Jimi Hendrix was the quintessential 1960s rock star. A black superstar in what was by then predominantly a white industry and an American who first found success in Great Britain, Hendrix embodied many of the contradictions of the late 1960s music scene. As a guitar player, he single-handedly redefined the genre's most important instrument and remains widely considered the best ever to have played it. As a performer, he combined showmanship and musician-ship in equal parts, and played the best remembered sets of the two best remembered music festivals of the period. His death at age 27 from an overdose of drugs (albeit prescription) completed the picture of what became a cultural archetype of the late twentieth century: that of the enormously talented, misunderstood rock star whose meteoric rise to fame is matched by a tragic fall and early death.

Johnny Allen Hendrix was born...