Culture Re-View: The gig that started it all - when Hendrix was kicked out of the band

20 February 1959: Jimi Hendrix gets kicked out of the band

Some people are born to be stars. Whatever feverish energy that was coursing through Jimi Hendrix’s veins to propel him into music history was clearly already there when he hit the stage for the first time in 1959.

Born Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle in 1942, a young Hendrix grew up in the 50s adoring the new rock n’ roll sound of Elvis Presley and blues artists like Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. As a kid, he’d imitate a guitar by strumming away on a broom. The affectation was noticed by his school's social worker who asked Hendrix’s father, Al, to buy him a guitar. Al refused.

Scouring some garbage with his father in 1957, he found a ukulele which he was allowed to keep. Despite only having one string, Hendrix learned to play Elvis’s ‘Hound Dog’. Finally, in 1958, Hendrix bought his first guitar, an acoustic purchased for $5.

Now he could play like his heroes, and he formed a band, The Velvetones. After three months of being drowned out by his bandmates, Hendrix was able to convince his father to buy him a white Supro Ozark electric guitar. Electric guitar in hand, the Hendrix of the future was born.

It was on this day in 1959 that a 16-year-old Hendrix took to the stage for the first time. His band was given two sets at the De Hirsch Synagogue in Seattle, but Hendrix only managed to play in the first one. His wild playing and “showing off” was too much for his bandmates, and the nascent guitar virtuoso was kicked out.

If only that band had known just what a genius they had in their midst. Hendrix would go on to join the army after being picked up by the police for joyriding, but was quickly honourably discharged for his lack of interest in war.

Out of the army,