Hendrix being a guitar god goes without saying, and Mitchell was a fantastic drummer. But Redding never got between them, he just connected the dots in a way anyone could have done.
Originally Hendrix wanted Billy Cox to be the bassist for JHE but he declined, Hendrix was really desperate for a bass player, so he hired a guy who wasn't even a bass player, Redding was a guitarist. Hendrix gave him a bass and taught him the basics.
You could say he did his job, but he was so limited, and Hendrix was such an ambitious musician that those limitations sometimes held him back, the more and more experimental and complex Hendrix's music became, the lesser of a role Redding had, because he couldn't keep up. So Hendrix ended up playing the more complex bass parts on Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland.
He eventually got Cox to play with his Band of Gypsys. And when you listen to them, you can hear that bass a lot more clearly, it didn't distract you from what Jimi did, but you had a player who was confident enough in his playing and didn't have to lurk in the shadows.
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