Rock legend Jimi Hendrix rose to fame in the late 1960s with his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. He had been working hard as a guitarist in the years leading up to his breakout, and was a talented musician who earned the respect of his peers. The song that got him discovered, however — his debut single “Hey Joe” — wasn’t actually his song in the first place.
Jimi Hendrix started playing guitar as a child
Jimi Hendrix didn’t grow up with much, but from an early age, he had an interest in playing music. As a result of his father falling behind on mortgage payments, the family moved into a boarding house, where Jimi found an old acoustic guitar that their landlady was willing to sell for $5.
“He begged his father to buy it for him, but the cash-strapped Al bluntly refused to finance such a seeming total irrelevance,” Philip Norman wrote in the 2020 book Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix. “His pleas were supported by his mother’s sister, Ernestine, a perceptive woman who had noticed the transformative effects of the one-string ukelele, and when his dad proved immovable, Aunt Ernestine gave him the money.”
At the time, electric guitars were gaining popularity, and Hendrix wasn’t one of his own, though he couldn’t afford it. So he and his brother Leon decided to improvise and electrify the guitar themselves, with Leon holding down an electric connection with his finger and getting shocked. The resulting sound was characterized by buzz and crackling.
“Not only did we have an electric guitar going,” Leon recalled, “but we had distortion.”
Jimi Hendrix’s first single
Hendrix went on to make a career for himself in the early 1960s as a backup guitarist for major acts like Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner, Sam Cooke, and The Isley Brothers. When he ventured out as an artist in his own right, he performed at bars such as New York’s famed Cafe Wha?. It was during this time that he performed the song “Hey Joe,” a garage rock song written by Billy Roberts and popularized by California band The Leaves in 1966.
Hendrix’s performance at Cafe Wha? caught the attention of Chas Chandler, former bassist for The Animals, who was enthralled by the largely-unknown artist’s performance. Chandler invited Hendrix to London to record his debut album, and the rest was history.
Jimi Hendrix’s career in the spotlight only lasted a few short years
Jimi Hendrix soon formed his own band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and they shot to stardom thanks in part to their rendition of “Hey Joe.” They went on to release their debut album Are You Experienced in 1967. They released a follow-up sophomore album later that year, Axis: Bold as Love. The following year, the band released their third and final album, Electric Ladyland.
In early 1969, The Jimi Hendrix Experience parted ways as Hendrix continued to forge a path as a musician. That same year, he gave a performance at Woodstock that continues to live on in history. But Hendrix’s star burned bright and fast: in September 1970, Hendrix died at age 27, leaving behind an indelible legacy on the world of rock.
