Jimi Hendrix‘s career in the spotlight only lasted a few years, but he showed during that time that he was a rock pioneer, and in the time since then, he’s been revered as a rock legend. During his life, however, only one of his songs ever reached the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart — and the song wasn’t even his to begin with.
Jimi Hendrix’s love for guitar dates back to his childhood
Jimi Hendrix grew up in poverty as his parents struggled to give him and his brother Leon a stable life. After falling behind on mortgage payments, their father moved them into a boarding house. Here, he found a used acoustic guitar that their landlady was willing to sell them for $5. His father, however, wasn’t having it.
“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.”
After being discharged from the military, Hendrix began pursuing a career as a guitarist in earnest. He played backup for major artists at the time including Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner, and The Isley Brothers.
‘All Along the Watchtower’ went to the top 40, but he didn’t write it
By the mid-1960s, Hendrix formed his own band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and began recording music. The band released two albums in 1967: Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love.
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In January 1968, Hendrix recorded “All Along the Watchtower,” originally released on Bob Dylan’s album John Wesley Harding just weeks earlier. He continued working on it until later that year when he released it as a single from the band’s third and final album, Electric Ladyland. The song reached No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — Hendrix’s highest-charting song of his career.
Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower” found more success than the original song, and according to Rolling Stone, even Dylan himself admitted that Hendrix took the song to a much different place. He never played the song in concert until four years after Hendrix died, and has since played it live over 2,100 times — more than any other song in his catalog — with each performance taking from Hendrix’s cover version.
He didn’t write his first single ‘Hey Joe’ either
Coincidentally, it wasn’t the first of Hendrix’s songs that was written and performed by another artist before he made it his own. He was discovered in New York City in the mid-1960s after performing the song “Hey Joe,” originally written by Billy Roberts and popularized by California band The Leaves in 1966.
Hendrix’s version of “Hey Joe” led him on his whirlwind path to stardom. He was flown out to London shortly thereafter to begin recording his debut album.
