John Medeski

Keyboardist with Medeski, Martin & Wood, the godfathers of the current jam-band scene.

First time I heard Jimi I wasn’t really ready for it yet. I was really deep into jazz and classical music and I didn’t really get it at first. It might’ve been a record of greatest hits or something like that and I thought it was alright, but I think Axis: Bold as Love was the first Hendrix record that I really understood from a different perspective. For me, he’s probably the greatest musician of the last century in terms of really culminating everything.

What inspired me about Hendrix’s music was it was so rooted in the blues and then it also had this futuristic, godlike quality to it, like Bach has. And it was also very raw. Whereas, Bach is, like, mathematically genius, Hendrix is, like, soulfully genius. If I had to pick a small amount of music to put in a time capsule that would represent the human race, it would probably be Bach and Hendrix just to show all sides of what we deal with people expressing themselves through music. And the tune that was the one that slew me overall was his solo on “Red House” from Hendrix in the West. I love that particular one. I listened to it maybe 100 times in a row, over and over in my car until I memorized it and could sing it note for note.

And to be totally honest, also tripping on acid to Hendrix was a revolutionary experience. I mean, it brings another dimension of music that is just phenomenal. Anybody who has done that knows, otherwise it’s impossible to explain it to somebody who doesn’t know what that’s about. It turns it into a spiritual experience. When you’re in it, it grabs you in a visual sense.

Hendrix had the same searching quality in his music that Coltrane had. In fact, his would be the third name I’d add to the time capsule—Hendrix, Bach and Trane. But Hendrix represented so many aspects of music. He was pop, he was blues, he was R&B, he was psychedelia and jazz people eventually got around to seeing how great he was. I never regarded him as a jazz musician. To me, he’s beyond that. He’s everything. Hendrix was the only guy I heard that made me wish I was a guitar player.

Source : http://jazztimes.com/articles/20150-jimi-hendrix-modern-jazz-axis