Some Jimi Hendrix Trivia-Strange Eric Clapton Curse

I was reading an eerie article about how Eric Clapton was the last person to see three famous guitar players before they died! Those would be Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Is this a Clapton Curse!? At the bottom of the eerie article was some Jimi Hendrix Trivia. Thought I would copy and past some of it onto my Tumblr site. As I went to link up some of the factoids, I found some interesting things about Jimi Hendrix that were scattered across the web and thought I would piece them together. About 12 hours later, it turned into a blog post here! I'll start it off with a piece of advice Jimi's father gave him about making music with the guitar. History tells us he listened!

“When you get into the music, into doing your thing, do something original, do something different.” ~James Al Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix aka Noize

 As the story goes, in 1866 Jimi Hendrix’ great-great grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross, was a wealthy grain dealer in Ohio. Through a union with Fanny Hendricks, who likely worked at his grain mill, Jimi’s great-grandfather Bertran Philander Ross Hendricks was born.

In 1896 Ross Hendricks moved to Chicago and changed his last name to Hendrix and eventually joined a traveling vaudeville troupe as a stagehand where he met stage performer Nora Moore. They married in Seattle but eventually moved to Vancouver where the father of Jimi Hendrix, James Al Hendrix, was born in 1919. Al Hendrix grew up with performing aspirations training in dancing and boxing, marrying  Lucille Jeter along the way, but the Great Depression forced him to focus on earning a living instead, forcing a move to Seattle in 1940. Al Hendrix eventually joined the Army.

Al Hendrix’ commanding officer locked him up to prevent him from going AWOL to be there at the birth of his son on November 27, 1942. After returning from WWII, Al took custody of him, and renamed him from Johnny Allen Hendrix to James Marshal Hendrix, he was three years old at the time.

About the name James: Origin: Hebrew. Meaning: “he who supplants”.  Nicknames: Jem, Jemmy, Jim, Jimbo, Jimmie, Jimmy

Al Hendrix gave Jimmy an old ukulele as a toy, followed by an acoustic guitar and soon after a used electric guitar. Jimmy taught himself to play by ear, and later dropped out of Garfield High School to tour with traveling bands and develop his new technique. He also changed the spelling of his first name to Jimi.

Jimi Hendrix joined the Army, not because he wanted to be a soldier, but because he didn’t want to go to jail. He was arrested for riding around in stolen cars (twice) and the second time they told him he could spend two years in prison or join the army, he chose to enlist in the army and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division.  This didn’t last long though as he was constantly getting in trouble for sleeping while on duty and disregarding rules and regulations.  His commanding officers finally requested that he be discharged, which he was, after being a soldier only a year.

• Hendrix contested this and stated he was discharged after breaking his ankle on his 26th parachute jump.

Hendrix was fired from his first official gig, at the Temple De Hirsch in Seattle.  He had been hired to play in the synagogue but was fired between sets due to “wild playing”.

In the song “Purple Haze”, Hendrix has a line “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.” This gave rise to some people misinterpreting the lyrics “Excuse me  while I kiss this guy.”  As a result of this, sometimes Hendrix would sing the latter line in his actual performances because he thought it was funny.

Jimi Hendrix toured with The Monkees, [Monkees official website] who were huge fans of his even though he wasn’t yet big in the U.S., but this didn’t go over very well with The Monkees’ fan base. His performances at these shows were often cut short with the audience booing or chanting for The Monkees until he got off the stage. As a result of this, he asked to leave the tour. In order to help him get more media attention from the break, The Monkees claimed Jimi was forced to leave because his performances were “lewd and indecent.

Hendrix was famous for being an extreme perfectionist with his music. For instance, it took 43 takes for him to be satisfied with the song “Gypsy Eyes”.  As a result of this, his producer, Chas Chandler, cut ties with Hendrix during the recording of the Electric Ladyland album. 

This also created tension with band mates.  For instance, bassist Noel Redding would get frustrated at how long it took to record things and take breaks to cool down, only to return and find Hendrix had played his own takes of Redding’s parts in his absence.

Hendrix’ famous stunt of lighting his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival in response to the The Who’s post concert antics of destroying their instruments. Hendrix followed The Who that night and decided to one up them by setting his guitar on fire, rather than smashing it.

Hendrix disliked performing in front of large crowds. Because of this, he requested to have his time slot at Woodstock moved to the end, on Monday morning, rather than on Sunday night, as he had been slotted before. He hoped that many of the people would have left by that time, which indeed happened. By the time he started playing at 8:30am on Monday morning only about 30,000 people of the estimated original 400,000 remained. Many of those 30,000 remaining left during his iconic performance.

• Hendrix’ rendition of the Star Spangled banner at Woodstock was actually something he’d been performing regularly for about a year up to that point.

Jimi Hendrix died from choking on his own vomit on September 17, 1970 in London, after ingesting nine prescription Vesparax sleeping pills, with the recommended dose being just one pill. It is thought Hendrix didn’t know how strong this particularly brand of sleeping pill was and his girlfriend, German figure skater Monika Dannemann, who the pills were for, claimed she didn’t know he took them.

• Dannemann also claimed that Hendrix was still alive when the ambulance arrived. Further, she claimed she was with him in the ambulance.   However, the medics stated she wasn’t there when they arrived and Hendrix had been dead for some time (probably around 3am-4am, and they arrived at 11:27am). Many years later, in 1996, Dannemann committed suicide after running into legal troubles.

At the time of his death, Jimi Hendrix had lost an estimated 60% of his hearing.

His great-great grandmother was a full blood Cherokee, hence why Jimi Hendrix is in the Native American Music Hall of Fame, the first musician to have that honor, being in inducted in 1998.

On May 13, 2014 The United States Postal Service released the Jimi Hendrix stamp set.

Backside of Jimi Hendrix USPS Stamp Set

On May 8, 2015, Rolling Stone Magazine reported that Hendrix estate has reached an agreement with Legendary Pictures for an official biopic of the rock legend.

Jimi Hendrix Quote: "It's hard for me to remember any notes, cause I'm trying to constantly create other things, that's why I make a lot of mistakes."

 Hear My Train A Comin'

OFFICIAL JIMI HENDRIX WEBSITE

POST SOURCES

• Black Past
• Today I Found Out
• Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• Native American Music Association
• Rolling Stone Magazine
• United States Postal Service
• Best Nicknames