The Life and Influence of Jimi Hendrix - Research Paper Example

The Life and Influences of Jimi Hendrix Jimi Hendrix is a legend in both rock music and the world. He is known as one of the most influential musicians of all time according to the research for this paper. When people refer to him even today, he is seen as "an experience" rather than just a musician. Jimi Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942 and he came onto the music scene rapidly. His major work started in 1967 in America (Gelfand, 1). He went to Europe for awhile after his career took off and people enjoyed his music all over the world. His real name was Johnny Allen Hendrix and he was born to a 17 year old mother who was a high school dropout and his father was an unskilled laborer and several years older than his mother (Gelfand, 10). Jimi's grandmother was a star on vaudeville and spent much of her life on the road until the days of vaudeville were over. His father had a love of music that he got from his mother and after his father died, he was able to win occasion dance contests to help when the family needed money. His father eventually moved to Seattle, the parents got divorced and Jimi and his brother lived with his father. While his father was a young man he went into the Army and did not see Jimi until after the war; the Army would not give him time off to go to see his child (Gelfand, 13). Jimi's family was always traveling and many researchers said that they think he got the traveling bug from his family. His mother and father had challenges because of their age differences and they fought up until their divorce. Because of their fighting Jimi was able to spend time with his grandmother who, besides being a dancer, was also part Cherokee Indian. She would tell Jimi about his heritage and he was proud of the fact that he also was part Cherokee (Willett, 15). Jimi had a difficult family life after his parents finally were divorced. He stayed with his father but his father had difficulty keeping a job and staying in his home. This meant that Jimi would have to move from school to school as they were evicted from one place and had to find a different home every few months. While they were staying with some relatives, Jimi met a young man who was a paraplegic but who had a guitar with one string; Jimi bought the guitar for a small price and learned to play the one string before he had his own guitar. His first exposure to music was rhythm and blues from his father's music collection and Elvis Presley. Hendrix was primarily a self-taught musician. He was also left-handed which created a problem with his father because he wanted him to play right handed for superstitious reasons. Hendrix was also an introvert and he was very shy. At one point in his life his mother died and this sent him into more seclusion and a more focused concentration on his music. Hendrix had many challenges in school and eventually dropped out. He wanted to focus more on his music than on his school work and all he wanted to do was play music (Willett, 23). In 1956, he received his first real guitar from his father; it was an electric guitar without an amplifier. From that point on, Hendrix played music with any musician he could find to play with and listened very carefully to the music. The first time he played professional was with an amateur band of older boys. They were auditioning him to see if he could be a part of the group. The challenge was that Hendrix wanted to be a star even then and he played out. When the people applauded him, his playing became more "wild" which lost him the change to play permanently with this group. Hendrix first played with a group called "The Velvetones" where he played backup and he learned to play a mixture of blues, rhythm and blues, jazz and R&B; they also did a lot of dancing on the stage (Willett, 26). Later he played with a group called "The Rocking Kings." After they broke up Jimi next played with a group called "The Tomcats". After a short time working for his father in a landscaping business, Jimi went into the Army to escape his father and to get out of some legal problems. He gave his guitar to a friend and told them to send it when he wrote for them to send it. He enlisted in the Army for three years and as he went through, within the first few months he had his guitar sent to him. Eventually he would become a supply clerk for the 101st Airborne Division in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky where he met Billy Cox who would be very influential to his career. Hendrix would eventually find his way out of the service, back to Seattle and then to Harlem. There he landed a job with the Isley Brothers as a backup guitar player (Cross, 111). By the time Hendrix was 24 years old he was making a name for himself. Much of what he learned about music he learned by going across the country playing in "the Chitlin' Circuit," a "network of black clubs and theatres in big cities and tiny country towns" (Lawrence, 29). He was playing backup to many now famous black musicians like Wilson Picket, Sam Cooke and King George. Hendrix went through a lot of difficulty in his life and was often taken advantage of by people around him. He was young and naïve and inexperienced except for his music. As time went on he became more troubled and he felt isolated; at times he took drugs to try and satisfy the loneliness (Lawrence, 274). Hendrix was an artist that made history because of his unique style and complicated rhythms. At one point in his life he realized that his manager was taking money from him -- he saw a discrepancy between what his records brought in and what he actually received in payment. This made him angry and sometimes he would destroy hotel rooms or act out aggressively towards the women he was dating (Egan, 175). Eventually Hendrix died in 1970 from an overdose of sleeping pills (Egan, 176). What is important to note is that Hendrix did not die of an overdose of drugs in the way people thought. He was with one of his fans and received the pills; researchers suggest that she was mentally unstable and he died when he was with her. Hendrix and His Contributions To Music Most people associate Hendrix with the 1960s because he was at the height of his career at that time. His albums like "Purple Haze" and "Voodoo Chile" topped the music charts. For those who liked rock music his music is still played as an example of a true rocker. His music had blues as the foundation and according to Gelfand, "it was a voice of release, a 'cry of love' that, like all great blues, transcended the pain and the physical hardships that gave the music its soul" (102). Although he was considered a rock musician he often grew tired of the constraints that this type of music put on him. Although Hendrix died very early in his life, his music lives on in the sounds of many current day guitarists. Many musicians like Pat Metheny, Van Halen, Eric Johnson and others have created the sounds of Hendrix in their music. He also influenced the way people dressed and acted when they performed on stage. One of the reasons why he was such an admired musician is because he always was on the lookout for new sounds he could create. He wanted to fully express the various possibilities of the guitar and he could only do this by continuously listening to its sound. Hendrix was able to generate electronic sounds that had never been heard before with other musicians. He did this with the help of an electronic engineer by the name of Roger Mayer. Mayer developed many electronic devices specifically for Hendrix, like his Axis fuzz unit. (Gelfand, 103). Hendrix was able to bring these devices together and combine them to make new and interesting sounds. He created many sounds by blending the volume with the intensity of a device and then he would control the feedback in such a way that people were amazed at what he produced (Gelfand, 104). Hendrix used every aspect of his guitar. He is credited with "using feedback, reverb, scraping and scratching his pick across the strings, and using the wa-wa pedal in completely new ways" (Gelfand, 105). These were all inventions that are used today after his instrumentation of them. Although Hendrix was self taught he had a strong sense of melody, song structure and composition that created a strong place for him in jazz and other music. Gelfand says of him that: Jimi Hendrix often seemed like a tourist on his own bus, going wherever going wherever the road led, leaving details to others. It was a posture that seemed to fit his gentle, undemanding nature and his live-and-let-live outlook (107). Hendrix is still someone that musicians admire and he is very missed for his contributions. One interesting endnote is that someone has bought the rights to Jimi Hendrix's entire music collection. The name of the individual was undisclosed but it sold for $15 million at an Ocean Tomo's auction in 2006 ("Managing Intellectual Property"). This lets readers know that this is still a very important individual and that his contributions to music are still valuable. Works Cited Cross, Charles R. Room full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix. NY: Hyperion, 2005. Egan, Sean. Jimi Hendrix and The Making of Are You Experienced. Illinois: A Cappella, 2002. Gelfand, Dale Evva. Black Americans of Achievement Legacy Edition: Jimi Hendrix Musician. NY: Chelsea House, 2006. Lawrence, Sharon. Jimi Hendrix: The Man, The Magic, The Truth. NY: Harper Collins, 1981. Managing Intellectual Property. "Hey Joe: Jimi Hendrix Rights Sold for $15 Million" . Weekly News, 01 November 2006. 21 April 2009. . Willett, Edward. Jimi Hendrix: Kiss The Sky. NJ: Enslow, 2006. Read More