Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall Hendrix arrived in London in 1966 and within months had reorganized what the electric guitar could do. His performances at the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock are touchstones of twentieth-century music, but the recordings themselves — Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland — demonstrate a composer and sonic architect of the first order. He died at twenty-seven, having compressed a lifetime of innovation into fewer than five years of recording. Every guitarist since has lived in his wake.