Before he morphed into a flamboyant Strat-wielding revolutionary, James Marshall Hendrix—a quiet cat from Seattle who backed artists like Little Richard, B.B. King, and Ike and Tina
Before he morphed into a flamboyant Strat-wielding revolutionary, James Marshall Hendrix—a quiet cat from Seattle who backed artists like Little Richard, B.B. King, and Ike and Tina Turner—worked under the stage name Jimmy James. Then, in 1966, at the height of the British Invasion, the guitarist moved to London, shed all his inhibitions and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Combining R&B, funk, blues rock and psychedelia in a recording career that spanned just four years, Hendrix penned a handful of classics while he revolutionized electric guitar playing.
While studies in Hendrix’s guitar work typically focus on his lead work, in this lesson we’ll explore his inventive rhythm work, which comprised a multifaceted mix of open-string and thumb voicings, double-stops, chord partials and other techniques that, together, were part of his unique sound and style.
FUNK FIGURES
Much of Hendrix’s rhythm playing was derived from funk. In fact, there’s a booty-shaking chord shape so synonymous with the guitarist that it’s been dubbed the Hendrix chord.
One possible voicing of it, shown in FIGURE 1, rears its head at the outset of “Foxey Lady,” where, against low F# (fretted by the 1st finger), the 4th finger bars the notes E and A at the 5th fret, implying what is actually an F#m7 chord (F#-A-C#-E).
FIGURE 1
The true Hendrix chord, meanwhile, can be heard in the F#7#9 of “Foxey Lady”’s chorus, the E7#9 of “Purple Haze” and the C#7#9 of “Spanish Castle Magic” (FIGURE 2). These 7#9 voicings differ from FIGURE 1’s in that they include a major 3rd, which creates tension against the minor 3rd (enharmonically, the #9). Hendrix sometimes enhanced these chords with Dunlop Rotovibe and Univibe effects, wah-wah, and Leslie, often to psychedelic effect.
FIGURE 2
