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(23,003 posts)Bristlecone
(10,081 posts)H2O Man
(73,308 posts)That was a sad day. Jimi was a beautiful, sensitive human being.
Paladin
(28,202 posts)San Antonio, 1968.
kentuck
(110,950 posts)bigtree
(85,915 posts)Jimi became more serious about the guitar while still in the Army and decided to head south of Kentucky a few short miles to Nashville to see if he could earn money playing the guitar. He moved into a housing development during the civil rights movement. In fact he was arrested once along with Billy Cox in 1962. Every Sunday we would go down to watch the race riots. We took a picnic basket because they wouldnt serve us in the restaurant
Sometimes if there was a good movie on Sunday there wouldnt be any race riots.
The Bonnevilles, 1962, Clarksville, TN at The Pink Poodle just prior to move to Nashville.
Ft. Campbell had been where Jimi had become friends with Billy Cox, a Bass player born in West Virginia, raised in Pittsburg, PA who also settled into Nashville for the music opportunities.
Together. they formed The King Kasuals. The band played at clubs like the Del Morocco on Jefferson Street as well as gigs on Printers Alley. Jimi did get a little studio time, but, engineers found him too experimental when he got to recording as a back up musician and Jimi had a hard time making some extra money as a studio musician.
King Kasuals, Jimi, Billy Cox (still living)
Hendrix waited for his Army buddy and bassist Billy Cox to get out and together they came down the road to Nashville to form their first band King Kasuals. King Kasuals became the house band of the now-gone Club Del Morocco (the owner of which ended up bailing the two out of jail after a Civil Rights demonstration downtown!). Hendrix played at so many of the clubs in Printers Alley and along Jefferson Street places where the likes of Etta James and James Brown were performing. Hendrix took his guitar everywhere in Nashville on the bus, to the store, on a walk. Nashville is where he really developed his guitar playing. He said so himself: Thats where I learned to play really Nashville. 365nashville.com
Hendrix credits Nashville as the place that he really learned how to play guitar. That still freaks out most people who think of Nashville as just country music, says Joe Chambers, the founder of the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville.
Chambers recounts how in 1962 Hendrix wound up at the army base at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, and met fellow musician Billy Cox. They became fast friends and a short time after moved to Nashville, some 60 miles away, and lived together on Jefferson Street, above a beauty shop called Joyces House of Glamour.
I actually saw Jimi Hendrix one night at Printers Alley. He was in his privates uniform, says Norbert Putnam, a musician, studio owner and producer with a long list of credits in Nashville.
Hendrix soaked up the style of the blues players in the bars along Jefferson Street. You gotta be pretty good to get their attention, Chambers recalls his friend Billy Cox saying. Jimi went to sleep with his guitar on, woke up with it on, walked out the door with it, and went to the movie theater with it.
Some of the first video footage ever shot of Hendrix was on Nashvilles WLAC Channel 5 television show Night Train. You can see him on a 1965 clip backing up Buddy & Stacy, looking freaky and sliding his hand over the front of his guitars neck. Chambers says Hendrix and Cox played the clubs on Jefferson as well as the club circuit from Murfreesboro to Tullahoma. From Rock In The Country: Nashvilles Secret History By Davis Inman 12/17/2010, American Songwriter
read more: https://thenashvillebridge.com/2010/11/21/jimi-hendrix-the-nashville-connection/
kentuck
(110,950 posts)..when I was a teenager. Way back in the mountains, I was introduced to R&B.
When I was stationed at Ft Campbell, 3 or 4 years after Jimi, I recall the story about his autograph inside the guard post at an ammo dump on post. That was before he became really famous in '67 and later. We did not know he was going to become the legend he became.
...and, I was 2yrs old in '62.
hermetic
(8,258 posts)Do his last US concert, June 19, 1970, at the Albuquerque Civic Auditorium. It was quite subdued, not his usual boisterous performance. He didn't even play The Star Spangled Banner.