Johnny Allen Hendrix Documentary Part three of the Twenty-Seven Club

All Along The Watchtower
Jimmy Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 - September 18, 1970) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter.

Though he only had a four-year mainstream career, he wrote more than 400 songs.

One of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists of all time.

According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he was "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music."

Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15 in Seattle, Washington.

He enlisted in the US Army in 1961, but was discharged a year later.

He retired shortly afterward.

From Clarksville he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and played gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a spot in the Isley Brothers backing band and later working with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work until 1965.

He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager.

Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary".

He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US.

The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album.

The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970.

Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues.

He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback.

He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe.

He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings.

Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. — Holly George-Warren

Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he was a leader.

Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously.

In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year.

Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time.