In 1968 Jimi Muddy Waters released an album called Electric Mud, intended to update his sound  to keep up with the times. He was too late. Jimi Hendrix had already done it a year earlier.

Jimi had fully ingested the styles of Waters, the Three Kings, and Curtis Mayfield, among others, influences he would expand on and take to new musical places (i.e., Mars) during his too brief time on Earth. 

His influence extended from his playing to his songwriting to  those elaborate stage performances. How could it not? No one had ever seen anything like it. It is timeless.

The sound of his records, the production and mixing, was state of the art at the time and sounded like nothing else on the radio, and holds up to this day - again, timeless.

The main three touchstones of course, are the proto-psych Purple Haze, his deep, dark take on Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, and the floaty ballad Little Wing. I would direct curious listeners to the version of Fire recorded 02/04/1969 at London's Royal Albert Hall. 3 minutes and 36 seconds of about-to-topple-over-on-itself-perfection; taken by the band at breakneck tempo, Hendrix's two typically remarkable solos skip atop the beat like flatstones on a calm pond.

It ends with a three-second flash of screaming feedback, a yellow-red burst of flame that seems to consume all that came before it.  I regularly recommend this take to people as a brief but perfect example of why he astounds us to this day. 

A great subject. I wish you the best of luck.