Jimi Hendrix Trivia
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97 free Jimi Hendrix trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jimi Hendrix played guitar for barely twelve years and changed the instrument for good. Born in Seattle in 1942, he learned on a one-string ukulele pulled from someone's trash, did a stint with the 101st Airborne, paid his dues on the Chitlin' Circuit behind the Isley Brothers and Little Richard, and was playing Greenwich Village clubs when Chas Chandler of the Animals flew him to London in September 1966. Within a year the Jimi Hendrix Experience had three UK top-ten singles, and a burning Stratocaster at Monterey had made him a star in America. This quiz follows the whole arc: childhood and the Army, the sideman years, the Experience and its three albums, the Monterey and Woodstock performances, Band of Gypsys, the studio he built in New York, his gear and effects, the Toronto trial, and the honours that followed his death in London at 27. Expect questions on who introduced him to whom, which tape he left in a taxi and what the London press called him after the Astoria. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for quiz night.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Hendrix born in 1942?
Seattle
Hendrix was born in Seattle on 27 November 1942; his father Al, away in the Army, was locked in the stockade, as he believed, to stop him going AWOL to see the baby.
Q 02Hendrix's father renamed him James in 1946; what had his mother named him at birth?
Johnny Allen
Johnny Allen Hendrix was the name his mother Lucille gave him while his father Al was away in the Army; back home in 1946, Al renamed him after himself and his own brother Leon.
Q 03Before he owned a guitar, the young Hendrix picked out tunes on which one-stringed instrument?
A ukulele
A ukulele, old and down to a single string, came home with his father; until then, Hendrix had been strumming a broom as if it were a guitar.
Q 04How much did Hendrix's first guitar, a second-hand acoustic, cost in the late 1950s?
$5
$5 bought the second-hand acoustic from a friend of his father's; within months Hendrix was in his first band, the Velvetones, and pressing his father for an electric guitar.
Q 05Which soul group hired the unknown Hendrix as their guitarist in New York in 1964?
The Isley Brothers
The Isley Brothers auditioned him soon after he reached New York and put him in their backing band; within weeks he was in the studio with them, playing on their single 'Testify'.
Q 06Which Army division was Hendrix assigned to after enlisting in 1961?
101st Airborne
The 101st Airborne trained him as a paratrooper at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he earned the Screaming Eagles patch; by his own account, an injury on a parachute jump ended his service after about a year.
Q 07Which bassist did Hendrix meet in the Army and later bring into Band of Gypsys?
Billy Cox
Billy Cox, a fellow soldier at Fort Campbell, heard Hendrix practising and likened the sound to a mix of John Lee Hooker and Beethoven; the two were soon playing clubs together as the King Kasuals.
Q 08Hendrix won first prize at an amateur contest at which venue in February 1964?
The Apollo Theater
The Apollo Theater's amateur contest gave Hendrix first prize in February 1964, soon after he moved to Harlem; he then worked the Harlem club circuit, sitting in with any band that would have him.
Q 09Which rock-and-roll pioneer's touring band employed Hendrix until he was fired in 1965?
Little Richard
Hendrix played in Little Richard's touring band in 1965, clashing with him over lateness, wardrobe and stage antics until Richard's brother Robert Penniman sacked him that July.
Q 10What was the name of the band Hendrix formed in Greenwich Village before he moved to London?
Jimmy James and the Blue Flames
Jimmy James and the Blue Flames had two members called Randy, so Hendrix renamed them by home state; 15-year-old Randy Wolfe kept the name Randy California when he co-founded Spirit.
Q 11At which Greenwich Village club did Chas Chandler first see Hendrix play?
Cafe Wha?
Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street was where Chas Chandler, tipped off by a friend who had watched Hendrix's sets, saw him in the summer of 1966 and resolved to take him to London.
Q 12Chas Chandler, who became Hendrix's manager, had been the bassist in which band?
The Animals
The Animals, the Newcastle band behind 'The House of the Rising Sun', had Chandler on bass; leaving to manage and produce, he brought Hendrix to London in September 1966 and built a band around him.
Q 13Who played bass in the Jimi Hendrix Experience?
Noel Redding
Noel Redding, a guitarist who had come to audition for another band, was offered the bass job by Chas Chandler; one biographer says what Hendrix really liked was his hairstyle.
Q 21A British urban legend credits Hendrix with releasing which birds on Carnaby Street?
Parakeets
Parakeets freed on Carnaby Street in the late 1960s are one popular origin story for London's wild flocks; a 2019 study that mapped decades of sightings found no sign the birds spread from there.
Q 22Which album was Hendrix's debut, released in 1967?
Are You Experienced
Are You Experienced came out in Britain in May 1967 and climbed to number two; America had to wait until August, after his Monterey set had made him news at home.
Q 23Which album kept Hendrix's debut off the top of the UK chart in June 1967?
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Q 14Who was the Experience's drummer?
Mitch Mitchell
Mitch Mitchell had just left Georgie Fame's band when Chas Chandler called; he won the Experience's drum stool on the toss of a coin against Aynsley Dunbar.
Q 15Which Howlin' Wolf song did Hendrix play when he jumped on stage with Cream in October 1966?
"Killing Floor"
"Killing Floor" was the number Hendrix tore through when he sat in with Cream at a London polytechnic, a week after landing in England; it also opened his set at Monterey the following summer.
Q 16The Experience played its first shows in October 1966 supporting which French rock singer?
Johnny Hallyday
Johnny Hallyday, France's rock-and-roll idol, took the trio on a short tour of his home country only days after it was formed, so its first audiences had come to see someone else.
Q 17The managers of which band set up Track Records, the Experience's British label?
The Who
The Who's managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, hurried over to Chas Chandler after an early London show, eager to get involved; Hendrix already had a manager, so they signed him to the label they were starting.
Q 18What was the Experience's first single?
"Hey Joe"
"Hey Joe" reached number six in Britain after its release in December 1966, yet failed to chart at all when it came out as his first American single the following spring.
Q 19In 1966 a British model lent the unknown Hendrix a guitar that belonged to her boyfriend, which rock star?
Keith Richards
Keith Richards's guitar was lent out by his girlfriend, the model Linda Keith, after she saw Hendrix in a New York club; she then set about getting record men and managers to come and watch him.
Q 20London newspapers in 1967 dubbed Hendrix the 'Wild Man of' where?
Borneo
Borneo's 'wild men' were an old showbiz billing: the pair the showman Barnum exhibited under that name were really two brothers from an Ohio farm; London's press hung the tag on Hendrix along with 'the Black Elvis'.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band held the top spot; three days after its release, Hendrix opened a London show with its title track while two of the Beatles watched from the audience.
Q 24Which Beatle insisted the Monterey Pop Festival book the Experience?
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney sat on the festival's board and pressed the organisers to book the trio, which was still unknown in America, where its only single had failed to chart.
Q 25Which Rolling Stone introduced Hendrix on stage at Monterey in June 1967?
Brian Jones
Brian Jones walked on at Monterey in June 1967 and told the crowd Hendrix was the most exciting player he had ever heard; the set he introduced ended with a guitar in flames.
Q 26Hendrix ended his Monterey set in 1967 by burning his guitar at the close of which cover song?
"Wild Thing"
"Wild Thing" ended with the guitar in flames, and Ed Caraeff, a 17-year-old crouched on a chair at the front, caught the photograph that later made the cover of Rolling Stone.
Q 27The Experience quit partway through a 1967 US tour as opening act for which band?
The Monkees
The Monkees were fans and asked for the Experience, but their young audience wanted no part of it; Chas Chandler later said he had set up the mismatch for the publicity.
Q 28Where did Hendrix lose the master tape of side one of Axis: Bold as Love?
In the back of a London taxi
In the back of a London taxi is where the side-one master vanished in late 1967; most of it was remixed in one overnight session, and 'If 6 Was 9' was saved from a bandmate's wrinkled copy, ironed flat.
Q 29The cover of Axis: Bold as Love pastes the band's faces onto a religious poster of which Hindu god?
Vishnu
Vishnu's many forms carry the faces of the three band members; Hendrix disliked the sleeve and said it should have drawn on his American Indian heritage, not the art of India.
Q 30Which album was Hendrix's only US number one?
Electric Ladyland
Electric Ladyland topped the Billboard chart for two weeks in November 1968; during the sessions producer Chas Chandler walked out, worn down by endless retakes and a control room full of Hendrix's guests.