The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. Born in Seattle , Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age In , he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville , then Nashville , Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit , earning a place in the Isley Brothers ' backing band and later with Little Richard , with whom he continued to work through mid He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires.
Hendrix moved to England in late , after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. His third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland , became his most commercially successful release and his only number one album on the US Billboard chart. The world's highest-paid rock musician, [ 2 ] Hendrix headlined the Woodstock Festival in and the Isle of Wight Festival in Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues.
He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain , and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback.
He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia , wah-wah , and Uni-Vibe.
He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began. Hendrix died in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia in September , at the age of Hendrix was of African-American and alleged Cherokee descent.
