Jimi Hendrix

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Perhaps no other rock-and-roll trailblazer has been as original or as influential in such a short span of time as Jimi Hendrix. Widely acknowledged as one of the most daring and inventive virtuosos in rock history, Hendrix pioneered the electric guitar (he played a right-handed Fender Strat upside-down and left-handed) as an electronic sound source capable of feedback, distortion, and a host of other effects that could be crafted into an articulate and fluid emotional vocabulary. And though he was on the scene as a solo artist for less than five years, Jimi Hendrix is credited for having a profound effect on everyone from George Clinton and Miles Davis to guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Vernon Reid.

Born James Marshall Hendrix in 1942, Hendrix taught himself to play the guitar during his schoolboy days in Seattle, drawing influence from old blues greats like B.B. King and Robert Johnson. He slung his guitar over his back and left home to enlist in the Army, where he served as a parachute jumper until an injury led to his discharge. Hendrix began working as a session guitarist under the name Jimmy James, supporting such marquee acts as Sam Cooke, Ike and Tina Turner, and the Isley Brothers. After gigging extensively with Little Richard in 1964, Hendrix became entangled in a contract dispute with the mercurial artist and left to form his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. With the exception of an obscure single, "My Diary," with Arthur Lee (later of the L.A. psych band Love), none of the music Hendrix cut with other artists was made more remarkable by his presence.

After playing Greenwich Village coffeehouses for the better part of a year (still under the moniker Jimmy James), Hendrix encountered Chas Chandler, of Animals fame, at a New York club. Impressed with his playing, Chandler, who was then looking to switch gears to management, took Hendrix to London in the fall of 1966 and masterminded the creation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Backed by Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, the Experience offered Hendrix the wide-open rock-and-roll format he needed to exercise his dazzling skills as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Chandler unleashed the band on the London pop scene, and in short order Hendrix et al became the talk of the town.

Hendrix's first single, "Hey Joe," a cover of a song written by the L.A. band the Leaves, hit the U.K. charts in early 1967, followed in quick succession by "Purple Haze," "The Wind Cries Mary," and the trio's ferocious debut album Are You Experienced?, which featured those tracks and the Hendrix staples "Foxy Lady" and "Manic Depression." Hendrix's popularity Stateside was a bit slower in igniting, but Are You Experienced? finally broke through in a major way after a defining moment at the famed Monterey Pop Festival when the notoriously outlandish frontman created a sensation by coaxing flames from his Strat during the band's performance. Throughout the next year, Hendrix's eclectic psychedelia reached a zenith with two albums, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland - the latter ranks as one of the greatest albums of the rock era. But the Experience at the top didn't last long - Hendrix and bassist Redding grew apart, and muddled by over-indulgence in drugs and groupies, Hendrix came to believe wrongly that his management was cheating him. In 1969, the Experience disbanded.

In the summer of '69, Hendrix played Woodstock with an informal ensemble called the Electric Sky Church, in a performance highlighted by another career-defining moment: a startling, renegade rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner." Hendrix subsequently formed the Band of Gypsies, with old army friend Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles (Electric Flag) on drums. The band's New Year's Eve concert at the Fillmore East in New York City provided them with material for their first album, Band of Gypsies (a second album, titled Band of Gypsies 2, was discovered and released in 1986). Hendrix brought Mitch Mitchell back into the fold in mid-1970 to begin work on a new double album Jimi had tentatively titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun. Several tracks were recorded for the project, but the sessions were sandwiched between tour dates, and, sadly, the album was left unfinished when Hendrix died September 18, 1970. The cause of death noted on the coroner's report was inhalation of vomit after barbiturate intoxication. In 1993, the investigation into Hendrix's death was reopened by Scotland Yard, but when no new evidence was unearthed, the matter was dropped.

In 1971, several of the tracks intended for First Rays were compiled and released as The Cry of Love, and the ensuing years have witnessed a flood of releases of Hendrix tributes, books, videos, and albums, including pre-fame barrel-scrapings of Hendrix takes from his pickup guitarist days. In the late '70s, audio engineer Alan Douglas grafted backup instrumentation onto incomplete Hendrix guitar tracks to pale effect. In 1994, M.C.A. released three Hendrix thematic compilations, one (Jimi Hendrix: Blues) devoted to blues, one (Jimi Hendrix: Woodstock) to his Woodstock performance, and a third (Voodoo Soup) that represented an attempt to posthumously recreate Hendrix's unfinished studio album. Despite these transgressions against his nearly faultless musical legacy, Hendrix's innovations and soul live on in the playing of every rock-and-roll guitarist.