November 27 - Jimi Hendrix

Musician and songwriter Jimi Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix (later renamed James Marshall Hendrix) on November 27, 1942, in Seattle. The child of an unstable family life, he became intensely focused on the acoustic guitar, the first of which he bought at age 15 for $5. The first music he learned to play was the theme to the TV series “Peter Gunn.” After a very brief stint in the U.S. Army, he began playing electric guitar in bands for the Isley Brothers, Little Richard and others. In 1966 he went to England, where he formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience and scored hits with "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze," making use of distinctive guitar effects such as feedback and, later, the wah-wah pedal and stereophonic phasing. The first of his three influential studio albums, “Are You Experienced” (1967), combined rhythm and blues, rock and roll and psychedelic rock. His U.S. fame was launched at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Two years later, Hendrix was the world’s highest-paid musician when his rendition of the national anthem at Woodstock became the anthem of a generation.