The guitarist Jimi Hendrix called “one of the best in the world”
Anyone who considers Jimi Hendrix anything less than the greatest guitarist of all time is usually lying to themselves. Fans are entitled to their favourite players, but in terms of reinventing the instrument in a way that no one else had, Hendrix’s influence is unparalleled. His arrival on the scene marked a shift akin to moving from black and white to colour; everything seemed more vibrant. Yet, despite his monumental impact, Hendrix himself admired Albert Collins, believing he had nothing on what Collins could do.
Because for all of the great music that Hendrix made during his short life, he was always an avid student of the blues. Before he struck out on his own and was still a backup guitarist for Little Richard, half of that material was just mining old blues traditions, only playing them a lot faster than anyone else.
But there’s a certain beauty in being able to play a slower version of the blues. Sure, not much is going on in the mix, but every note feels like a little piece of a conversation, usually starting off a little slower before ramping towards the end before it sounds like a symphony of guitar solos happening all at once.
Whereas artists like John Lennon prided themselves on being a guitar player and a singer, it almost felt like the guitar was an extension of Collins’ body half the time. Even when he wasn’t singing, it felt like his lead chops would finish the sentence for him, as if it were putting a noise to the emotion that no one could express with words.
In fact, it’s not hard to see where Hendrix took a lot of his tricks from. Outside of his unique covers of blues standards like ‘Red House’ and ‘Killing Floor’, hearing him compliment himself on tracks like ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Hey Joe’ let you know that the guitar wasn’t just another instrument. It was another voice in the band.
Outside of the other blues greats like BB King, who were paving the way for rock and roll, Hendrix still thought that Collins was among the finest to ever pick up a guitar, telling Rolling Stone, “That’s one cat that I’m still trying to get across to people. He is really good, one of the best guitarists in the world.”
For all of the great blues licks that Collins played, though, Hendrix was much more lyrical in the way he phrased everything. A lot of times, any guitarist can find themselves getting lost in their own playing, but for as wild and off the rails that Hendrix’s leads could get at times, it never sounded self-indulgent. This was a man channelling music from another realm, and tracks like ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ seem to defy any kind of blues phrasing.
While Collins wouldn’t get as much notoriety as Hendrix did even after his death in 1993, Hendrix seemed to be passing on the language that he spoke to a different generation. Even though most rock aficionados can’t think of Collins’s name offhand when referencing the best of all time, they have internalised his style of playing every time they have tried to learn the solo to ‘Voodoo Child’.
