Touching the Purple Haze: A Conversation with Stanley Jordan on Reimagining Jimi Hendrix

Often, emphasis on genre improperly discards the lines of influence that transcend imposed stylistic segmentations. No artistic expression exists solely in isolation or in a neatly maintained silo. This is especially evident with Jimi Hendrix. Most would categorize the guitar great’s music as “rock.” In reality, his shadow – particularly his use of feedback, distortion, and tone as textures, as well as his use of altered dominants and polytonal voicings – casts over all areas of music. Before Hendrix, electric guitar in the space many would label “jazz” was overwhelmingly clean and precise. Think, for instance, of guitarists like Wes Montgomery or Kenny Burrell who frequently accompanied organ trios. Hendrix added a hard-hitting funkiness and gnarliness that was often largely missing from the vocabulary of improvised guitar at the time. In the words of John McLaughlin, “Hendrix showed me you could ‘scream’ with the guitar and still be musical.”  Or as Sonny Sharrock put it, “Jimi was the first to make the guitar ‘talk’ like a horn.” Both “fusion” and the “avant-garde” would be wildly different without Hendrix’s contributions. These lessons were not limited to a singular instrument. Miles Davis’ electric period, for one, has Hendrix’s fingerprints on it. However, even narrowing our scope to only guitars shows how his influence is wider than it first appears. The fact that Stanley Jordan is currently presenting a tribute to his artistic ancestor, as he will do at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on November 22, 2025, exposes the sheer breadth of Hendrix’s contributions.

Since emerging in the 1980s, Stanley Jordan’s developed himself as a guitarist whose tone exudes warmth and gentleness. This aesthetic is particularly evident on the record that brought him to prominence, Magic Touch (Blue Note, 1985), where the lyricism of original songs like “All the Children.” Much of the supreme intimacy and softness of his sound comes from his distinctive two-handed touch technique, which allows him to play melody, harmony, and rhythm simultaneously on his strings. His adoption of the touch technique not only reflected his extreme virtuosity but also earned him four Grammy Award nominations and the role of a figure who revolutionized modern guitar. While the music coming from his use of such an approach is beautiful and often very tender, there was also always an edge to Jordan’s music for anyone willing to look deeper. In his college years, he studied with Paul Lansky, and the composer’s approach of transforming recorded natural sounds can be subtly heard in Jordan’s work. The experimental nature of the serial music of another professor, Milton Babbitt, also seeps through. The touch technique itself comes from Hendrix’s use of left-handed tapping. Indeed, it was Hendrix’s work that first inspired a young Jordan to take up the guitar. Even the famed Magic Touch includes a cover of Hendrix’s “Angel.” And while Jordan does not always stay in that realm, when he decides to go scorched earth, the ghost of Hendrix emerges yet again.

There is a long history of musicians taking the works of others and adding their own spin, without much more. “Stanley Jordan plays Jimi” could easily have been such a project, with the younger artist essentially merely covering the elder’s tunes. The dominant force could have been Jordan’s own voice with Hendrix’s contributions – since they are a building block of his musical DNA – seemingly emerging in passing. Instead, in many ways, Jordan does the exact opposite with his project; he puts Hendrix at the fore with his own perspective channeled through his idol. He aims to present what he believes a Hendrix concert would be if held today, forty-five years after the legend’s death. Jordan does not merely look back at the prior works of his hero but also looks forward. He considers the pages in Hendrix’s artistic book that were left unwritten due to the subject’s substance abuse. He treads creative paths hinted at but not fully explored.  To fully place himself and the audience into such a mindset, Jordan even dresses up as Hendrix for his performances. True to his inspiration, musically, Jordan also sounds wilder and freer than many may anticipate given his earlier works.

The idea of being able to attend a concert, or something close to, of an artist who left decades before is certainly a curious thought. But there is more than entertainment at stake here. To both men, music is more than just an exercise in pleasure. In the words of Hendrix, “If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.” Jordan similarly recognizes music as part of something larger. Through his work in music therapy, he knows of its power to heal both body and mind. In his contributions to sonification, he seeks to avoid the social calamity that can come from poor decision-making by those in power. Just as Hendrix is more than “just a rock guitarist,” music itself is greater than the enjoyment it can provide. It is a prescription for remedying the chaos of life.

We sat down with Jordan to discuss the influence of Jimi Hendrix, Magic Touch at forty, and the true power of music.

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PostGenre: Before we get into your Jimi Hendrix project, 2025 marks the fortieth anniversary of Magic Touch. Do you have any thoughts on that record?

Stanley Jordan: This year, I’ve been doing several tributes to the album, actually. Magic Touch came at such a special moment in time. Everything just lined up. It wasn’t only the fact that the music, I think, struck a nerve in the public. There were many things that fell into place on the business side as well. I had met [Blue Note Records president] Bruce Lundvall when he was the president of Columbia Records. And after that, he was at Elektra Records.

I was scheduled to meet with Bruce to discuss a record deal with Elektra. But it turned out the night before our meeting, he received an offer to revive Blue Note Records. He got a call from the chairman of Capitol [Music Group, which operates Blue Note] asking him to come revive the label, and he accepted the offer on the spot. So, the day I came in to talk to Bruce about my record, the first thing he said was, “Actually, I don’t work here anymore.” He told me the story of the phone call the night before and how tremendous an opportunity it was to revive Blue Note. He also said that he wanted me to be the first artist he signed for the label. He was going to get things going and then give me a call to record. And that is how the record ended up on Blue Note. There was so much around that record that fell into place. I’m thrilled to be able to go back and play some of the songs from the record now, too. I don’t think I will play any of that music as part of the Jimi project, but who knows, I might be able to find a way to fit it in.  

PG: Do you remember when you first heard Hendrix’s music?

SJ: I think the second record I ever bought was Cry of Love (Reprise, 1971). I must have been about eleven [years of age at that time]. It was around the same time that I started playing guitar, though I think I bought the album after I started playing.

But I knew Jimi had passed away before that album. I remember when I first heard he had died. I was waiting for a checkup at a doctor’s office. The waiting room had magazines sitting on a table. I read one that had an article on how we had lost all of these icons. We lost Janis [Joplin]. We lost Jimi. And that’s when I found out Jimi died. I love Janis, but Jimi was such an icon to me. And I remember thinking that musicians really need to preserve what he did and to keep his legacy alive. I decided at that moment that I would learn how to play guitar. I’d been wanting to anyway, but that was when I really made up my mind that I was going to play.

So, the idea of a Hendrix tribute, in a way, was in the air from the beginning because he was so connected with my starting guitar.

PG: Do you feel his approach to guitar can be heard in your own sound in some tangible way?

SJ: Yeah, he was such an innovator in his approach to the instrument. A couple of videos I watched a long time ago showed him tapping the guitar with the pick or playing guitar with only one hand for a little while. Jimi certainly didn’t play one-handed or tap on the guitar  as extensively as other people, but he was the first person I saw do it. When I saw the videos, I thought, “Hey, that was cool what he just did right there. Wouldn’t it be cool to play with one hand and then play another part with the other hand?” So, you could say that my touch technique was inspired by watching Jimi Hendrix.

PG: Do you have any sense why the touch technique is not more frequently used by other guitarists?

SJ: Well, I think it’s caught on a lot with younger musicians in recent years. Many math rock bands, for example, use a tapping guitar. I would say things have changed now, with the technique’s use becoming much more common.

But I think it’s a fair question to ask why it took so long for the technique to be used more often. I think there have always been people you could point to, like [Eddie] Van Halen or Emmett Chapman with the Chapman stick, who used the technique. Emmett was using the technique even before I was, though I wasn’t aware of it when I started using it. The technique was still fairly rare until recently. I think that nowadays, it has really caught on with younger artists.

PG: As far as the Jimi project, you do more than merely play your own interpretations of his songs. With each performance, you try to recreate a hypothetical fantasy concert by him. You even dress up as him. Do you feel dressing up places you more into the mindset of how he would approach music?

SJ: Definitely. We don’t really know how Jimi would dress if he were still here today. My guess is he probably would have a different style than he did in the 1960s. But I don’t really address that in this show. It’s more important for me to create the illusion, as an actor, that it is Jimi Hendrix on stage. Since I’m trying to recreate the jaw-dropping experience of experiencing a Jimi Hendrix concert and people are accustomed to seeing Jimi looking a certain way, it’s more important for me to work with that image to create the illusion for the audience. When it comes to the music, that’s where I have more liberty to update what he did.

PG: You are also not merely doing covers of Jimi’s tunes and instead trying to adopt his mindset towards creating music. Is it more difficult to approach his music from that angle than simply covering his work?

SJ: Yes, I would have to say this one has been one of my more challenging projects because I have so much love and respect for Jimi. He has always amazed me, not just as a guitarist but also as a person. The project is a lot of work, but I truly love it. Though this may sound weird, I feel that I have a spiritual kinship with Jimi. I feel connected to him. There was a time in my teen years, when I started playing guitar, that it took me a while to figure out I wasn’t Jimi musically. He was such an idol to me. His style, the things he would say, his mind, and the way that he would think all came from creativity. He oozed creativity in everything he said and did. He had a mission to do something good through music, not to merely entertain or succeed artistically. He wanted to make the world a better place through music. Music’s effect on people was really important to him. And that really speaks to me.

PG: So, you always knew if you were doing a tribute to another artist that it would be Jimi?

SJ: Well, when I first did something like this, it was with Phil Lesh. I have played many Phil Lesh and Friends shows starting in 2012. One thing we did was a five-night run in 2016 at Terrapin Crossroads [in San Rafael, California]. One of the performances there was an all-day show called “Aquarius Rising.” The idea was that, in one day, we would recreate all the classic performances from Woodstock. We all played the roles of different people. Phil was the only one there who actually played at Woodstock. All the rest of us were in character, so to speak. For example, Elliot Peck was Grace Slick. I had three jobs that day. I was Pete Townshend, Carlos Santana, and Jimi Hendrix.

It was so much fun. Oh my god, it was fun. I remember going to the theater to watch the movie Woodstock (Warner Bros., 1970) when it first came out. It was a big deal for me. However, Townshend, Santana, and Hendrix are completely different, yet amazing, guitar players who all influenced me. In terms of being the character and going on stage as that person, I felt there was no way that I could do justice to all three. So I ultimately decided to pick only one, and I chose Jimi. I spent significant time putting together the outfit to wear to portray him, and had great fun doing so. Something really resonated with me in [portraying him].

Then, a few years later, came the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock, and I had the idea of imagining what Jimi would be doing today if he were still making music.

PG: What do you feel he would be doing musically today?

SJ: We don’t know, obviously. But we do know he wouldn’t be doing the same stuff he was doing in 1970.

PG:Right.

SJ: He would have progressed into other things. But toward the end of his career, Jimi was starting to do interesting things harmonically. One of my favorite of his albums is Nine to the Universe (Reprise, 1980); it was some studio jams late in his career that came out years after he passed. In it, you could start to hear that he was moving more into jazz.

He was also a fan of surf guitar player Dick Dale. A lot of people don’t know this, but Dick Dale was Lebanese, which is why that surf music has a Middle Eastern vibe to it; that whole thing came in because of his Lebanese heritage. Anyway, as a fan of Dick Dale and surf music, Jimi started to work with some of those Middle Eastern scales as well. There might have also been other influences on him to do that. But for sure, he was starting to expand his harmonic vocabulary beyond blues scales. That expansion influenced me when I was younger to see how far I could take things. I wanted to see what other scales were out there, and went on an expedition to mathematically map out all the possible scales and chords. And that was one of the things that got me into jazz at the beginning of my career.

PG: Do you find yourself getting lost in the character of Jimi when you perform this project?

SJ: Well, another thing that I like about this project is that it allows me to, in a sense, be myself too. People coming to one of my concerts want to hear me do the things that are part of my musical personality. So, naturally, if I imagine Jimi today, it’s going to have my stuff in it. I’m not trying to argue that Jimi would be doing the same thing I do, though I do think I followed up on some of what he was working on towards the end of his life. So, it’s a really intriguing concept.

I’ve gotten some great positive feedback from people when they see the show and get the concept of what I’m doing with it. In fact, I think that this approach to other artists’ work could be a new genre. Other people could have their version of what they imagine another artist would be doing today and build off of that.

PG: While at Princeton University, you studied composition with Milton Babbitt. Do you incorporate any of the elements of his work in your Jimi project as a way of imagining something Hendrix may have explored during his career?

SJ: So far, I have not. However, I am increasingly starting to incorporate those ideas into the Jimi show. I have held off for a while because I was not finding a plausible enough link between that music and what Jimi was doing before he died. Anything where I can expand upon the Blues would make sense. There are many things from jazz that expand on the Blues that I can easily incorporate into the project .

But there is one place where I think Babbitt’s music does fit into the project now that I think of it. One of the songs that we play is “EXP,” which was on Jimi’s album, Axis: Bold as Love (Reprise, 1967). “EXP” has an interview, ultimately leading to “Up From the Skies,” with an alien character. It features a bunch of weird and crazy avant-garde sounds. It’s an opportunity for us to go in any direction we want musically. I will bring in some Babbitt-inspired stuff for that piece  because it fits the theme of the music of the space creature.

PG: When you imagine a hypothetical future for Jimi’s music, do you take into consideration any of the projects he had worked on that fell through the cracks? For instance, do you think about the failed group he almost had with Miles [Davis], Tony Williams, and [Paul] McCartney?

SJ: In not such specific terms. But there is a show that we’re doing – not at NJPAC but elsewhere – that is part of my Grateful Dead tribute. For this, I was asked to combine both the Dead project and the Jimi one. I wasn’t sure how to do so, but I ultimately found out that there was a legendary concert where Jimi was supposed to sit in with the Dead. It didn’t end up happening, but we have the set list from that show. I think we’re going to work off that set list and imagine what might have happened had he actually sat in with the Dead.

PG: That’s cool.

SJ: Yeah, there’s a lot of studying history involved in considering what Jimi would be doing musically today. You have to imagine Jimi would be very conscious of the things going on in the world today. Even though he wasn’t explicitly political for the most part, he would make comments and address issues that were going on. For sure, “Machine Gun” was incredibly political. I think a big issue today is saving democracy. It is interesting to think about how Jimi would address that.

PG: Somewhat tied to that, earlier, you mentioned how Jimi’s music was beyond entertainment. Do you see a direct connection between that element and your interest in music therapy?

SJ: Yes, definitely. One of the things that greatly intrigued me when I was reading a lot of interviews from Jimi was how he had said he wanted to do the “Electric Sky Church” [, Hendrix’s concept of a metaphorical, spiritual space where music serves as a conduit for transcendence]. He wanted music to be a spiritual experience.

The spiritual side and the healing side of music go hand in hand. The idea that music goes beyond the surface and can achieve non-musical goals is the whole concept of music therapy. Based on the words of Jimi and some of my other favorite artists, as well as some of the experiences that I had as a youngster, I knew that music has a special power. But, for a long time, I didn’t know there was science behind it. I didn’t know there was a profession around musical therapy until I was in my mid-thirties. That’s when I started getting involved with music therapy.

PG: Does your work with music therapy shape your work as a composer? Do you keep music therapy in mind when composing?

SJ: I do, but I have to preface this by saying that I put taking the stage as an artist in a different category than conducting a music healing session. When you approach music therapeutically, you focus much more on the needs of the people you’re working with. For example, I worked with a music therapist to help a girl with severe developmental delays. She was about two and a half years old and has several physical disabilities. Music was the only thing that she ever gravitated towards. She wasn’t speaking. She wasn’t communicating normally. But music was her whole world. So, I tried out different things to play for her. I said to her, “Hey, do you like the blues?” and played some blues licks. And she visibly frowned. “Okay, so you don’t like the blues. No problem.” The point is, she was communicating. She was expressing her preference when she usually couldn’t. That goes way beyond my music or any ego I may have as an artist. All of that goes out the window. The music was doing something far more important. I would occasionally check in with the music therapist, who later told me that the girl started to show more and more signs that she would actually learn to speak. The medical experts didn’t know if she would ever learn to speak. But with the help of music, she was getting there.

PG: It is incredible how music has a power to allow people to communicate when they otherwise could not. My nine-month-old son is not disabled, but also cannot communicate in words yet due to his age. But you could see from the day he was born how music clicked with him. You can see it often with young babies, suggesting it is not socially learned. There’s something in music that transcends language; transcends all kinds of things.

SJ: It’s amazing. It really, truly is amazing. Most people know Noam Chomsky for his political writings, but he was also an important figure in the development of modern linguistics. I think there’s something in Chomsky’s work in linguistics that can relate to music. One of the more fascinating things has come from his research of people who have had fairly severe brain damage from a physical trauma, for example, from a car accident. They lose much of their abilities, but very often can still groove to a rhythm. If they hear music, they can move to the beat of the music. And that’s a pretty complex task because your brain has to hear the sound and decode the underlying pulse. Then it must synchronize and maintain motor synchronization with that pulse. It’s very complex.

The point of this is that most damage from a physical trauma comes from the outside in. In other words, the inner parts of the brain tend to be more preserved after that type of accident. What Chomsky’s work suggests is that the ability to groove to a rhythm is very deep inside the brain, in a part that still wasn’t affected by the trauma. It also suggests that the skill of grooving is very old in terms of our evolution and a central to who we are as a species on the planet.

PG: That’s fascinating. Where does technology fit in? You are hardly someone averse to technology, having studied and worked in computer music and even providing the startup chime for the first generation Power Macintosh computers. In an interesting podcast with your alma mater, Princeton University, on these areas, you said music is an applied philosophy. You also spoke of how music deepens our understanding of each other. How does the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – essentially  computers thinking for themselves with less and less human input – interfere with music as a method of understanding one another when at least one side of the conversation is not human at all?

SJ: Wow, there are a couple of things that I can pick up on there. For one, with AI in general, I do have concerns that we humans are moving too quickly and not really thinking about the possible effects of what we are doing with the technology. There is a danger that we could reach a point where it’s hard to turn back because we’ve relegated so many tasks to AI that the AI controls critical systems, and we can’t wrestle them back. I definitely have concerns there.

However, I would say in terms of technology in general, there is one area of technology I feel is especially positive about. I have been working in the area and am very excited about its potential. It’s not even new. It’s just that the technology is getting better. And that area is called sonification. It is where you take data and render it in an audible form. I’ve been developing technology that turns data into non-speech audio. I have also been giving presentations with scientists and physicists to spread the word on it and get more people aware of its possibilities.

I think sonification could be so significant because we’re living in an age where visual representations have been predominant for a good six hundred years. My own theory is that the predominance of the visual form – called ocular centrism – traces back to the invention of the printing press. Occular centrism is the belief that visually represented information is somehow superior, smarter, or more important than that communicated aurally.

We’re all familiar with the visual kid in class doing really well in school, while the more auditory and kinesthetic kid struggles. That difference is often because information is presented to the students in a more visual way. Sonification can change that. With sonification, we bring in a part of our brain that’s more integral because it connects more directly to the rest of our brain. The optic nerve only goes to the visual cortex at the back of the brain. But the auditory nerve splits before it even hits the brain. It splits and goes directly to every major center of the brain. Humans are actually wired for sound more comprehensively than for visuals. If you can represent information by sound, you can understand it on a deeper level.

On a more integral level. I would suggest that this deeper understanding could make people better decision-makers. For example, imagine you’re in a boardroom and need to make a big decision. A lot of these boardrooms are so dry. But what if you were able to sing and incorporate music into the decision-making process? Many people in the corporate world would be resistant to this approach initially, but doing so could help lead to choices that would do things like improve the quality of life for employees. Incorporating music into the decision-making process might lead to more compassionate choices. It will let you take a bigger picture view of things.  

I tend to be very optimistic. Even overly optimistic sometimes. But I think that if people were making more integral decisions, it might also help with the problem of runaway AI, where people are stuck with tunnel vision and not thinking about the big picture. Music can do so much, if you let it.

Stanley Jordan will be performing his tribute to Jimi Hendrix at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) on November 22, 2025. More information on Jordan is available on his website.