On what would have been his 75th birthday, we look back at some of James Marshall Hendrix’s earliest musical offerings.

It could be worse than this, but I’m going to keep hustling and scuffling until I get things to happening, like they’re supposed to for me.” This baptism by fire forged the singular style that would make his name cultural shorthand for musical virtuosity. “Although I don’t eat every day, everything’s going all right for me. “I still have my guitar and amp and as long as I have that, no fool can keep me from living,” he writes. Rats running all across your chest, cockroaches stealing your last candy bar out of your pocket …”ĭespite the challenges, a letter Hendrix sent to his father during this period reveals his steely resolve to realize his destiny. Hendrix s guitar is prominent, and identifies him as conclusively as a DNA sample. 'Testify' is noisy and congested, too much is going on. Sleeping outside them tall tenements was hell. These are the first offerings from the Isley Brothers T-Neck record label, and many consider special because Jimi Hendrix played lead guitar on them.

“We even tried eating orange peel and tomato paste. “We’d get a gig once every twelfth of never,” he told Rave in 1967. In later years he spoke with little fondness of the days when work was slow. After his discharge from the 101st Airborne Division following his brief spell as a paratrooper, the chance to dive headlong into rhythm & blues behind pros like Little Richard, King Curtis and the Isley Brothers served as a valuable apprenticeship – though a decidedly unglamorous one. Before he was experienced, Jimi Hendrix was a hard-working sideman, playing studio session dates and backing bands across the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit and beyond during the first half of the Sixties.

Jimi hendrix isley brothers songs