ON THIS DAY SEPTEMBER 18 2023

This Day in History: September 18

Featured Event

1970







American rock guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix—who fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock to redefine the electric guitar in his own image—died of an overdose of barbiturates in London.


Jimi Hendrix, byname of James Marshall Hendrix, originally John Allen Hendrix, (born November 27, 1942, Seattle, Washington, U.S.—died September 18, 1970, London, England), American rock guitarist, singer, and composer who fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock to redefine the electric guitar in his own image.
Though his active career as a featured artist lasted a mere four years, Hendrix altered the course of popular music and became one of the most successful and influential musicians of his era. An instrumentalist who radically redefined the expressive potential and sonic palette of the electric guitar, he was the composer of a classic repertoire of songs ranging from ferocious rockers to delicate, complex ballads. He also was the most charismatic in-concert performer of his generation. Moreover, he was a visionary who collapsed the genre boundaries of rock, soul, blues, and jazz and an iconic figure whose appeal linked the concerns of white hippies and black revolutionaries by clothing black anger in the colourful costumes of London’s Carnaby Street.


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Featured Biography

Greta Garbo
Swedish American actress







Greta Garbo, original name Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, (born September 18, 1905, Stockholm, Sweden—died April 15, 1990, New York, New York, U.S.), Swedish American actress who was one of the most glamorous and popular motion-picture stars of the 1920s and ’30s. She was best known for her portrayals of strong-willed heroines, most of them as compellingly enigmatic as Garbo herself.



Lars Hanson and Greta Garbo in The Saga of Gösta Berling
The daughter of an itinerant labourer, Greta Gustafsson was reared in poverty in a Stockholm slum. She was working as a department-store clerk when she met film director Erik Petschler, who gave her a small part in Luffar-Petter (1922; Peter the Tramp). From 1922 to 1924 she studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, and in 1924 she played a major role in Gösta Berlings Saga (The Saga of Gösta Berling). The film’s director, Mauritz Stiller, gave her the name Garbo, and in 1925 he secured her a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in Hollywood.


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