The Essential Jimi Hendrix E-Book

Rotimi Ogunjobi

• Herausgeber: xceedia publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 123

Beschreibung

"The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar."- Jimi Hendrix James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was a cultural icon and arguably the greatest and most influential electric guitarist in rock music history. Mostly self-taught on the instrument, the left-handed Hendrix played a right-handed guitar turned upside down and re-strung to suit him. Hendrix extended the tradition of rock guitar, exploiting them to a previously undreamed-of extent. As a record producer, Hendrix was also an innovator in using the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas. In 2003, more than 30 years after his death at 27, Rolling Stone magazine named Hendrix number one on their list of the "100 greatest guitarists of all time". This book presents Hendrix, the man, the musician, the philosopher. It presents his music, his shows, his song lyric, his life.

Leseprobe

THE ESSENTIAL

JIMI HENDRIX

Name : James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix

Born :November 27, 1942; Seattle, Washington, USA

Died : September 18, 1970; London, England, UK

Compiled and Edited by

Rotimi Ogunjobi

copyright©2013 Rotimi Ogunjobi.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Family and Childhood

Early Music Career

Discovery

Death And Legacy

Posthumous Fame

Music Gear

Discography

Biographies

Other books

Lyrics

Selected Albums

Woodstock - An Epilogue

Quotes

Of Self :

"Music is my religion."

"Music is a safe type of high. It's more the way it was supposed to be. That's where highness came, I guess, from anyway. It's nothing but rhythm and motion."

"The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar."

"We call it 'Electric Church Music' because to us music is a religion"

"Technically, I am not a guitar player, All I play is truth and emotion"

Of Love:

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power... the world will know peace"

"The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye, until we meet again."

Of Life:

"When I die, just keep playing the records."

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to"

"It's funny how most people love the dead. Once you're dead you're made for life."

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."

"When you die you're just getting rid of that old body"

"You can leave if you want, we're just jammin' that's all"

Introduction

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American musician, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and cultural icon. Widely lauded by music fans and critics alike, Hendrix is arguably the greatest and most influential electric guitarist in rock music history.

Mostly self-taught on the instrument, the left-handed Hendrix played a right-handed guitar turned upside down and re-strung to suit him. As a guitarist, he built upon the innovations of blues stylists such as B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker, and Muddy Waters, as well as those of rhythm and blues and soul guitarists like Curtis Mayfield. Hendrix's music was also influenced by jazz; he often cited Rahsaan Roland Kirk as his favorite musician. Most importantly, Hendrix extended the tradition of rock guitar: although previous guitarists, such as The Kinks' Dave Davies, Jeff Beck, and The Who's Pete Townshend, had employed techniques such as feedback, distortion and other effects as sonic tools, Hendrix was able to exploit them to a previously undreamed-of extent, and made them an integral part of his compositions.

As a record producer, Hendrix was an innovator in using the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas. Hendrix was notably one of the first to experiment with stereo and phasing effects during the recording process. Hendrix was also an accomplished songwriter whose compositions have been performed by countless artists.

Chapter 1

Family and Childhood

Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle, Washington, the son of Al Hendrix and Lucille Jeter Hendrix. As a toddler and young boy he was known as Buster, a family nickname. At age three, his father, after returning from military service in World War II, legally renamed him James Marshall Hendrix. As a school age boy and young adult, he was simply known as Jimmy or James. In his early career, Hendrix often used the stage name Jimmy James. He did not adopt the monikerJimiuntil after his discovery in late 1966, although most writings refer to him as Jimi throughout the timeline of his life for purposes of consistency.

Jimi Hendrix was of mixed African American, European, and Cherokee Native American descent.

Both of Jimi's paternal grandparents were vaudeville performers from the midwest who settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Al Hendrix was born. Jimi was close to his paternal grandmother Nora Rose Moore, the daughter of a Cherokee father and a mulatto mother, who instilled in him a strong sense of pride about his Native American ancestry, which would later become a recurring theme in his music. Jimi's paternal grandfather was the mulatto son of a former slave and the white merchant who once owned her. Al Hendrix (June 10, 1919–April 17, 2002) was the youngest of their four children.

Jimi's maternal grandfather, Preston Jeter, was also the mulatto son of a former slave and slave owner. He left Richmond, Virginia at the turn of the century after witnessing a lynching, and settled in the Seattle area. In 1915, he married Clarice Lawson, a woman half his age who was of mixed Cherokee and slave descent. Lucille Jeter was the youngest of their eight children.

Lucille met Al through a mutual friend and they began dating. The same week that Lucille realized she was pregnant with Jimi, Al received his draft notice and shipped off to the U.S. Army three days after they were married. It would be three years before Al would see his son for the first time. Lucille endured both personal and financial hardships while her husband was away: her father Preston passed away months after Jimi was born; nearly two years passed before any of Al's military pay reached her; and a fire destroyed the Jeters' uninsured home. When Al returned from his military service, Jimi was living with a church friend of the Jeter family in Berkeley, California. His caregiver offered to keep the boy, but after some internal debate, Al brought his son back to Seattle. He changed Jimi's name from Johnny Allen to James Marshall because he felt the name Johnny referred to John Page, a man whom Lucille became involved with during Al's military service. Still, Al decided to stay married to Lucille.

Over the next few years, four more children were born into the Hendrix family: Leon in January 1948; Joseph, born with serious birth defects; Kathy, born sixteen weeks premature and blind; and Pamela, also born with health problems. All four of Jimi's siblings were eventually moved into foster homes. Lucille and Al gave up their parental rights to Kathy, Pamela, and then Joseph. Jimi and Leon would sometimes spend time with Pamela in their neighborhood or run into Joe on the streets of the Central District. In December 1951, Lucille left Al and they divorced, with Al retaining custody of the two boys. Three years later, social workers placed Leon into a foster home due to parental neglect. Young Jimi remained with Al only because he was already a teenager and required less care. Fortunately, Leon was placed only a few blocks away in a large home that young Jimi frequently visited, so the two brothers continued to grow up together.

In late 1957, Lucille's excessive drinking and partying began to take its toll on her health. She was hospitalized twice for cirrosis of the liver. In January 1958, she married retired longshoreman William Mitchell after a very brief courtship - he was 30 years older than she. Weeks later she was hospitalized again, this time with hepatitis. Jimi and Leon visited her at the hospital and were shocked at her sickly appearance. This would be the last time they would see their mother. On February 1, 1958, Lucille was found unconscious in the back alley of a bar on Yesler Street. She went nearly untreated at the hospital while staff attended to other patients and died of a ruptured spleen, more commonly associated with physical trauma than with liver problems. Her death was never investigated.

In late 1966, Al Hendrix married Ayako June Fujita and adopted her daughter from a previous marriage, Janie, who assumed the name Janie Hendrix.

Jimi grew up shy, sensitive, and full of confusion. Like his contemporaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Hendrix was deeply affected by family events: his parents' divorce when he was nine; and the death of his mother in 1958. Hendrix was fond of listening to Elvis Presley (a color drawing, showing a young Elvis armed with a guitar, and made by the then impressionable 15-year-old Hendrix, two months after attending Presley's concert at Seattle's Sick's Stadium on September 1, 1957, can be seen at that city's Rock museum).

At about age fourteen, Jimi acquired his very first guitar, a severely battered acoustic with one string that he retrieved when another boy had thrown it away. That same year his only failing grade in school was an F in music class. His first electric guitar was a white Supro Ozark that his father, Al Hendrix, had purchased for him. He learned simply by practicing and watching others play, and he idolized the flashy moves of T-Bone Walker and the duck walk of Chuck Berry.

His first gig was with an unnamed band in the basement of a synagogue. After too much wild playing and showing off, he was fired in between sets. The first formal band he played with was the Velvetones, who played regularly at the the Yesler Terrace Neighborhood House without pay. His flashy style and left-handed playing of a right-handed guitar was already a standout. At some point, his guitar was stolen when he left it backstage overnight. Al then bought him a white Silvertone Danelectro which he painted red and emblazoned with the words Betty Jean, the name of his high school girlfriend.

Hendrix graduated junior high school with little trouble but failed to graduate from Garfield High School; he would later be awarded an honorary diploma. When his fame began in the late 1960's, Hendrix would punch up his own past by telling reporters that he was expelled by racist faculty for holding hands with a white girlfriend in study hall, but Principal Frank Hanawalt insisted that it was simply due to poor grades and attendance problems.

After getting into trouble with the law via a stolen car, Hendrix traded a two-year jail sentence for enlistment in the U.S. Army, enlisting on May 31, 1961. After boot camp in Fort Ord, California, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky as a trainee paratrooper. Other paratrooper divisions would later mistakenly claim that he was part of their unit.

His letters home indicate that initially at least, he was adjusting to Army life and was very excited to be a part of the 101st Airborne, a well respected outfit after their heroic actions in World War II. His military records, however, show that Hendrix was considered an incompetent soldier, repeatedly caught sleeping while on duty and missing at midnight bed-check. Superiors noted that he needed constant supervision even for basic tasks, and lacked motivation. He was described by one supervisor as having "no known good characteristics", and by another that "his mind apparently cannot function while performing duties and thinking about his guitar".

At the post recreation center, he met fellow soldier and bass player Billy Cox, and forged a loyal friendship that would serve Hendrix well during the last year of his life. The two would play with other musicians at venues both on and off the post.

On May 31, 1962, after exactly one year of service, Hendrix was recommended for discharge for "behavior problems", "little regard for regulations", and for being "apprehended masturbating in platoon area while supposed to be on detail"[.Hendrix would later tell reporters that he received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump. The 2005 biography Room Full of Mirrors by Charles Cross claims that Hendrix faked being gay—claiming to have fallen in love with a fellow soldier—and was therefore discharged. According to Cross, Hendrix was an avid anti-communist and did not leave the Army as a protest to the Vietnam War, but simply wanted out so he could focus on playing guitar.

As a celebrity, Hendrix spoke nonchalantly of his military service, but once said that the sound of air whistling through the parachute shrouds was one of the sources of his "spacy" guitar sound. Although discharged from the Army three years before Vietnam saw large numbers of U.S. soldiers arrive, his recordings would become favorites of soldiers fighting there, most notably "All Along the Watchtower", a Bob Dylan cover.

Chapter 2

Early Music Career

After leaving Ft. Campbell, Hendrix and his friend and band mate Billy Cox moved to nearby Nashville. There they played, and sometimes lived, in the clubs along Jefferson Street, the traditional heart of Nashville's black community, and home to a lively rhythm and blues scene.

During the early 1960s, Hendrix made a precarious living on the Chitlin Circuit. The "Chitlin' Circuit" was the general name given to the string of venues throughout the eastern and southern United States that catered primarily to African American audiences. The starting place of entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, The Supremes, Ike & Tina Turner, Patti LaBelle, Jimi Hendrix, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Isley Brothers, and The Jackson 5, the "Chitlin' Circuit" (deriving its name from the soul food item chitterlings: fried pig intestines) was the main way of seeing many popular black acts before the days of integration. Jimi performed in backing bands for touring soul and blues musicians, including Curtis Knight, B. B. King, and Little Richard. His first notice came from appearances with The Isley Brothers, notably on the two-parter "Testify" in 1964.

On October 15, 1965, Hendrix signed a 3-year recording contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin, receiving $1 and 1% royalty on records with Curtis Knight. The relationship with Chalpin was short-lived, and Hendrix moved on to other opportunities. However, from a legal point of view, his contract remained in force, which caused considerable problems for Hendrix later on in his career. The result was a legal dispute which was eventually settled

 Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village is generally known as an important landmark on the map of bohemian culture. The neighborhood is known for its colorful, artistic residents and the alternative culture they propagate. Due in part to the progressive attitudes of many of its residents, the Village have been traditionally known to be focal points of new movements and ideas, whether political, artistic, or cultural. This tradition as an enclave of avant-garde and alternative culture was established by the beginning of the 20th Century when small presses, art galleries, and experimental theater thrived.