In 1968 Jimi Hendrix released what would be his third of only four albums released in his lifetime. Are You Experienced and Axis Bold As Love, his first two albums, turned out only to be the warm up act for something nobody was really expecting.
For all that Jimi is mainly remembered today as a guitar ace, and a hard rocker, a close examination of the process that went into the creation of Electric Ladyland, his third album, goes a long way to dispelling that myth. Instead what we are shown on the DVD Classic Albums: Electric Ladyland is a musician driven to experiment and discover what could and couldn't be done within the confines, and beyond, of Blues based rock and roll.
In an interview near the end of the documentary one of his friends says that he always thought of Hendrix as the equivalent for Blues that people like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane were for Jazz. They saw and heard things that other people didn't even know existed as potentials in the music and tried to push it in that direction.
Unfortunately for Blues and Rock, in my opinion, unlike Jazz there weren't the players or the incentive for that experimentation to continue. People saw the noise and the burning guitar solos but didn't see the 90% that lay behind that small example of the man's talent.
Of course there is no disputing the man understood guitar in ways that few coming after or those who came before had discovered yet. I'm sure there were faster players before his time and faster players have existed since his death. But as we enter the studio with Jimi and the Experience (Noel Redding on Bass and Mitch Mitchell on Drums) and anybody else who happened along that Jimi felt could contribute, it's like entering a painter's studio where he works with his materials to create the visions in his head.
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