Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington. An American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, he came to define a bold edge of 1960s rock. He was of African-American and Cherokee descent, and his family story included hardship, movement, and separation. He died in London on September 18, 1970, from barbiturate-related asphyxia, at the age of 27.

Hendrix began playing guitar at 15. Before music became his work, he enlisted in the US Army in 1961 and was discharged the following year. Soon afterward he moved to Clarksville, then Nashville, Tennessee, where he played gigs on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Those years brought him into backing bands for the Isley Brothers and, later, Little Richard, with whom he worked through mid-1965. He also played with Curtis Knight and the Squires.

His breakthrough came after he moved to England in late 1966, when Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. Within months, Hendrix formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. The group scored three UK top-ten hits: “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze,” and “The Wind Cries Mary.” Hendrix became famous in the United States after his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. His third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, released in 1968, became his most successful release and his only number-one album on the US Billboard 200 chart. He later headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.

The forces that shaped Hendrix were both musical and personal. He was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. As a child in Seattle, he often carried a broom at school to imitate a guitar, enough that a social worker tried to get him a real instrument through school funding. In 1957, while helping his father with a side job, he found a one-string ukulele in the trash and learned by ear, playing along to Elvis Presley songs, especially “Hound Dog.” His early life was marked by poverty, frequent moves, his parents’ conflict, the threat of separation from his brother Leon, and the death of his mother, Lucille, in 1958.

As a guitarist, Hendrix changed what rock music could sound like. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and helped make amplifier feedback part of the music rather than a flaw. He was among the first guitarists in mainstream rock to make extensive use of tone-altering effects such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He was also the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. In 1992, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience; the institution called him “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music.” For readers drawn to artists’ words, Hendrix’s life gives his songs and statements a direct charge: they come from a player who turned noise, pressure, and feeling into a personal musical language.