Hendrix, Jimi
(27 Nov. 1942–18 Sept. 1970), rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter, was born into a working-class family in Seattle, Washington, the son of James Allen Ross Hendrix, a gardener, and Lucille Jetter. Named Johnny Allen Hendrix at birth by his mother while his father was in the service, his name was changed to James Marshall Hendrix by his father upon his return home. Self-taught as a left-handed guitarist from an early age, Hendrix played a right-handed guitar upside down, a practice he maintained throughout his life since it allowed for unusual fingering patterns and quicker access to tone and volume controls. His early influences ranged from the jazz guitarist
Charlie Christian to blues guitarists and honking rhythm and blues saxophone soloists. He attended elementary school in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle and went to Garfield High School in Seattle. In his senior year he left high school to become a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army.
At Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Hendrix formed a rhythm and blues band, the Casuals, with bassist Billy Cox, who would rejoin him years later at the height of his fame. Following his discharge from the army in 1962, he moved to Nashville, where he played with some locally successful rhythm and blues groups and recorded a demonstration tape with the soul guitarist Steve Cropper, one of many guitarists to have an influence on Hendrix's maturing style. After a brief tour in 1963 with
Little Richard, Hendrix was in great demand as a sideman, performing with a number of established figures and groups such as
Solomon Burke, Ike and
Tina Turner,
Jackie Wilson,
B. B. King, and, later, the Isley Brothers and Curtis Knight. In 1963–1964 Hendrix's guitar playing was increasingly influenced by traditional bluesmen such as
Robert Johnson,
T-Bone Walker, B. B. King,
Muddy Waters, and especially
Albert King, although the relatively few available recordings from this period reveal only that he was a fluent and idiomatic rhythm and blues guitarist and capable sideman.
Leading his own group, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, in a Greenwich Village club in late 1965, Hendrix began to exhibit increasing signs of an original, even eccentric approach that incorporated feedback and other electronic sounds as an integral part of his style as well as overt sexual posturing and a further development of the showmanship techniques (such as playing his guitar behind his back and with his teeth) that he had displayed while touring with the Isley Brothers. Among the influences that took root in this period were Bob Dylan, whose mannered vocal style and sometimes mystical and visionary lyrics Hendrix admired, and the guitar playing of Mike Bloomfield, the inventive lead guitarist for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Impressed by Hendrix's formidable technique, distinctive playing style, and charismatic stage presence, Chas Chandler, the former bass guitarist of the British rock group the Animals, convinced Hendrix to return with him to England to launch a new career. Under Chandler's guidance, the new Jimi Hendrix Experience, also featuring the bassist Noel Redding and the virtuoso drummer Mitch Mitchell, quickly became a favorite on the British and European pop scenes, releasing its first single, “Hey Joe,” in December 1966 and its first album,
Are You Experienced? (Reprise 6267), in September 1967. Consisting mostly of original songs, the album was characterized by extensive multitracking and electronic manipulation of sound (for example, phase shifting, tape reversed effects, and a variety of feedback sounds), the result of a collaboration between Hendrix and the recording engineer Eddie Kramer. The album demonstrated that Hendrix's virtuoso guitar style had by this point successfully assimilated and adapted techniques from an unusually wide variety of sources ranging from soul guitarists to traditional and contemporary urban bluesmen and even jazz players such as
Wes Montgomery. His vocal style had developed into a highly individualistic blend of mannerisms derived from blues, soul, and Dylan's half-spoken narrative style.
The
Are You Experienced? album and associated singles did much to propel Hendrix to the forefront of the emerging British psychedelic rock movement. He was one of the few black performers associated with that style. His popularity in the United States was guaranteed by his electrifying performance at the prestigious First International Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, in which he burned his guitar and destroyed his equipment onstage.
Hendrix released his second album with the Experience,
Axis: Bold as Love (Reprise 6281), in January 1968. This album exhibited an even more elaborate use of multitracking and electronic manipulation than the first, with some songs demonstrating more complex structures and more ambitious and visionary lyrics, some of which appear to have been inspired by drug experiences. In 1968 he was named Artist of the Year by both
Billboard and
Rolling Stone magazines.
Following
Axis, Hendrix began various attempts to expand the basic “power trio” format of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The double album issued in September,
Electric Ladyland (Reprise 6307), employed various other artists along with Redding and Mitchell and was the most intricately textured to date. Some songs, however, such as the hit single version of Dylan's “All along the Watchtower,” showed an unusually straightforward, almost austere style, and others, such as “Voodoo Chile,” suggested a return to the earlier urban blues style of Muddy Waters.
After the release of this album, Hendrix continually expressed the desire to shed his “psychedelic wizard” reputation and further develop his musical style, speaking on a number of occasions of his interest in jazz and his eagerness to perform with major jazz figures such as
Miles Davis, who had shown some interest in Hendrix's music. Hendrix disbanded the Experience in 1969, envisioning a fluid “Electric Sky Church” made up of various musicians performing in different styles. His performance at the August 1969 Woodstock Festival, in which Billy Cox, a friend from his army days, replaced Noel Redding on bass, included a particularly dynamic and violent performance of the “Star-Spangled Banner” that became famous as a demonstration of his unique guitar style. Under some pressure from black militants to make outspoken political statements, Hendrix shied away from active involvement in politics but did launch an all-black trio, the Band of Gypsys, featuring the bass player Billy Cox and the drummer/vocalist Buddy Miles, which in 1970 released an album of tracks (
The Band of Gypsys, Capitol 0472) from a concert at the Fillmore East in New York City. But Hendrix remained dissatisfied, and the group quickly disbanded, with Hendrix walking offstage during a performance in early 1970. Hendrix was briefly rejoined by the original members of the Experience, but Noel Redding was soon replaced by Cox once again. In this period, Hendrix devoted considerable time to planning for and working in his new studio, Electric Lady Studios. His final live performances were erratic, with Hendrix sometimes appearing to be out of control or distant. He died in London in his sleep, asphyxiated following a presumably accidental overdose of sleeping pills. By then he had become a figure of gigantic proportions in the pop music world, not only as the first major black artist in the psychedelic style, but as a guitarist and composer whose work was considered strikingly original and distinctive.
Despite his great fame, his influence on later rock musicians was expressed more in terms of inspiration than direct imitation. Few if any of his followers appeared able to duplicate many of Hendrix's guitar-derived or studio-generated electronic effects with the finesse that he had demonstrated. His compositional approach was sufficiently unique that his songs were largely inimitable as well. But the Hendrix legacy remains strong, if for no other reason than because he is seen as a musical free spirit who expanded the potential of the electric guitar and the boundaries of rock music in general in the late 1960s to a degree matched by few others.
Further Reading
- Henderson, David. Scuze Me while I Kiss the Sky: The Life of Jimi Hendrix (1980)
- Hopkins, Jerry. Hit and Run: The Jimi Hendrix Story (1983)
- Knight, Curtis. Jimi: An Intimate Biography of Jimi Hendrix (1974)
- Tarshis, Steve. Original Hendrix (1982)
- Welch, Chris. Hendrix: A Biography (1972)
Obituary:
- New York Times, 19 Sept. 1970.
This entry is taken from the American National Biography and is published here with the permission of the American Council of Learned Societies.
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