Cover Story: Jimi Hendrix: The Greatest Guitarist of All Time

In 1959, Hendrix graduated to the electric guitar and joined his first group, the Rocking Kings. Except for an aborted career as an army parachutist (he was discharged in 1962, after only a year, for "medical unsuitability" — he broke his ankle during a parachute jump), Hendrix spent the next seven years on the road. He gigged with a motley succession of club bands, including the King Kasuals, which featured army buddy and future post-Experience bassist Billy Cox, and worked as an itinerant backup musician for, among others, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, the Impressions, Little Richard and the Isleys.

Hendrix, eventually made his vinyl debut on a pair of singles released in late 1963 and 1964 by a minor sax player, Lonnie Youngblood. But his first significant studio date as a sideman was with the Isley Brothers on their storming 1964 single "Testify"; his emphatic rhythm-guitar work and piercing lead flourishes show evidence of an already unique style. Hendrix actually lived with the Isleys for a couple of months in 1964 (the Isleys also bought him his first Fender guitar), and guitarist Ernie Isley, just a youngster at the time, remembers hearing that style evolve as Hendrix practiced in the house.

"He could play wonderfully without an amp," Isley told writer Harry Weinger. "He would play in the hallway of our house while we were in the dining room. With his back to us, no amplifier, the sound and the feeling emanating from him was quite something. Seeing him that way, through the eyes of a child, [what he was all about] came through clean and clear and pristine."

Up through the first half of 1966, Hendrix continued his sideman odyssey, working with Little Richard, King Curtis and Curtis Knight. A live recording made with Knight in late December 1965 at a club in Hackensack New Jersey, shows just how far Hendrix sound and stage act had evolved. Given room to roam in "Drivin' South," Hendrix coaxes serrated sustain from his instrument, twists his meaty riffing into bluesy pretzel logic and fires off spiky high notes shivering with vibrato. At one point you can also hear Knight yell, "Eat that guitar! Eat it! Eat it!" It's only a one-chord jam, and the recording is of the two-Dixie-cups-and-a-thread variety with clumsy overdubs added later when it was issued in the early Seventies as Early Jimi Hendrix. Nevertheless, "Drivin' South" is a rough but revealing glimpse of what Hendrix would later do with the blues.

In the fall of 1965, Hendrix signed a three-year recording contract with Knight's manager and producer, Ed Chalpin, for a one-dollar advance, a deal that would come back to haunt him later. But the deal that really mattered came in the summer of 1966, when bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals caught Hendrix playing with his own group Jimmy James and the Blue Flames at the Cafe Wha?, in New York's Greenwich Village. Chandler, on the lookout for management and production opportunities, was knocked out by Hendrix's fierce sound, outrageous look and gymnastic stage presence.

On September 23rd, 1966, under Chandler aegis, Hendrix flew to England to pursue stardom in earnest. A flurry of auditions in London yielded bassist Noel Redding — who had actually turned up to try out for a guitar seat in the Animals — and drummer John "Mitch" Mitchell, a former child actor who had played with Screaming Lord Sutch, the Riot Squad and Georgie Fame. The Jimi Hendrix Experience (the exotic spelling was Chandler's idea) was born.

In Redding and Mitchell, Hendrix found the perfect accomplices for this guitar attack. The fact that Redding had never played the bass before joining the Experience was, in fact, a plus; Hendrix knew just what he wanted from the instrument, and Redding proved a malleable learner. His sturdy, anchoring bass work freed Mitchell, a proficient drummer adept at both jam and rhythm & blues, to fly all over the kit. Together, they complemented the rhythmic idiosyncrasies of Hendrix's songs and playing style with their own turbulent blend of hardy soul dynamics and breathtaking acid-jazz breakaways. The sound was fluid enough for open-ended jamming yet free of excess instrumental baggage, tight and heavy in the hard-rock clutches.

In concert, Hendrix often chose to go with the flow, taking his melodies and riff ideas out on distended solo detours, leaving Mitchell to strike his own parallel rhythm path while Redding usually maintained a steady course. But on record, especially in the tightly focused three-and four-minute performances on Are You Experienced?, you can hear the form and force of the Experience in pummeling microcosm. In "Manic Depression," Mitchell generates a tidal drum wave under Hendrix's agitated riffing and Redding's echoing bass, fueling the corkscrew-waltz rhythm with convulsive Elvin Jones-style patterns. On "Hey Joe," the group's comparatively tame debut single, the song's simple folk-blues structure cracks at the end under the strain of Hendrix's choppy chording and Mitchell's impatient accenting. Hendrix later experimented with other lineups and expanded instrumentation, but he always returned to the power-trio concept epitomized by the Experience.