Jimi Hendrix

Nobody in the family had a guitar to give him. His father was in the Army when he was born and was locked in a stockade to stop him going AWOL, and he renamed the boy James Marshall in 1946. Three younger siblings were handed to foster care and adoption. A school social worker noticed the child carrying a broom around as though it were an instrument and asked the district to buy him a guitar, warning that going without might damage him. Al Hendrix refused. So the first instrument was a one-string ukulele found in 1957 in a pile of garbage he was helping his father haul. His mother died the next February at 33. Al gave the boys whiskey and would not let them attend the funeral.

Two arrests in stolen cars put him in front of a judge who offered the Army instead, and the 101st Airborne gave him a bass player, Billy Cox, before a sergeant wrote in May 1962 that Private Hendrix would never come up to the standards required of a soldier. He went out and worked the circuit behind the Isley Brothers and Little Richard, then fronted a band at Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village, where Chas Chandler found him and flew him to London in September 1966. Everything then happened inside three years. Hey Joe reached number six. He burned a guitar at the Astoria in March 1967 and again at Monterey that June. Three albums appeared in 18 months, the third of them, Electric Ladyland, going to number one.

The pace was not survivable and the record is not flattering. He was arrested at Toronto airport on May 3, 1969 with heroin and hashish in his luggage, and the trial hung over him for seven months before a jury acquitted him. Drunk and high in the same period he threw punches and stones at a friend he wrongly accused of theft, and he cut his girlfriend Carmen Borrero above the eye with a vodka bottle, badly enough for stitches. At Madison Square Garden in January 1970 he played a few songs, insulted the audience, sat down on the drum riser and walked off. In Aarhus that September he quit after three numbers, saying he had been dead a long time.

He took nine of a girlfriend's Vesparax tablets. The recommended dose was half of one. The ambulance crew reached the Notting Hill flat at 11:27 on the morning of September 18, 1970, found him alone and choked with vomit, and St Mary Abbots pronounced him dead at 12:45. The autopsy gave inhalation of vomit under barbiturate intoxication, and the coroner returned an open verdict because the circumstances could not be established. They still cannot. Monika Dannemann's account changed repeatedly, the London Ambulance Service contradicted it in writing, and Scotland Yard reviewed the case in the early 1990s without reopening it. He was buried at Greenwood in Renton. His father won back control of the songs in 1995.

Jimi Hendrix's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Are You Experienced album
  Kept off the top of the UK chart by Sgt. Pepper 1967
• Axis: Bold as Love album
  Recorded and released within seven months of the first album 1967
• Electric Ladyland album
  His only number one, and it carried All Along the Watchtower 1968
• The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock song
  Played at eight in the morning to a field that had mostly gone home 1969
• Band of Gypsys album
  Recorded across two nights at the Fillmore East with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles 1970
• Electric Lady Studios building
  Built in a Greenwich Village club, with round windows and as few right angles as possible 1970

• February 2, 1958 aged 15 His mother Lucille dies at 33 Al Hendrix refused to let the boys go to the funeral and gave them whiskey instead.
• May 31, 1961 aged 18 Enlists in the Army rather than face prison for riding in stolen cars
• June 29, 1962 aged 19 Discharged from the 101st Airborne His sergeant had written that he would never come up to the standards required of a soldier.
• September 24, 1966 aged 23 Chas Chandler brings him from Greenwich Village to London Chandler also changed the spelling of his name.
• June 18, 1967 aged 24 Burns his guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival
• May 3, 1969 aged 26 Arrested at Toronto airport with heroin and hashish in his bag He was acquitted in December after testifying that a fan had given him the vial.
• August 18, 1969 aged 26 Closes Woodstock on Monday morning with The Star-Spangled Banner The crowd was down from an estimated 400,000 to about 30,000.
• August 26, 1970 aged 27 Throws the opening party for Electric Lady Studios and leaves for England He never returned to the United States.
• September 18, 1970 aged 27 Dies in a Notting Hill flat at 27 The inquest recorded an open verdict for want of evidence about the circumstances.

• Little Richard 1932–2020
  Singer and pianist whose explosive performances and recordings helped establish the sound and visual style of rock and roll. employed and fired him
• Bob Dylan b. 1941
  Songwriter whose poetic lyrics transformed folk, rock, and the role of popular music in public life. wrote All Along the Watchtower
• Miles Davis 1926–1991
  Trumpeter and bandleader who repeatedly redirected jazz through bebop, cool jazz, modal music, and fusion. attended his funeral
• Muddy Waters 1913–1983
  Chicago bluesman who electrified Delta blues and supplied a foundation for rock music. the blues he built on
• Prince 1958–2016
  Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose innovation and fight for artistic control influenced generations. heir on the instrument