124 Facts About Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager.

Jimi Hendrix achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US.

Jimi Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues.

Jimi Hendrix favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback.

Jimi Hendrix was one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe.

Jimi Hendrix was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings.

Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Jimi Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began.

Jimi Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

Jimi Hendrix's paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, was born in 1866 from an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny and a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, or Illinois, one of the wealthiest men in the area at that time.

Jimi Hendrix's paternal grandmother, Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, was a former dancer and vaudeville performer.

Johnny Allen Jimi Hendrix was born on November 27,1942, in Seattle; he was the first of Lucille's five children.

Jimi Hendrix spent two months locked up without trial, and while in the stockade received a telegram announcing his son's birth.

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 Jimi Hendrix; this is where Al saw his son for the first time.

The violence sometimes drove Jimi Hendrix to withdraw and hide in a closet in their home.

Jimi Hendrix's relationship with his brother Leon was born on 1948 and was close but precarious; with Leon in and out of foster care, they lived with an almost constant threat of fraternal separation.

On December 17,1951, when Jimi Hendrix was nine years old, his parents divorced; the court granted Al custody of him and Leon.

Jimi Hendrix's efforts failed, and Al refused to buy him a guitar.

In 1957, while helping his father with a side-job, Jimi Hendrix found a ukulele among the garbage they were removing from an older woman's home.

Jimi Hendrix told him that he could keep the instrument, which had only one string.

In 1958, Jimi Hendrix completed his studies at Washington Junior High School and began attending, but did not graduate from, Garfield High School.

In mid-1958, at age 15, Jimi Hendrix acquired his first acoustic guitar, for $5.

The first tune Jimi Hendrix learned to play was the television theme "Peter Gunn".

Around that time, Jimi Hendrix jammed with boyhood friend Sammy Drain and his keyboard-playing brother.

Jimi Hendrix joined the Rocking Kings, which played professionally at venues such as the Birdland club.

Jimi Hendrix later spoke of his dislike of the army and that he had received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump.

In September 1962, after Cox was discharged from the Army, he and Jimi Hendrix moved about 20 miles across the state line from Fort Campbell to Clarksville, Tennessee, and formed a band, the King Kasuals.

In Seattle, Jimi Hendrix saw Butch Snipes play with his teeth and now the Kasuals' second guitarist, Alphonso "Baby Boo" Young, was performing this guitar gimmick.

Not to be upstaged, Jimi Hendrix learned to play in this way.

In January 1964, feeling he had outgrown the circuit artistically, and frustrated by having to follow the rules of bandleaders, Jimi Hendrix decided to venture out on his own.

Jimi Hendrix moved into the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where he befriended Lithofayne Pridgon, known as "Faye", who became his girlfriend.

In February 1964, Jimi Hendrix won first prize in the Apollo Theater amateur contest.

In March 1964, Jimi Hendrix recorded the two-part single "Testify" with the Isley Brothers.

Jimi 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.

Jimi 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.

Jimi Hendrix played guitar on both tracks, which included background vocals by Lee.

In July 1965, Jimi Hendrix made his first television appearance on Nashville's Channel 5 Night Train.

Jimi Hendrix earned his first composer credits for two instrumentals, "Hornets Nest" and "Knock Yourself Out", released as a Curtis Knight and the Squires single in 1966.

The Blue Flames played at several clubs in New York and Jimi Hendrix began developing his guitar style and material that he would soon use with the Experience.

Jimi Hendrix invited him to join her for a drink, and the two became friends.

That night, Jimi 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.

Jimi Hendrix met guitarist Noel Redding at an audition for the New Animals, where Redding's knowledge of blues progressions impressed Jimi Hendrix, who stated that he liked Redding's hairstyle.

Chandler asked Redding if he wanted to play bass guitar in Jimi Hendrix's band; Redding agreed.

On June 4,1967, Jimi Hendrix opened a show at the Saville Theatre in London with his rendition of Sgt.

Jimi Hendrix insisted that the event would be incomplete without Hendrix, whom he called "an absolute ace on the guitar".

The set ended with Jimi Hendrix destroying his guitar and tossing pieces of it out to the audience.

When Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival he created one of rock's most perfect moments.

Caraeff stood on a chair next to the edge of the stage and took four monochrome pictures of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar.

The Los Angeles Times asserted that, upon leaving the stage, Jimi Hendrix "graduated from rumor to legend".

Author John McDermott wrote that "Jimi Hendrix left the Monterey audience stunned and in disbelief at what they'd just heard and seen".

Jimi Hendrix composed the album's title track and finale around two verses and two choruses, during which he pairs emotions with personas, comparing them to colors.

Jimi Hendrix's guitar playing throughout the song is marked by chordal arpeggios and contrapuntal motion, with tremolo-picked partial chords providing the musical foundation for the chorus, which culminates in what musicologist Andy Aledort described as "simply one of the greatest electric guitar solos ever played".

The scheduled release date for Axis was almost delayed when Jimi Hendrix lost the master tape of side one of the LP, leaving it in the back seat of a London taxi.

Jimi Hendrix voiced his disappointment about having re-mixed the album so quickly, and he felt that it could have been better had they been given more time.

Jimi Hendrix stated that the cover, which Track spent $5,000 producing, would have been more appropriate had it highlighted his American Indian heritage.

Jimi Hendrix allowed numerous friends and guests to join them in the studio, which contributed to a chaotic and crowded environment in the control room and led Chandler to sever his professional relationship with Jimi Hendrix.

Electric Ladyland included Jimi Hendrix's cover of a Bob Dylan song, "All Along the Watchtower", which became Jimi Hendrix's highest-selling single and his only US top 40 hit, peaking at number 20; the single reached number five in the UK.

In January 1969, after an absence of more than six months, Jimi Hendrix briefly moved back into his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham's apartment in Brook Street, London, next door to the home of the composer Handel.

Jimi Hendrix announced that he had left the band and intended to pursue a solo career, blaming Hendrix's plans to expand the group without allowing for his input as a primary reason for leaving.

Manager Michael Jeffery arranged the accommodations in the hope that the respite might encourage Jimi Hendrix to write material for a new album.

Jimi Hendrix was an important draw for the event, and although he accepted substantially less money for the appearance than his usual fee, he was the festival's highest-paid performer.

Jimi Hendrix decided to move his midnight Sunday slot to Monday morning, closing the show.

Jimi Hendrix's performance included a rendition of the US national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", with copious feedback, distortion, and sustain to imitate the sounds made by rockets and bombs.

Jimi Hendrix played "Hey Joe" during the encore, concluding the 3.

Jimi Hendrix decided that they would record the LP, Band of Gypsys, during two live appearances.

Biographers have speculated that Jimi Hendrix formed the band in an effort to appease members of the Black Power movement and others in the black communities who called for him to use his fame to speak up for civil rights.

The Band of Gypsys album was the only official live Jimi Hendrix LP made commercially available during his lifetime; several tracks from the Woodstock and Monterey shows were released later that year.

That same month a single was issued with "Stepping Stone" as the A-side and "Izabella" as the B-side, but Jimi Hendrix was dissatisfied with the quality of the mastering and he demanded that it be withdrawn and re-mixed, preventing the songs from charting and resulting in Jimi Hendrix's least successful single; it was his last.

Jimi Hendrix didn't move until it was time for the show.

Jimi Hendrix had started writing songs for the album in 1968, but in April 1970 he told Keith Altham that the project had been abandoned.

Architect and acoustician John Storyk designed Electric Lady Studios for Jimi Hendrix, who requested that they avoid right angles where possible.

Jimi Hendrix first used Electric Lady on June 15,1970, when he jammed with Steve Winwood and Chris Wood of Traffic; the next day, he recorded his first track there, "Night Bird Flying".

Immediately afterwards, Jimi Hendrix left for England; he never returned to the States.

Jimi Hendrix boarded an Air India flight for London with Cox, joining Mitchell for a performance as the headlining act of the Isle of Wight Festival.

Jimi Hendrix was met with booing and jeering from fans in response to his cancellation of a show slated for the end of the previous night's bill due to torrential rain and risk of electrocution.

Jimi Hendrix's performance was uncharacteristically subdued; he quietly played backing guitar, and refrained from the histrionics that people had come to expect from him.

Jimi Hendrix entered a small club in Clarksville, Tennessee, in July 1962, drawn in by live music.

Jimi Hendrix stopped for a drink and ended up spending most of the $400 that he had saved during his time in the Army.

Jimi Hendrix would try to explain this to people, but it didn't make sense because it was not linked to reality in any way.

Roby and Schreiber assert that Jimi Hendrix first used LSD when he met Linda Keith in late 1966.

Shapiro and Glebbeek assert that Jimi Hendrix used it in June 1967 at the earliest while attending the Monterey Pop Festival.

When Jimi Hendrix drank to excess or mixed drugs with alcohol, often he became angry and violent.

In 1969, Jimi Hendrix rented a house in Benedict Canyon, California, that was burglarized.

Jimi 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.

Jimi Hendrix spent much of September 17,1970, in London with Monika Dannemann, the only witness to his final hours.

Dannemann later revealed that Jimi Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage.

Jimi 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 recordings, which came under the control of producer Ed Chalpin of PPX, with whom Jimi Hendrix had signed a recording contract in 1965, were often re-mixed between their repeated reissues, and licensed to record companies such as Decca and Capitol.

In 1993, MCA Records delayed a multimillion-dollar sale of Jimi Hendrix's publishing copyrights because Al Jimi Hendrix was unhappy about the arrangement.

Jimi Hendrix acknowledged that he had sold distribution rights to a foreign corporation in 1974, but stated that it did not include copyrights and argued that he had retained veto power of the sale of the catalogue.

Under a settlement reached in July 1995, Al Jimi Hendrix regained control of his son's song and image rights.

Jimi Hendrix subsequently licensed the recordings to MCA through the family-run company Experience Hendrix LLC, formed in 1995.

Jimi Hendrix played a variety of guitars, but was most associated with the Fender Stratocaster.

Jimi Hendrix acquired his first in 1966, when a girlfriend loaned him enough money to purchase a used Stratocaster built around 1964.

Jimi Hendrix mainly played right-handed guitars that were turned upside down and restrung for left-hand playing.

Jimi Hendrix used Fender Jazzmasters, Duosonics, two different Gibson Flying Vs, a Gibson Les Paul, three Gibson SGs, a Gretsch Corvette, and a Fender Jaguar.

At their initial meeting, Jimi Hendrix bought four speaker cabinets and three 100-watt Super Lead amplifiers; he grew accustomed to using all three in unison.

Jimi Hendrix usually turned all the control knobs to the maximum level, which became known as the Jimi Hendrix setting.

Jim Marshall said Jimi Hendrix was "the greatest ambassador" his company ever had.

Jimi Hendrix was fascinated by Zappa's application of the pedal, and he experimented with one later that evening.

Jimi Hendrix used a wah pedal during the opening to "Voodoo Child ", creating one of the best-known wah-wah riffs of the classic rock era.

Jimi Hendrix used a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face and a Vox wah pedal during recording sessions and performances, but experimented with other guitar effects.

Jimi Hendrix used the Uni-Vibe, designed to simulate the modulation effects of a rotating Leslie speaker.

Jimi Hendrix uses the effect during his performance at Woodstock and on the Band of Gypsys track "Machine Gun", which prominently features the Uni-vibe along with an Octavia and a Fuzz Face.

Cox stated that during their time serving in the US military, he and Jimi Hendrix primarily listened to southern blues artists such as Jimmy Reed and Albert King.

Howlin' Wolf inspired Jimi Hendrix, who performed Wolf's "Killing Floor" as the opening song of his US debut at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Jimi Hendrix expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before.

Jimi Hendrix's boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll.

Jimi Hendrix's achievement was to reclaim title to a musical form pioneered by black innovators like Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the 1950s.

Jimi Hendrix was instrumental in developing the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback, and helped to popularize use of the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock.

Jimi Hendrix rejected the standard barre chord fretting technique used by most guitarists in favor of fretting the low 6th string root notes with his thumb.

Jimi Hendrix applied this technique during the beginning bars of "Little Wing", which allowed him to sustain the root note of chords while playing melody.

Jimi Hendrix was the first artist to incorporate stereophonic phasing effects in rock music recordings.

Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Jimi Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began.

Musicologist David Moskowitz emphasized the importance of blues music in Jimi Hendrix's playing style, and according to authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, "[He] explored the outer reaches of psychedelic rock".

Jimi Hendrix's influence is evident in a variety of popular music formats, and he has contributed significantly to the development of hard rock, heavy metal, funk, post-punk, grunge, and hip hop music.

Jimi Hendrix's lasting influence on modern guitar players is difficult to overstate; his techniques and delivery have been abundantly imitated by others.

Jimi Hendrix has directly influenced numerous funk and funk rock artists, including Prince, George Clinton, John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic, and Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers.

Jimi Hendrix influenced post-punk guitarists such as John McGeoch of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Robert Smith of the Cure.

Jimi Hendrix received several prestigious rock music awards during his lifetime and posthumously.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

In 1998, Jimi Hendrix was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame during its first year.

Jimi Hendrix's music has received a number of Hall of Fame Grammy awards, starting with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, followed by two Grammys in 1999 for his albums Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland; Axis: Bold as Love received a Grammy in 2006.

The James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix United States Post Office in Renton Highlands near Seattle, about a mile from Hendrix's grave and memorial, was renamed for Hendrix in 2019.