Jimi Hendrix. Jeezus!

No. The Soft Machine opened for him. He was the headliner.

I went on a Senior trip on a bus with about 40 people in 1969, my senior year. About 4 of us left our Taft hotel room to walk down the street at night late, after we were supposed to go to sleep. In a nightclub, Jimi Hendrix was playing live. We looked in the door and saw about 3 songs. we were 17. We did look through the open door for a once in a lifetime view for a bunch of La. boys.

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Hendrix never played as single note that was not pure godhead.

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While he was fairly described as a perfectionist in the studio, he was just the slightest bit "sloppy" at some live performances. I do not say this was either unintentional or detracts from the performances - I mean, at the time, it was difficult to see where Jimi ended and his guitar began - during the brief window - while not the most technically proficient (I would rate him in a top tier, technically, but not nearly at the top) of the elite players, but was attuned to the music at the genius level. He wanted live performances to take on the characteristic of a fingerprint or the uniqueness of a snowflake - so he intentionally went about crafting those.

And, I mean, Jimi understood how feedback, effects (which he benefited from a growing variety of effects options, but almost nothing compared to what guys have available today), acoustics, just everything going into making music worked - and the results speak for themselves.

For example, if you listen to the studio version of his cover of All Along The Watchtower (in the end, my favorite song of his) - he and Redding had a falling out. So, he recorded it when Redding was away. Dave Mason had been excited to work with Jimi - and started out on the 12-string acoustic. Jimi didn't care for Mason's playing - at least how it was coming out on tape. So he took over and Mason slid down to bass. Jimi didn't care for Mason's bass, either, so Mason moved to the recording engineer slot and Jimi plays everything on the record except the drums and percussion.

And it is crafted expertly - every effect, pause, etc., is placed perfectly - so well done it has influenced the way Dylan has played his own song ever since.

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GOAT

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While highly subjective, and very often a popular choice, there is little question that Hendrix is the most influential six-string rock electric guitar player of all time, possibly excepting the other "Jimmy" (Page). I mean, there was a time before Jimi Hendrix, and the time since. That is a pretty significant bright line (and there were other cats in the window, even traditionally country guys like Glenn Campbell and Chet Atkins, along with Page, Beck, Clapton, the Kings, and so forth - but none of them leap out from history like Hendrix - and part of that is because he died young - but not all of it.)

Imagine if he'd have lived to be as old as SRV ?

Or hell BB King. How much greatness could have come out before his hands failed him and he ends up a strummer on a stage with his band? Like BB

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While highly subjective, and very often a popular choice, there is little question that Hendrix is the most influential six-string rock electric guitar player of all time,

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Everyone who came after Jimi could follow a clearly marked trail. When Jimi came along, he was going out where the busses don't run.

Has any other guitarist advanced the art as much as Jimi Hendrix?

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the racial component of it was certainly a factor, but Jimi wouldn't have been considered traditionally "black" at that point, more alien than anything else (like from another planet)

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Eh. Hendrix explicitly fled the racial animus of the US for more favorable climes in London...and he found them. His hometown outside of Seattle loves to claim him now, but that love was not reciprocated.

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Traumatised by an impoverished upbringing in Seattle and stung by the systemic racism that dogged him as a “half-caste” child of African-American and Cherokee parents, Hendrix was exceptionally vulnerable to the rankest forms of exploitation.

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LINK

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Hendrix left his hometown of Seattle because of racism, says Cross, his biographer. He grew up in a world of abject poverty and family turmoil that was typical of black families at that time. When he was a teenager, he was arrested on dubious charges of driving in stolen cars and given the choice of being jailed or enlisting in the Army, Cross says. He enlisted and became a paratrooper.

"What happened to Jimi would have never happened to a white male in that era," Cross says. "Jimi was run out of Seattle for being black."

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LINK

The latter article also talks about the racism he suffered from black audiences that thought he was an Uncle Tom (including in Harlem).

I stand by my original statement:

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Hendrix explicitly fled the racial animus of the US for more favorable climes in London.

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