r
             body, it was so loud"(Wadleigh 60). His electrified cry of emotion echoed in the
             hearts and minds of the audience. That song became the prominence of Woodstock
             and a defining moment that would be recalled time and time again. This was his
             challenge to American foreign policy, it was his response to a nation torn apart by
             Vietnam. It became the finest piece of rock and roll to emerge from the 1960's and
             even now nobody has topped it. As rock guitarist Vernon Reid recalled in a 1989
             reminiscence, "At that moment he became one of the greats like Coltrane, or Parker,
             or Dolphy. He plugged into something deep, something beyond good or bad playing.
             It was just 'there it is'"(Piccoli 20). Despite his premature death in London before his
             twenty eighth birthday, Jimi Hendrix produced an innovative playing style that has
             influenced a multitude of later musicians and revolutionized rock and roll music during
             James Marshall Hendrix grew up as deprived insignificant child but would
             eventually be remembered as an ingenious musician who left his mark on the world.
             He was born in Seattle on November 27, 1942 and at age sixteen Hendrix bought his
             first guitar for five dollars. It was a secondhand acoustic model that was a balancing
             element to his scarred childhood of his parents divorce, his unpredictable schooling
             and his mother's death in 1958. In 1959, Hendrix joined his first band, the Rocking
             Kings. He learned to play by listening to R&B artists such as B.B. King and the
             Chicago blues of Muddy Waters and Elmore James (Gregory150). Entirely
             self-taught, Jimi Hendrix's inability to read music made him concentrate even harder
             on the music he could hear. Due to this hindrance, it is nothing short of remarkable
             that his meteoric rise in the music took place in just four short years (Pesant 1). After
             an aborted career as an army parachutist, Hendrix hit ...