Hendrix’s breakthrough came from cheap Village club gigs and scene contacts

Evidence

At the suggestion of singer-song-writer Richie Havens, twenty-three-year-old James Marshall—soon to be “Jimi”—Hendrix, a veteran of the chitlin circuit and an experienced R&B session guitarist who had absorbed both Little Richard and Bob Dylan, turned up at a Café Wha? hoot and found himself fronting the house band’s rhythm section—hired by owner Manny Roth to play five sets a day at six bucks a set. … Putting together an act called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, Hendrix ruled MacDougal Street. His set might encompass soul hits (“In the Midnight Hour”), classic rock ’n’ roll (“Johnny B. Goode”), and Chicago blues (Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor”), as well as a few original songs (“The Wind Cries Mary”), a garage-band standard (“Hey Joe”) reconfigured as blues, and, using a fuzz box gifted by the Fugs, the summer’s #1 hit, “Wild Thing.” Taking the song literally, Hendrix also amazed walk-in audiences with his loud outfits, earsplitting guitar, and a surplus of showmanship that might include playing the guitar behind his back or with his teeth. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 915

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s thesis that cheap rent and ignorable low-stakes venues produced invention density — Hendrix at six bucks a set, free guitars and fuzz boxes from fellow scene figures.
• SHARE: A music-obsessed friend would enjoy the detail that Hendrix got the fuzz box for ‘Wild Thing’ from the Fugs.