walking upstream…
Jimi Hendrix
sourcesGuitar Player — 1968 Hendrix interview (naming Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Eddie Cochran, B.B. King as influences) · Louder Sound — Jimi Hendrix's blues foundations and London arrival ("Blues, man. Blues" quote; Clapton/Beck context) · Wikipedia — Jimi Hendrix (birth, early guitars, biographical timeline)
In 1959, a fifteen-year-old in Seattle traded odd-job money for a five-dollar acoustic guitar, and within a year his father had scraped together an electric Supro Ozark. What Jimi Hendrix wanted to chase was a sound he'd heard as a boy on an old Muddy Waters record — a sound, he later said, that "scared me to death, because I heard all of those sounds. Wow, what is that all about?" The fear became apprenticeship: through the early sixties he toured as a sideman behind Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, and Sam Cooke, learning showmanship from performers who'd built the music themselves. By the time he reached London in 1966, English blues musicians recognized someone who'd learned on the circuit, not secondhand. "Blues, man. Blues," Hendrix said. "For me that's the only music there is." Everything after was blues wearing a new amplifier.
the sound in question
1967
Purple HazeJimi Hendrix
walk the tributaries ↓
John Lee Hooker1950s · Delta blues / Electric blues / Boogie
Two decades after Hendrix's death, John Lee Hooker cut his own version of "Red House" for a tribute album, and admitted the connection ran deeper than the session: Hendrix's former manager "Alan Douglas said Jimi would talk about me a lot," Hooker recalled in a 1989 interview, "and he was the one who had me do this." The two never met — Hooker never saw Hendrix play live — but Hooker's hypnotic one-chord drone and raw, distorted tone were already on record while teenage Hendrix worked through every blues single he could find. "Mr. Jimi Hendrix, one of my favorites," Hooker said. "He was one of my idols."
listen: upstream & heresource: Jas Obrecht — The Complete 1989 John Lee Hooker Interview (Hooker on recording "Red House" and on Hendrix) ↗
1949
Crawlin' King SnakeJohn Lee Hooker
1967
Red HouseJimi Hendrix
listen forHooker's 1949 "Crawlin' King Snake" barely moves off one chord for its full length, the guitar tone dirty and unresolved, its menace coming from repetition rather than change. "Red House" runs the same trick at greater length — a slow blues Hendrix stretches well past the usual structure, circling one riff and one feeling, heartbreak instead of menace, until the solo turns the drone into something closer to a voice. Neither song hurries toward resolution; both trust one idea, held long enough, to become hypnotic.
Muddy Waters1950s · Chicago blues / Electric blues / Delta blues
Hendrix placed the moment precisely: hearing an old Muddy Waters record as a boy in Seattle "scared me to death, because I heard all of those sounds, wow, what is that all about," he told Rolling Stone in 1968 — genuine fright, not admiration, at what an electric guitar could do. The scare sent him looking for a guitar of his own rather than away from one. Waters stayed a fixed reference through the interviews of his breakthrough year, named again by Guitar Player among the artists "who influenced him while he was trying to make it" — proof the debt outlasted the fear that started it.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — Jimi Hendrix on Early Influences, Axis and More (1968 interview; Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Albert King quotes) ↗
1954
Hoochie Coochie ManMuddy Waters
1967
Foxy LadyJimi Hendrix
listen forPlay Muddy Waters' 1954 "Hoochie Coochie Man" and notice how the whole song rides one insistent guitar-and-bass riff under a boast about what its narrator can do to you. "Foxy Lady" opens the same way — a fuzzed, four-note riff stated and restated before Hendrix even starts bragging on the woman in the title. Waters' riff stays plain and unbent; Hendrix pushes his through a wah pedal and octave fuzz until the same swagger turns theatrical. The move is identical — riff first, boast after — just run through a louder amplifier.