Fort Campbell — where Hendrix served and met Billy Cox

Jimi Hendrix enlisted in the United States Army in May 1961, at the age of eighteen, in lieu of what would otherwise have been a jail sentence — he had been caught riding in stolen cars on two occasions in Seattle and given a choice by the judge. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and completed paratrooper training, making more than twenty-five jumps. By his own account, he genuinely enjoyed the physical challenge. The military, however, did not enjoy him.

Hendrix was a compulsive guitarist who could not stop playing even when the Army required him to be doing something else. He reportedly played in his bunk, during breaks, whenever he could get his hands on an instrument. His sergeant later recalled that Hendrix was more interested in the guitar his pay cheques were going toward than in anything the Army was trying to teach him. He was also, by all accounts, essentially indifferent to military discipline in any form it took. He was given an honorable discharge in June 1962 on grounds of "unsuitability" — the Army's way of saying that some people are simply not soldiers and that Hendrix was emphatically one of them.

Before he left Fort Campbell, Hendrix met a bass player named Billy Cox, a fellow soldier from Pittsburgh who was also devoted to music. They began playing together on the base, formed a band called the King Kasuals, and played local clubs in the Clarksville, Tennessee area. Cox would play bass for Hendrix for the rest of Hendrix's life — in the Band of Gypsys, and at Woodstock. The friendship that became one of the most important musical partnerships of the era began in an Army barracks at Fort Campbell because two people who did not belong there found each other.