Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

He died 26 years ago this week in a London hotel room, with a girlfriend who couldn't make up her mind to call an ambulance. James Marshall Hendrix had ingested nine German sleeping pills, some wine, and a meal of brown rice. He was 27 years old.

The British had discovered him -- give them credit there. Like Faulkner and the French, it took another country to recognize this quintessentially American artist. Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix was a mix of African, Cherokee and Irish blood. The product of a broken home, his father had removed him from his teenaged mother's care at age three. Jimi was brought up by relatives when Al was away, and in later life Hendrix was opposed to marriage. More telling he drifted in and out of romantic relationships in a way that fit the mores of the nineteen sixties, but suggested a deeper anxiety. The female figures in his lyrics are either the evasive, angelic wanderers of songs such as Little Wing, or the dangerous temptress' of Dolly Dagger and Foxy Lady. He took up the guitar at thirteen, dropped out of high school at 17, and then joined the 101st Airborne. He became a paratrooper and jumped 26 times before breaking his ankle on his last attempt. It was just as well. An honorable discharge kept him away from Vietnam, and he had quickly come to understand that the army was not a place sympathetic to guitarists. Billy Cox, his friend, bass player and fellow serviceman recalls that his nickname in those years was "Marbles," a tribute to the fact that Hendrix would walk down city streets playing an unplugged electric guitar. He was honing his chops; steeping himself in the native music of the south. The blues became his backbone, at a time when slicker and more popular Moto...

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... London hotel room and the nine sleeping pills.

Twenty-six years later it seems like such an incredible waste. Hendrix would be 53. With the exception of Charlie Christian and Robert Johnson, the other black geniuses of American music all had more time.

Still, few musicians have lived more thoroughly the life of their times. Unlike the tie-dyed, good time trip of Jerry Garcia's Grateful Dead, Hendrix felt both the raw, unleashed energy of the sixties, and also the decades terror and confusion. Listening to his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, or the equally powerful Machine Gun one can't help but wonder if this wasn't the most empathic musician to ever pick up a guitar. In those works Hendrix seemed to feel everything for everyone -- black, white, GI, protester, hippie, straight -- he found a place for all of us. American music would never be the same.