Al Hendrix, the father of the late guitar legend Jimi Hendrix and longtime protector of his legacy, died Wednesday in his Seattle home.
He was 82 and had congestive heart failure.
Mr. Hendrix, remembered as a gracious, gentle and kind man who loved golf and plants, had spent the 31 years since his famous son’s death preserving his memory, eventually gaining the rights to Jimi’s name and music and pursuing a controversial monument at his grave site in Renton, south of Seattle.
Born James Al Hendrix, Mr. Hendrix grew up in Vancouver with performing aspirations, training in dancing and boxing.
The Depression forced him to focus on earning a living instead. Settling in Seattle in 1940, he and his wife, Lucille Jeter, had son Johnny Allen in 1942. When Mr. Hendrix returned from military service in Atlanta several years later, he renamed his son James Marshall Hendrix.
After his divorce from Lucille, who died in 1957, Mr. Hendrix raised Jimmy, as James was called then, and his half-brother Leon as a single father.
Mr. Hendrix gave Jimmy an old ukulele as a toy, followed by a $5 acoustic guitar and soon after, a used electric. Jimmy taught himself to play by ear and later dropped out of high school to tour with bands and develop his new technique. He also changed the spelling of his first name to Jimi.
“I told him one time,” Al Hendrix once said, “`When you get into the music, into doing your thing, do something original, do something different.’ He sure did.”
Jimi Hendrix died Sept. 18, 1970, at age 27 of a drug overdose.
In 1995, Mr. Hendrix and his family gained full control over Jimi Hendrix’s music, name and likeness, estimated at between $60 million and $90 million, after two years of legal troubles.
The settlement granted Mr. Hendrix back royalties and rights to future royalties.
After the decision, he and daughter Janie founded Experience Hendrix, a Seattle-based management company, to handle the estate.
