Childhood

Hendrix's background was characterized by adversity-- poverty, racial prejudice, parental divorce, and the virtual emotional abandonment by his mother in early childhood, followed by her death when he was fifteen. Jimi’s first memory was connected to an astonishing sonic and visual display, filling his young ears and eyes. His fascination with the mystical, the spiritual, the science fictional, flowered in the wildly imaginative drawings he made as a schoolboy and, inevitably, in the music he created, which transcended genres and expanded the horizon of rock music.

Jimi and Leon had one younger brother, Joseph, and two sisters, Cathy and Pamela. All three younger siblings had health problems and were given up to foster care. Like his mother Lucille, Al’s drinking and pursuit of the opposite sex caused him to be absent from the house for days on end. His chronic underemployment, coupled with gambling, kept the three male Hendrix's enmeshed in poverty, and Jimi took the responsibility for the care of his younger brother.

This struggle for survival included the boys scrounging meals where they could from understanding, kind neighbors. Sometimes, unpaid bills meant Jimi and Leon woke up alone in a cold, dark house. The shy, soft-spoken Jimi, who stuttered at an early age, once walked with his little brother into a Seattle Safeway supermarket. He surreptitiously opened a package of white bread, took out two pieces, and resealed the bag. He led Leon to the cold cuts section, opened a package of bologna, took out one slice, placed it between the two pieces of bread, and closed the package. Jimi not only helped raise Leon, but he also shared his own passion for music and art with his little brother. Jimi’s artistic ability was exceptional, his drawings of soldiers fighting, cowboys and Indians clashing, and distant planets orbiting in space showed skills well beyond average. Jimi fell in love with the science fiction world of Flash Gordon and earned the nickname “Buster,” after the serial’s star, Buster Crabbe.

‍On February 1, 1958, Lucille Jeter Hendrix was found unconscious in the back alley of a bar on Yesler Street. She died of a ruptured spleen, a treatable condition and one that was more likely to have been caused by violence than alcohol consumption. She was only thirty-three. Al Hendrix did not take the boys to Lucille’s funeral. Instead, he gave the children shots of his Seagram’s 7 whiskey and told them that was how men dealt with their grief.

Jimi was so desperate to play guitar that when he was at Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle, he brought a broom to school regularly, keeping it close to him, as a younger child might cling to a blanket. A social worker tried, after a year of this pitiable behavior, to get funds to buy Jimi a guitar. She wrote a note, insisting that not providing the boy a guitar might result in psychological damage. But the school did not think a boy humming and treating a broom like a guitar in a public school indicated any kind of mental imbalance.

One night, Al was playing cards with a male friend who had an acoustic guitar. Jimi sometimes quietly brought it out onto the front porch and carefully explored its strings and neck. On that night, Al’s friend drunkenly decided to sell it for five dollars to satisfy the boy who was so fascinated by it. But Al again cried poverty and said he could not spare the money, waving away the offer. But Ernestine Benson, who was present, sprang to Jimi’s defense. It was Ernestine who played old 78 rpm records that captivated Jimi, including the blues of Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield), Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Arthur Burnett), Robert Johnson, and others. Ernestine laid into Al, yelling, finally demanding, “Al Hendrix, you’re going to buy this guitar for five dollars!” That acoustic guitar, Jimi’s first real guitar, would be so dear to him that he carried it everywhere, played it constantly, even slept with it on his chest.
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Being left-handed, he had to reverse the order of the strings on a right-handed guitar because left-handed models were hard to find and more expensive. His father disapproved of Jimi playing lefthanded, calling it the Devil’s work. So Jimi simply chose the most logical solution to the problem: He learned to play right-handed guitars upside down without changing the strings. By his late teens, Jimi was playing in local bands. First, it was the Velvetones and the Rocking Kings, followed by Thomas and the Tomcats. He practiced every spare moment he had, even if some of his strings were broken. When he didn’t have his guitar with him, he pretended he did.
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Jimi, introverted, fearful of his future, never able to bring friends over to his house, was bullied by some of the boys, who saw him as peculiar and aloof. Once, friends saw Jimi chased across a football field by a boy he would not let hold his guitar. Eventually, Jimi was knocked to the turf, punched, and kicked. He suffered the blows, rather than releasing the guitar and risking damage to it. In spite of the indignities Jimi faced, his mind craved new musical experiences.

He listened to Seattle’s two black radio stations, KFKF and KZAM. They played many of the top R&B and soul hits. Jimi’s early interest in John Lee Hooker, B. B. and Albert King, and other bluesmen now incorporated rock-and-roll acts such as Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard.