Born Nov. 27, 1942, Seattle, Wash., U.S. died Sept. 18, 1970, London,
England.
Jimi Hendrix fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock. Though his active career as a featured artist lasted a mere four years, Hendrix altered the course of popular music and became one of the most successful and influential musicians of his era. An instrumentalist who radically redefined the expressive potential and sonic palette of the electric guitar.
A former paratrooper whose honourable medical discharge exempted him from service in the Vietnam War, Hendrix spent the early 1960s working as a freelance accompanist for a variety of musicians. Performing alongside two British musicians, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, he stunned London's club land with his instrumental virtuosity and extroverted showmanship. By November '66 his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, had their first Top Ten single, Hey Joe. Two more hits, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary, followed before their first album, Are You Experienced?, was released in the summer of 1967, when it was second in impact only to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Its immediate successor, Axis: Bold as Love, followed that December.
Relocating back to the United States in 1968, he enjoyed further acclaim with the sprawling, panoramic double album Electric Ladyland, but the second half of his career proved frustrating. Legal complications from an old contract predating his British sojourn froze his recording royalties, necessitating constant touring to pay his bills; and his audiences were reluctant to allow him to progress beyond the musical blueprint of his earliest successes. He was on the verge of solving both these problems when he died of an overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind a massive stockpile of works-in-progress that were eventually edited and completed by others.
Sample:
Improvisation after Purple Haze picking up and going home Live'68, Woodstock.
Jimi Hendrix