Chas Chandler, bassist of the Animals, "discovered" Jimi playing Greenwich Village clubs in the summer of 1966. His skill and theatrics, honed by cutting his teeth in the road bands of R&B acts like Little Richard and the Isley Brothers, gave him an instantaneous visceral appeal — a fact that I can attest to, a teenager watching him awestruck from the front row of the Café au Go Go during a "Blues Bash" in late August of that year. Hendrix, then going under the name of Jimmy James, had stopped by from his regular gig at the Café Wha to jam with John Hammond Jr. He picked the guitar with his teeth, he played it behind his neck, he poured sounds out of it that I'd never heard before.

But Chandler, bringing him to England in September, was wise enough to realize that guitar playing alone wouldn't be enough to set Jimi apart from the six-string slingers then populating the hit charts. He dotted his "I", helping him find a band that matched his explosive energy — drummer Mitch Mitchell had a jazzy skittering style that danced around the beat, while guitarist-turned-bassist Noel Redding held down the rhythm (not unlike the… read more »