SEATTLE (AP) — James Al Hendrix, father of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, died Wednesday after a long battle with congestive heart failure. He was 82.
The elder Hendrix was chairman of the board of Experience Hendrix, a family company centered on his son's legacy and headed by his daughter, Janie L. Hendrix.
In 1999, Hendrix wrote "My Son Jimi," a book about his oldest son, a 1960s music icon who died at age 27 from a drug overdose in 1970.
Steeped in the blues recordings of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and others favored by his father, Jimi Hendrix taught himself to play an old ukulele his father had given him. The guitar followed.
The elder Hendrix, the youngest of four children born to a pair of vaudeville actors, grew up mostly in Canada. He dropped out of school to go to work after his father died in the mid-1930s, came to Seattle around 1940 and stayed after winning a Golden Gloves boxing tournament.
James Al Hendrix also worked as a plumber, electrician and gardener before retiring because of poor health in 1979.