Ask most guitarists how to play the chord made famous by “Purple Haze,” and they’ll likely strum the E7#9 grip known informally the world over as “the Hendrix chord.”
However, other players - such as Chicago, Illinois, guitarist Paul Petraitis, who saw Jimi Hendrix perform four times in 1968 - can attest that in later performances of the song, Hendrix sometimes used an open-position Em7 instead.
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“E7#9 is so overused in the post-Stevie Ray world, that this Em7 chord makes a nice alternative,” says Petraitis. “It doesn’t have that G#/G dissonance. It’s like the ‘Foxey Lady’ voicing.”
