He played back-up guitar for many groups and musicians starting in 1962, including for Wilson Pickett, the Isley Brothers, and Ike Turner and Tina Turner. Hendrix also toured in The Upsetters, Little Richard’s band, before forming his own rock band in 1966, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Hendrix became lead singer, lead guitarist, and band frontman from 1966 until 1970. He played mostly rock, hard rock, psychedelic rock, R&B and blues music genres, with the influences of blues, soul, and rhythm musicians and guitarists such as B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, Curtis Mayfield, Cornell Dupree, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard.

He was "discovered" by producer Chas Chandler, who became his manager and helped him form a new band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with musicians Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. With this band, he released two albums in 1967, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love, and one in 1968, Electric Ladyland. Hendrix achieved celebrity status as a musician when he played at the Monterey Pop Festival, and went on the headline at the famous Woodstock Festival in 1969 before his death on September 18, 1970, in London,  two months before he was to turn twenty-eight. After the break-up of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Hendrix’s bands became the short-lived Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, then Band of Gypsys, with musicians Billy Cox and Buddy Miles, and finally, The Cry of Love. In 1970, he released the album, Band of Gypsys, featuring live performances with his Band of Gypsys band mates Cox and Miles.

His most famous guitar was his beloved Fender Stratocaster, which was right-handed turned upside down and restrung. Hendrix became famous for creating new sounds, experimenting with feedback, overdriven guitars, stereophonic, and phasing effects, and for combining "earth" (a jazz, funk, or blues-driven rhythm) with "space," created by his guitar producing high-pitched psychedelic sounds. Hendrix was also renowned for his misuse and abuse of drugs, mostly hallucinogenic drugs; in particular, LSD. Although the precise cause of his death is unknown, Hendrix had allegedly been drinking wine and had taken nine sleeping pills the night before. There have been speculations of misjudgment, suicide, and even murder. He had spent the night with his German girlfriend Monika Dannemann, who later, in 1996, allegedly committed suicide after a libel case brought on by Kathy Etchingham, a former girlfriend of Hendrix’s.

In 1992, twenty-two years after Hendrix’s death, he was officially inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2005, the UK Music Hall of Fame. Hendrix’s debut album, Are You Experienced, was inducted into the National Recording Registry of U.S. National Recording Preservation Board in 2006.

YUDDY