When the guitar showed up it was like a third person in the apartment.Plunk,Plunk,Plunk, all day and all night, it took over Jimi's imagination and became the perfect companion. Alone in his room with all the time in the world to learn how to make it talk, to cry, to sing. His Father told him about Charlie Christian and Benny Goodman and all the other great Jazz musicians that he'd listened to when he was a young man and he began to absorb it. Jimi quickly began to absorb the popular Rock and Roll music that was beginning to to take the country by storm. Chuck Berry was the first black artist to attain real crossover succsess, Bill Haley and the Comets, Wilson Pickett, and the Blues artists like Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. He absorbed it all and within a few short years became the best rhythm and blues guitar player on the local scene playing in bands all over the city.
Never being interested in school Jimi dropped out of high school probably in his senior year. He spent some time working with his Dad but after an encounter with an old friend who had joined the Screaming Eagles, the elite Army paratrooper group. Jimi was so impressed he went down and started talking to the local recruiter and after a couple of conversations with him he joined up.
It was during his time in the Army as a paratrooper that his own unique conception of playing the the guitar began to form. He loved the sound of the big planes rolling across the sky and the intense rush of air into the cabin as the door opened. First the singing and crying of the wind and then falling away from the sound and floating down towards the earth with sound of the sky singing in his ears. After he got his father to send him his guitar to the Army base he began to use it to try to imitate the sound of the rolling aircraft and rushing wind. He started jamming at the base service clubs and once he had his guitar back he quickly realized what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He began sleeping with his guitar partly to keep it from being stolen by his fellow paratroopers but also because he'd heard that all the great bluesmen had done it as well.
He became a constant fixture in the music room, even when he was at mess without his guitar he would strum the air as if to finger some arpegio that only he could hear. Many of the men in his barracks began to complain, he would practice at night without an amplifier and talk to his guitar in the morning. He painted the name Betty Jean on it and began to call it by name. Eventually word got round that Jimi was getting out, his old friend from Seatle came by to see him, he had heard that Jimi had been to see every psychiatrist on the base, others said he had been in an accident during a fall. Whatever the reason, after 14 months in the Army Jimi Hendrix was given an Honorable Discharge and released.
