Talk:Jimi Hendrix

Equipment

In an interview released on June 30, 2022, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter revealed that he gave Jimi Hendrix his first customized, reverse-strung white Fender Stratocaster. This answered a decades-old mystery about the origin of Hendrix's first Stratocaster. Baxter also built the guitar himself. Sgmerritt (talk) 16:43, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

@Sgmerritt: According to biographer Steven Roby, Baxter gave a similar account in 1981. [Roby 2002 pp. 53, 260] However, Hendrix equipment biographer Michael Heatley relates a somewhat different story:

The first Strat Jimi Hendrix played ... had been purchased that May [1966] from Manny's Music in New York, with funds provided by his then girlfriend, Carol Shiroky. The price of a new Strat at that time was $289. Jeff Baxter, later of Steely Dan, was an assistant at the shop and claims Jimi traded his Duo-Sonic for it, but Carol Shiroky suggests he wanted to move away from Curtis Knight (whose guitar the Duo-Sonic was) and forge his own career. So logic would dictate he returned the cheaper guitar to his friend. [Heatley 2009, p. 62]

Biographer Harry Shapiro quotes Shiroky as saying that Hendrix told her the only reason he still played with Knight was that he owned the Duo-Sonic and that:

two days later I went out and bought him [Hendrix] a white Fender Stratocaster ... He filed down the frets, because he'd reversed the order of the strings, and he sat there for hours and hours filing the frets. So the strings would fit in reverse. [Shapiro 1991, p. 101]

Baxter also claims to have sat in on bass with Hendrix's Greenwich village group Jimmy James and the Blue Flames that turned into "about two months". [Roby 2002 p. 53] But in an interview, bandmate Randy California said: "I know Jeff was claiming that he was in the band, but I don't really remember him being in the band." [Roby 1994]

With these somewhat conflicting accounts, there is really nothing to change in the article that cites Shapiro: "Hendrix played a variety of guitars, but was most associated with the Fender Stratocaster.[328] He acquired his first in 1966, when a girlfriend loaned him enough money to purchase a used Stratocaster built around 1964.[329]"

—Ojorojo (talk) 14:25, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Ambidextrous?

It's frequently claimed that he was left-handed (hence playing a right-handed guitar strung upside down) although it is also claimed that he was ambidextrous as per this article. Should Hendrix's handedness be addressed in the article? JezGrove (talk) 19:40, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Hendrix biographers have little to say about his ability to use both hands. He often sat in with other musicians and he sometimes played a right-handed bass or guitar with his right hand when he didn't have his own instrument. He also could play a normally-strung right-handed bass and guitar upside down with his left hand (like Albert King and Doyle Bramhall II). However, for his own performances and recordings, he always played left handed with the strings set up for a lefty (lowest string on top, highest on bottom).

It's an interesting idea that his mixed-handedness somehow resulted in "signaling better interaction between the left and right hemispheres of the guitarist's brain, [that] suffused every part of his music". But, as with many attempts to psychoanalyze creativity, it seems highly speculative and probably should be treated as a fringe theory. I don't think there's really enough to it to add to the article and am not even sure where it would go.

—Ojorojo (talk) 16:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Atlanta International Pop Festival

This article skips right over his legendary appearance at Byron GA just before Woodstock.  63.155.11.3 (talk) 05:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Hendrix did not perform at the first Atlanta International Pop Festival#1969 festival, which was held July 4–5, 1969 (before the Woodstock festival in August). He did perform at the second Atlanta International Pop Festival#1970 festival on July 4, 1970 (eleven months after Woodstock). This is noted in the "Cry of Love Tour" section of the article: "Several shows were recorded [on the tour], and they produced some of Hendrix's most memorable live performances. At one of them, the second Atlanta International Pop Festival, on July 4, he played to the largest American audience of his career.[255] According to authors Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz, as many as 500,000 people attended the concert.[255]" (see article for the citations used). Several of his performances at Atlanta were released on albums and videos. Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival album and the accompanying video released in 2015 are the most recent and complete. Check it out. —Ojorojo (talk) 14:18, 5 June 2023 (UTC)