The Story of Jimi Hendrix’s First Guitar

Each world well-known artist needed to begin someplace. For Jimi Hendrix, that someplace was Seattle the place he began his six-string journey with an previous ukulele.

Because the story goes, a teenage Hendrix was serving to his father filter the house of an older girl someday. Among the many garbage was a ukulele with just one string that the girl informed Hendrix he may have. One string was evidently all of the 15-year-old wanted to start out studying songs like “Hound Canine” by Elvis Presley by ear.

Roughly a 12 months later, Hendrix lastly obtained his arms on his first actual guitar, an acoustic that price him $5 (about $55 in 2025), the precise make and mannequin of which is unclear. “Once I first began taking part in guitar [was] approach up within the Northwest, in Seattle, Washington,” Hendirx mentioned in a 1967 interview, citing individuals like Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Robert Johnson as influences. “They do not have too most of the actual blues singers up there.”

It was round this time, Feb. 20, 1959 to be actual, that Hendrix made his reside debut within the basement of a synagogue, Seattle’s Temple De Hirsch, the place he had been invited to audition for an area band. However Hendrix’s model proved too animated for his or her style and his audition was over simply as rapidly because it started — the band thought he was an excessive amount of of a showcase.

Earlier than lengthy, Hendrix shaped his personal group, the Velvetones, however quickly discovered that his acoustic guitar wasn’t going to chop it.

Jimi Hendrix Plugs In

“Once I was 17 I shaped this group with another guys, however they drowned me out,” he would say to Guitar Participant in 1968 (by way of The Guardian). “I did not know why at first, however after about three months I noticed I might must get an electrical guitar. My first was a Danelectro, which my dad purchased for me. Will need to have busted him for a very long time. However I needed to present him I may play first.”

Hendrix, in fact, wound up doing precisely that.

“Pricey Dad, I nonetheless have my guitar and amp and so long as I’ve that, no idiot can hold me from dwelling,” he wrote in a letter to his father in 1965. Hendrix was then dwelling in New York Metropolis and taking part in guitar in numerous bands. “There’s a number of file firms I visited that I in all probability can file for. … I simply needed to let you recognize I am nonetheless right here, making an attempt to make it. Though I do not eat daily, every thing’s going all proper for me. It could possibly be worse than this, however I’ll hold hustling and scuffling till I get issues to occurring like they’re alleged to for me.”

READ MORE: 60 Greatest Jimi Hendrix Songs

Hendrix’s assortment would broaden to incorporate a myriad of guitars, most notably his signature Stratocaster. In 1968, he provided some phrases of recommendation to aspiring musicians, guitar gamers particularly: “It’s a must to keep it up. Generally you’re going to be so pissed off you wish to surrender the guitar, you will hate the guitar. However all of that is simply part of studying, as a result of in the event you keep it up you are going to be rewarded.”

Watch Jimi Hendrix Performing in 1965