The guitarist who inspired, taught and turned Jimi Hendrix on
In the 1960s, when Jimi Hendrix rose to province, it was during a period of experimentation and confusion within music. The Beatles had created some level of uniformity in the charts in that artists within pop music could branch out and experiment, but as rock was creeping further and further into the mainstream, fans weren’t sure which way to lean, and it felt like artists could do whatever they wanted in the interest of simply trying stuff out.
In Jimi Hendrix’s case, trying stuff out meant spontaneity within his music. He improvised by dancing around the pentatonic scale and came out with an unmatched stage presence. He had both skill and flamboyancy, and that captured the hearts of people worldwide.
Of course, rock wasn’t the only genre in the ‘60s. As previously mentioned, it was a period of experimentation. The public had never been susceptible to such varying sounds in music, which meant lots of different styles and sounds were created and released into the world. It was an exciting time for music lovers, as people were constantly finding new things to be inspired by.
Artists weren’t immune to this inspiration, either. Many ideas were brand new, or at least so in their infancy that people watched the building blocks get assembled and stacked on top of one another. The popularisation of soul and R&B music also took the world by storm, and the heart of that was Stax Records and guitarist Steve Cropper.
Though Cropper and Hendrix both had different playing styles, that didn’t mean they couldn’t inspire one another, and that’s precisely what happened. One night, already a fan, Hendrix bumped into Cropper, and the two swapped ideas. They found their love for music ignited more than ever as they played together.
“Steve Cropper turned me on millions of years ago and I turned him on millions of years ago too, but because of different songs,” said Hendrix, “Like we went into the studio and we started teaching each other. I found him at the soul restaurant eating all this stuff right across from the studio in Memphis. I was playing on this Top 40 R&B Soul Hit Parade package with the patent leather shoes and hairdo combined.”
Hendrix went on to talk about a song that the two of them made together, which was lost shortly afterwards. “So anyway, I got into the studio and said, ‘Hey man, dig, I heard you’re all right; that anyone can come down here if they’ve got a song’, so we went into the studio and did a song, and after that, it was just with guitar, and he was messing around with the engineering, and it’s just a demo acetate,” said Hendrix, “I don’t know where it’s at now.”
The two guitarists found themselves lost in an adoration of one another. Two brilliant and talented minds, two different approaches to the same instrument, sharing in a moment where music felt like it was combustible and anything could happen. “He turned me on to a lot of things. He showed me how he played certain songs, and I showed him how I played ‘Mercy, Mercy’ or something like that.”
