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GUITAR PALLET #1105/ 2005
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Paintings: Landscape | | Medium: | oilstick on guitar without strings | | Size (inches): | 38 x 13.5 x 3.7 (approximate) | | Size (mm): | 965 x 343 x 94 (approximate) | | Catalog #: | PA_092 | | Description: | Signed, titled, date, copyright in magic ink on the reverse.
Jimi Hendrix:
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (27 November 1942, Seattle – 18 September 1970, London) was an American musician, songwriter and virtuoso guitarist, often regarded as the best electric guitarist in the history of popular music.
Mostly self-taught on the instrument, the left-handed Hendrix used a right-handed guitar that was restrung and played right side up. As a guitarist, he built upon the innovations of blues stylists such as B. B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker, and Muddy Waters, as well as those of rhythm and blues and soul music guitarists like Curtis Mayfield. Hendrix's music was also influenced by jazz; he often cited Rahsaan Roland Kirk as his favorite musician. In addition, Hendrix extended the tradition of rock guitar: although previous guitarists, such as The Kinks' Dave Davies, and The Who's Pete Townshend, had employed techniques such as feedback, distortion and other effects as sonic tools, Hendrix was able to exploit them to a previously undreamed-of extent, and to incorporate them as an integral part of his compositions.
Hendrix so desired a guitar by the time he was in grade school that he had fits of depression when his father, who viewed the instrument as frivolous and jazz/rock as sinful, refused to get him one. His school counsellor told his father to get him a guitar, and his father gave him a one-stringed toy guitar. Jimi played it so much that his father finally relented and bought his son a real guitar.
As a record producer, Hendrix was an innovator in using the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas. Hendrix was notably one of the first to experiment with stereo effects during the recording process. Hendrix was also an accomplished songwriter whose compositions have been performed by countless artists. Finally, his image and influence as a rock star place him in the company of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, and Hendrix's first idol Elvis Presley.
The controversial nature of Hendrix's style is epitomized in the sentiments expressed about his renditions of the "Star Spangled Banner", a tune he played loudly and sharply accompanied by simulated sounds of war (machine guns, bombs and screams) from his guitar. His impressionistic renditions have been described by some as anti-American mockery and by others as a generation's statement on the unrest in U.S. society, oddly symbolic of the beauty, spontaneity, and tragedy that was endemic to Hendrix's life. When taken to task on the Dick Cavett Show on the "unorthodox" nature of his performance, Hendrix replied, "I thought it was beautiful."
Legacy:
Hendrix's style was unique. Although he synthesized many styles in creating his musical voice, being a visionary, there was something in his playing truly his own. He owned and used a variety of guitars during his career, including a Gibson Flying V that he decorated with psychedelic designs. His guitar of choice, and the instrument that became most associated with him, is the Fender Stratocaster, or "Strat". He bought his first Strat about 1965 and used them almost exclusively thereafter.
Hendrix's emergence coincided with the lifting of postwar import restrictions (imposed in many British Commonwealth countries), which made the instrument much more available, and after its initial popularisers — Buddy Holly and Hank B. Marvin — Hendrix arguably did more than any other player to make the Stratocaster the biggest-selling electric guitar in history. Before his arrival in the U.K. most top players used Gibsons and Rickenbackers, but after Hendrix, almost all of the leading guitarists, including Beck and Clapton*, switched to the Stratocaster. Hendrix bought dozens of Strats and gave many away (including one given to ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons). Many others were stolen and he destroyed several in his famous guitar-burning finales.
Hendrix fully exploited the Stratocaster's patented tremolo arm feature, which, unlike guitars such as the Gibson SG, normally only permitted the string pitch to bent down and then up again. The tremolo arm – a key feature of early Sixties surf music – enabled him to bend single notes or entire chords, and he is known to have removed at least two of the tremolo unit's five springs in order to allow him to bend the strings up or down.
The Strat's easy action and relatively narrow neck were also ideally suited to Hendrix's evolving style and enhanced his tremendous dexterity — Hendrix' hands were large enough to fret across all six strings with the top joint of his thumb alone, and he could reputedly play lead and rhythm parts simultaneously. A more amazing fact about Hendrix is that he was left-handed, yet used a right-handed Stratocaster, meaning he played the guitar upside down. While Hendrix was capable of playing with the strings upside down per se, he restrung his guitars so that the heavier strings were in their standard position at the top of the neck. He preferred this layout because the tremolo arm and volume/tone controls were more easily accessible above the strings.
The burnt and broken parts of the Stratocaster he destroyed at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival were given to Frank Zappa, who later rebuilt it and played it extensively during the 1970s and 1980s. In May 2002, Zappa's son Dweezil put the guitar up for auction in the U.S., hoping it would fetch $1 million, but it failed to sell. The legendary white 1968 Strat that Hendrix played at Woodstock sold at Sotheby's auction house in London in 1990 for £174,000 (295,800 Euros) and resold in 1993 for £750,000 (1,275,000 Euros). Both it and a shard of the burnt and broken guitar now reside in a permanent exhibit at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.
Hendrix was also a catalyst in the development of modern guitar amplification and guitar effects. His high-energy stage act and the blistering volume at which he played required robust and powerful amplifiers. For the first few months of his touring career he used Vox and Fender amplifiers, but he soon found that they could not stand up to the rigours of an Experience show. But he soon discovered a new range of high-powered guitar amps being made by London audio engineer Jim Marshall and they proved perfect for his needs. Along with the Strat, the Marshall stack and Marshall amplifiers were crucial in shaping his heavily overdriven sound, enabling him to master the creative use of feedback as a musical effect, and his exclusive use of this brand soon made it the most popular amplifier in rock.
It is believed that the Marshall Super 100 amp, purchased by Hendrix on 8 October 1966, was the first he ever bought. Rich Dickinson of Thrupp, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, bought the second-hand Marshall amp in 1971 for just £65. In May, 2005, experts at Marshall Amplifiers in Milton Keynes unearthed photos of the rock star with the amp that proved beyond doubt that it was the genuine article. In a local news story[2], Dickinson said that he had to part with the beloved amp because insuring it would cost thousands.
"I'm not in any rush to sell it and will wait for the best price, not just jump at whoever offers the first silly money."
The amp, of which there were only four ever made, had been fully serviced by Marshall and was to be sold in a private sale. It was believed that it would fetch over £1 million.
Hendrix also constantly looked for new guitar effects. He was one of the first guitarists to move past simple gimmickry and to exploit the full expressive possibilities of electronic effects such as the wah-wah pedal. He had a fruitful association with engineer Roger Mayer and made extensive use of several Mayer devices including the Axis fuzz unit, the Octavia octave doubler and especially the UniVibe, a vibrato unit designed to electronically simulate the modulation effects of the Leslie speaker.
Hendrix's sound is a unique blend of high volume and high power, precise control of feedback and a range of cutting-edge guitar effects, especially the UniVibe-Octavia combination, which can be heard to full effect on the Band of Gypsys' live version of Machine Gun. He was also known for his trick playing, which included using his teeth or playing behind his back, although he soon tired of audience demands to perform these tricks.
Despite his hectic touring schedule and his notorious perfectionism, he was a prolific recording artist and left behind more than 300 unreleased recordings besides his five official LPs and various singles.
He became legendary as one of the great 1960s rock'n'roll musicians who, like Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Brian Jones, rose to stardom, flourished for just a few years and died young.
Rolling Stone magazine named Hendrix the number 1 guitarist of all time. His influence almost cannot be overstated.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix/ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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