Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

Al (Jimi's father) was stationed in Alabama at the time of Hendrix's birth. Al was denied the standard military furlough afforded servicemen for childbirth; his commanding officer placed him in the stockade to prevent him from going AWOL to see his infant son in Seattle. He spent two months locked up without trial, and, while in the stockade, received a telegram announcing his son's birth. During Al's three-year absence, Lucille struggled to raise their son.When Al was away, Hendrix was mostly cared for by family members and friends, especially Lucille's sister Delores Hall and her friend Dorothy Harding. Al received an honorable discharge from the US Army on September 1, 1945. Two months later, unable to find Lucille, Al went to the Berkeley, California, home of a family friend named Mrs. Champ, who had taken care of and attempted to adopt Hendrix; this is where Al saw his son for the first time.

After returning from service, Al reunited with Lucille, but his inability to find steady work left the family impoverished. They both struggled with alcohol, and often fought when intoxicated. The violence sometimes drove Hendrix to withdraw and hide in a closet in their home. His relationship with his brother Leon (born 1948) was close but precarious; with Leon in and out of foster care, they lived with an almost constant threat of fraternal separation. In addition to Leon, Hendrix had three younger siblings: Joseph, born in 1949, Kathy in 1950, and Pamela in 1951, all of whom Al and Lucille gave up to foster care and adoption. The family frequently moved, staying in cheap hotels and apartments around Seattle. . On December 17, 1951, when Hendrix was nine years old, his parents divorced; the court granted Al custody of him and Leon.

+INFO

Write a subtitle

WRITE YOUR TITLE HERE

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit imperdiet, dis dictumst ligula interdum facilisi feugiat justo nostra eleifend, lacinia senectus varius est netus montes. Massa vehicula volutpat vitae dis.

At Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle during the mid-1950s, Hendrix's habit of carrying a broom with him to emulate a guitar gained the attention of the school's social worker. After more than a year of his clinging to a broom like a security blanket, she wrote a letter requesting school funding intended for underprivileged children, insisting that leaving him without a guitar might result in psychological damage. Her efforts failed, and Al refused to buy him a guitar. In 1957, while helping his father with a side-job, Hendrix found a ukulele among the garbage they were removing from an older woman's home. She told him that he could keep the instrument, which had only one string. Learning by ear, he played single notes, following along to Elvis Presley songs, particularly "Hound Dog". By the age of 33, Hendrix's mother Lucille had developed cirrhosis of the liver, and on February 2, 1958, she died when her spleen ruptured. Al refused to take James and Leon to attend their mother's funeral; he instead gave them shots of whiskey and told them that was how men should deal with loss.

In mid-1958, at age 15, Hendrix acquired his first acoustic guitar, for $5 (equivalent to $54 in 2024). He played for hours daily, watching others and learning from more experienced guitarists, and listening to blues artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson. The first tune Hendrix learned to play was the television theme "Peter Gunn". Around that time, Hendrix jammed with boyhood friend Sammy Drain and his keyboard-playing brother. In 1959, attending a concert by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters in Seattle, Hendrix met the group's guitarist Billy Davis. Davis showed him some guitar licks and got him a short gig with the Midnighters. Soon after he acquired the acoustic guitar, Hendrix formed his first band, the Velvetones. Without an electric guitar, he could barely be heard over the sound of the group. After about three months, he realized that he needed an electric guitar. In mid-1959, his father relented and bought him a white Supro Ozark. Hendrix's first gig was with an unnamed band in the Jaffe Room of Seattle's Temple De Hirsch, but they fired him between sets for showing off.

Before Hendrix was 19 years old, law authorities had twice caught him riding in stolen cars. Given a choice between prison or joining the Army, he chose the latter and enlisted on May 31, 1961. After completing eight weeks of basic training at Fort Ord, California, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He arrived on November 8, and soon afterward he wrote to his father: "There's nothing but physical training and harassment here for two weeks, then when you go to jump school ... you get hell. They work you to death, fussing and fighting." In his next letter home, Hendrix, who had left his guitar in Seattle at the home of his girlfriend Betty Jean Morgan, asked his father to send it to him as soon as possible, stating: "I really need it now." His father obliged and sent the red Silvertone Danelectro on which Hendrix had hand-painted the words "Betty Jean" to Fort Campbell.

In March 1964, Hendrix recorded the two-part single "Testify" with the Isley Brothers. Released in June, it failed to chart. In May, he provided guitar instrumentation for the Don Covay song, "Mercy Mercy". Issued in August by Rosemart Records and distributed by Atlantic, the track reached number 35 on the Billboard chart. Hendrix toured with the Isleys during much of 1964, but near the end of October, after growing tired of playing the same set every night, he left the band. Soon afterward, Hendrix joined Little Richard's touring band, the Upsetters. Hendrix met singer Rosa Lee Brooks while staying at the Wilcox Hotel in Hollywood, and she invited him to participate in a recording session for her single, which included the Arthur Lee penned "My Diary" as the A-side, and "Utee" as the B-side. Hendrix played guitar on both tracks, which also included background vocals by Lee. The single failed to chart, but Hendrix and Lee began a friendship that lasted several years; Hendrix later became an ardent supporter of Lee's band, Love.

Keith referred him to Chas Chandler, who was leaving the Animals and was interested in managing and producing artists. Chandler saw Hendrix play in Cafe Wha?, a Greenwich Village, New York City nightclub. Chandler liked the Billy Roberts song "Hey Joe", and was persuaded he could create a hit single with the right artist. Impressed with Hendrix's version of the song, he brought him to London on September 24, 1966, and signed him to a management and production contract with himself and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. That night, Hendrix gave an impromptu solo performance at The Scotch of St James and began a relationship with Kathy Etchingham that lasted for two and a half years.

+INFO

Write a subtitle

WRITE YOUR TITLE HERE

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit imperdiet, dis dictumst ligula interdum facilisi feugiat justo nostra eleifend, lacinia senectus varius est netus montes. Massa vehicula volutpat vitae dis.

In July 1962, Hendrix entered a small club in Clarksville, Tennessee, drawn in by live music. He stopped for a drink and ended up spending most of the $400 (equivalent to $4,158 in 2024) that he had saved during his time in the Army. "I went in this jazz joint and had a drink," he explained. "I liked it and I stayed. People tell me I get foolish, good-natured sometimes. Anyway, I guess I felt real benevolent that day. I must have been handing out bills to anyone that asked me. I came out of that place with sixteen dollars left." Alcohol eventually became "the scourge of his existence, driving him to fits of pique, even rare bursts of atypical, physical violence".

One of the most notable renditions of the anthem was Jimi Hendrix's solo guitar performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, captured on the documentary film of the event. Hendrix played the anthem with a number of distorted regressions—some mimicking the "rockets" and "bombs" of the anthem's lyrics—to great acclaim from the audience. It was voted 52nd on the list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time by readers of Guitar World Magazine. Hendrix also recorded a studio version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" some time before the Woodstock festival. That version features numerous guitar tracks played through octave-shifting effects. The studio version is available on the Rainbow Bridge album and Cornerstones collection.

+INFO

Write a subtitle

WRITE YOUR TITLE HERE

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit imperdiet, dis dictumst ligula interdum facilisi feugiat justo nostra eleifend, lacinia senectus varius est netus montes. Massa vehicula volutpat vitae dis.

Roby and Schreiber assert that Hendrix first used LSD when he met Linda Keith in late 1966. Shapiro and Glebbeek, however, contends that Hendrix used it in June 1967 at the earliest while attending the Monterey Pop Festival. According to Hendrix biographer Charles Cross, the subject of drugs came up one evening in 1966 at Keith's New York apartment. One of Keith's friends offered Hendrix "acid", a street name for LSD, but Hendrix asked for LSD instead, showing what Cross describes as "his naivete and his complete inexperience with psychedelics". Before that, Hendrix had only sporadically used drugs, including cannabis, hashish, amphetamines, and occasionally cocaine. After 1967, he regularly used cannabis, hashish, LSD, and amphetamines, particularly while touring. According to Cross, "few stars were as closely associated with the drug culture as Jimi".

When Hendrix drank to excess or mixed drugs with alcohol, often he became angry and violent. His friend Herbie Worthington said Hendrix "simply turned into a bastard" when he drank. According to friend Sharon Lawrence, liquor "set off a bottled-up anger, a destructive fury he almost never displayed otherwise". In January 1968, the Experience travelled to Sweden to start a one-week tour of Europe. During the early morning hours of the first day, Hendrix got into a drunken brawl in the Hotel Opalen in Gothenburg, smashing a plate-glass window and injuring his right hand, for which he received medical treatment. The incident culminated in his arrest and release, pending a court appearance that resulted in a large fine. In 1969, Hendrix rented a house in Benedict Canyon, California, that was burglarized. Later, while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, he accused his friend Paul Caruso of the theft, threw punches and stones at him, and chased him away from his house. A few days later Hendrix hit his girlfriend, Carmen Borrero, above her eye with a vodka bottle during a drunken, jealous rage, and gave her a cut that required stitches.

Hendrix was passing through customs at Toronto International Airport on May 3, 1969, when authorities found a small amount of heroin and hashish in his luggage, and charged him with drug possession. He was released on $10,000 bail (equivalent to $85,744 in 2024), and was required to return on May 5 for an arraignment hearing. The incident proved stressful for Hendrix, and it weighed heavily on his mind during the seven months leading up to his December 1969 trial. For the Crown to prove possession, they had to show that Hendrix knew that the drugs were there. During the jury trial, he testified that a fan had given him a vial of what he thought was legal medication which he put in his bag. He was acquitted of the charges. Mitchell and Redding later revealed that everyone had been warned about a planned drug bust the day before flying to Toronto; both men also stated that they believed that the drugs had been planted in Hendrix's bag without his knowledge.

Details concerning Hendrix's last day and death are disputed. He spent much of September 17, 1970, in London with Monika Dannemann, the only witness to his final hours. Dannemann said that she prepared a meal for them at her apartment in the Samarkand Hotel around 11 p.m., when they shared a bottle of wine. She drove him to the residence of an acquaintance at approximately 1:45 a.m., where he remained for about an hour before she picked him up and drove them back to her flat at 3 a.m. She said that they talked until around 7 a.m., when they went to sleep. Dannemann awoke around 11 a.m. and found Hendrix breathing but unconscious and unresponsive. She called for an ambulance at 11:18 a.m., and it arrived nine minutes later.[308] Paramedics transported Hendrix to St Mary Abbots Hospital where doctor John Bannister pronounced him dead at 12:45 p.m. on September 18.

+INFO

Write a subtitle

WRITE YOUR TITLE HERE

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit imperdiet, dis dictumst ligula interdum facilisi feugiat justo nostra eleifend, lacinia senectus varius est netus montes. Massa vehicula volutpat vitae dis.

Coroner Gavin Thurston ordered a post-mortem examination which was performed on September 21 by Robert Donald Teare, a forensic pathologist. Thurston completed the inquest on September 28 and concluded that Hendrix aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates. Citing "insufficient evidence of the circumstances", he declared an open verdict. Dannemann later revealed that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage. Desmond Henley embalmed Hendrix's body, which was flown to Seattle on September 29. Hendrix's family and friends held a service at Dunlap Baptist Church in Seattle's Rainier Valley on Thursday, October 1; his body was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in nearby Renton, the location of his mother's grave. Family and friends traveled in 24 limousines, and more than 200 people attended the funeral, including Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding, Miles Davis, John Hammond, and Johnny Winter. Hendrix is often cited as one example of an allegedly disproportionate number of musicians dying at age 27, including Brian Jones, Alan Wilson, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin in the same era, a phenomenon referred to as the 27 Club.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography for the Experience states: "Jimi Hendrix was arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. Hendrix expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. His boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll." Musicologist Andy Aledort described Hendrix as "one of the most creative" and "influential musicians that has ever lived". Music journalist Chuck Philips wrote: "In a field almost exclusively populated by white musicians, Hendrix has served as a role model for a cadre of young black rockers. His achievement was to reclaim title to a musical form pioneered by black innovators like Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the 1950s."

The End

Got an idea?

Let the communication flow!

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to wow your audience. You can also highlight a particular sentence or piece of information so that it sticks in your audience’s minds, or even embed external content to surprise them: Whatever you like! Do you need more reasons to create dynamic content? No problem! 90% of the information we assimilate is received through sight and, what’s more, we retain 42% more information when the content moves.

• Generate experiences with your content.
• It’s got the Wow effect. Very Wow.
• Make sure your audience remembers the message.

Got an idea?

Let the communication flow!

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to wow your audience. You can also highlight a particular sentence or piece of information so that it sticks in your audience’s minds, or even embed external content to surprise them: Whatever you like! Do you need more reasons to create dynamic content? No problem! 90% of the information we assimilate is received through sight and, what’s more, we retain 42% more information when the content moves.

• Generate experiences with your content.
• It’s got the Wow effect. Very Wow.
• Make sure your audience remembers the message.

Got an idea?

Let the communication flow!

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to wow your audience. You can also highlight a particular sentence or piece of information so that it sticks in your audience’s minds, or even embed external content to surprise them: Whatever you like! Do you need more reasons to create dynamic content? No problem! 90% of the information we assimilate is received through sight and, what’s more, we retain 42% more information when the content moves.

• Generate experiences with your content.
• It’s got the Wow effect. Very Wow.
• Make sure your audience remembers the message.

Got an idea?

Let the communication flow!

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to wow your audience. You can also highlight a particular sentence or piece of information so that it sticks in your audience’s minds, or even embed external content to surprise them: Whatever you like! Do you need more reasons to create dynamic content? No problem! 90% of the information we assimilate is received through sight and, what’s more, we retain 42% more information when the content moves.

• Generate experiences with your content.
• It’s got the Wow effect. Very Wow.
• Make sure your audience remembers the message.