James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer.
Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as the greatest and one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music.”
Born in Seattle, Washington, 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 before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: “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, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US. The double LP was Hendrix’s most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world’s highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia in September 1970.
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. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: “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 the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. 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. Rolling Stone ranked the band’s three studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968), among the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth-greatest artist of all time. Hendrix was named the greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023. (wikipedia)
And here´s a little “fanzine” from the 80´s … that was a time when we didn’t have the internet and therefore had to rely on such sources to find out as much as possible about this great artist.
Now completely outdated, of course, but still a fond memory of those days when freaks (somewhere in the world, perhaps from the Netherlands) took it upon themselves to produce such brochures (54 pages).
The back of this magazine:
More from Jimi Hedrix in this blog:
The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group’s original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by their vocal harmonies, adolescent-oriented lyrics, and musical ingenuity, they are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. They drew on the music of older pop vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and black R&B to create their unique sound. Under Brian’s direction, they often incorporated classical or jazz elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. (wikipedia)
This band emerged from Hamburg and lasted only a few years. It included a mixture of local musicians and two “foreigners”. The German musicians were Reinhart Firchow (recorders, flutes, ocarina, stylophone, percussion, vocals), Lucas Lindholm (bass, bass fiddle, organ, piano), Dicky Tarrach (drums, percussion), Herb Geller (flutes, cor anglais, alto/soprano/tenor saxes, organ), the Irishman John O’Brien-Docker (guitars, organ, percussion, vocals, wind chimes) and Esther Daniels (vocals). As you can tell from the name of the band and one album title, their coming together was to make their instrumental interpretation of Aldous Huxley’s novel – A Brave New World. Being almost entirely an instrumental band (apart from some occasional voices) they created a most unique sound which combined together successfully different styles such as folk, psychedelic rock and electronics. Their use of wind instruments (woodwinds), peculiar percussion patterns, flute, saxophones and a stylopohone gives their music a special otherworldly sound. A possible sound-alike would be Annexus Quam (in the psychedelic rock approach) and Between (in the ethereal, atmospheric sound). Sadly, after they released Impressions on Reading Aldous Huxley in 1972 and then dissolved. It is commonly referred to as an essential album in any krautrock album collection. (by Assaf Vestin)
Tracklist:
The Symphonie fantastique is a symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz. It is one of the most famous Romantic works for orchestra. The official title of the piece is Episode de la Vie d’un Artiste (An Episode in the Life of an Artist), but it is always called by its subtitle Symphonie Fantastique which means Fantasy Symphony. The “Fantasy” refers to the story that is described by the music. (Fantasy Symphony is a better translation than Fantastic Symphony because fantastique is not like the modern meaning of the English word fantastic).
(And if you come back on Monday, they say this “Slowhand” guy’s pretty good.) (Kevin Walsh)
Barbara Gracey Thompson MBE (27 July 1944 – 9 July 2022) was an English jazz saxophonist, flautist and composer. She studied clarinet, flute, piano and classical composition at the Royal College of Music, but the music of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane made her shift her interests to jazz and saxophone. She was married to drummer Jon Hiseman of Colosseum from 1967 until his death in 2018.
Ellas Otha Bates (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), known professionally as Bo Diddley, was an American guitarist and singer who played a key role in the transition from the blues to rock and roll. He influenced many artists, including Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, George Thorogood, Syd Barrett, and the Clash.
Timothy Charles Buckley III (February 14, 1947 – June 29, 1975) was an American musician. He began his career based in folk rock, but subsequently experimented with genres such as psychedelia, jazz, the avant-garde, and funk paired with his unique five-octave vocal range. His commercial peak came with the 1969 album Happy Sad, reaching No. 81 on the charts, while his experimental 1970 album Starsailor went on to become a cult favorite. The latter contained his best known song, “Song to the Siren.”
ManyFantasticColors 