Jimi Hendrix: from a five-dollar guitar in Seattle to Electric Lady | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

JIMI HENDRIX made three studio albums with the Experience. The first two came out in Britain in the same year, 1967, and the third, Electric Ladyland, went to number 1 in America. He was 27 when he died, in September 1970.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame credits him with changing how electric guitar was played, and with studio tricks like panning, backmasking and phasing. It also keeps a list of the players he influenced. Three of them hang in this painting: Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Who’s Who number 4 and Prince, Who’s Who number 18.

People are still playing the records. On Spotify, All Along the Watchtower had passed 885 million plays by October 2026, more than twice any other song of his. Purple Haze was next, on about 427 million. When Rolling Stone ranked the 100 greatest guitar songs in 2008, Purple Haze came second, behind only Chuck Berry’s, Who’s Who number 36 Johnny B. Goode. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was number 12 and Machine Gun number 49.

And it was all done in about four years. Before that, he was the bloke at the side of the stage, playing behind someone else.

Early life and training

He was born Johnny Allen Hendrix at King County Hospital in Seattle on 27 November 1942, at 10:15 in the morning. His parents were Al Hendrix and Lucille Jeter. Al renamed him James Marshall Hendrix, and as a boy he went by Jimmy.

By the summer of 1958 Al had bought him a second-hand acoustic guitar. It cost five dollars. His first band was the Rocking Teens, who soon became the Rocking Kings.

He left Garfield High School without finishing. He later said he was expelled, but the school’s records show he dropped out.

In 1961 he joined the US Army and served with the 101st Airborne. While he was in, he formed a band with a bassist named Billy Cox, the King Casuals (the name is also spelled Kasuals). He was discharged in 1962 after he was hurt in a parachute jump. Cox would be back on bass with him in 1969, at Woodstock and then in Band of Gypsys.

Career chapters

1. 1961Joins the US Army, 101st Airborne
2. 1964Joins the Isley Brothers’ band in New York
3. 1966Moves to London; the Jimi Hendrix Experience formed in October
4. 1967Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary all reach the UK top 10
5. 1967Monterey International Pop Festival
6. 1968Electric Ladyland, his only US number 1 album
7. 1969Woodstock
8. 1970Band of Gypsys; dies in London, 18 September; Voodoo Chile goes to UK number 1
9. 1992Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The sideman years 1964 to 1966

Early in 1964 he joined the Isley Brothers’ band in New York. By the end of 1965 he had also played behind Ike and Tina Turner, Who’s Who number 1 in · The Ultimate Reunion (story coming soon), Sam Cooke and Little Richard. In October 1965 he started playing and recording with Curtis Knight and the Squires, and he kept turning up on their sessions into the first half of 1966.

After he left Little Richard, he put his own band together and called it Jimmy James and the Blue Flames.

That’s where Chas Chandler of the Animals found him. Chandler saw him play at Café Wha? one July, and in September 1966 he came back to sign him and take him to London. When Hendrix landed, on 23 September, he was billed as Jimi.

London and three hit singles 1966 to 1967

The Jimi Hendrix Experience came together in October 1966, with Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. Their first single, Hey Joe, entered the UK chart on 4 January 1967, peaked at number 6 that February and stayed on the chart for 11 weeks.

On 3 February 1967 the band recorded Purple Haze at Olympic Studios in London. When the tapes were sent to America, a note went with them saying the distortion at the end was meant to be there, not a fault. It entered the chart on 29 March, reached number 3 in May and spent 14 weeks on the chart. The Wind Cries Mary followed it in, on 17 May, and peaked at number 6 that June. That’s three top 10 singles in his first six months on the UK chart.

On Sunday 4 June 1967 the Experience topped the bill at the Saville Theatre in London, which Brian Epstein, Who’s Who number 1 in · Ultimate Beatles Reunion (story coming soon) rented on Sunday nights. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had officially come out on the Thursday. Hendrix opened with its title song, with Paul McCartney, Who’s Who number 4 in · Ultimate Beatles Reunion (story coming soon) and George Harrison, Who’s Who number 44 (story coming soon) in the audience. McCartney, Who’s Who number 4 in · Ultimate Beatles Reunion (story coming soon) later told Barry Miles, for the 1997 book Many Years From Now, that it was “the ultimate compliment”, and “one of the great honours of my career”.

Monterey 1967

Then came Monterey, in June 1967. The Who were on the same bill, and the two acts had to settle the running order. Pete Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 says Hendrix suggested they toss a coin for it, and the Who won. “It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me,” Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 said. Hendrix’s official site credits his Wild Thing that night with setting the crowd alight.

It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me.

Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love both came out in Britain in 1967.

Electric Ladyland and Brook Street 1968 to 1969

Electric Ladyland followed in 1968 and became his only number 1 album on the Billboard 200. In Britain it reached number 6, and his version of All Along the Watchtower went to number 5 there in December 1968.

Watchtower was a Bob Dylan song, from Dylan’s album John Wesley Harding. The engineer, Eddie Kramer, told Sound On Sound it took about 27 takes to get the backing track going at Olympic early in 1968. Dave Mason of Traffic played a 12-string acoustic, and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones sat in on piano for a couple of takes. When Noel Redding left the session, Hendrix played the bass himself. The vocals and percussion were added later in New York. The single spent 11 weeks on the UK chart.

In June 1968 he moved into a flat at 23 Brook Street in Mayfair, taking the top two floors with his girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham. He lived there until March 1969.

He also went home to play Seattle: the Seattle Center Arena in February 1968, then the Seattle Center Coliseum that September and again in May 1969. His last Seattle show was at Sicks’ Stadium on 26 July 1970.

The Experience broke up in 1969.

Woodstock and Band of Gypsys 1969 to 1970

In August 1969 he played the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, and his version of The Star Spangled Banner from that set earned him his one Grammy nomination, in 1971. He didn’t win. His old army bandmate Billy Cox was on bass.

Cox stayed on. With him on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, Hendrix played four New Year shows as Band of Gypsys at the Fillmore East in New York across 31 December 1969 and 1 January 1970, and the live album Band of Gypsys came out in 1970.

He also built his own studio, Electric Lady Studios, in New York City.

Craft, sound and style

The blues underneath

The Hall of Fame’s list of his influences reads like a record collection: Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Curtis Mayfield, Bob Dylan, Elmore James, Eddie Cochran, B.B. King, Who’s Who number 2 and Chuck Berry, Who’s Who number 36. You can hear the blues and the rock and roll in everything he played.

He said Purple Haze came from a dream about walking under the sea, and that his first draft had far more words in it than the version we know.

Roger Mayer and the Octavia

In January 1967 he met Roger Mayer, who had already built fuzz boxes and treble boosters for Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32, Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15, Ritchie Blackmore, Who’s Who number 14 and the session player Big Jim Sullivan. Mayer’s pedal for Hendrix was the Octavia. It adds a distorted tone an octave above the note you play. You can hear it on Purple Haze.

By Mayer’s own account, the Octavia on Are You Experienced ran on germanium transistors and a ferrite transformer, and needed a second custom box in front of it to drive it. Guitar Player says you can hear it on Purple Haze and Fire, and later on Little Wing and Machine Gun. In 2021 Mayer made 100 numbered, hand-signed Purple Haze Octavias.

The Fuzz Face and the Marshall stack

In a 2026 study of his sound, IEEE Spectrum, the engineering magazine, describes the Purple Haze sound as built on a Fuzz Face, the Octavia and a 100-watt Marshall stack. The Fuzz Face is a simple two-transistor circuit that reacts directly to the guitar’s pickups. Turn the guitar’s volume knob down and the fuzz cleans up, so he could go from clean to dirty without touching a pedal.

Wah-wah and the Uni-Vibe

For the wah-wah, the same study points to Voodoo Child (Slight Return). The pedal sweeps a narrow band of tone up and down, roughly between 300 and 2,000 hertz. That’s the talking sound on the record.

Later he added a Uni-Vibe, a phase-shifting unit that makes the tone swirl. He used it on many tracks.

Feedback

He treated feedback as part of the instrument. With the Marshall pushed close to its limit, the guitar, the amp and the room formed a loop, and moving a few centimetres was enough to change the pitch of the note.

In the studio with Eddie Kramer

Kramer, his engineer, says Hendrix often sang along with his own solos, in unison with the guitar. Kramer called it an old jazz trick. At Olympic, the desk was a Helios and the tape machine had four tracks. Kramer miked Hendrix’s amp with Neumann U67s, and caught the guitar with a U67, a Beyer M160, or both.

In the studio he went further than most. The Hall credits him with panning, backmasking and phasing, sounds that moved between the speakers and ran backwards. Sound On Sound adds the flanging, chorusing, looping and backwards tapes Kramer used to get the sounds Hendrix heard in his head. Electric Ladyland is the album to hear them on.

Stories people still tell

1. The coin toss.

   At Monterey in 1967, Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 says it was Hendrix who suggested a coin toss to settle the running order. The Who won it.

2. Expelled, or not.

   Hendrix used to say Garfield High expelled him. The school’s records say he dropped out.

3. Handel next door.

   The Brook Street flat is now part of the Handel House Museum, and it opened to the public on 10 February 2016. English Heritage put up a blue plaque there in 1997.

4. The name.

   He was Jimmy as a boy and Jimmy James on the New York circuit. He was billed as Jimi from the day he landed in London.

Legacy

The Jimi Hendrix Experience went into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Neil Young, Who’s Who number 24 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) inducted them. In the Hall’s essay, Young, Who’s Who number 24 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) put it simply: on guitar “you can play”, or “you can transcend”. Grammy.com says Hendrix received a Lifetime Achievement Award the same year, and six of his recordings are in the Grammy Hall of Fame, including All Along the Watchtower and Purple Haze.

The records kept coming. First Rays of the New Rising Sun came out in 1997. In October 2024 the estate released Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, a documentary and box set with 38 unreleased tracks from 1970. Magic Boy, a 1970 show recorded at Berkeley, was set for release on 16 October 2026.

Seattle hasn’t forgotten him. The Experience Music Project opened there in June 2000, founded in his honour, and in March 2026 the new Judkins Park light-rail station opened with two Hendrix murals.

The players haven’t either. Zakk Wylde, Who’s Who number 27 was back on the Experience Hendrix Tour in 2025. Robert Smith of the Cure has said Hendrix was the first person who made him think being both a singer and a guitarist could be good.

On 10 June 2026, New York co-named West 8th Street in Greenwich Village as Jimi Hendrix Way. It runs past Electric Lady Studios, the place he built.