Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was born in a disadvantaged area of Seattle in 1942. Passionate about Blues, Jazz and Rock music, he made his first weapons at fourteen on an old guitar with only one rope. Soon his father bought him an electric guitar and Hendrix began to do it seriously. Self-taught, he learns by watching and listening to others, inspired as much by music as by the gestures of artists like Chuck Berry or T-Bone Walker.
A few years later, during his military service, he formed The Kasual with Billy Cox. The group will take the name of The King Kasuals after the end of their service. Hendrix and Cox performed various Rythm&Blues concerts until the mid-1960s, on the famous Chitlin' Circuit, a tour of clubs in the southeastern United States where African American artists played during racial segregation.
Hendrix moved on New York in 1964 and integrated a whole bunch of bands (including that of his idol, Little Richard , but also Ike and Tina Turner ...), but his game too progressive for the time bothered the musicians with whom he shot, who then fired him. Tired of these experiences, Hendrix founded his own band, The Blue Flames, in which he made a lot of friends and musicians. In 1966 Hendrix became friends with Linda Keith, Keith Richard's girlfriend, guitarist of the Rolling Stones. Linda tried to introduce Hendrix to the Stone producers, but without success. She eventually made him discover Chase Chandler (The Animals) who decided to take him to England and sign him. This is the birth of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, where the talented guitarist is surrounded by Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums.
Hendrix's success in England is almost immediate. His play and stage performances impressed the greats of the time (the Beatles, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and the Who attended several of his concerts). Nobody at the time had seen anyone playing a guitar on their backs, with their teeth or blowing up amps! His first album, Are You Experienced ? , was released in 1967 and quickly reached second place in the English charts, behind the Sgt. Pepper Beatles. If Hendrix's reputation is no longer to be proved in England and more widely in Europe, it took Paul McCartney to plunge him into the Monterey International Pop Festival to show his talent overseas. Very creative, Hendrix released a second album in 1967, Axis : Bold as Love, in the same vein as Are You Experienced ? . It was in 1968 with Electric Ladyland that Hendrix changed his register, having decided to break a little with Chandler's thinking that limited him too much. Hendrix flies to more progressive skies. But a year later The Experience split up after Redding's departure, with whom Hendrix did not get along well, especially because he recorded Electric Ladyland's bass parts.
After some troubles with justice (drugs, contract), Hendrix bounced back and formed Gipsy Suns and Rainbow , along with Billy Cox, Mitch Mitchell, guitarist Larry Lee and percutionists Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez. In 1969 the popularity of Hendrix is such that it is one of the headlines of the famous Hippie Woodstock festival alongside Joe Cocker, The Greatful Dead, the Who ... Hendrix's performance was so impressive that his name was essentially retained, and for reasons... His version of The Star Spangled Banner (Ogg - Wikipedia), the American anthem, will probably remain forever in the history of music through a performance reproducing the guitar of war sounds. This act was perceived by many as a political gesture, but Hendrix challenged this vision.
Gipsy Sun and Rainbow was an ephemeral group to which Hendrix quickly ended. He kept his long-time friend Billy Cox and recruited drummer Buddy Miles to form Band of Gipsy. But manager Michael Jeffrey fired Cox and Miles to reform The Experience. Hendrix did not keep Redding long and quickly resumed Cox. The trio took the name of The Cry of Love at the end of their 1970 English tour. On September 18, 1970, just over a month after the European tour of The Cry of Love and the opening of the studio 'Electric Ladyland Studio' in New York, Jimi Hendrix was found dead in his bed in London. If the cause of his death is known – a choking due to vomiting after a high consumption of alcohol and medicines – all sorts of assumptions are circulating as to the circumstances of his death. Some talk about suicide, others about murder, and still others about accidental death, thesis that will eventually be retained.
A genius guitarist who disappeared too quickly, Jimi Hendrix is without a doubt the most influential musician in Rock music, from Pop to Heavy Metal, a genre that is often attributed to him fatherhood through his use of distortion, and his very heavy way of playing for the time. Nearly forty years after his death Hendrix remains an icon, an essential artist in the history of music.