Though the Jimi Hendrix Experience released only three albums in its three-year existence, the trio's influence remains huge. Their drummer, Mitch Mitchell, who has died aged 61, apparently of natural causes, in a hotel in Portland, Oregon, cemented himself into rock'n'roll history with his free-ranging but powerful technique, partly influenced by John Coltrane's drummer Elvin Jones.
Mitchell was recruited into the band in autumn 1966, after Hendrix had been brought over to England from New York by his new manager, Chas Chandler, previously the bassist with the Animals. Mitchell recalled that when Chandler offered him the job, he replied that he would "have a go for two weeks".
Born in Ealing, west London, Mitchell gained his first taste of show business as a child actor, appearing in BBC television's Jennings at School. But by the time Chandler came knocking, he had amassed a wealth of musical experience via stints with several early sixties bands including the Tornados, the Coronets and the Riot Squad. In 1964, Mitchell was among several drummers who auditioned for the Who, only to be trumped by Keith Moon, and in mid-1965 his profile received a hefty boost when he joined Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames. The band split on October 1 1966, and on October 6 he attended his first rehearsal with Hendrix's band. The trio was completed by another Englishman, Noel Redding, on bass.
In the US, the reaction to Hendrix's prodigious gifts was slow, but among the British rock elite it was immediate and unanimous. The likes of Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and John Lennon all turned out to see the Experience play in London, and Eric Clapton was so dumbfounded by Hendrix's guitar-playing that he confessed he felt (temporarily) like giving up the instrument. Hendrix's dexterity, imagination and technical innovations established him as a path-finder in rock music's most daring and creative phase.
Yet Hendrix was fortunate to have found two such sympathetic musicians as Mitchell and Redding, both of whom proved remarkably able to adapt to his improvisation and his quest for fresh studio sounds. The Experience's 1967 debut album Are You Experienced? was one of the seismic events of the period, bristling with such classic tracks as Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary, but while the bandleader hogged most of the plaudits, critics hailed Mitchell's achievement in transforming his drums into something beyond mere percussion. The group's dramatic appearance at the Monterey pop festival in June 1967 was pivotal in their rise to international prominence.
On their second album, Axis: Bold As Love, the trio continued to display prodigious growth. Along with the rock, soul and R&B influences, they ventured into experimental psychedelia such as If Six Was Nine. By the time they made the double album Electric Ladyland in 1968, Hendrix was testing the trio format to destruction, deploying a barrage of recording techniques to create a new medium beyond the physical limitations of three musicians on a stage.
A US tour in spring 1969 proved to be the Experience's last stand, and they played their final show in Denver that June. Mitchell also played with Hendrix at Woodstock in August 1969 in a temporary line-up called Gypsy Sun and Rainbows. It later emerged that Hendrix's co-manager Mike Jeffery had cut Mitchell and Redding out of shares in future royalties.
By now Mitchell was admired and in demand. He had featured in the Rolling Stones' Rock'n'Roll Circus in 1968 as part of the Dirty Mac (alongside Lennon, Clapton and Keith Richards). In 1969 he appeared on the concept album Music from Free Creek, which involved various artists including Clapton and Beck, and on Martha Velez's Fiends & Angels. In 1970 he joined Jack Bruce and Friends, an under-appreciated jazz-rock outfit, then in April 1970 he temporarily rejoined Hendrix, with bassist Billy Cox, for the Cry of Love tour, five months before Hendrix's death. In 1971 he was back with Bruce, then deputised for a sick Cozy Powell in the Jeff Beck Group. In 1972 he featured on the solitary album by Ramatam, a band he formed with Mike Pinera and April Lawton.
Subsequently Mitchell's profile waned, though he cropped up in a band called Hinkley's Heroes in 1976, made an album with the Dave Morrison Band in 1982, and played on Bruce Cameron's Midnight Daydream in 1999. In 1992, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
At the time of his death, Mitchell had just completed an Experience Hendrix tribute tour, alongside Buddy Guy, the Doors' Robby Krieger and Pearl Jam's Mike McCready. He had worked on numerous projects with Experience Hendrix, a company started by Jimi's father, James "Al" Hendrix, to sustain his son's legacy. Mitchell is survived by his wife, Dee, and a daughter.
John "Mitch" Mitchell, drummer, born July 9 1947; died November 12 2008