Jimi Hendrix Pictures, Biography, Profile, Facts, Discography, Filmography, more.

Jimmy Hendrix, like Paul McCartney, was a left-handed guitar player... Hendrix's fuzz-guitar version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock has become a famous sound clip... He died two short weeks before another rock icon, Janis Joplin. A museum and interactive shrine to Hendrix, called the Experience Music Project, was built in Seattle by computer magnate Paul Allen.

Name: Jimmy Hendrix

Real Name / Birth Name: Johnny Allen Hendrix

Born: 27 November 1942

Birthplace: Seattle, Washington, USA

Died: 18 September 1970 (drug overdose)

Profession: Rock Musician / Guitarist

Genres: Rock / Pop

Hendrix could and would play behind his back and with his teeth and set his guitar on fire, has sometimes obscured his considerable gifts as a songwriter, singer, and master of a gamut of blues, R&B, and rock styles. Hendrix grabbed electric guitar by the neck and wrestled it into a new era. His feedback-heavy solos and hallucinogenic tunes helped define the psychedelic '60s. Hendrix was one of the featured performers at the Woodstock music festival. He's also one of a series of rock stars who famously died young; he was 27 when he suffocated after ingesting wine and sleeping pills in 1970.

Jimmy Hendrix recorded a massive amount of unreleased studio material during his lifetime. Much of this was issued posthumously, several of the live concerts were excellent, but the studio tapes have been the focus of enormous controversy for over 20 years. These initially came out in haphazard drabs and drubs (the first, The Cry of Love, was easily the most outstanding of the lot). In the mid-'70s, producer Alan Douglas took control of these projects, posthumously overdubbing many of Hendrix's tapes with additional parts by studio musicians. In the eyes of many Hendrix fans, this was sacrilege, destroying the integrity of the work of a musician known to exercise meticulous care over the final production of his studio recordings. Even as late as 1995, Douglas was having ex-Knack drummer Bruce Gary record new parts for the typically misbegotten compilation Voodoo Soup. After a lengthy legal dispute, the rights to Hendrix's estate, including all of his recordings, returned to Al Hendrix, the guitarist's father, in July of 1995.

With the help of Jimi's step-sister Janie, Al set up Experience Hendrix to begin to get Jimi's legacy in order. They began by hiring John McDermott and Jimi's original engineer, Eddie Kramer to oversee the remastering process. They were able to find all the original master tapes, which had never been used for previous CD releases, and in April of 1997, Hendrix's first three albums were reissued with drastically improved sound. Accompanying those reissues was a posthumous compilation album (based on Jimi's handwritten track listings) called First Rays of the New Rising Sun, made up of tracks from the Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge and War Heroes. in 1997, another compilation called South Saturn Delta showed up, collecting more tracks from posthumous LPs like Crash Landing, War Heroes, and Rainbow Bridge (without the terrible '70s overdubs), along with a handful of never-before-heard material that Chas Chandler had withheld from Alan Douglas for all those years. Radio One was basically expanded to the two-disc BBC Sessions (released in 1998), and 1999 saw the release of the full show from Woodstock as well as additional concert recordings from the Band of Gypsies shows entitled Live at the Fillmore East. 2000 saw the release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience four-disc box set, which compiled remaining tracks from In the West, Crash Landing and Rainbow Bridge along with more rarities and alternates from the Chandler cache.

Hendrix's style was unique. Although he synthesized many styles in creating his musical voice, being a visionary, there was something in his playing truly his own. He owned and used a variety of guitars during his career, including a Gibson Flying V that he decorated with psychedelic designs. His guitar of choice, and the instrument that became most associated with him, is the Fender Stratocaster, or "Strat". He bought his first Strat about 1965 and used them almost exclusively thereafter.

Jimi Hendrix was also a catalyst in the development of modern guitar amplification and guitar effects. His high-energy stage act and the blistering volume at which he played required robust and powerful amplifiers. For the first few months of his touring career he used Vox and Fender amplifiers, but he soon found that they could not stand up to the rigours of an Experience show. But he soon discovered a new range of high-powered guitar amps being made by London audio engineer Jim Marshall and they proved perfect for his needs. Along with the Strat, the Marshall stack and Marshall amplifiers were crucial in shaping his heavily overdriven sound, enabling him to master the creative use of feedback as a musical effect, and his exclusive use of this brand soon made it the most popular amplifier in rock.

Hendrix's sound is a unique blend of high volume and high power, precise control of feedback and a range of cutting-edge guitar effects, especially the UniVibe-Octavia combination, which can be heard to full effect on the Band of Gypsys' live version of Machine Gun. He was also known for his trick playing, which included using his teeth or playing behind his back, although he soon tired of audience demands to perform these tricks.

Hendrix became legendary as one of the great 1960s rock'n'roll musicians who, like Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Brian Jones. In 2004, Janie Hendrix was sued by her half-brother, Leon Hendrix, Jimi's younger brother, who was written out of his father's will in 1997. He was seeking to have his inheritance restored and Janie removed from her position of control over the Hendrix estate.