Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (November 27 1942 – September 18 1970) was an American musician, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and cultural icon. Widely lauded by music fans and critics alike, Hendrix is considered one of the most influential electric guitarists in rock music history.

Mostly self-taught on the instrument, the left-handed Hendrix played a right-handed guitar turned upside down and re-strung to suit him. As a guitarist, he built upon the innovations of blues stylists such as B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker, and Muddy Waters, as well as those of rhythm and blues and soul guitarists like Curtis Mayfield. He was also inspired by rock music pioneer Little Richard, having toured in his back-up band before he became famous. Hendrix's music was also influenced by jazz; he often cited Rahsaan Roland Kirk as one of his favorite musicians. Most importantly, Hendrix extended the tradition of rock guitar: although previous guitarists—such as The Kinks' Dave Davies, The Yardbirds' Jeff Beck and The Who's Pete Townshend—had employed effects such as feedback and distortion as sonic tools, Hendrix was able to exploit them to an extent that was previously undreamed of, and made them an integral part of many of his compositions.

As a record producer, Hendrix was an innovator in using the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas. Hendrix was notably one of the first to experiment with stereo and phasing effects during the recording process. Hendrix was also an accomplished songwriter whose compositions have been performed by countless artists.

Hendrix was inducted into the US Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6627 Hollywood Blvd.), was dedicated in 1994. In 2006, Hendrix's debut album Are You Experienced was inducted into the United States National Recording Preservation Board's National Recording Registry.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named Hendrix number one on their list of the "100 greatest guitarists of all time".

Names

Jimi Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix, the son of Al Hendrix and Lucille Jeter Hendrix, in Seattle, Washington on November 27, 1942. As a toddler and young boy he was known as Buster, a family nickname inspired by the early 20th century comic strip character Buster Brown. In 1946, Al changed the legal name of his son to James Marshall Hendrix, which it remained until his death. As a school age boy and young adult, he was simply known as Jimmy or James. In his early career, Hendrix used the stage name Maurice James and later Jimmy James. He did not assume the moniker Jimi until after his discovery in late 1966, although most writings refer to him as Jimi throughout the timeline of his life for purposes of consistency.

Family origins

Jimi Hendrix was of mixed African American, Caucasian American, and Cherokee Native American descent.

Both of Jimi's paternal grandparents were vaudeville performers from America's midwest who settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Al Hendrix was born. Jimi was close to his paternal grandmother Nora Rose Moore, the daughter of a Cherokee father and a mother of mixed race, who instilled in him a strong sense of pride about his Native American ancestry, which would later become a recurring theme in his music. Jimi's paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, was the son of a former slave and the white merchant who once owned her. Bertran met Nora Moore on the vaudeville circuit in Chicago. Al Hendrix (June 10, 1919 – April 17 2002) was the youngest of their four children.

Jimi's maternal grandfather, Preston Jeter, was also the son of a former slave and slave owner. He left Richmond, Virginia at the turn of the century after witnessing a lynching, and settled in the Seattle area. In 1915, he married Clarice Lawson, a woman half his age who was of mixed Cherokee and slave descent. Lucille Jeter was the youngest of their eight children.

Lucille was sixteen years old when she met Al Hendrix through a mutual friend - he was twenty. After a few casual dates, their relationship escalated when Al was hospitalized with a hernia and Lucille volunteered at the hospital to help care for him. The same week that Lucille realized she was pregnant with Jimi, Al received his draft notice. Three days after they were married, he shipped off to the U.S. Army. It would be three years before Al would see his son for the first time.

Lucille endured a number of personal and financial hardships while her husband was away: her father Preston died months after Jimi was born; nearly two years passed before any of Al's military pay reached her; and a fire destroyed the Jeters' uninsured home. She also led an untamed lifestyle of drinking and partying as a waitress in the clubs of Jackson Street, while care of little "Buster" slipped further into the hands of Lucille's mother Clarice, her sister Delores Hall, and family friends Dorothy Harding and Freddie Mae Gautier. When Al returned from his military service, young Jimi was living with a church friend of the Jeter family in Berkeley, California. His caregiver offered to keep the boy, but after some internal debate, Al brought his son back to Seattle. He changed Jimi's name from Johnny Allen to James Marshall because he felt the name Johnny referred to John Page, a longshoreman whom Lucille became involved with while Al was away. Despite her parental neglect and infidelity, Al decided to stay married to Lucille.

Over the next few years, four more children were born into the Hendrix family: Leon in January 1948; Joseph, born with serious birth defects; Kathy, born sixteen weeks premature and blind; and Pamela, also born with health problems. All four of Jimi's siblings were eventually moved into foster homes. Lucille and Al gave up their parental rights to Kathy, Pamela, and then Joseph due to the expensive medical care they each required. Jimi and Leon would sometimes spend time with Pamela in their neighborhood or run into Joe on the streets of the Central District. In December 1951, Lucille left Al and they divorced, with Al retaining custody of the two boys. Three years later, social workers placed Leon into a foster home due to parental neglect. Jimi remained with Al only because he was already a teenager and required less care. Fortunately, Leon was placed only a few blocks away in a large foster home that Jimi frequently visited, so the two brothers continued to grow up together.

In late 1957, Lucille's excessive drinking and partying began to take its toll on her health. She was hospitalized twice for cirrhosis of the liver. In January 1958, she married retired longshoreman William Mitchell after a very brief courtship — he was 30 years her elder. Weeks later she was hospitalized again, this time with hepatitis. Jimi and Leon visited her at the hospital and were shocked at her sickly appearance. This would be the last time they would see their mother. On February 1, 1958, Lucille was found unconscious in the back alley of a bar on Yesler Street. She went nearly untreated at the hospital for hours while staff attended to other patients and died of a ruptured spleen, a condition more commonly associated with physical trauma than with liver problems. Her death was never investigated.

In late 1966, Al Hendrix married Ayako June Fujita and adopted her daughter from a previous marriage, Janie, who assumed the name Janie Hendrix.

Early life

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A hand drawn picture of Elvis Presley made by Jimi Hendrix at the age of 15.

Youth

Jimi grew up as a shy and sensitive boy. Like his contemporaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Hendrix was deeply affected by family events: his parents' divorce when he was nine, and the death of his mother in 1958. Hendrix was fond of Elvis Presley and his music; this color drawing (right), showing a young Elvis armed with a guitar, was made by an impressionable 15-year-old Hendrix, two months after attending Presley's concert at Seattle's Sick's Stadium on September 1, 1957. It can still be seen at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Young Jimi was equally impressed when Little Richard appeared in his Central District neighborhood and he shook hands with the R&B star. Jimi's first exposure to Blues music came from listening to records by Muddy Waters and Lightnin Hopkins with his father. Another impressionable image came from the 1954 western Johnny Guitar, in which the hero wears a guitar slung behind his back. At about age fourteen, Jimi acquired his very first guitar, a severely battered acoustic with one string that he retrieved when another boy had thrown it away. Young Jimi proudly slung his guitar behind his back like the hero in Johnny Guitar, and tried to coax every sound possible from its one string. That same year his only failing grade in school was an F in music class. His first electric guitar was a white Supro Ozark that his father, Al Hendrix, had purchased for him. He learned simply by practicing and watching others play, and he emulated the flashy moves of T-Bone Walker and the duck walk of Chuck Berry.

His first gig was with an unnamed band in the basement of a synagogue. After too much wild playing and showing off, he was fired between sets. The first formal band he played with was the Velvetones, who performed regularly at the Yesler Terrace Neighborhood House without pay. His flashy style and left-handed playing of a right-handed guitar was already a standout. At some point, his guitar was stolen when he left it backstage overnight. Al then bought him a white Silvertone Danelectro which he painted red and emblazoned with the words Betty Jean, the name of his high school girlfriend.

Hendrix graduated junior high school with little trouble but failed to graduate from Garfield High School; he would later be awarded an honorary diploma. When his fame began in the late 1960s, Hendrix would punch up his own past by telling reporters that he was expelled from Garfield by racist faculty for holding hands with a white girlfriend in study hall, but Principal Frank Hanawalt insisted that it was simply due to poor grades and attendance problems.

Military service

After getting into trouble with the law over a stolen car, Hendrix traded a two-year jail sentence for enlistment in the U.S. Army, enlisting on May 31, 1961. After boot camp in Fort Ord, California, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky as a trainee paratrooper. Other paratrooper divisions would later mistakenly claim that he was part of their unit.

His letters home indicate that initially at least, Hendrix was adjusting to Army life and was very excited to be a part of the 101st Airborne, a well respected outfit after their heroic actions in World War II. His military records, however, show that Hendrix was considered an incompetent soldier, repeatedly caught sleeping while on duty and missing at midnight bed-check. Superiors noted that he needed constant supervision even for basic tasks, and lacked motivation. He was described by one supervisor as having "no known good characteristics", and by another that "his mind apparently cannot function while performing duties and thinking about his guitar".

At the post recreation center, he met fellow soldier and bass player Billy Cox, and forged a loyal friendship that would serve Hendrix well during the last year of his life. The two would often play with other musicians at venues both on and off the post as a loosely organized band named The Kasuals.

On May 31, 1962, after exactly one year of service, Hendrix was recommended for discharge for "behavior problems", "little regard for regulations", and for being "apprehended masturbating in platoon area while supposed to be on detail". Hendrix would later tell reporters that he received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump. The 2005 biography Room Full of Mirrors by Charles Cross claims that Hendrix faked being gay—claiming to have fallen in love with a fellow soldier—and was therefore discharged. According to Cross, Hendrix was an avid anti-communist and did not leave the Army as a protest to the Vietnam War, but simply wanted out so he could focus on playing guitar.

As a celebrity, Hendrix spoke nonchalantly of his military service, but once said that the sound of air whistling through the parachute shrouds was one of the sources of his "spacy" guitar sound. Although discharged from the Army three years before Vietnam saw large numbers of U.S. soldiers arrive, his recordings would become favorites of soldiers fighting there, most notably his version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower".

Early career

The Chitlin Circuit

After leaving Ft. Campbell, Hendrix and Billy Cox moved to nearby Clarksville, Tennessee and formed a new band, The King Kasuals. The group toiled in low-paying gigs at obscure venues, eventually moving to Nashville. There they played and sometimes lived, in the clubs along Jefferson Street, the traditional heart of Nashville's black community, and home to a lively rhythm and blues scene. In November 1962, Hendrix participated in his first studio session, where his wild but still undeveloped playing found him cut from the soundboard.

For the next three years, Hendrix made a precarious living on the Chitlin Circuit, performing in black oriented venues throughout the South with both the King Kasuals and in backing bands for various soul, R&B, and blues musicians including Chuck Jackson, Slim Harpo, Tommy Tucker, Sam Cooke, and Jackie Wilson. The Chitlin Circuit was an important phase of Jimi's career, since the refinement of his style and blues roots occurred there. Unfortunately his work garnered him little fame or profit, and the extremes of racism and poverty that he endured left an indelible mark of hardship on his memories of this era.

Harlem

Frustrated by his experiences in the South, Hendrix decided to try his luck in New York City. In January 1964, he moved to Harlem, where he quickly befriended girlfriend Lithofayne "Faye" Pridgeon and the Allen twins, Albert and Arthur. In February, Hendrix won first prize in the Apollo Theater amateur contest—the win was encouraging, but in general he found the New York scene difficult to break into.

R&B tours

After only two months in New York, Hendrix earned a spot as the new guitarist for the The Isley Brothers band and joined their national tour, which ironically included the southern Chitlin Circuit. Hendrix played his first successful studio session on the two-part Isley Brothers hit "Testify". In Nashville, he left the Isleys to tour with Gorgeous George Odell. In Atlanta, he earned a spot in the backing band of Little Richard known as The Upsetters. Although Hendrix idolized Richard (He was once quoted as saying, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice."), he clashed frequently with the star over tardiness, wardrobe, and mostly, Hendrix's flashy stage antics. For a short while, Hendrix quit and toured with Ike and Tina Turner, but was quickly fired for playing wild guitar solos and returned to the Little Richard band. Months later, he was banished from the Little Richard gig after missing the tour bus in Washington DC.

In the fall of 1965, Hendrix joined a New York based band named Curtis Knight and the Squires, after meeting Knight in the lobby of a seedy midtown hotel where he was living at the time. Hendrix then toured for two months with Joey Dee and the Starliters before rejoining the Squires in New York. On October 15, 1965, Hendrix signed a 3-year recording contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin, receiving $1 and 1% royalty on records with Curtis Knight. The relationship with Chalpin was short-lived, and Hendrix moved on to other opportunities. However, from a legal point of view, his contract remained in force, which caused considerable problems for Hendrix later on in his career. The result was a legal dispute which was eventually settled.

As 1966 dawned, Hendrix dreamed of breaking out on his own as a bandleader. Unfortunately, black audiences in Harlem weren't receptive to his progressive style of music. Hendrix would find a much better reception with the eclectic mix of patrons in the clubs of Greenwich Village.

Greenwich Village

In the summer of 1966, Hendrix formed his own band, Jimmy James and The Blue Flames, comprised of various friends he would casually meet at Manny's Music Shop, including a 15-year old runaway from California named Randy Wolfe. Since there were two musicians named "Randy" in the group, Hendrix dubbed Wolfe "Randy California" and the other "Randy Texas". Randy California would later co-found the band Spirit with Ed Cassidy.

Hendrix and his new band quickly gained local fame and would play throughout New York City, but their primary spot was a residency at the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street in the West Village, initially booked in by Willie Ashwood Kavanna, a Boston booking agent then living at the Albert Hotel on 12th Street where many other musicians stayed, such as Buddy Miles, Muddy Waters & Janis Joplin, when in N.Y. Kavanna had met Hendrix two years earlier when he booked the Isley Bros at his college, Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. During this period Hendrix met and worked with singer-guitarist Ellen McIlwaine, also at the Albert and guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, who was an employee at Manny's. Kavanna worked for Jack Witemore & Bob Messenger who managed many older jazz and blues artists such as Muddy Waters, Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, Grady Tait and Clark Terry and so, he was able to introduce Hendrix around to the N.Y. jazz scene where his artists perfromed. Later, in 1968, it was Kavanna, while managing Decca Recording Group, The Sun Downers, (who toured as middle (2nd) group on the Monkies Tour), he was able to get Hendrix on that national tour as their opener. Hendrix also met iconoclast Frank Zappa during this time, also staying at the Albert. Zappa introduced Hendrix to the newly-invented wah-wah pedal, a tool which Hendrix soon mastered and made an integral part of his sound.

Discovery

In 1965, guitar pioneer and producer Les Paul watched Hendrix audition for a nightclub gig, and was awestruck by his performance. An errand forced Les Paul to leave the club before he had the chance to speak with Hendrix. When he returned later to contact and sign Hendrix, Les Paul found that the club owner had turned him down for being too loud and crazy of an act, and that Hendrix had disappeared.

In 1966, at the Cheetah Club on West 21st Street, Linda Keith (then-girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards) befriended Hendrix, through Suzzanne DePass (the booker at the Cheetah) and couldn't believe that he hadn't been discovered. She recommended Hendrix to Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and then to producer Seymour Stein, but both men did not take a liking to Hendrix's music and passed. She even brought the members of the Rolling Stones to a Blue Flames show, but the effort did not yield any results. She then referred Chas Chandler, who was ending his tenure as bassist of The Animals and looking for talent to produce. Chandler was enamoured with the folk song Hey Joe and was convinced that he could create a hit single by remaking it as a rock song. It was at the Cafe Wha? where the discovery took place. When Hendrix launched into his own rendition of Hey Joe, Chandler became so excited that he spilled a drink on himself.

Chandler brought Hendrix to London, signed him to a management and production contract with himself and Animals manager Michael Jeffrey, and helped him form a new band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with guitarist-turned-bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

UK success

After a number of blockbuster European club appearances, word of the new star spread through the British music industry. His showmanship and dazzling 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 The Who's record label, Track Records.

Jimi's first single was a cover of "Hey Joe", crafted after folk-singer Tim Rose's slower revision of the song and adapted to Hendrix's emerging style. Backing the first single was Jimi's first songwriting effort, "Stone Free". Further success came with the incendiary and original "Purple Haze", with a heavily distorted guitar sound, and the soulful ballad "The Wind Cries Mary". The three singles were all U.K. Top 10 hits. Onstage, Hendrix was also making a huge impression with fiery renditions of the BB King hit "Rock Me Baby" and an ultra-fast revision of Howlin Wolf's blues classic, "Killing Floor".

Established as a star in the U.K., Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham moved into a flat at 23 Brook Street in central London. The adjacent building at 25 Brook Street was once the home of baroque composer George Frideric Handel. Hendrix, aware of this musical coincidence, bought Handel recordings including Messiah and the Water Music. The two houses currently comprise the Handel House Museum, where both musicians are celebrated.

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Are You Experienced (U.S. version)

Are You Experienced

The first Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Are You Experienced, was released in England on May 12, 1967. It contained none of the previous UK singles or their B sides ("Hey Joe/Stone Free," "Purple Haze/51st Aniversary" and "The Wind Cries Mary/Highway Chile"). A groundbreaking album, it was released just a few weeks prior to another exceptional album, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, along with the Monkees' More of the Monkees, prevented Are You Experienced from reaching No. 1 on the UK charts.

At this time the Experience were touring the United Kingdom and parts of Europe extensively. This allowed Hendrix to develop his stage presence, which reached a high point on March 31, 1967 when he set his guitar on fire. Later, after causing damage to amplifiers and other stage equipment at his shows, Rank Theatre management warned him to "tone down" his stage act. On June 4, 1967, the Experience played their last show in England before heading off to America at London's Saville Theatre. The Sgt. Pepper's album had just been released days prior, and two Beatles (Paul McCartney and George Harrison) were in attendance at the show, along with a rollcall of UK rock stardom: Brian Epstein, Eric Clapton, Spencer Davis, Jack Bruce, and pop singer Lulu. In a courageous and brilliant display, Jimi chose to open the show with his own rendition of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", crafted minutes before taking the stage.

Months later, Reprise Records released the US version of Are You Experienced, removing "Red House," "Remember" and "Can You See Me" to make room for the first three UK single A-sides. Where the UK album kicked off with "Foxey Lady," the American one started with "Purple Haze". The UK and US versions both offered a startling introduction to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the album was a blueprint for what had just become possible on the electric guitar.

US success

Although they were quite popular in Europe at this time, the Experience had yet to crack America. Their chance came when Paul McCartney recommended the Experience 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 that was present at the event, but also because most of the performances were filmed and were later shown in movie theatres throughout the country. D. A. Pennebaker was responsible for filming the event, and immortalized Hendrix's iconic burning and smashing of his guitar in the film Monterey Pop.

Following the festival, the Experience played a short-lived gig as the opening act for the pop group The Monkees on their first American tour. The Monkees asked for Hendrix because they were fans, but their mostly teenage audience did not warm to his outlandish stage act and he abruptly quit the tour after a few dates, just as "Purple Haze" gained popularity in America. Chas Chandler later admitted that being "thrown" from The Monkees tour was engineered to gain maximum media impact and publicity for Hendrix. At the time a story circulated claiming that Hendrix was removed from the tour because of complaints made by the Daughters of the American Revolution that his stage conduct was "lewd and indecent". Australian journalist Lillian Roxon, accompanying the tour with singer Lynne Randell (the other support act), concocted the story. The claim was repeated in Roxon's 1969 Rock Encyclopedia but she later admitted it was fabricated.

Meanwhile in England, Hendrix's wild-man image and musical gimmickry (such as playing the guitar with his teeth and behind his back) continued to bring publicity, but Hendrix was already advancing musically and becoming frustrated by media and audience concentration on his stage act and his hit singles.

Audio sample: Killing Floor

Hendrix adapted the Howlin Wolf slow blues classic "Killing Floor" into this wild and fast paced revision, and throughout the first year of his fame, these were usually the first notes concertgoers would hear when witnessing a live Hendrix show. This sample is from the Experience's raucous entrance at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 18, 1967. The Monterey performance included an equally lively rendition of the BB King hit "Rock Me Baby", Tim Rose's "Hey Joe" and the Bob Dylan hit "Like a Rolling Stone". The set ended with Hendrix burning his guitar onstage, then smashing it to bits and tossing pieces out to the audience. The show instantly catapulted Hendrix into US stardom. Today, the charred remnants of Hendrix's psychedelicly painted Stratocaster can now be found at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

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Axis: Bold as Love : The cover depicts Jimi's head superimposed onto an image of Durga, the Vedic deity.

Axis: Bold as Love

The Jimi Hendrix Experience's second 1967 album, Axis: Bold as Love continued the style established by Are You Experienced, but showcased a profound sense of melody as well as his well-known technical virtuosity with tracks such as "Little Wing" and "If 6 Was 9". The opening track "EXP" featured a stereo effect in which a ruckus of sound emanating from Jimi's guitar appeared to revolve around the listener, fading out into the distance from the right channel, then returning in on the left.

A mishap almost prevented the album's release: Hendrix lost the master tape of side 1 of the LP, leaving it in the back seat of a New York City taxi. With the release deadline looming, Hendrix, Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer remixed the missing side from the multitracks in an all-night session. Kramer and Hendrix later admitted that they were never entirely happy with the results.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience continued to pursue an extremely demanding touring schedule, which involved performing in front of ever-larger audiences. This, combined with the influence of drugs, alcohol and fatigue, led to a trouble-plagued tour of Scandinavia, culminating with the arrest of Hendrix in Stockholm, after trashing a hotel room in a drunken rage.

Electric Ladyland

The band's third recording, a double album, Electric Ladyland (1968), was a departure from their previous efforts and is considered by many fans to be the best of the three studio releases.

As the album's recording progressed, Chas Chandler became so frustrated with Hendrix's perfectionism and with various friends and hangers-on milling about the studio that he decided to sever his professional relationship with Hendrix. Chandler's professional and musical education was very business-oriented, and it taught him that songs should be recorded in a matter of hours, and should be written with a view to releasing them as singles. His influence over the Experience's first two albums is clear in light of the facts that very few of the tracks are more than four minutes long, that both albums were recorded in short times, and that most of the songs on both albums conformed to the structure of a typical pop song. However, as Hendrix began developing his own vision and started to assert more control over the artistic process in the studio, Chandler decided to move to other opportunities and ceded overall control to Hendrix. Chandler's departure had a clear impact on the artistic direction that the recording took.

Electric Ladyland (U.S. version)

Jimi began tinkering with different combinations of musicians and instruments, and modern electronic effects. For example, Dave Mason, Chris Wood and Steve Winwood from the band Traffic, drummer Buddy Miles and former Dylan organist Al Kooper, among others, were all involved in the recording sessions. This was one of the other reasons that Chandler cited as precipitating his departure. He described how Hendrix went from a disciplined recording regimen to an erratic schedule, which often saw him beginning recording sessions in the middle of the night and with any number of hangers-on.

Chandler also expressed exasperation at the number of times Hendrix would insist on re-recording particular tracks - the song "Gypsy Eyes" was reportedly recorded 43 times. This was also frustrating for bassist Noel Redding, who would often leave the studio to calm himself, only to return and find that Hendrix had recorded the bass parts himself during Redding's absence.

The effects of these events can clearly be identified in the album's musical style. On a purely superficial level, the tracks no longer conformed to the standard pop song format, often lacked easily identifiable patterns or sections, and would sometimes lack even a recognizable melody. More particularly, however, the themes that the songs addressed, and the music that Hendrix set out to record, went far beyond anything that he had attempted to achieve before.

Electric Ladyland includes a number of compositions and arrangements that Hendrix is still remembered for. These include "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" as well as Hendrix's rendition of "All Along The Watchtower", (written by Bob Dylan). Hendrix's version was a complete departure from the original, and includes one of the most highly praised guitar arrangements in modern music.

Live jam sessions

Throughout the four years of his international fame, Jimi appeared in impromptu jams with various musicians at small venues. For example, a recording exists of Hendrix playing at Steve Paul's Scene Club with blues legend Johnny Winter and then Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles in which a very intoxicated Jim Morrison grabbed an open microphone and contributed a growling, obscenity laced vocal accompaniment. The band continued to play behind him, and Hendrix can be heard on the tape offering Morrison a better microphone. The track, circulated among Hendrix and Doors collectors, is titled "Morrison's Lament".

Experience breakup

The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed at London's Royal Albert Hall February 18 and February 24, 1969, two sold-out concerts which became the last British appearance of the band. A Gold and Goldstein-produced film titled "Experience" was also recorded at these two shows, but remains to this day unreleased.

Noel Redding felt increasingly frustrated by the fact that he was not playing his original and favored instrument, the guitar. In 1968, he decided to form his own band "Fat Mattress", which would sometimes open for the Experience (Hendrix would jokingly refer to them as "Thin Pillow"). Redding and Hendrix would begin seeing less and less of each other, which also had an effect in the studio, with Hendrix playing many of the basslines on Electric Ladyland.

Redding was also increasingly uncomfortable with the hysteria surrounding Hendrix's performances. The last Experience concert 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 rioting and tear gas. The three bandmates were smuggled out of the venue in the back of a rental truck which was crushed by a mob of fans. The next day, Noel Redding announced that he had quit the Experience. [1]

Legal troubles

Throughout 1969, Hendrix also encountered a number of legal difficulties. Firstly, a contractual dispute arose in relation to an unfavorable agreement that Hendrix had entered into with Ed Chalpin, a producer, long before he became successful. The dispute was resolved when the parties agreed that Hendrix would record an album specifically for Chalpin and that it would be released under his auspices. This was the genesis of the live album entitled Band of Gypsys. Then on May 3, 1969 Hendrix was arrested at Toronto's Pearson International Airport after heroin and hashish were found in his luggage. Hendrix argued in his jury trial defense that the drugs were slipped into his bag by a fan without his knowledge, and he was acquitted on that basis.

Gypsy Sun and Rainbows

The Shokan house

After the departure of Noel Redding from the group, Jimi moved into a rented eight-bedroom mansion near the town of Shokan in upstate New York for the duration of the summer of 1969. Manager Michael Jeffery covered the rent and expenses, even hiring a chef and housekeeper, with hopes that the respite would produce a new album. To replace Redding, Jimi immediately tracked down Billy Cox, his old and trusted Army buddy. The trio of Hendrix, Cox, and Mitch Mitchell fulfilled his last commitment at the time, which was an appearance on The Tonight Show. In an effort to expand his sound beyond the power trio format, Hendrix added Larry Lee (another old friend from his R&B days) on rhythm guitar, and percussionists Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez. He dubbed the new band Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, although this was never formally announced by Jimi's management. The cohesion of the group in the relaxed, country atmosphere of the Shokan house inspired fresh material like "Jam Back at the House", "Shokan Sunrise", "Villanova Junction", and the funk driven centerpieces of Jimi's post-Experience sound: "Message to Love" and "Izabella".

Woodstock

Hendrix's popularity eventually saw him headline the Woodstock music festival on August 18, 1969. Although a number of the world's most talented and popular musicians were invited to the festival, including The Who, The Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix was considered to be the festival's main attraction. The band's $18,000 stipend was the highest of all Woodstock performers, and the group was given the top-billing position, scheduled to perform last on Sunday night.

Due to enormous delays caused by bad weather and other logistical problems, he didn't appear on stage until Monday morning, by which time the audience, which had peaked at over 500,000 people, had depleted to at most 180,000 - many of whom merely waited to catch a glimpse of him before leaving. Hendrix played a two hour set (the longest of his career) that was plagued with administrative and technical difficulties. The group was introduced at the festival as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, but early into the set Hendrix conveyed the correct name of the band as Gypsy Sun and Rainbows. Besides suffering microphone level and tuning problems, it was also apparent that Jimi's new, much larger band was not rehearsed enough, and at times simply could not keep up with him. Despite this, Hendrix managed to deliver a historic performance, which featured his highly-appreciated rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, a solo improvisation which became a defining moment of the 1960s.

Audio Sample: Star Spangled Banner

The controversial nature of Hendrix's style is epitomized in the sentiments expressed about his renditions of the "Star Spangled Banner", a tune he played loudly and sharply accompanied by simulated sounds of war (machine guns, bombs and screams) from his guitar. His impressionistic renditions have been described by some as anti-American mockery and by others as a generation's statement on the unrest in U.S. society, oddly symbolic of the beauty, spontaneity, and tragedy that was endemic to Hendrix's life.

Hendrix claimed that he did not intend for his performance of the national anthem to be a political statement. His comments show that he simply intended it as a different interpretation of the anthem. When taken to task on the Dick Cavett Show regarding the "unorthodox" nature of his performance of the song at Woodstock, Hendrix replied, "I thought it was beautiful," which was greeted with applause from the audience. Rather, it was his latter-career live favorite "Machine Gun" which he intended as a protest song against war.

Woodstock was not first time Hendrix played the Star Spangled Banner in concert. It was in fact a setlist staple from fall 1968 through the summer of 1970, and various studio recordings of the song exist as well.

Kidnapping

In September of 1969, Hendrix was apparently kidnapped and held for two days in New York City by men who appeared to be New York mobsters. The standoff ended when associates of manager Michael Jeffery appeared and peacefully regained custody of the rock star. No police or media reports of the incident exist, but Hendrix himself retold the story often when confiding with friends or associates about his management problems. He believed that Jeffery staged the kidnapping to bolster his role as manager or as a threat of some kind. The incident did occur at a time when Hendrix was at odds with Jeffery over the direction of his career. Most Hendrix biographies make reference to the kidnapping and support the theory that it was staged by Jeffery, notably Noel Redding's autobiographical Are You Experienced? The Inside Story of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

This incident is cited as evidence by conspiracy theorists who believe Jimi was murdered by mob thugs, by being forced to ingest pills at gunpoint.

Politics and Racism

Even after achieving worldwide success as a musician, Hendrix could not avoid experiences of racism or political strife, with the former omnipresent whenever he returned to the Southern region of the United States. While on tour with the Experience in the south, Hendrix would often wait in the car or bus during highway restaurant stops, sending Mitch Mitchell or a roadie in to purchase food for the group. His eccentric wardrobe and Caucasian friends infinitely compounded the offense that southern whites would maintain from his mere presence. At one of his shows in the deep south, police officers hired for concert security drew their guns on Hendrix when he walked into the venue arm-in-arm with a tall blonde woman. Before the show began, the entire security force walked off the job in protest.

Jimi was also shunned by most of the black community for playing ‘white music’ and for having white musicians in his band. Weeks after Woodstock, his performance at a Harlem block party became a harrowing experience: Within seconds of arriving at the site, his guitar was stolen from the backseat of his car – the Allen twins tracked down the thief and had the guitar returned. When he appeared stageside to watch the early acts with his Puerto-Rican girlfriend Carmen Borrero, the crowd assumed she was white and verbally harassed the pair. When he appeared onstage wearing white pants, he was pelted with bottles and eggs from the crowd. After the show, drummer Mitch Mitchell and roadie Eric Barrett were physically assaulted while dismantling their set.

Hendrix was also constantly harassed by various civil rights oriented activist and extremist groups who wished to use his fame to further their own message or cause. The Black Panthers even went as far as posting signs for his appearance at a benefit concert that Hendrix never even knew existed. Jimi tried to handle these experiences in stride and with as much finesse as he could muster, but this usually meant pandering to whatever was pulling at him at any given time. His opinions on social and political topics varied in step with the company that he kept. He would speak in a ‘jive’ tone with his black friends, but in the company of whites, his speech and mannerisms would seem more like those of a British sophisticate. To a crowd of hippies, Hendrix would speak about social change and against the Vietnam War - In Europe however, he would rant in disgust to his British friends about witnessing war protesters riot in Paris.

Band of Gypsys

Band of Gypsys

The Gypsy Sun and Rainbows band was short-lived: after two post-Woodstock shows, some studio time, and an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, Hendrix disbanded the group, but retained bassist Billy Cox. After attending to the successful defense of his drug possession charges in Toronto, Hendrix added drummer Buddy Miles and formed a new trio: the Band of Gypsys. Rehearsing for ten days at Juggy's sound studio, the group gelled quickly and produced a surprising amount of original material, including the lively "Earth Blues", which featured The Ronettes on background vocals. Four memorable concerts on New Year's Eve 1969-70 at Bill Graham's Fillmore East in New York captured several outstanding pieces, including one of Hendrix's greatest live performances: an explosive 12-minute rendition of his anti-war epic Machine Gun. The release of the Band of Gypsys album—the only official live recording sanctioned by Jimi—brought to an end the contract and legal battles involving Ed Chalpin.

The second and final Band of Gypsys appearance occurred one month later (January 28, 1970) at a twelve-act show in Madison Square Garden dubbed the Winter Festival for Peace. Similarly to Woodstock, set delays forced Hendrix to take the stage at an inopportune 3am, only this time he was obviously high on drugs and in no shape to play. He belted out a dismal rendition of "Who Knows" before snapping a vulgar response at a woman who shouted a request for "Foxy Lady". He lasted halfway through a second song, then simply stopped playing, telling the audience: "That's what happens when earth fucks with space—never forget that". He then sat quietly on the stage until staffers escorted him away. Various angles exist around this bizarre scene—Buddy Miles claimed that manager Michael Jeffrey dosed Hendrix with LSD in an effort to sabotage the current band and bring about the return of the Experience lineup. Blues legend Johnny Winter said it was Hendrix's girlfriend Devon Wilson who spiked his drink with drugs for unknown reasons.

The Cry of Love band

Jeffrey's reaction to the botched Band of Gypsys show was swift and firm: He immediately fired Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, then rushed Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding over from England to begin press for the upcoming tour dates as a reunited Experience. Before the tour began however, Jimi nixed Redding from the band and reinstated Billy Cox. Fans and collectors refer to this final Hendrix/Cox/Mitchell lineup as the Cry of Love band, named after the tour.

Most of 1970 was spent recording during the week, and playing live on the weekends. The "Cry of Love" tour, begun in April, (Los Angeles Forum, April 25, 1970) was structured to accomodate this pattern. Performances on this tour were occasionally uneven in sound quality, but featured Hendrix, Cox and Mitchell playing new material and extended, vibrant versions of older recordings. A show in May at the University of Oklahoma Field House (Norman, Oklahoma) was dedicated to the students killed in the Kent State shootings. The Cry of Love U.S. tour included 30 performances ending at Honolulu, Hawaii on August 1, 1970. A number of these shows were professionally recorded and produced some of Hendrix's most memorable live performances.

Electric Lady Studios

August of 1970 saw the opening of Electric Lady Studios in New York. Two years prior, Hendrix and Jeffery had invested jointly in the purchase of the Generation Club in Greenwich Village. Their initial plans to reopen the club were scrapped when the pair decided that the investment would serve them much better as a recording studio. The studio fees for Electric Ladyland alone were astronomical, due to the amount of time spent recording and the high rates. Construction of the studio took nearly double the amount of time and money as planned: permits were delayed numerous times, the site flooded due to heavy rains during demolition, and sump pumps had to be installed (then soundproofed) after it was determined that the building sat on the tributary of an underground river. A six-figure loan from Warner Brothers was required to save the project. The studio is now a recording industry legend: a near countless list of music stars have practiced their craft inside its walls.

Hendrix spent only four weeks recording in Electric Lady, most of which took place while the final phase of construction was still ongoing. An opening party was held on August 26. The next day, Hendrix created his last ever studio recording, a cool and tranquil instrumental known only as "Slow Blues". He then boarded an Air India flight for London (with Billy Cox in tow), joining Mitch Mitchell to perform at the Isle of Wight Festival.

European Tour

The group then commenced on a tour of Europe designed to earn money to repay the Warner Brothers loan and fund the production of his next album, tentatively titled First Rays of The New Rising Sun.

On September 6, 1970, his final concert performance, Hendrix was greeted with booing and jeering by fans at the Isle of Fehmarn Festival in Germany in a riot-like atmosphere; shortly after he left the stage, it went up in flames during the first stage appearance of Ton Steine Scherben. Billy Cox quit the tour and headed back to the United States after reportedly being dosed with PCP.

Death

In the early morning hours of September 18, 1970, Jimi Hendrix was found dead in the basement flat of the Samarkand Hotel at 22 Lansdowne Crescent in London. Hendrix died amid circumstances which have never been satisfactorily explained, and the exact details of his death will probably never be confirmed. He had spent the night with his German girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, and likely died in bed after drinking wine and taking nine Vesperax sleeping pills, then drowning in his own vomit. For years, Dannemann publicly claimed that Hendrix was alive when placed in the back of the ambulance; however, her comments about that morning were often contradictory and confused, varying from interview to interview. Police and ambulance reports reveal that not only was Hendrix dead when they arrived on the scene, but he had been dead for some time, the apartment's front door was wide open, and the apartment itself empty. Following a libel case brought in 1996 by Hendrix's long-term British girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, Monika Dannemann took her own life.

A sad poem written by Hendrix that was found in the apartment has led some to believe that he committed suicide. More speculative is the belief that Hendrix was murdered—forcibly given the sleeping pills and wine, then asphyxiated with a scarf by professionals hired by either manager Michael Jeffery or the US government. The most accepted and credible theory, however, is that he simply misjudged the potency of the sleeping pills, and asphyxiated in his sleep due to an inability to regain consciousness when he vomited.

Reports that Jimi's tapes of the concept album Black Gold had been stolen from the London flat are in fact wrong: the tapes were handed to Mitch Mitchell by Jimi at the Maui concert in July 1970. Hendrix's Greenwich Village apartment, however, was indeed plundered by an unknown series of vandals who stole numerous personal items, tapes, and countless pages of lyrics and poems, some of which have resurfaced in the hands of collectors or at auctions.

Although Jimi had verbally requested to be buried in England if he should ever die, his body was returned home to Seattle and he was interred in Greenwood Memorial Park, Renton, Washington.

Posthumous releases

Due to his tireless creative habits and untimely death, Hendrix left behind countless hours of unreleased material in the form of personal recordings, impromptu jams, studio takes, and unfinished or abandoned songs in various stages of completion. His death also led to an immense interest in recordings of his live performances. In addition, Hendrix wrote vast quantities of lyrics and poems on notepads, envelopes, scraps of paper, and hotel stationery. Decades have passed since his death, yet on a regular basis, new material is still discovered in tape vaults, auction houses, dusty attic shoeboxes, or swap meets, and previously unreleased material still reaches the public via trade among collectors or official release by various record companies.

Control over the Hendrix musical legacy has changed hands numerous times, and legal issues (many of which still are still being fought to this day) further complicate the story of his posthumous catalog. The control and material released is typically categorized into three distinct eras:

The Michael Jeffery era (1970-1973)

The first era produced music that was sanctioned by Al Hendrix as the heir to Jimi's estate and created by the same personnel that Hendrix was working with at the time of his death: drummer Mitch Mitchell, engineer Eddie Kramer, and manager Michael Jeffery. The Cry of Love album (1971) was the first posthumous Hendrix release and was crafted to represent Jimi's intentions for his fourth studio album. This era ended when Michael Jeffery perished in a mid-air plane collision and Hendrix family lawer Leo Branton sold the rights to Jimi's music, apparently without Al's permission.

The soundtrack to the Rainbow Bridge movie became available on LP in 1971, featuring several tracks that weren't in the film: "Dolly Dagger", "Earth Blues", "Room Full of Mirrors", and a stellar version of "Star Spangled Banner" mixed at the Record Plant. The Rainbow Bridge album is highlighted by a 10-minute electric version of "Hear My Train A-Comin.", which saw the song transformed almost beyond recognition; like "Machine Gun", it showcased the classic elements of the Hendrix electric sound and featured some of his most inspired improvisation.

Another LP to emerge from this era was the live compilation Hendrix In The West, consisting of top-shelf American and British live recordings from 1969 and 1970, including an outstanding rendition of the concert favorite "Red House" recorded at the San Diego Sports Arena, plus "Johnny B. Goode", "Lover Man", and "Blue Suede Shoes" (soundcheck) at the Berkeley Community Theater. The album also included "Little Wing", "Voodoo Child" (recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London), "God Save the Queen", and "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (recorded at the Isle of Wight Festival.

In 1973, British producer Joe Boyd produced a film documentary on Hendrix's life, titled simply Jimi Hendrix, which included live performances from the Monterey, Berkeley, and Isle of Wight concerts interspersed with interview footage. The film played in art-house cinemas around the world for many years, and a double-album soundtrack was also released.

The Alan Douglas era (1974-1996)

The second era is defined by the period of ownership and control held by producer Alan Douglas, who purchased the rights in the Leo Branton deal, then reconstructed selections of studio material by hiring session players to overdub portions that were incomplete. The resulting LPs, Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning, contain several important tracks but are generally considered to be of substandard quality. They achieved only marginally successful sales, and the use of replacement musicians (including lead guitar work) was viewed by fans as sacrilege.

Interest in Jimi's music waned during the 1980s as his genre evolved into "classic rock" and was avoided by American and British youth in favor of new wave, pop, and metal acts. With the advent of the compact disc, Polygram and Warner-Reprise reissued many Hendrix recordings on CD in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The earliest Polygram reissues are of a poor standard - Electric Ladyland suffered particularly, being evidently a direct transfer from the existing LP masters, with tracks placed out of their correct order. This reflected the original LP running order, an artifact of the days when double-LPs were pressed with sides 1 and 4 on one LP and sides 2 and 3 on the other, so that the records could be placed on an automatic changer and played in sequence by turning the entire stack over. Polygram subsequently released a superior-quality double boxed set of eight CDs with studio tracks in one four-disc box and the live tracks in another. This was followed by an excellent four-disc set of live concerts on Reprise. An audio documentary, originally made for radio and later released on four CDs, also appeared around this time and included previously unreleased material as well.

The Experience Hendrix era (1997-present)

The third and most successful era of the Hendrix legacy began in 1995 when Al Hendrix regained the rights to Jimi's music after a two-year court battle funded by Microsoft executive Paul Allen. Al placed his adopted daughter Janie in charge of the newly formed company, Experience Hendrix, LLC. Working in collaboration with engineer Eddie Kramer, biographer John McDermott and bandmates Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell, Experience Hendrix embarked on an extensive reissue program designed to showcase its own vision of Hendrix's musical legacy. Their first order of business was to rebuild CD releases of Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland using the original master tapes, since previous CD releases were substandard conversions of LP masters. In 1997, the company released it's version of Hendrix's planned fourth studio album, titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun. The release was compiled using track listings hand written by Hendrix and consisted of songs previously released on Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge, and War Heroes. A "definitive" greatest hits album followed in 1998, and an epic four-disc box set filled with selections of live and studio performances was released in 2000. Experience Hendrix also released concert soundboard recordings and other rare finds under the auspices of "official bootlegs" through its Dagger Records label. To date, Experience Hendrix has made more than $44 million from the recordings and associated merchandising. Press commentary from the company has revealed that it intends to produce a documentary feature of its own in the near future, followed by a scripted biographical feature film.

Audio sample: Title #3

Recorded in 1967 during sessions for Are You Experienced, this song was conceived by Hendrix and this base track performed, only to be abandoned so the group could concentrate on other tasks. Hendrix never returned to the song again. Decades later, it was selected for inclusion in The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a four-disc box set produced by Experience Hendrix, LLC. The song's name was derived from the entry Hendrix made in the session log that day, naming each untitled song after its place in the log.

Pre-fame releases

A separate category of posthumous work includes material recorded before Hendrix signed with Chas Chandler and Michael Jeffery in 1966. Various producers from Hendrix's early days have re-released music that Hendrix played little or no part in, but which features his name as top billing. The music released by Curtis Knight through Ed Chalpin is a prime example. Ironically, some of the Knight tracks include session work that Jimi performed for Knight and Chalpin at the onset of his fame in 1967, part of a failed attempt by Hendrix to charm the pair into releasing their material without using his name. Most Hendrix fans consider such works to be exploitative and tend to disassociate them from their view of an "official" Hendrix discography. Regardless of their opinions however, some fans still collect, review, and enjoy early works where Hendrix's playing is actually present.

Financial Legacy

Al Hendrix died of congestive heart failure in 2002. His will stipulated that Experience Hendrix, LLC was to exist as a trust designed to distribute profits to a list of Hendrix family beneficiaries. Upon his death, it was revealed that Al had signed a revision to his will which removed Jimi's brother Leon Hendrix as a beneficiary. A 2004 probate lawsuit merged Leon's challenge to the will with charges from other Hendrix family beneficiaries that Janie Hendrix was improperly handling the company finances. The suit argued that Janie and a cousin (Robert Hendrix) paid themselves exhorbitant salaries and covered their own mortgages and personal expenses from the company's coffers while the beneficiaries went without payment and the Hendrix gravesite in Renton went uncompleted.

Janie and Robert's defense was that the company was not profitable yet, and that their salary and benefits were justified given the work that they put into running the company. Leon charged that Janie bilked Al Hendrix, then old and fraile, into signing the revised will, and sought to have the previous will reinstated. The defense argued that Al willingly removed Leon from his will because of Leon's problems with alcohol and gambling. In early 2005, presiding judge Jeffrey Ramsdell handed down a ruling that left the final will intact, but replaced Janie and Robert's role at the financial helm of Experience Hendrix with an independent trustee. The gravesite of Jimi Hendrix remains to this day (2006) incomplete.

Guitar Legacy

Fender Stratocaster

Jimi owned and used a variety of guitars during his career, including a Gibson Flying V that he decorated with psychedelic designs (notably used on "House Burning Down"). His guitar of choice however, and the instrument that became most associated with him, is the Fender Stratocaster, or 'Strat'. He bought his first Stratocaster in 1965 and thereafter used it almost exclusively for his stage performances and recordings.

Hendrix's emergence coincided with the lifting of postwar import restrictions (imposed in many British Commonwealth countries), which made the instrument much more available, and after its initial popularizers Buddy Holly and Hank B. Marvin, Hendrix arguably did more than any other player to make the Stratocaster the biggest-selling electric guitar in history. Before his arrival in the U.K., most top players used Gibson and Rickenbacker models, but after Hendrix, almost all of the leading guitarists, including Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, switched to the Stratocaster. Hendrix bought dozens of Strats and gave many away as gifts, including one given to ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. Many others were stolen, and a few were destroyed during his notorious guitar-burning finales.

The Strat's easy action and narrow neck were also ideally suited to Hendrix's evolving style and enhanced his tremendous dexterity—Hendrix's hands were large enough to fret across all six strings with the top joint of his thumb alone, and he could reputedly play lead and rhythm parts simultaneously. A more amazing fact about Hendrix is that he was left-handed, yet used a right-handed Stratocaster, meaning he played the guitar upside down. While Hendrix was capable of playing with the strings upside down per se, he restrung his guitars so that the heavier strings were in their standard position at the top of the neck. He preferred this layout because the tremolo arm and volume/tone controls were more easily accessible above the strings, but it also had an important effect on the sound of his guitar: because of the design of the pickups, his lowest string had a bright sound while his highest string had a mellow sound—the opposite of the Strat's intended design.

Amplifiers & effects

Hendrix was also a catalyst in the development of modern guitar amplification and guitar effects. His high-energy stage act and the blistering volume at which he played required robust and powerful amplifiers. For the first few months of his touring career he used Vox and Fender amplifiers, but he soon found that they could not stand up to the rigors of an Experience show. Hendrix soon discovered a new range of high-powered guitar amps being made by London audio engineer Jim Marshall and they proved perfect for his needs. Along with the Strat, the Marshall stack and Marshall amplifiers were crucial in shaping his heavily overdriven sound, enabling him to master the creative use of feedback as a musical effect, and his exclusive use of this brand soon made it the most popular amplifier in rock music.

Hendrix also constantly looked for new guitar effects. He was one of the first guitarists to move past simple gimmickry and to exploit the full expressive possibilities of electronic effects such as the wah-wah pedal. He had a fruitful association with engineer Roger Mayer and made extensive use of several Mayer devices including the Axis fuzz unit, the Octavia octave doubler and especially the UniVibe, a unit designed to electronically simulate the modulation effects of the Leslie speaker.

Hendrix's sound combined high volume and high power, feedback manipulation and a range of cutting-edge guitar effects, especially the UniVibe-Octavia combination, which can be heard to full effect on the Band of Gypsys' live version of "Machine Gun." He was also known for his trick playing, which included playing with only his right (fretting) hand, using his teeth or playing behind his back, although he soon grew tired of audience demands to perform these tricks.

Collector's items

It is believed that the Marshall Super 100 amp, purchased by Hendrix on October 8, 1966, was the first he ever bought. Rich Dickinson of Thrupp, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, bought the second-hand Marshall amp in 1971 for just £65. In May 2005, experts at Marshall Amplification in Milton Keynes unearthed photos of the rock star with the amp that proved beyond doubt that it was the genuine article. In a local news story, Dickinson said that he had to part with the beloved amp because insuring it would cost thousands. "I'm not in any rush to sell it and will wait for the best price, not just jump at whoever offers the first silly money," he said. The amp, of which only four were made, had been fully serviced by Marshall and was to be sold in a private sale. It was believed that it would fetch more than £1 million.

Prior to his death in 1970, Hendrix gave one of his black Stratocasters to Al Kooper as a gift. Kooper later used the instrument while helping Del Shannon record "Runaway" for the Crime Story soundtrack.

The burnt and broken parts of the Stratocaster he destroyed at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival were given to Frank Zappa, who later rebuilt it and played it extensively during the 1970s and 1980s. In May 2002, Zappa's son Dweezil put the guitar up for auction in the U.S., hoping it would fetch $1 million, but it failed to sell.

The legendary white 1968 Strat that Hendrix played at Woodstock spent years in the collection of drummer Mitch Mitchell, who restrung the guitar for right handed use and allowed friends and visitors to play it. The guitar sold at Sotheby's auction house in London in 1990 for £174,000. It was again sold in 1993 for £750,000 to collector Gabriele Ansaloni, known in Italy as radio celebrity Red Ronnie. In 1996, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen purchased the guitar from Ansaloni for an undisclosed amount. It now resides in a permanent exhibit at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, along with a shard of the burnt and broken Monterey guitar.

The last guitar that Jimi ever played, a black 1968 Stratocaster, was kept by Monika Dannemann after Hendrix died in her London flat. Years later, Dannemann lived as the common law wife of Scorpions guitarist Uli Jon Roth - upon her suicide in 1996, ownership of the guitar was transferred to Roth. Univibes contributor Len Jones documented and photographed the instrument in 1993.[2]

Drug use

Hendrix is widely known for and associated with the use of hallucinogenic drugs, especially LSD. The prevailing opinion is that Jimi's use of LSD was an integral part of his creative process and contributed greatly to the content of his three studio albums. He had never taken hallucinogenics until the night he met Linda Keith, but likely experimented with other drugs in years prior. Various forms of speed and sleeping pills fueled his ‘stop and go’ lifestyle throughout his career, and pictures exist of Hendrix smoking marijuana.

Hendrix was also notorious among friends and bandmates for becoming angry and violent when he drank alcohol. Kathy Etchingham spoke of an incident that took place in a London bar in which an intoxicated Hendrix beat her with a public telephone handset because he thought she was calling another man on the payphone. Carmen Borrero revealed that while drunk, Jimi once threw a glass vodka bottle at her, which shattered when it struck her face. Musician Paul Caruso's friendship with Hendrix ended in 1970 when Jimi punched him during an alcohol-fueled argument.

The most controversial topic however, concerns his alleged abuse of heroin. The Hendrix family, along with a portion of his friends and biographers, strongly state that Jimi was never a heroin user. An equally strong group of associates and writers, including bassist Noel Redding, insist that Hendrix did abuse heroin and hint that he was in a withdrawal period when he died of asphyxiation in September 1970. Heroin was not found in the toxicology report prepared after his death.

Paternity

Jimi Hendrix is reportedly the father of two children: Tamika Laurice Carpenter James of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA and James Daniel Sundqvist of Stockholm, Sweden. Hendrix never met or publicly acknowledged paternity of either child.

Tamika was born in 1966 after a brief relationship between Jimi and her mother Diana Carpenter took place in New York City. An unreleased Hendrix song named "Red Velvet Room" mentions a child named "Tami". In June of 1970, a paternity suit began in Minneapolis, which turned into a probate claim after Jimi’s death months later. The suit challenged Al Hendrix’s claim to the estate and sought to install Tamika as the sole heir to Jimi’s estate. The New York surrogate court in charge of Jimi’s estate proceedings denied this claim. Years later, Tamika would reconcile and reunite with Al Hendrix, who seemed to accept that the young woman was indeed his granddaughter.

James Sundqvist was born on October 5, 1969. His mother, Eva Sundqvist, met Jimi in May 1967 at the Stureplan train station in Stockholm when he asked her for directions to the Konserthuset. She later noticed his face on a record store album cover and began courting him during his subsequent Stockholm concerts (January 1968 and January 1969), leaving him love notes and flowers backstage. Jimi would oblige these advances by taking her along with him on his post-concert social engagements, the latter of which ended in an overnight stay at the Hotel Carlton. When James was born, Eva at first did not reveal Jimi as the father of her child. She filed a paternity suit against Jimi after child welfare services demanded the action as a requirement of her maintenance payments. This also evolved into a probate claim against Jimi’s estate, although the judgments made in favor of the Sundqvist family were only achieved in Swedish courts. In December 1978 the case was settled and the Sundqvist family received four million Swedish kronor (almost $1 million) from Jimi’s estate.

Impact

Hendrix's style was unique. Although he synthesized many styles in creating his musical voice, there was something in his playing that was truly distinct and inimitable. Despite his hectic touring schedule and notorious perfectionism, he was a prolific recording artist and left behind more than 300 unreleased recordings.

His astonishing career and ill-timed death has grouped him with Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison as one of contemporary music's tragic "three J's", iconic 60's rock stars that suffered drug-related deaths at age 27 (see The 27 Club) within months of each other, leaving legacies in death that have eclipsed the popularity and influence they experienced during their lifetimes.

Musically, Hendrix did perhaps more than any other performer to further the development of the electric guitar repertoire. Many claim that he moved the instrument to a higher level, establishing it as more than merely an amplified version of the acoustic guitar. Likewise, his feedback and fuzz-laden soloing moved guitar distortion well beyond mere novelty, popularizing effects pedals and units (most notably the wah-wah pedal) dramatically. Hendrix affected popular music with similar profundity- along with earlier bands such as The Who and Cream, he established a heavy yet technically proficient bent to rock music as a whole, significantly furthering the development of Hard Rock and paving the way for Heavy Metal. His music has also had a profound influence on Funk and the development of Funk Rock especially through the guitarist Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic.

Quotations

• "When I die, just keep playing the records."
• "When the power of love overcomes the love of power... the world will know peace"
• "Music is my religion."
• "It's funny how most people love the dead. Once you're dead you're made for life."
• "Music is a safe type of high. It's more the way it was supposed to be. That's where highness came, I guess, from anyway. It's nothing but rhythm and motion."
• "The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar."
• "Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
• "The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye, until we meet again."
• "When you die you're just getting rid of that old body."
• "You can leave if you want, we're just jammin' that's all."
• "We call it 'Electric Church Music' because to us music is a religion."
• "Technically, I am not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion."
• "When I was a little boy, I believed that if you put a tooth under your pillow, a fairy would come in the night and take away the tooth and leave a dime. Now, I believed in myself more than anything. And, I suppose in a way, that's also believing in God. If there is a God and He made you, then if you believe in yourself, you're also believing in Him. So I think everybody should believe in himself. That doesn't mean you've got to believe in heaven and hell and all that stuff. But it does mean that what you are and what you do is your religion. I can't express myself in easy conversation—the words just don't come out right. But when I get up on stage—well, that's my whole life. That's my religion. My music is electric church music, if by 'church' you mean 'religion', I am electric religion."

Musical equipment

Guitars

• Fender
  • Stratocaster
  • Jaguar
  • Duo-Sonic and Musicmaster (1961)
  • Telecaster
  • Jazzmaster
• Gibson
  • Gibson SG
  • Gibson Flying V (1967 and 1968 makes)
  • Gibson 330
  • Gibson Firebird
• Others
  • Danelectro Shorthorn (1959)
  • Supro Ozark 1560S Electric
  • Three Rickenbackers: a bass, a 6-string, and a 12-string guitar
  • Martin D-45, bought new
  • Hofner electric
  • Guild 12-string acoustic
  • Gibson stereo
  • Acoustic Black Widow (salvaged by Hendrix)
  • Zemaitis 12-string acoustic guitar (played on an acoustic version of "Hear my Train a Comin")
  • Two Hagstrom 8-string basses (played by Hendrix in "Spanish Castle Magic" on "Axis: Bold as Love")

Eric Barrett adds that Hendrix generally had more than one of everything, except the Rickenbackers.

Amplifiers

• Fender
• Marshall
• Sunn
• Vox

Discography

Studio albums

• Are You Experienced? (1967) UK #2; U.S. #5
• Axis: Bold as Love (1967) UK #5; U.S. #3
• Electric Ladyland (1968) UK #5; U.S. #1

Live albums

• Band of Gypsys (1970) UK #5; U.S. #5

Posthumous live albums

• Hendrix in the West (1972)
• Jimi Plays Monterey (1986)
• The Last Experience Concert: Live at the Royal Albert Hall (1990)
• Jimi Hendrix: Live at Berkeley (2003)

MCA reissues catalog

• Blues (1994)
• First Rays of the New Rising Sun (1997)
• South Saturn Delta (1997)
• BBC Sessions (1998)
• Live at the Fillmore East (1999)
• Live at Woodstock (1999)
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience (MCA Box) (2000)
• Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight (2002)

Compilations

• Smash Hits (1969) UK #5; U.S. #6
• The Ultimate Experience (1993)
• Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix (1998)
• Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix (2003)

Others

• Rainbow Bridge Concert (1971)
• The Cry of Love (1971)
• War Heroes (1972)
• Loose Ends (1974)
• Crash Landing (1975)
• Doriella Du Fontaine (Lightnin Rod) (1984)

Notable live performances

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

• October 13, 1966 - Novelty Club, Evreux, Normandie, France (first Experience show ever)
• June 18, 1967 - The Monterey International Pop Music Festival, California, USA (first appearance and show for the Experience in America)
• February 24, 1969 - Performance in the historic Royal Albert Hall. It was the last British appearance of The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• June 29, 1969 - Performance at the Barry Fey's Denver Pop Festival, a three-day event held at Denver's Mile High Stadium that was marked by rioting and tear gas. It was the last ever performance by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Gypsy Sun and Rainbows

• August 18, 1969 - Woodstock Music & Art Fair; Bethel, New York, USA
• September 5, 1969 - United Block Association Harlem Benefit, 139 Street/Lenox Avenue, New York City, USA
• September 9, 1969 - The Dick Cavett Show, ABC live television broadcast, USA

Band of Gypsys

• December 31, 1969 - The Fillmore East Auditorium, New York City, USA
• January 1, 1970 - The Fillmore East Auditorium, New York City, USA
• January 28, 1970 - Winter Festival For Peace, Madison Square Garden; New York City, USA

Cry of Love band

• April 25, 1970 - LA Forum; Inglewood, Los Angeles, USA (first Cry of Love concert)
• May 30, 1970 - Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, California, USA
• August 30, 1970 - Isle of Wight Music Festival, Afton, Isle of Wight, UK
• September 6, 1970 - Fehmarn Love and Peace Festival, Mecklenburg Bay, Isle of Fehmarn, West Germany (last concert ever)

Solo/collaborative

• September 16, 1970 - Ronnie Scott's Club, London, England (jam session, last performance ever)

See also

• List of songs covered by Jimi Hendrix
• Best selling music artists
• Rainbow Bridge concert Maui Hawaii 1970

References

Biographies

• Johnny Black, Jimi Hendrix: The Ultimate Experience, 1999
• Tony Brown, Jimi Hendrix, 2003
• Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, 2005: ISBN 1-4013-0028-6
• David Henderson, 'Scuse Me while I Kiss the Sky: The Life of Jimi Hendrix, 1978: ISBN 0-553-01334-3
• James A. 'Al' Hendrix, My Son Jimi, 1999
• Sharon Lawrence, Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth, 2004: ISBN 0060562994
• Charles Shaar Murray, Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-War Pop, 2nd rev. edition 2001: ISBN 0571207499
• Noel Redding, Are You Experienced?: The Inside Story of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1996: ISBN 0306806819
• Keith Shadwick, Jimi Hendrix: Musician, 2003
• Harry Shapiro, Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy, 1995

Other books

• Ken Matesich, Jimi Hendrix: A Discography, 1982
• David Stubbs, Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child: The Stories Behind Every Song, 2003
• John Kruth, Bright Moments: The Life & Legacy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, 2004: ISBN 1566491053

Magazine articles

• Jimpress magazine; Warrington, Cheshire, England
• Univibes magazine; Popiglio, Italy
• Experience Hendrix magazine; Seattle, USA

Tribute bands

• Randy Hansen
• Jimi Hendrix Tribute Band, from Germany
• Jimi Hendrix Tribute Band
• Tony "Wild T" Springer
• Third Stone From The Sun, California