Jimi Hendrix - David Stubbs

Jimi Hendrix began musical life on the "chitlin' circuit" in the mid-1960s, where he developed a fluid, funky guitar style, backing the likes of the Isley Brothers on the road. In 1966 Chas Chandler, formerly of The Animals, discovered him playing in Greenwich Village and shrewdly persuaded him to relaunch his career in London, from whence he could be manufactured as a pop-rock sensation and then sold back to America. The plan worked. He enjoyed instant success with hits like "Hey, Joe" and "Purple Haze." His band, which included British rhythm section Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, was promoted as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, cutting three albums in quick succession in 1967 and 1968. Part of the successful series that includes Rolling Stones, U2, The Doors, and others in the strong-selling and well-established Stories Behind the Songs series, Voodoo Child includes a complete discography, 90 photographs, as well as a discussion of all of Hendrix's live albums. Jimi Hendrix is very probably the greatest solo rock artist of all time and thirty-seven years after his death, he remains a best-seller. Certainly, if anyone personified the genre in its purest, most potent and inflammatory form, it was Hendrix.