The Most Soulful Guitarist

Jimi Hendrix(November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970)



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Jimi Hendrix was one of rock's few true originals. He was one of the most innovative and influential rock guitarists of the late '60s and perhaps the most important electric guitarist after Charlie Christian. Jimi Hendrix's influence figures prominently in the playing style of rockers ranging from Robin Trower to Living Colour's Vernon Reid to Stevie Ray Vaughan. A left-hander who took a right-handed Fender Stratocaster and played it upside down, Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before Hendrix had experimented with feedback and distortion, but he turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began. His expressively unconventional, six-string vocabulary has lived on in the work of such guitarists as Adrian Belew, Eddie Van Halen, and Vernon Reid. But while he unleashed noise - and such classic hard-rock riffs as “Purple Haze,” “Foxy Lady,” and “Crosstown Traffic” - with uncanny mastery, Hendrix also created such tender ballads as “The Wind Cries Mary,” the oft-covered “Little Wing,” and “Angel,” and haunting blues recordings such as “Red House” and “Voodoo Chile.” Although Hendrix did not consider himself a good singer, his vocals were nearly as wide-ranging, intimate, and evocative as his guitar playing.