Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a part of his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience; the institution describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music".

Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, then Nashville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires.

Hendrix moved to England in late 1966, after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. Within months, he formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience (with its rhythm section consisting of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell) and achieved three UK top-ten hits: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. His third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland (1968), became his most successful release and his only number-one album on the US Billboard 200 chart. The world's highest-paid rock musician, Hendrix headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. He died in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia in September 1970, at the age of 27.

Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also 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. He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Rolling Stone wrote: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."

Hendrix was of African-American and Cherokee descent. His paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, was born in 1866 from an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny and a wealthy grain merchant. Hendrix's paternal grandmother, Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, was a dancer and vaudeville performer who co-founded Fountain Chapel in Hogan's Alley. Hendrix and Moore relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where they had a son they named James Allen Hendrix on June 10, 1919; the family called him "Al".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.