs."

For reasons never quite explained, the blues – both in their acoustic Delta form, and Chicago blues plugged into an amplifier – had captivated this generation of English musicians more deeply than their American counterparts. Elderly blues musicians found themselves, to their amazement, courted for concerts, such as an unforgettable night at Hammersmith with Son House and Bukka White. Champion Jack Dupree married and settled in Yorkshire. "People [here] felt a certain affinity with the blues, music which added a bit of colour to grey life," Altham continues. And as Garland points out: "White America was listening to Doris Day – black American music got nowhere near white AM radio. Jimi was too white for black radio. Here, there were a lot of white guys listening to blues from America and wanting to sound like their heroes."

Things happened at speed after Hendrix landed. "'Come down to the Scotch,' Chas told me the day Jimi arrived and hear what I found in New York," recalls Altham. "Jimi couldn't play because he had no work permit, but he jammed that night, and my first impression was that he'd make a great jazz musician." That was the night, his first in London, that Hendrix met Kathy Etchingham. "It happened straightaway," she recalls. "Here was this man: different, funny, coy – even about his own playing."

"A short while later," recalls Altham, "Chas took me to hear him at the Bag O'Nails club [in Soho] for one of his first proper gigs, turned to me and said, 'What'ya think?' I said I'd never heard anything like it in all my life." At a concert in the same series, remembers Garland, "Michael Jeffery put an arm round Chas, another round me and said, 'I think we've cracked it, mate.'" They had: Kit Lambert, according to Altham, literally scrambled across the tables to Chas at one of the shows and said, "in his plummy accent", he had to sign him. Chas needed a record contract, Decca had turned Hendrix down (along with the Beatles) and Lambert was about to launch a new label, Track Records, with interest from Polydor: "The deal was done, on the back of a napkin," says Altham.

Hendrix had formed his band at speed: a rhythm guitarist from Kent called Noel Redding – who had applied to join the Animals but to whom Hendrix now allocated bass guitar – and Mitch Mitchell, a jazz drummer seeking to mould himself in the style of John Coltrane's great percussionist, Elvin Jones. With a stroke of genius, Jeffery came up with the only name befitting what was to follow: the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Is there any line in rock'n'roll more assuredly seductive as: "Are you experienced?/ Have you ever been experienced?/ Well, I have" (from 1967's "Are You Experienced")?

Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the other Beatles quickly converged to hear this phenomenon, along with the Stones and Pete Townshend. Arriving one night at the Bag O'Nails, Altham met Brian Jones "walking back up the stairs with tears in his eyes. I said, 'Brian, what is it?' and he replied, 'It's what he does, it chokes me' – only he put it better than that".

There was also curiosity from the emergent powerhouse of British blues: Cream and Eric Clapton. There was a particular night when Cream allowed Jimi to join them for a jam at the Regent Street Polytechnic in central London. Meeting Clapton had been among the enticements Chandler had used to lure Hendrix to Britain: "Hendrix blew into a version of [Howlin' Wolf's] 'Killing Floor'," recalls Garland, "and plays it at breakneck tempo, just like that – it stopped you in your tracks." Altham recalls Chandler going backstage after Clapton left in the middle of the song "which he had yet to master himself"; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: "You never told me he was that fucking good."

With a reputation, a recording contract and the adoration of his peers, Hendrix was allocated a flat belonging to Ringo Starr, in Montagu Square, in which he lived with Etchingham, Chandler and Chandler's Swedish girlfriend, Lotta. It was not ideal, but base camp for an initial tour – as opening act for Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdinck, with the Walker Brothers topping the bill.

Something was needed, Chandler thought, whereby Hendrix could blow the successive acts off the stage and Altham had the beginning of an idea. He said: "'It's a pity that you can't set fire to your guitar.' There was a pregnant pause in the dressing room, after which Chas said, 'Go out and get some lighter fuel.'" Garland remembers: "I went out into Seven Sisters Road [in north London] to buy lighter fluid. At first, it didn't make sense to me – there were too many things going on to worry about lighter fluid – but it all became clear in the end."

Altham borrowed a lighter from Gary – the third Walker brother and drummer – and that night, at the Astoria theatre in central London, Hendrix set his guitar ablaze for the first time. "One of the security guards said, 'Why are you waving it around your head?'" recalls Altham. "'Cause I'm trying to put it out,' replied Jimi. Actually, he only did it three times after," says Altham, "but it became a trademark."

The touring began in earnest during that winter of 1966-7: around working men's clubs and little theatres in the north of England. "That's when I remember him at his very best," recalls Etchingham. "And at his happiest. The small clubs in regional venues. When he was desperate to make a name for himself, but was also playing for himself. In the working men's clubs, they just wanted some music to enjoy while they drank their beer. In the small theatres, people had come to hear him. But that was his best music ever – played for its own sake. None of these crazy expectations, no one hanging on – just the people he knew, liked and trusted, and his own music."

But what was this music, this singular, uplifting, otherworldly, menacing, exotic and erotic sound? "Hendrix was a magpie," says Altham. "He would take from blues, jazz – only Coltrane could play in that way – and Dylan was the greatest influence. But he'd listen to Mozart, he'd read sci-fi and Asimov and it would all go through his head and come out as Jimi Hendrix. Then there was just the dexterity – he was left-handed, but I remember people throwing him a right-handed guitar and Hendrix picking it up and playing it upside down."
"And don't forget," says Tappy Wright, who acted as roadie at first, then joined the management team, "we were using the cheapest guitars. These were no Fenders or Stratocasters. These were Hofners we bought for a few quid. Very basic, but stretched to the fucking limit."

The most precious insight comes from Etchingham. "People often saw Jimi on stage looking incredibly intense and serious. And suddenly this smile would come across his face, almost a laugh, for no apparent reason," she says. "Well, I remember that very well, sitting on the bed or the floor at home in Brook Street. Sometimes, he would play a riff for hours, until he had it just right. Then this great smile would creep across his face or he'd throw his head back and laugh. Those were the moments he had got it right for himself, not for anyone else."

Touring ran concurrent with work in the studio – first the singles: "Hey Joe", the inimitable "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary", written for Kathy when Hendrix was left alone at home after she had stormed out from an argument, so the story goes (Mary is her middle name). "I never realised quite how hard he worked," says Sarah Bardwell, director of the Handel House Museum, researching her new charge. The Experience would finish a concert up north, drive south, record between 3am and 9am, then return north for two more shows each day. LSD had yet to play a major role – if the Experience were on amphetamines, it was to keep the schedule.

In various studios, ending up at west London's Olympic, work began. "I used to ring them up to book time," recalls Etchingham. "Thirty quid an hour and they'd want the cheque there and then." Chandler was aware of this and would occasionally hasten things along by taking what the band thought was a warm-up to be the finished product. "'What?' the band would say," recalls Altham. "'That's it,' Chas would reply. 'Now for the next one.'"

But the soundscape unique to Hendrix, pushing the technology to its limits, was not serendipity, nor was it only about Hendrix's genius: there was science behind the subliminal magic. "This was not 'psychcolergic', as Eric Burdon used to call it," says Garland. "Hendrix knew exactly what he was doing." And this process began with a man called Roger Mayer.

"We call this the Surrey blues Delta," says Mayer, with a wave of his arms across the crazy-paving pathways of Worcester Park, near Surbiton. "Eric over here, Keith down the road, the Stones from there." Mayer was an acoustician and sonic wave engineer for the Admiralty, a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, but also an inventor of various electronic musical devices, including an improved wah-wah pedal and the "Octavia" guitar effect with its unique "doubling" effect. "I'd shown it to Jimmy Page, but he thought it was too far out. Jimi said, the moment we met, 'Yeah, I'd like to try that stuff.'" "One of my favourite memories of all," says Etchingham, "is Jimi and Roger huddled together over the console and the instruments, talking about stuff way over my head, and then this glorious thing happening."
"We started from the premise that music was a mission, not a competition," says Mayer, who describes himself as a "sonic consultant" to Hendrix. "That the basis was the blues, but that the framework of the blues was too tight. We'd talk first about what he wanted the emotion of the song to be. What's the vision? He would talk in colours and my job was to give him the electronic palette which would engineer those colours so he could paint the canvas.

"Let me try to explain why it sounds like it does: when you listen to Hendrix, you are listening to music in its pure form," he adds. "The electronics we used were 'feed forward', which means that the input from the player projects forward – the equivalent of electronic shadow dancing – so that what happens derives from the original sound and modifies what is being played. But nothing can be predictive – it is speed-forward analogue, a non-repetitive wave form, and that is the definition of pure music and therefore the diametric opposite of digital.

"Look, if you throw a pebble into a lake, you have no way of predicting the ripples – it depends on how you throw the stone, or the wind. Digital makes the false presumption that you can predict those ripples, but Jimi and I were always looking for the warning signs. The brain knows when it hears repetition that this is no longer music and what you hear when you listen to Hendrix is pure music. It took discussion and experiment, and some frustrations, but then that moment would come, we'd put the headphones down and say, 'Got it. That's the one.'

"But I take none of the credit," insists Mayer. "You can build a racing car just like the one that won the 1955 grand prix. But if you can't drive like Juan Manuel Fangio, you're not going to win the grand prix. Jimi Hendrix only sounds like he does because he was Jimi Hendrix."

Everyone knows that Hendrix had hundreds of women, often concurrently – but that is not as interesting as the fact that, says Altham, "Kathy Etchingham was the love of his life". Mayer recalls them "oozing affection, even when there was a row – he needed her very badly indeed". Hendrix called the flat into which he moved with her in 1968 "the only home I ever had".

"We knew we wanted Mayfair," says Etchingham, "so we could walk to the gigs, but the prices were high, even though it was a little seedy – £30 a week." The couple furnished the split-level, top-floor apartment together with prints and wall hangings from Portobello Road. When Hendrix found out that Handel had lived downstairs, "he went round to HMV or One Stop Records to get Messiah," says Sarah Bardwell. "What is so interesting is that they were both musicians from abroad, who came to London to make their name in this building."

It feels extraordinary now to walk over the venerable floorboards past a replica of Handel's harpsichord, portraits of the composer and the score of Messiah in the room in which it was composed, then up a wooden staircase to Hendrix's whitewashed sitting room and bedroom above. Sarah Bardwell's aim is for a joint Handel-Hendrix house museum of some kind. Blue English Heritage plaques accompany each other on the wall outside; Hendrix was added in 1997, a labour of devotion by Kathy Etchingham, who recalls English Heritage balking at the fact that the shop front below was a lingerie shop, "all mannequins wearing suspenders and knickers", which needed covering up while the plaque was unveiled.

Now, it is the posh Jo Malone perfumery, though "in our day it was Mr Love's cafe," she recalls fondly. "On the corner of Oxford Street. And there was an Indian tea shop we'd go to in South Molton Street, and always HMV or One Stop – and we'd walk to the gigs along Regent Street or across Hanover Square, and maybe take a taxi home."

The memories of the people who actually knew him overshadow the tragic, antiheroic Hendrix of popular imagination. Etchingham and Keith Altham recall a man with a sense of humour. "If things were getting tense in the studio," says Altham, "he'd just play 'Teddy Bears' Picnic'." Adds Tony Garland: "If I told Jimi to 'kiss my arse', he'd answer, 'You've got a rubber neck, do it yourself' with a sly grin. You always knew you were with someone quicker-witted than yourself."

Altham also talks about Hendrix "saying nothing to reporters, or contradictory things, on purpose. He would pat his fingers against his lips mid-sentence and go, 'etcetera, etcetera, etcetera', in order to say, in effect, nothing. He wanted the music to speak. He also had this way of saying things that made you do a double take: 'Did he really say that?' Such as, just before he went on to play with Clapton, who was his idol, for the first time, he told me, 'I want to see if he is as good as he thinks I am' – which is not at all the remark you first think it is."

But many of those who comprised Hendrix's inner circle in London now talk about some demise in his mental agility once he became popular in his native US, a mass commodity caught between the triangle of his own "racially transgressive" music, his blackness and the black power movement, and his overwhelmingly white audience. Even then, though, Hendrix closed the 1969 Woodstock festival with a version of "The Star-Spangled Banner", which became the anthem for both the movement against the war in Vietnam and Hendrix's own complicated empathy with the young American fodder sent to fight it, as a former military man himself. Many of his childhood friends were over there, some never to return. The anthem made Jimi famous worldwide, veering into a vortex out of which emerged "Purple Haze", a glorious, lyrical dirge – for something, for everything; an endpiece not only to Woodstock but to so many dreams.

"Chas Chandler would come into the studio and find two women in his chair," recalls Tappy Wright. "'Get out of my chair!' he'd say. And then, well, there were drugs, drugs, drugs. I never took any, because I had to make sure everyone got out of bed in the morning – but they were around, too much around." Altham says that Chandler told him "that he gave Jimi an ultimatum: 'Either I go or the hangers-on go.' But there was no getting rid of them, so Chas quit and Jimi was left with Michael Jeffery".

"Jimi was at his best when the fame never got in the way of the music," says Etchingham, "and at his worst when the fame took over, when people who hardly knew him suddenly became his best friends." "He had this thing," says Altham, "of not being able to say no to people – and this became a problem."

Even the flat on Brook Street became an open house, to journalists, anyone. "It's funny," says Sarah Bardwell. "Here we are trying to contact his old friends who are now superstars for our events and exhibition, and it's like laying siege to Fort Knox! Yet Hendrix was available to anyone, perhaps almost too much so."

Despite the distractions, there was one project consistently dear to Hendrix's heart: the state-of-the-art Electric Lady Studios in New York, opened with a party on 26 August 1970, the night before he was due to fly back to England to play the Isle of Wight festival. Only Hendrix was almost too shy to appear and, when he did so, he retreated to the steps outside, where he met a young singer-songwriter too shy to enter the fray – Patti Smith. "It was all too much for me. Johnny Winter in there and all," recalled Smith in a past interview with the Observer. "So I thought, 'I'll just sit awhile on the steps' and out came Jimi and sat next to me. And he was so full of ideas; the different sounds he was going to create in this studio, wider landscapes, experiments with musicians and new soundscapes. All he had to do was get over back to England, play the festival and get back to work..."

It had been a long weekend on the Isle of Wight and, for me, an exciting one. I was compelled – not disgusted, as is the official history – by the determination of French and German anarchists to tear down the fences so that it be a free festival. I loved the fact that Notting Hill's local band, Hawkwind, played outside the fence in protest at the ticket prices. The strange atmosphere added to the climactic moment, after the Who and others: the one set, at 2am on the Monday, for which it was imperative to get down from among the crowds on Desolation Row and force a way right to the front and concentrate or, rather, submit to hypnosis. The set by Jimi Hendrix.

It is written in the lore of Hendrixology that this was a terrible performance. Hendrix had arrived exhausted, by the previous month's events, the upcoming tour, the day's violence and by walkie-talkie voices that somehow made their way into the PA system. But all I remember, having just turned 16, is a dream coming true: the greatest rock musician of all time (one knew this with assurance) dressed in blazing red and purple silks, actually playing the version of "Sgt Pepper's" about which I had read so much in NME, playing "Purple Haze", "Voodoo Chile" and a long, searing "Machine Gun", just yards away. I remember the sound – the sounds, plural – bombarding me from the far side of some emotional, existential, hallucinogenic and sexual checkpoint along the road towards the rest of my life. I remember him playing the horn parts to "Sgt Pepper's" on his guitar! I remember the deafening and painful silence after he finished his fusillade and in the crowd a mixture of rapture, gratitude, enlightenment and affection.

Afterwards, Hendrix went on a reportedly disastrous tour of Scandinavia and Germany (failing to meet one of his two children, by a Swedish girlfriend – the other he had sired in New York and also never met), before returning to the Cumberland hotel and the room in which he gave his last ever interview, to Keith Altham. (To mark the anniversary, the Cumberland has designed and decorated these rooms in a swirl of colour, stocked it with Hendrix music and called it the Hendrix Suite, in which people can stay.)

"There were two women in the room," recalls Altham. "One of them was a girlfriend called Devon Wilson and she was dodgy – she dealt him drugs and I can say that now because she's dead. But he knew me well by this time and he seemed better than I'd seen him previously." The interview is a remarkable one, utterly devoid of all the nonsense that would ensue about suicide and a death wish. On the tape, Hendrix laughs and jokes; he tells Altham about plans to re-form the Experience and tour England again.

On the night of 16 September, Hendrix went to Ronnie Scott's without his guitar, hoping to jam with Eric Burdon's new band, War. Burdon considered him unfit to play. The following night, he returned and joined his friend on stage. "I was tired, I missed it," says Altham, "though, of course, I regret that now. It was the last time Hendrix ever played the guitar."

Hendrix went on to a party with a German woman, Monika Danneman, and back to her rooms at the Samarkand hotel in Lansdowne Crescent. There are so many accounts of exactly what happened next, but all converge on the fact that he had drunk a fair amount, taken some kind of amphetamines ("Black bombers, I think, given to him by Devon Wilson," surmises Altham) and some of Danneman's Vesparax sleeping pills, not knowing their strength. He vomited during the deep ensuing sleep, insufficiently conscious enough to throw up; Danneman panicked, and telephoned Burdon, who urged her to call an ambulance. But the greatest guitarist of all time was dead upon arrival at St Mary Abbot's hospital, aged 27. (Sadly, Danneman took her own life in 1996.)

So it was, back in September 1970, that I made my way up Lansdowne Rise and round the corner to the Samarkand hotel after reading the news today, oh boy. I was amazed to have the pavement outside the address at which Jimi Hendrix had died that morning all to myself for a good couple of hours – not a soul. I went home, got some chalk, and wrote: "Scuse us while we kiss the sky, Jimi" on the flagstones (OK, but I was only 16) and retreated to watch. Nothing happened and after another hour, a man came out and washed the words away and I returned home to write a lament in my diary, which I still have, the Standard's front page folded at the date.

Speculations about suicide and murder are too ridiculous to contemplate – most of them are probably concocted in order to dramatise and distract from the awful reality of such a genius dying in this way – but what does matter are Kathy Etchingham's reflections. "Jimi died because the simple things got complicated. He was born to a father who was an alcoholic and a mother who died and he died because he was in that flat in Notting Hill with a complete stranger who gave him a load of sleeping pills without telling him how strong they were. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

"I'm older and wiser now," she says. "I enjoy culture and the fine things in life. I can look back and see all that more clearly than I did at the time – I was so young, only 24." Of the compelling memoir she has written, Through Gypsy Eyes, she says: "I'd like to go over it again, fill in a few things, but what I want now, most of all from this anniversary, is for people to understand that it was in Britain that he was welcomed, it was there he was happy and such fun to be around – yes, grumpy at times, and a handful – but such a man. I'd like the young people to know that."

"Let's face it," says Tappy Wright, "if Jimi had stayed with Kathy, he'd probably be alive and playing still. Plus, he always said he wanted to be buried in London, not Seattle, where he was born and his family lived. It wasn't just me he told that, it was plenty of people – that this was home." "Still," says Etchingham, "at least we've got the plaque, the Handel House Museum, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in September. They were great times and we'll take a trip down memory lane. Only 40 years is a long time and Jimi won't be there."

The Hendrix in Britain exhibition runs at Handel House museum, 25 Brook Street, London W1, from 25 Aug-7Nov. Hendrix's rooms will be open from 15-26 Sep

Sound Projections

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970): Legendary innovative musician, composer, singer, songwriter, and cultural icon

New York: Schirmer Books; Simon and Schuster Macmillan. 1996, ISBN: 0028646096

References

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About the author

Thomas Attah

Jimi Hendrix's Greatest Hits - The Best Of Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix - Live At The LA Forum 1970:

David Henderson,author of Jimi Hendrix biography Part 2 (Hendrix Series part 22) on CACE INT'L TV:

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Jimi Hendrix Drifting

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (Audio)

Music video by The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing All Along The Watchtower. (C) 2009 Experience Hendrix L.L.C., under exclusive license to Sony Music Entertainment

Jimi Hendrix - "Hey Joe" (1967)

(The Jimi Hendrix Experience:

Jimi Hendrix--Guitar

Noel Redding--Bass

Mitch Mitchell--Drums

Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing (Original music & Video)

Jimi Hendrix

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

Ancestry and childhood

First instruments

Military service

Music career

Early years

First recordings

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

UK success

Are You Experienced

Monterey Pop Festival

Axis: Bold as Love

Electric Ladyland

Break-up of the Experience

Woodstock

Band of Gypsys

Cry of Love Tour

Electric Lady Studios

European tour

Drugs and alcohol

Substance abuse and violence

Canadian drug charges and trial

Death, post-mortem, and burial

Unauthorized and posthumous releases

Equipment

Guitars and amplifiers

Effects

Influences

Legacy

Recognition and awards

Discography

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

Jimi Hendrix: 'You never told me he was that good'

Editor's Bio

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