Your picks of mediocre or lousy vocals with great musicians!

Actually, I listen to Hendrix for the songs as well as everything else.  He's not a great singer but he does okay, as does Clapton (I'm a fan of both).  Little Wing has been covered so much I wish people would leave it alone.  I think Manic Depression, Angel, Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) and Fire, among many others, are great songs.  But I don't want to hear most covers as they fall far short of the original.  Anyway, I'm sorry the songs don't register with you but I don't think I'm alone in this respect.  And, FWIW, I like his tone.  Lots of celebrated players have worked hard to duplicate it or to create a personalized variation thereof.  Sometimes they come to close to the original and put me off (SRV and Robin Trower come to mind immediately).  Hendrix, IMO, paved the way for not only a new way to play the guitar but new sounds and songwriting for decades beyond his time.  As much as the Yardbirds did to push things forward, Hendrix was the one who smashed the barriers and led rock into a new age.  Confused youngsters and wannabes have spent the last 50 years trying to catch up.

I go both ways on this one.  Jimi just went about playing the guitar in a new and different way.  While I tend to agree with Bdp on both of his main points:

1) Playing should generally be in service to the song
and
2) Jimi's songs weren't often compelling.

Hendrix may be the rare exception to the rule.  

I guess my reasoning is that the other side of the analysis is that playing can also be in service to the technology.  One difference between Bach (whose keyboard was a harpsichord) and Mozart is that the latter had access to a newfangled device called a piano.  What Mozart did to unleash the instrument's potential is significant (and generally compelling) to me beyond what that playing did for the particular piece at hand.

Fast forwarding to the last century (and NOT drawing any qualitative comparisons), you saw a similar opportunity with both guitar and synthesizer.  In my view, the heart of the electric guitar playing  evolution occurred in a roughly thirty year span ending in +/- 1965.  Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Chuck Berry, and Jimi - as well as a potentially contentious list of bluesmen that I'll avoid selecting - all contributed to the evolution of expression from an instrument that didn't even exist as a commercial product before 1935.  That's enough to get me interested, even if the underlying music doesn't always move.

BTW, I'll give Pete Townsend similar props for the synthesizer.  For me, the classical world struggled to find good use (although I like some of Phillip Glass' early ideas more than most folks I know) for the instrument.  Rock musicians tended to use it as a guitar.  Townsend really found a more interesting avenue, IMO.

All in all, an interesting subject to me.  My own views are probably somewhat eccentric, s the ever popular:

YMMV.

Hendrix was a fabulous songwriter.  Purple Haze, Little Wing, Red House, Voodoo Chile, Have You Ever Been, Angel, Fire, If 6 Were 9, etc.  There's a reason Gil Evans did concerts of Hendrix compositions.

bdp24941 posts02-22-2016 7:12am

What makes for a great guitarist, or great musician on any instrument?

First and foremost, it’s musicality.

Can you clarify "Musicality"?

Wow how important is this i will be up all night thinking of the answer.