Jimi Hendrix Formed a Band While in the Army Called The Kasuals
Before he was a rock star, Jimi Hendrix was a young parachutist in the U.S. Army’s famous 101st Airborne Division. While Hendrix’s time in the army didn’t last long, it was productive — though for his music career and not his military one.
Jimi Hendrix enlisted in the army in 1961
Philip Norman’s 2020 book Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix described how Hendrix came to join the army in the first place. He had a run-in with the law after stealing some clothes from a local store, and the judge presented him with the choice of juvenile detention or enlisting in the army.
“After what he described as ‘seven days in the cooler,’ but was more likely a few hours on remand in juvenile hall, a judge gave him the choice of two years detention or joining the army,” Norman wrote. “He unhesitatingly picked the latter, which at the time hardly seemed like punishment at all. He had long felt attracted to a life in one or other armed service, not from any bellicose spirit but because it seemed to offer all the security and stability his childhood had lacked.”
Jimi Hendrix formed The Kasuals while in the army
One of Hendrix’s fellow servicemen, Billy Cox, overheard Hendrix playing guitar one night and was intrigued.
“I asked my buddy who was with me what he thought of the guy’s playing and he said he thought it sounded like a bunch of mess,” Cox recalled. “But he was only listening with a human ear and thought I was listening with a spiritual ear. To me it sounded like a combination of John Lee Hooker and Beethoven. I walked in and introduced myself and told him I had played upright bass in the school symphony, but I wasn’t that good. He said, ‘They have electric basses now, go check them out. By the way, my name is Jimmy Hendrix.'”
Hendrix and Cox soon became inseparable, and the two formed their own band with other soldiers called The Kasuals.
He was eventually discharged because he cared more about music than the military
The army didn’t make any effort to shut down The Kasuals, but it became clear that Hendrix cared more about music than about his training.
“Playing with the Kasuals until all hours often made him late for bed-check and he was always tired and nodding off to sleep while on duty,” Norman said of Hendrix’s time in the service. “‘He seems unable to conform to military rules and regulations,’ the army concluded, ‘and his mind apparently cannot function while performing duties and thinking about his guitar.’”
Hendrix was honorably discharged from the army in 1962 after serving for a year, but Cox and Hendrix kept The Kasuals alive, renaming themselves The King Kasuals. Eventually, Hendrix blazed his own path as a guitarist by playing backup guitar for major artists like Little Richard and Ike and Tina Turner. In the mid-1960s, he formed a band of his own, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, which became the foundation for his storied career that rock fans revere today.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience released three smash albums in succession in 1967 and 1968: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland. He continued to perform after their dissolution in 1969 up until his death in September 1970 at age 27.
