Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix (27 November, 1942 – 18 September, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is frequently credited as being the most important electric guitarist in the history of popular music.

Youth and pre-professional career

Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendricks, in Seattle, Washington the son of Al Hendricks and Lucille Jeter. His mother was an alcoholic and died young of cirrhosis. His father, after returning from World War II, later renamed him James Marshall Hendrix. He grew up shy and sensitive. Like his contemporaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Hendrix was deeply affected by family events – his parents' divorce in 1951, listening to Elvis Presley, whom he loved (a color drawing, showing a young Elvis armed with a guitar, and made by the then impressionable 15 year old Hendrix himself, two months after attending Presley's concert at Seattle's Sick's Stadium on 1st September, 1957, is remarkable in its sheer detail and can be seen at that city's Rock museum), and the death of his mother, a year later. He was close to his paternal grandmother Nora Rose Moore. Nora, the daughter of an Irish Cherokee father and a mulatto mother, instilled in him a strong sense of pride about his Native American ancestry. Both of Jimi's paternal grandparents were vaudeville performers who settled in Vancouver, Canada, where his father, Al Hendrix, was born. Al relocated to Seattle, where he met and married Lucille Jeter. After Lucille's death, Al gave Jimi a ukulele, and later bought him a US$5 acoustic guitar, setting him on the path to his future vocation.

Related Topics:
Seattle, Washington - Alcoholic - Cirrhosis - World War II - John Lennon - Paul McCartney - Divorce - 1951 - Elvis Presley - Irish - Cherokee - Mulatto - Native American - Vaudeville - Vancouver - Canada - Ukulele - Acoustic guitar

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After playing with several local Seattle bands and getting into trouble with the law via a stolen car, Hendrix enlisted in the Army, joining the 101st Airborne Division (stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky) as a trainee paratrooper. Hendrix was a poor soldier who was 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"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0803051jimi1.html. After less than a year he received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle on his 26th parachute jump (He said later that the sound of air whistling through the parachute shrouds was one of the sources of his "spacy" guitar sound). Hendrix was discharged from the US Army three years before the Vietnam War saw large numbers of US soldiers arrive. But his recordings would become favorites of soldiers fighting there. (A biography published in summer 2005, Room Full Of Mirrors, by Charles Cross, claims that Hendrix faked being gay--claiming to have fallen in love with another soldier--and was therefore discharged. According to Cross, Hendrix was an avid anti-communist and did not leave the US Army as a protest to the Vietnam War, but simply wanted out so he could focus on playing guitar.)

Related Topics:
Army - 101st Airborne Division - Fort Campbell, Kentucky - Paratrooper - Gay - Communist

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After leaving Ft. Campbell, Hendrix and his friend and bandmate Billy Cox moved to nearby 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.

Related Topics:
Nashville - Rhythm and blues

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During the early 1960s, Hendrix made a precarious living performing in backing bands for touring soul and blues musicians, including Curtis Knight, B. B. King, and Little Richard. His first notice came from appearances with The Isley Brothers, notably on the two-parter Testify in 1964.

Related Topics:
1960s - Curtis Knight - B. B. King - Little Richard - The Isley Brothers - 1964

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