The Voodoo Child!

Life has time, there’s no big rush. So, just read on without feeling bugged. I’d bet he’s a pretty interesting guy to write about. 😀

 

The Voodoo Child

Considered to be the greatest electric guitarist in the history of rock music, James Marshall Hendrix or Jimi Hendrix was one of the most important and influential musicians of his era.

In his short career comprising of only seven years between 1963 and 1970,Hendrix  did much to further the development of the electric guitar’s repertoire, rather than merely an amplified version of the acoustic guitar. He was one of the musicians who popularized the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock and his fuzz-laden soloing moved guitar distortion well beyond mere novelty, incorporating other effects pedals and units specifically designed for him by his sound technician Roger Mayer. His music combined high volume and high power, feedback manipulation, and a range of cutting-edge guitar effects.

His band The Jimi Hendrix Experience was an English-American psychedelic band that was formed in October 1966. It Comprised of eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. Until June 1969,the band had released three successful studio albums, after which it broke up. Their first album, Are You Experienced? was released in May 1967 and was a big hit with the solos “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Lady”. It  had topped the UK Charts, with only The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band preventing it from reaching the No.1 spot.

The The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s second album, Axis:Bold as Love was also released in 1967, including hits such as “Little Wing” and “If 6 was 9”. It continued the style established by Are You Experienced, but showcased a profound use of melody. The Band’s third recording, the double album Electric Ladyland was released in 1968 and included a number of compositions and arrangements for which Hendrix is still remembered like ‘All Along The Watchtower’, which was named the 5^th greatest solo of all-time in Guitar World’s 100 Greatest Guitar Solos and ‘Voodoo Chile’, which was at No.11 on the same list.

The Band reunited in 1970 with Billy Cox dubbed as “The Cry of Love”, but with Jimi Hendrix’s mysterious  death on 18^th September 1970, the band broke up again.

Jimi Hendrix posthumously won many awards, including being inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.He was ranked number 3 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock behind Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and was also on VH1’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Rock N’ Roll at No.3, behind the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.The Rolling Stones Magazine has ranked “Purple Haze” at No.2 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks of All-Time. He is also listed 6 times on the Guitar World’s 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of all-time, more than any other artist on the list. In 1992, Jimi Hendrix was posthumously awarded the ‘Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award’.

He loved his guitar more than anything else in this world, and being a crazily obsessed guy, he let his music speak from the inside. AND HIS MUSIC CHANGED THE ERA OF ROCK N’ ROLL FOREVER.

In his own words,

Music doesn’t lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.