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talking about this Jimi cat.
In fairness, the Ondine s appearance may not have been the Blues
Flames at their finest, as the club was in midtown and most of the facil-
ity was a disco. The Blues Flames always had a greater appeal to the
more forgiving audiences in Greenwich Village. Jimi never attempted
to play his band in Harlem, figuring that his hybrid of rock and blues
wouldn t fly there. He did repeatedly invite his friend Lonnie Young-
blood down to the Wha to see a Blues Flames show, but appreciating
Jimi s music was too large a leap for Youngblood.  Jimi began to hang
around with these white kids, these freaks, Youngblood recalled.  He
kept playing me these songs he d written, and he wanted me to record
them with him, but when I heard them, they were weird. Hendrix re-
peatedly bragged to Youngblood that with the right group the two of
them could  own the Café Wha.  I didn t have any interest in that,
Youngblood said.  I went back to my briar patch at Small s Paradise.
For some months, Jimi remained a man torn between two musical
cultures: the strict, regimented tradition of uptown Harlem R&B and
the loose amalgam of folk and rock that was developing in the Village.
His exceptional musicianship made him comfortable in both worlds,
yet he knew not to bring downtown back uptown.  If he would have
taken that to Harlem, he would have been laughed at, observed
Taharqa Aleem. The Aleems were some of Jimi s only black friends
who went to the Village to see him play.  The revelation took place
then, Tunde-Ra said.  It was the epiphany for him artistically. This
cross-pollination of genres happened, as did most of the major events
in Jimi s career, without a master plan. Jimi did not set out to mix blues,
146 C H A R L E S R . C R O S S
rock  n roll, and R&B; his musical imagination was simply so wide that
combining genres was inevitable. The unique sound he forged that
summer in the basement of Greenwich Village clubs was an accident, in
a way, but it was also a visionary, brilliant accident.
mn
HAVING STRUCK OUT with Andrew Loog Oldham, Seymour Stein,
and the Rolling Stones, Linda Keith felt she had failed.  I was truly
grasping at straws, she said.  I was starting to doubt myself, and think-
ing I was mad. Her savior, and Jimi s, came in the form of Bryan
 Chas Chandler, who was the bass player in the Animals. The Animals
were a successful U.K. band with eight Top 40 hits; their 1964 hit
 House of the Rising Sun had topped the charts on both sides of the
Atlantic. Chandler had planned to leave the Animals when their 1966
U.S. tour ended and he was looking for producing opportunities.
Though Chandler was only twenty-eight at the time, he had a decade of
experience in one of the biggest rock bands in the world, and he knew a
hit when he heard it. That summer he heard a version of Tim Rose s
 Hey Joe and became convinced that if he found the right artist to
cover this song in England, he d have a smash.
On the night of August 2, Linda ran into Chandler outside a club.
 I had never really talked to Chas before, though I knew who he was,
she recalled. Chandler was hard to miss: He was six-foot-four, and had
the barrel-chested build of a Newcastle coal miner which was the fate
that had awaited him before he discovered music. Linda told Chas there
was a guitar player down in the Village he should check out. They made
arrangements to attend the next afternoon.
When Chandler and Linda showed up at the Wha for the
Wednesday-afternoon show, there were two dozen teenagers inside sip-
ping Green Tigers. Chandler, who was dressed in a suit, stood out.  He
was better dressed than anyone in there, so you could tell he was a man-
ager type, recalled Danny Taylor from Jimi s band. Hendrix had been
tipped off that Chandler was coming and put on his A-game perfor-
R OOM F UL L OF MI R R OR S 147
mance. As fate would have it, Jimi also had recently discovered Tim
Rose s  Hey Joe, and when he played this song, Chandler became so
excited he spilled a milk shake on himself.  I thought immediately he
was the best guitarist I d ever seen, Chandler recalled in A Film About
Jimi Hendrix.
After the set, Jimi, Chas, and Linda retreated to a table and Chan-
dler introduced himself. Chandler asked Jimi about  Hey Joe and how
he had figured out his unique guitar parts for the song. This bit of
serendipity their mutual love affair with  Hey Joe  was the begin-
ning of their working relationship. As they talked, and Chandler heard
about Jimi s years on the road backing up Little Richard and the Isley
Brothers, he became convinced that Jimi had the makings of a star.  I
just sat there and thought to myself,  There s got to be a catch here
somewhere, somebody must have signed him up years ago,  Chandler
recalled in an interview years later.  I just couldn t believe that this guy
was standing around and nobody was doing anything for him. Jimi
told Chandler about Juggy Murray and the Sue Records contract, and
Chandler said he would try to straighten that out. When asked if he had
any other contracts, Jimi failed to mention or forgot the contract
he d signed with Ed Chalpin and PPX.
Chandler asked if Jimi would consider coming to England, where
Chandler was certain he d succeed. In future tellings of the story, Jimi
always stated that he immediately said yes, but many on the Village
scene remember it differently: The idea of going to England scared Jimi
at first. He knew so little about Britain that he asked whether his electric
guitar would still work with their electricity. Still, when the meeting
ended, a gentleman s handshake was exchanged. Chandler had another
month of touring the U.S. with the Animals; he assured Jimi he d re-
turn to straighten out all the details.
If Jimi took Chandler seriously, he gave no indication in what he
said to his friends or in how he conducted his career over the next
month. He continued to play in the Village with the idea that he might
get signed Stateside and put out a record. It would be another five
weeks back when Chandler returned before Jimi would even apply
148 C H A R L E S R . C R O S S
for a passport. In the meantime, he went back to winning his own fans
in Greenwich Village one by one. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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