Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division; he was granted an honorable discharge the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who in turn interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the U.S. after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the U.S.; it was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27.
Hendrix was inspired musically by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in utilizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He helped to popularize the use of a wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock, and was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."
Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year, and in 1968, Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time.
I'm A Man
Jimi Hendrix Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
At the age of five,
I had somethin' in my pocket,
Keep a lot of folks alive.
Now I'm a man,
Made twenty-one,
You know baby,
I'm a man,
I spell M-A-N...man.
All you pretty women,
Stand in line,
I can make love to you baby,
In an hour's time.
I'm a man,
I spell M-A-N...man.
I goin' back down,
To Kansas to
Bring back the second cousin,
Little John the conqueroo.
I'm a man,
I spell M-A-N...man.
The line I shoot,
Will never miss,
The way I make love to 'em,
They can't resist.
I'm a man,
I spell M-A-N...man.
The opening line of "I'm A Man" by Jimi Hendrix is actually a modified version of a traditional blues song entitled "Mannish Boy" by Muddy Waters. In this song, Hendrix talks about growing up from a young boy into a man and the power he has over women. The line "I had somethin' in my pocket, keep a lot of folks alive" refers to the powerful effect his sexuality has on women.
As he continues the lyrics, he boasts about his ability to seduce women, claiming that he can make love to them within an hour's time, and that they can't resist his charm. The line "I goin' back down, to Kansas to bring back the second cousin, Little John the conqueroo" references another traditional blues song where "conqueroo" refers to a mythical creature known for its power over women.
Throughout the song, Hendrix repeats the phrase "I'm a man, I spell M-A-N...man" as a way of emphasizing his masculinity and his position of power in society. This is a common theme in the blues genre where male singers often sing about their sexual prowess and the control they have over women.
Overall "I'm A Man" is a classic example of the traditional blues sound with lyrics that emphasize power dynamics between men and women. The song has been covered by many artists, further spreading the influence of traditional blues music to new generations.
Line by Line Meaning
Now when I was a little boy,
At the age of five,
I had somethin' in my pocket,
Keep a lot of folks alive.
As a child, I possessed something that was valuable to many people.
Now I'm a man,
Made twenty-one,
You know baby,
We can have a lot of fun.
Now that I'm an adult, we can enjoy ourselves and have some fun.
I'm a man,
I spell M-A-N...man.
I am confident in my masculinity and want to make sure everyone knows it.
All you pretty women,
Stand in line,
I can make love to you baby,
In an hour's time.
All of you beautiful women, line up and I'll show you how good of a lover I am.
I'm a man,
I spell M-A-N...man.
I am confident in my masculinity and want to make sure everyone knows it.
I goin' back down,
To Kansas to
Bring back the second cousin,
Little John the conqueroo.
I'm on my way to Kansas to bring back my relative, Little John the Conqueroo.
The line I shoot,
Will never miss,
The way I make love to 'em,
They can't resist.
I am very skilled at hunting and at lovemaking; no one can resist me.
I'm a man,
I spell M-A-N...man.
I am confident in my masculinity and want to make sure everyone knows it.
Lyrics © DistroKid
Written by: Ellas McDaniel
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@quinngalloway4989
Listening to “Band of Gypsies”-era Jimi recordings has always been such a double-edged sword, bittersweet experience. Instantly—even simultaneously—inspirational and heartbreaking; breathtaking and tragic. He was barely into the evolutionary phase that would unbind his creativity from the limitations of commercial categorization, arbitrary genre boundaries, as well as sociocultural and racial separation, expectations, determinations, etc.
Phenomenal as BoG-era Jimi’s (relatively) meager amount of rehearsed, studio and (largely) improvised live recordings are, they were merely “rough drafts” and “warm-ups”; a brief glance of his burgeoning new vision on which he was only starting to fully focus.
There was a time I spent the better part of a year endlessly, and obsessively listening to every recording and reading every interview I could find of BoG-era Jimi.
It was such an engrossing, phenomenal, otherworldly, enthralling, bewitching, and enchanting experience. One that had such a substantial transporting effect on my mind that I genuinely started thinking, theorizing, and daydreaming about; worse yet, I sincerely began HOPING and WAITING for the next, NEW BoG Jimi album and performances.
Jimi’s potential had only just begun to journey into an unfathomable future expanse of promised potentialities and impossible possibilities.
My heart melted with an uncanny sort of excitement thinking about what sort of incredible new worlds of sound, sight, feeling, and experience Jimi would find on his new journey.
Reaching the zenith of anticipation for what Jimi would share with us from the journey into his singular future…and then I remembered
@mrmojo48
At 64 years old, I will never get tired of listening to Hendrix.
@TheIndogamer
Anthony Morrongiello it's been 16 years of my life.....
I'm sticking with Hendrix too.
@arquizul
agree -------- i am 97 years old & still listening john mayall & neil young & willie nelson ......... too old to rock and roll too young to die ......... hahaha
@dortega12
Same here
@ophiolatreia93
Anthony Morrongiello music is the elixir of life
@ProMrLecoq01
arquizul what 97 are you still alive? Wonder if this is a really weird internet troll or you were already old when jimi was hot and rocking haha
@carolblackburn3917
Wonderful ! I was lucky enough to see Jimi play live in 1969 - Yes I'm that old & still rockin'!
@mikescanlan7326
me, too!
@antoniopetisce3417
Me three! Rock on!!!
@a.j.martin7059
I didn't see him, but I'm that old, too, and still rockin'! I'm 82 today. For Jimi, I don't think it was his voice or his guitar playing only, but the fact that he could hear that inner sound, and try to bring it forward so we could all hear it. A very unusual man. His imitators can capture the voice and guitar, but don't seem to have the inner voice.