From Eric Clapton to B.B. King: Jimi Hendrix’s 10 favourite guitarists
Even to this day, Jimi Hendrix remains the ultimate guitarist. A player who, with his genius talent, elevated the instrument to heady heights that had never been reached by any artist before. The performer transformed the instrument from the weapon of choice for street thugs and dastardly rock and rollers into the kind of gilded paintbrush that Michaelangelo or Da Vinci would be proud of. In the 50 years since his premature death, question marks remain if any musician will ever be able to match Hendrix on a technical level.
Given his prestige, praise doesn’t come much higher than from Hendrix himself. Some of the guitarists that Hendrix considered idols are musicians who didn’t receive anywhere near as much acclaim as he achieved, and to rectify that, we are going to look at some of the reasons why Hendrix admired the below artists so greatly.
The only place we could begin with a list of Hendrix’s favourites is with the ultimate musician’s musician, the great Rory Gallagher. The Irish guitarist was wildly successful and recorded 14 studio albums that went on to sell over 30 million copies worldwide, gathering a series of landmark fans in the process. Gallagher’s esteemed solo career began shortly after he departed Taste in 1970, the band he had founded just four years earlier. Viewed as a key player in the blues movement, Gallagher tragically passed away in 1994, aged just 47, after a failed liver transplant.
Never one to hide his admiration, Hendrix spoke at length of his appreciation for Gallagher’s talents, most notably when he appeared on the long-running popular afternoon talk show, The Mike Douglas Show. Douglas asked Hendrix: “What’s it was like to be the best rock guitarist in the world?” and, pausing for a moment, Jimi then beautifully responded: “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Rory Gallagher”. For that reason alone, he could easily be considered Jimi’s all-time favourite.
Sadly, one musician that is far from a household name but has his place on Hendrix’s list is the mercurial and magical talent of Otis Rush. The guitarist played an influential part in the formation of Jimi Hendrix’s musical DNA, and he was also cited as a significant influence on the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Buddy Guy and countless others. Rush helped create a modernised R&B, fusing the Chicago blues sound that was later labelled by industry executives as the ‘West Side Sound’. Ultimately, Otis Rush changed guitar playing forever. Like Hendrix, Rush was a left-handed guitarist, and despite not receiving commercial success, he remains one of the great pioneers of the instrument and is seen as an icon who helped shape Chicago’s image.
The next name on the list may also suffer from a lack of commercial recognition for his craft: the wonderful talent of Steve Cropper. Known as ‘The Colonel’, the guitarist starred with Booker T. & the MGs. Cropper and Hendrix’s two styles are incomparable, with the former opting for a minimalist style while Hendrix was all about expression. Regardless of their differences, it shows that Hendrix recognised talent wherever he saw it. Hendrix’s bassist Billy Cox revealed in 2014 how Cropper was an influence on Jimi’s early sound. He said: “Jimi was in his infancy at that particular time, Steve and (his band) Booker T. and the MGs were (producing many of) the R&B songs being played at that time, and we copied that before we came into our own persona”. When Cropper was in Memphis during a tour with Sam Cooke in the early ’60s, Hendrix sought him out, and the two spent the day bonding over their mutual love of their dear instrument. Hendrix once said: “Steve Cropper turned me on millions of years ago and I turned him on millions of years ago too — but because of different songs. He turned me on to a lot of things.”
Of course, one major favourite was also a personal friend of Jimi’s. When Hendrix first moved to London, he made an immediate impact and managed to prove to his then-idol, Eric Clapton, within days of his arrival that there was a new guitar king in town. Cream had heard impressive things about London’s latest import and, as a result, invited him up on stage to jam with them back in 1966, a move which saw Hendrix seemingly put the band to shame. Jimi, buoyed by the cordial invitation, took to the stage and grabbed a guitar to cover Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Killing Floor’. Later, Eric Clapton told Planet Rock: “We got up on stage, and Chas Chandler says, ‘I’ve got this friend who would love to jam with you.’”
Clapton added: “It was funny, in those days anybody could get up with anybody if you were convincing enough that you could play. He got up and blew everyone’s mind. I just thought ‘ahh, someone that plays the stuff I love in the flesh, on stage with me.’I was actually privileged to be (on stage with him)… it’s something that no one is ever going to beat; that incident, that night, it’s historic in my mind but only a few people are alive that would remember it.”
Keith Altham of The Guardian later noted of the meeting between Clapton and Hendrix, saying that he remembers “Chandler going backstage after Clapton left in the middle of the song ‘which he had yet to master himself’; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: ‘You never told me he was that fucking good.’” Altham also wrote that Hendrix wanted to prove himself to his idol and remarkably self-depreciatingly stated: “I want to see if he is as good as he thinks I am”.
Another name on the list is the great Albert Collins. Known as ‘The Iceman’, Collins was a pioneering figure that shaped the Texan blues scene throughout the 1950s and ’60s, and his influence would go far beyond the southern state – even if his name perhaps didn’t. In 1968, Jimi Hendrix declared his love for the underappreciated stalwart of the Houston blues scene: “There’s one cat I’m still trying to get across to people,” he said: “He is really good, one of the best guitarists in the world.”
Moving swiftly on, we explore the work of Elmore James, who sadly died aged just 45 in 1961, before he could see the full scale of the influence that his skills would have throughout the ’60s and beyond. Many tried to replicate the slide guitar sound that he had not only perfected but pioneered. The impresario is also a pivotal figure in the development of Hendrix. Early on in his career, Hendrix styled himself as ‘Maurice James’ and subsequently as ‘Jimmy James’, which arrived as a tribute to James, according to former bandmate and recording partner Lonnie Youngblood. Hendrix would frequently cite Elmore James as an influence and even went as far as recording several different arrangements of ‘Bleeding Heart’, which would become something of a legend among Hendrix fans as various bootlegs were passed around during the late ’60s before it was officially released posthumously.
Of course, no guitarist worth their salt will leave B.B. King off the list of their favourite musicians. Hendrix, naturally, was a huge fan. King is a bonafide blues icon who is one of the genre’s most influential names, and his iconic style can still be felt in music today. Hendrix regularly covered ‘Every Day I Have the Blues’ as a member of the Rocking Kings and would turn up the bass on his amplifier to sound like King. During Hendrix’s time playing as part of Little Richard’s band, he received significant criticism from Richard for trying to copy King’s style. Once he went solo, Hendrix returned to his emulation of King, which is perhaps most notable on ‘Hey Joe’ or ‘Voodoo Chile’.
Following a similar pattern, Hendrix also shared the same admiration every guitarist other of the ’60s held for the brilliant Muddy Waters. Waters is one of the first-ever artists that Jimi Hendrix remembers listening to as a child. Many have argued that Waters’ music is what first captured Hendrix’s imagination and would inadvertently set him on his path to stardom. The blues legend played a key role in reshaping culture post-war, and without him, who knows how different culture would be today. Hendrix remarked this to Rolling Stone in 1968: “The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his old records when I was a little boy, and it scared me to death because I heard all of those sounds. Wow, what is that all about? It was great.”
Remaining with the King theme, we turn our attention to Albert King, an artist who helped put the blues scene on the map and became a tremendous influence on Jimi Hendrix in the process. “I like Albert King,” Hendrix once said. “He plays completely and strictly in one way, just straight funk blues. New blues guitar, very young, funky sound, which is great. One of the funkiest I’ve heard. He plays it strictly that way, so that’s his scene.”
However, while all of the aforementioned names undoubtedly shaped the vision of Hendrix, most believe that the title of his ultimate favourite is reserved for another searing axeman: Billy Gibbons.
The ZZ Top powerhouse has long been undervalued as one of rock and roll’s finest players. Naturally, Gibbons was awestruck when he first met Hendrix. Speaking during an interview with Express, Gibbons said: “We hit it off in a rather unexpected manner”. Gibbons goes on to describe his first encounter with Hendrix, adding: “Our contract required us to play for 45 minutes, and at that time, the only way we could complete the run was to include two numbers by Jimi Hendrix. Which was kinda chancy, I must say.”
“I remember wrapping up the set, coming off the stage, there was Jimi in the shadows – off to the side with his arms folded. But he was grinning, and as I passed by, he grabbed me and said, ‘I like you. You’ve got a lot of nerve,'” he told Ultimate Classic Rock of their first meeting. Gibbons clearly found himself a mentor on the guitar that he could look for during his career. “He was a real technical wizard. He was inventing things to do with the Stratocaster guitar. I am confident the designers had no clue would unfold in later years. Jimi had the talent to make that work for him. His technique was very peculiar in that he was playing a right-handed guitar in a left-handed style, upside down. To look at it and try to figure out what he was doing was very daunting,” said Gibbons in an interview with Rolling Stone.
While we will never know a definitive list of Hendrix’s most beloved musicians, the aforementioned names undoubtedly played a significant role in his development as an artist. Below, we’ve pulled together a playlist for your enjoyment.
Jimi Hendrix’s favourite guitarists:
- Albert King
- Muddy Waters
- B.B. King
- Elmore James
- Albert Collins
- Eric Clapton
- Steve Cropper
- Otis Rush
- Rory Gallagher
- Billy Gibbons
