A new postage stamp honoring legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix will be released March 13.
The U.S. Postal Service is releasing the 49-cent Hendrix stamp Thursday as part of the Music Icons series. Last year, Lydia Mendoza, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles were honored with their own
stamps, according to stamp collector website Linns.com.
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Janis Joplin and James Brown are also slated to get stamps.
Created by artist Rudy Gutierrez, the colorful image resembles a 45 rpm record sleeve and depicts Hendrix wearing a military-style jacket and playing one of his signature white Fender Stratocaster guitars.
"The technical challenge was making art that will still read at stamp size, so it was a matter of not being overly complicated," Gutierrez said in a statement. "It was important to make the art accessible ... and to be true to the incredible combination of rawness and virtuosity that was Jimi Hendrix."
The postage stamp release coincides with the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas,
where there will be a new biopic screened about Hendrix's rise to fame. The film, "Jimi: All is By My Side," stars Outkast's Andre 3000.
"Over the years, more people have embraced Jimi's music,"
Hendrix's stepsister, Janie Hendrix, told USA Today."His influence is evident in the music of Raphael Saadiq, Erykah Badu and Musiq Soulchild."
Slash, the Doors' guitarist Robby Krieger, and Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell are among the celebrities who will participate in the stamp's first-day-of-issue reveal.
Hendrix shot to fame in the late 1960s and was a headlining artist at the 1969 Woodstock festival. He died at age 27 from a drug overdose.
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