What do Bob Dylan, Django Reinhardt, George Frideric Handel and the Beatles have in common? Jimi Hendrix. They and a selection of other great yet surprisingly diverse artists inspired the young virtuoso James Marshall Hendrix into becoming the most acclaimed electric guitarist of all time. Tracks like “Purple Haze”, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” and “Hey Joe” still tickle spines with the sheer majesty of spirit infused in every chord plucked, every word sung. In 1966, after playing for big names, including Little Richard, Tina Turner and B. B. King, and a band of his own, Chas Chandler, bassist for The Animals, helped Hendrix form a new group in London called the Jimi Hendrix Experience. And the rest is history.
Influence on Culture
His name has been attached to more than generations of musicians. There is the Jimi Hendrix Park in Seattle, a landmark constructed with care and dedication to honor his memory, depicting and instilling his importance to music, art, unity and so much more. Hendrix was a TV movie produced in 2000 about his early career, starring Wood Harris (Ant-Man, 2015) and directed by Leon Ichaso (El Cantante, 2006).
An acoustic concert was thrown in West London in May by bgo casino, with their Jimi Hendrix themed slots as one of the attractions alongside a line-up of musicians covering beloved Hendrix songs. This video slot game has been a wildly successful sequel to the Guns N’ Roses slot game, which features on numerous online casinos such as Casumo and Magical Vegas, with the difference that, instead of just focusing on the music, the Jimi Hendrix slot’s features are all about hippie love.
Music
At the end of the day, it is the music industry that he impacted the most, his revolutionizing the use of the electric guitar being but the beginning. We have his fusion of blues, jazz, rock, soul, pop and classical melodies largely to thank for the standardization of combining differing genres to generate new and exciting sounds. Steve Vai, Freddie Mercury, Eric Clapton, Motorhead’s Lemmy and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age are some contemporary guitar stars to pay tribute to the man who showed them the way to freedom of musical and lyrical expression as opposed to firm, impassive methodology. His passion for his guitar only marginally surpassed his electrifying stage presence, a quality also idolized by his fans.
The Present
John Mayer, while discussing 100 Greatest Artists, states on Rollingstone, “Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.” This is in fact the magic of Hendrix. Verging on fifty years since his death, and he remains the god-like figure that music-lovers either strive to match or venerate, whether in the style of bgo casino’s event or the rendering of his London flat into a museum alongside Handel’s, whose 18th century residence was – to Jimi’s delight – next door. With the efforts being made by Experience Hendrix in collaboration with Legacy since 2009, his memory and legacy will not be dwindling any time soon, a fact demonstrated by the reported 8,000 album units of Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival sold by September 2015, which granted him his 46th entry on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Photo: “London 003 Hendrix and Handel houses.jpg” by David Holt (CC-BY-SA-2.0)
