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Frank Dicksee
Frank Bernard Dicksee

Today is the birthday of Francis Bernard Dicksee (London 27 November 1853 – 17 October 1928 London); Victorian painter and illustrator, best known for his pictures of dramatic literary, historical, and legendary scenes.  He also was a noted painter of portraits of fashionable women, which helped to bring him success in his own time.

He was knighted in 1925, and named to the Royal Victorian Order by King George V in 1927. In 1921 Dicksee exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Graphic Art in London.

Dicksee painted The Funeral of a Viking (1893; Manchester Art Gallery, see below), was used by Swedish Viking/Black metal band Bathory for the cover of their 1990 album, Hammerheart.

Gallery

The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy 1902.

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  Chivalry, 1885

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  Lady Palmer

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  An Offering

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  Christ of the Cornfield, 1888

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  The Funeral of a Viking, 1893

   

Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix performing on the Dutch television show Hoepla in 1967

Today is the birthday of James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; Seattle, Washington; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970 Kensington, London); rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter.  Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century.  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music”.

Hendrix had three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Hey Joe”, “Purple Haze”, and “The Wind Cries Mary”.  He achieved fame in the US 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 US.  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 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.

Hendrix met 20-year-old Kathy Etchingham in The Scotch of St. James nightclub, on the night of his arrival in London on 24 September 1966. They became a couple during the time of his rise to stardom. According to her personal web page, Etchingham was the inspiration for many of Hendrix’s compositions including “The Wind Cries Mary” (penned after an argument between Hendrix and Etchingham), “Foxy Lady” (during one of the first performances of this number Hendrix pointed her out from the stage), as the Katherina in “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” and in “Send My Love to Linda” (the original lyrics of which were “Send My Love to Kathy”, until Etchingham objected to being named). In 1969, she and Hendrix drifted apart.

Hendrix met Monika Dannemann on 12 January 1969, in Düsseldorf, after his concert there. She spent that night with him and part of the next day too, when she accompanied him to his next concert in Cologne; after that, she returned to Düsseldorf. He spent the last night of the tour with model Uschi Obermaier, with whom he was filmed kissing and petting outside the Kempinski Hotel the next morning. He wrote to Dannemann on 25 March 1969, inviting her to visit him in New York City. Dannemann claims she next saw Hendrix when she travelled to London on 25 April 1969 in the hope of meeting him again, where she bumped into him at the Speakeasy Club. She says they spent some time together over the next nine days, but she only spent one night with him.

After his September 1970 European tour, Hendrix began a relationship with the Danish model Kirsten Nefer. (It was reported in the Danish press at the time that they were engaged.) After Nefer left London due to work, he again took up with Dannemann on 15 September and spent the next four nights at her flat at the Samarkand Hotel, Notting Hill Gate.

Details are disputed concerning Hendrix’s last day and death. He spent much of September 17, 1970, with Dannemann, the only witness to his final hours. Dannemann said that she prepared a meal for them at her apartment in the Samarkand Hotel around 11 p.m., when they shared a bottle of wine. She drove him to the residence of an acquaintance at approximately 1:45 a.m., where he remained for about an hour before she picked him up and drove them back to her flat at 3 a.m. She said that they talked until around 7 a.m., when they went to sleep. Dannemann awoke around 11 a.m. and found Hendrix breathing but unconscious and unresponsive. She called for an ambulance at 11:18 a.m., and it arrived nine minutes later. Paramedics transported Hendrix to St Mary Abbot’s Hospital where Dr. John Bannister pronounced him dead at 12:45 p.m. on September 18.

Coroner Gavin Thurston ordered a post-mortem examination which was performed on September 21 by Professor Robert Donald Teare, a forensic pathologist. Thurston completed the inquest on September 28 and concluded that Hendrix aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates. Citing “insufficient evidence of the circumstances”, he declared an open verdict. Dannemann later revealed that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage.

Desmond Henley embalmed Hendrix’s body which was flown to Seattle on September 29. Hendrix’s family and friends held a service at Dunlap Baptist Church in Seattle’s Rainier Valley on Thursday, October 1; his body was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in nearby Renton, the location of his mother’s grave. Family and friends traveled in 24 limousines, and more than 200 people attended the funeral, including Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding, Miles Davis, John Hammond, and Johnny Winter.

Hendrix is often cited as one example of an allegedly disproportionate number of musicians dying at age 27, a phenomenon referred to as the 27 Club.

Song lyrics

Are You Experienced? (1967)

• I got a bad, bad feeling my baby don’t live here no more…
  But that’s alright i still got my guitar.
  • Red House

• Waterfall, nothing can harm me at all
  My worries seem so very small
  With my waterfall.
  • May This Be Love

• Listen here, baby
  And stop acting so crazy
  You say your mum ain’t home,
  it ain’t my concern,
  Just play with me and you won’t get burned.
  I have only one itching desire:
  Let me stand next to your fire.
  • Fire

• We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sunrise
  From the bottom of the sea
  But first, are you experienced?
  Uh-have you ever been experienced? Well, I have
  • Are You Experienced?

• Have you ever been experienced?
  Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful.
  • Are You Experienced?

• Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?
  Hey Joe, I said where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?
  Alright. I’m goin down to shoot my old lady,
  You know I caught her messin’ ’round with another man.
  Yeah,! I’m goin’ down to shoot my old lady,
  You know I caught her messin’ ’round with another man.
  Huh! And that ain’t too cool.
  • Hey Joe

• Purple haze, all in my brain
  Lately things just don’t seem the same,
  Acting funny, but I don’t know why,
  ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.
  • Purple Haze

• You got me blowin, blowin my mind,
  Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?
  • Purple Haze

• The traffic lights, they turn a blue tomorrow
  And shine their emptiness down on my bed
  The tiny island sags on downstream
  Cause the life it lived, is, is dead
  • The Wind Cries Mary

Axis: Bold as Love (1967)

• Well she’s walking through the clouds
  With a circus mind, that’s running round.
  Butterflies and Zebras, and moonbeams, and fairytales-
  That’s all she ever thinks about. Riding with the wind.
  • Little Wing

• White collar conservative flashin’ down the street,
  Pointing that plastic finger at me,
  Hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
  But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high.
  • If 6 Was 9

• I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.
  • If 6 Was 9

• Castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually
  • Castles Made Of Sand

• Anger he smiles towering in shiney metallic purple armour,
  Queen jealousy envy waits behind him,
  Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground.
  • Bold as Love

Electric Ladyland (1968)

• You’re just like crosstown traffic
  So hard to get through to you.
  Crosstown traffic.
  I don’t need to run over you.
  Crosstown traffic.
  All you do is slow me down.
  And I’m tryin’ to get on the other side of town.
  • Crosstown Traffic

• I’m a Voodoo Child, Voodoo Child,
  Lord knows I am a Voodoo Child
  • Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Rainbow Bridge (1971)

• I used to live in a room full of mirrors,
  All I could see was me.
  Then I take my spirit and I smash my mirrors,
  And now the whole world is here for me to see,
  Now I’m searching for my love to be.
  • Room Full Of Mirrors