<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Johnny Allen Hendrix lived anything but a charmed life in his early years.\u00a0 He was born on November 27, 1942 at Seattle\u2019s Harborview Hospital while his father, Al, was stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama.\u00a0 The Army feared he would go AWOL to see his new son so they locked Al in the stockade just before his unit was deployed to the Pacific.\u00a0 Al was in Fiji when he finally got a photo of his son, but the boy\u2019s mother, Lucille, had only labeled the picture \u2018baby Hendrix\u2019 for fear of enraging her husband.\u00a0 With Al away on duty, Lucille turned to other men for support, one of whom she had been involved with before she and Al were married may or may not have been Johnny\u2019s father.\u00a0 His name was John Page.\u00a0 If she wanted to get a rise out of jealous Al, she certainly picked a name for their son with the potential to do just that.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lucille\u2019s ill fortunes during Al\u2019s absence found their son living, not with his mother, but in Berkeley, California with a woman named Mrs. Champ.\u00a0 She was in the process of adopting him when Al returned from the Pacific.\u00a0 At three years of age, it surely was a shock to Johnny when Al collected him from Berkeley, gave him his first spanking on the train ride back to Seattle, and re-registered the boy as James Marshall Hendrix (combining the middle names of his deceased older brother, Leon and his own).\u00a0 It did not seem to matter to the boy because he insisted on being called \u2018Buster\u2019 after actor Buster Crabbe, the movie star known for his portrayals of Tarzan and Flash Gordon.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Johnny Allan-James Marshall-Buster Hendrix would change his name several times before landing on the one he is most associated with:\u00a0 Jimi Hendrix.\u00a0 In a Netflix documentary called <\/span>Voodoo Child <\/span><\/i>(2010), he described his early life (with bass player Bootsy Collins providing Jimi\u2019s voice):\u00a0 \u201cDad was very strict and level-headed, but my mother liked dressing up and having a good time.\u00a0 She used to drink a lot and didn\u2019t take care of herself but she was a groovy mother . . . Mostly my dad took care of me.\u00a0 He taught me that I must respect my elders always.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t speak unless I was spoken to first by grown-ups.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve always been quiet, but I saw a lot of things.\u00a0 A fish wouldn\u2019t get in trouble if he kept his mouth shut.\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps that is why the adult Jimi would normally be quiet and soft spoken.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When his younger brother, Leon, was born, Lucille\u2019s frequent disappearances and Al\u2019s need to work to support his family put Buster in the role of Leon\u2019s caregiver and protector.\u00a0 When their parents would fight, they often hid in a kitchen cabinet until things blew over.\u00a0 Three more children would be born into the family (two after they had divorced in 1951) with Al denying paternity. \u00a0 Al was awarded custody of Leon and Buster after the divorce.\u00a0 All of the other children had serious birth defects requiring institutional care.\u00a0 Lucille continued to drift in and out of their lives until she was married again, this time to a retired longshoreman (William Mitchell), thirty years her senior.\u00a0 She was in and out of the hospital in 1957 and 1958 with the boys visiting her at Harborview Hospital just days before she died of a ruptured spleen at age 32.\u00a0 Al got drunk on the way to the funeral and arrived six hours too late.\u00a0 He could only offer his grieving sons a sip of whisky each before he finished the bottle himself.\u00a0 Leon later recalled, \u201c[Jimi] was always sore at our dad for not taking better care of Mama,\u201d but there was no mention of Lucille taking better care of herself or her kids.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Writer Phil Norman has an affinity for Hendrix\u2019s hometown of Seattle.\u00a0 His Grandma Norman\u2019s husband was killed in the last year of WWI (his ship was torpedoed by a German sub in the Irish Sea), so she emigrated to Seattle to join her sister, Gwen, who already lived there.\u00a0 Though Norman\u2019s father, Clive, was but four years-old at the time, his Grandmother\u2019s description of 1918 Seattle fascinated him.\u00a0 It sounded to him like it was a \u2018wild-frontier\u2019 kind of place.\u00a0 A city with hills so steep that Model T Fords (Tin Lizzies) had to use their most powerful gear (reverse) to negotiate them.\u00a0 In his years as a correspondent for the <\/span>Sunday Times, <\/span><\/i>his cross country travels only brought him to Seattle once in 1973 as he traveled with and wrote about singer Roberta Flack.\u00a0 Norman notes that Seattle\u2019s reputation as a \u2018music town\u2019 seems to be relatively \u2018white\u2019 having produced nationally known artists like Bing Crosby (from nearby Tacoma), the Ventures, Judy Collins, and the band Heart.\u00a0 As Norman states in his book <\/span>Jimi Hendrix – The Short Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix <\/span><\/i>(Liveright Publishing, 2020), \u201cIt\u2019s generally thought that Seattle played little part in the history of black American music;\u00a0 that this incalculable gift to humankind was a product only of New Orleans or Memphis or Chicago or the cruel cottonfields of the Mississippi Delta.\u00a0 But they are forgetting Jimi.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Al Hendrix worked hard to keep a roof over his boy\u2019s heads, but they moved around a lot for financial reasons.\u00a0 This made their life, according to Leon, \u201cLike a constant camping trip.\u201d\u00a0 The boys were frequently left on their own and often cared for by their neighbors.\u00a0 Again, Leon recalled, \u201cThe black ladies and Jewish ladies in the Central District kind of adopted us.\u00a0 Mrs Weinstein made us matzo ball soup, Mrs Jackson fried us chicken with mashed potatoes, and Mrs Wilson, who had a little store there, washed our clothes for us and made us take a bath.\u201d\u00a0 Dodging the child welfare authorities was a constant in their life with Leon most often being carted off to a foster facility somewhere.\u00a0 He would always escape and make it back to wherever Al and James were living.\u00a0 Schooling was difficult when the boys were being uprooted all the time.\u00a0 They found stays with their grandmother (Zenora who lived across the border in Vancouver) could be difficult (she was much more strict with them than Al).\u00a0 Still, they loved hearing Zenora\u2019s stories about her days in a minstel show and also learning about their slave great-grandmother and Cherokee great-great-grandmother.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Al was a hard working man and had little tolerance for frivolity (other than his own indulgences).\u00a0 When twelve year-old Buster found a beat up Ukulele with one loose string attached in a garbage pile (Al had the boys help sort rubbish for things they could sell), Al\u2019s first thought was it might bring in a few bucks.\u00a0 Buster begged his father to let him keep it and so began his obsession with coaxing sound from a taut instrument string.\u00a0 The next year, they were displaced when Al could not keep up the payments on the small house they were living in and it was repossessed.\u00a0 Living at Mrs McKay\u2019s boarding house, Buster discovered an old Kay acoustic guitar in her back room. \u00a0 His father could not be convinced to spend $5 on such an \u2018irrelevance\u2019, but his Aunt Ernestine had noticed the effect the one-string ukulele had on the boy and she put up the money.\u00a0 Leon noticed the change in Buster immediately:\u00a0 \u201cHe forgot all about sports and lived only for the guitar.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t ever apart from it.\u00a0 He\u2019d play it in bed, fall asleep with it on his chest, then start playing it again as soon as he woke up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Buster soon realized he could come closer to the sounds he heard on the radio by attaching a metal pickup under the base of the fretboard.\u00a0 With Leon absorbing the occasional electric shock while holding the connection between the cord and pickup together, he would run it through the only amplifier available – Al\u2019s record player.\u00a0 Al was known to cuff Buster\u2019s ears when he found him doing anything left-handed, so one can only suspect how he would have reacted if he found the boys tampering with his beloved record player.\u00a0 When it became apparent that Buster would need to upgrade to a real electric guitar, it was again his Aunt Ernestine who came to the rescue telling her brother-in-law Al, \u201cYou <\/span>have<\/span><\/i> to get that boy an electric guitar.\u201d\u00a0 Even as opportunities to join bands came knocking at his door, Hendrix would return to this familiar pattern of having the women in his life obtain guitars for him.\u00a0 Whether it was getting his guitar out of the pawn shop, borrowing one from another musician (like Keith Richards\u2019 white Fender Strat the Keef\u2019s one time girl friend loaned Hendrix), or even buying a new ax, it seems 90 percent of these dealings happened because one of his female acquaintances made it happen.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Buster\u2019s first electric guitar was a fifteen-dollar Supro Ozark from Myers Music.\u00a0 Al surprised his son by not only supplying the down payment on the guitar, but by also picking up a saxophone for himself.\u00a0 Al did not have his son\u2019s knack for music and Leon recalls, \u201cHe could only ever play one note.\u201d\u00a0 The left-handed Buster had to make do by restringing the right-hand Supro which left the volume and tone controls at the top of the instrument, not below the strings.\u00a0 With no money to spare, Buster did Chuck Berry\u2019s <\/span>Johnny B. Goode<\/span><\/i> one up by using a dry-cleaning-bag, not a \u2018gunny sack\u2019 as a carrying-case.\u00a0 Armed with his new guitar and a new name, Jimmy, he began looking for a band to play in.\u00a0 His first audition (in the basement of the Temple De Hirsch Sinai) lasted one set as the band he tried out for thought his playing was too wild.\u00a0 His second attempt with an old-fashioned \u2018revue\u2019 band with horns, saxes, and dance routines landed him a spot with the Velvetones.\u00a0 Another lifelong pattern soon emerged when Jimmy left the Velvetones and joined another local band, the Rocking Kings: Jimmy would hop from band to band – a lot.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Rocking Kings gig almost evaporated when Jimmy made the classic mistake of leaving his Supro Ozark backstage at the Birdland Club and someone made off with it.\u00a0 Squeezing pennies from part time jobs and leaning on his new bandmates, he was able to get the down payment on a Danelectro Silvertone from the Sears Roebuck catalog for the princely sum of $49.95 with a small amplifier included.\u00a0 He christened his new guitar Betty-Jean for his then girlfriend.\u00a0 His mother\u2019s name, Lucille, had already been used for B.B. King\u2019s legendary guitar.\u00a0 The Rocking Kings traveled in a beat-up Mercury sedan playing military bases or ballrooms (like the 2,000 – capacity Spanish Castle in Kent) to predominantly white audiences.\u00a0 None of the venues on either side of the U.S.\/Canadian border discriminated against blacks attending the same shows which would make Jimmy\u2019s first experiences on the Chitlin Circuit down south an eye opening experience for Hendrix.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The seventeen year old Jimmy found ways to sit in with other bands whenever he could.\u00a0 He also began decorating his guitar (with a pigeon feather here, a Seagram\u2019s Seven whiskey bottle tassel there) and himself with unconventional wardrobe choices.\u00a0 As Leon said, \u201cPeople would\u00a0 ask me, \u2018Where does Jimmy get his clothes from?\u2019 and I\u2019d say, \u2018From his girlfriend.\u2019\u00a0 That was out with the other guys in the band, who were only about conformity.\u00a0 He was a hippy before anyone knew what a hippy was.\u201d\u00a0 When their Mercury gave up the will to live in Vancouver, the band barely had bus fare to get home before the band fell apart.\u00a0 Jimmy was included in their manager\u2019s next project, Tom and the Tomcats, where he had background vocals added to his duties.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Georgia-born Ray Charles had first been discovered in Seattle playing at the Rocking Chair Club so he made frequent visits to the city after he became famous.\u00a0 On a return trip in search of a new guitarist in 1960, Jimmy\u2019s name came up and he got the job.\u00a0 He played with Charles in Seattle but apparently did not leave town with him as evidenced by the line in the biopic about Ray starring Jamie Foxx.\u00a0 In the film, Ray\u2019s manager says, \u201cYou should never have left that kid back in Seattle,\u201d in one scene.\u00a0 Jimmy soon dropped out of school (or was asked to leave – accounts vary so take your pick), and defied everybody else\u2019s expectations.\u00a0 Most figured he would become a professional musician but he joined the US Army instead where he trained as a parachutist in the 101st Airborne Division.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Though Hendrix was never a gang member or delinquent, it was his one encounter with law enforcement that put him in the army.\u00a0 He and a friend were picked up for joy riding in a stolen car and performing petty larceny.\u00a0 They were caught snagging clothes from a broken back window at a store by means of an unbent clothes hanger.\u00a0 The judge gave him a choice:\u00a0 two years of detention or joining the army.\u00a0 On May 31, 1961, Jimmy set out for basic training at Fort Ord in California leaving his guitar in the care of the real Betty-Jean.\u00a0 He signed all his correspondence home \u2018Love, James\u2019.\u00a0 In his letters. there was an undertone of him wanting to make his father proud of him:\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll try my very best to make the AIRBORNE for the sake of <\/span>our<\/span><\/i> name.\u201d\u00a0 While parachute training from a 34-foot tall tower scared some (the three soldiers ahead of him wouldn\u2019t take the leap), Jimmy didn\u2019t hesitate and was carried to the ground dangling from a parachute harness.\u00a0 In all, he recorded 25 jumps from aircraft which he later described:\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s so personal because once you get there, it\u2019s so quiet,\u00a0 All you hear is the breeze – sssshhh – like that . . . and you look up and there\u2019s that big, beautiful white mushroom above you.\u201d\u00a0 With Korea behind and Vietnam in the future, Hendrix was posted to Fort Campbell on the Kentucky – Tennessee border.\u00a0 He would not be deployed overseas and the environment there would prove to be much less tolerant than it had been in progressive Seattle.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Nine months after landing at Fort Campbell, Jimmy seemed to be on the way to becoming a good soldier.\u00a0 He asked his father to get Betty-Jean back from Betty-Jean and send it to him.\u00a0 With his beloved guitar back in hand, soldering took a back seat to playing guitar.\u00a0 Hearing music coming from the Number 1 Service Club one evening, fellow soldier Billy Cox walked in and introduced himself.\u00a0 Cox recalled, \u201cI thought I was listening to a combination of John Lee Hooker and Beethoven.\u00a0 I told him I played upright bass in the school symphony, but I wasn\u2019t that good.\u00a0 He said, \u2018They have electric basses now, go check them out.\u00a0 By the way, my name is Jimmy Hendrix.\u201d\u00a0 Cox proved to be a natural on bass guitar and they soon recruited more service buddies and began playing out as the Kasuals.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Their first regular gig was at a club called The Pink Poodle where they backed up a singer named Crying Shame.\u00a0 Cox says, \u201cAnd he had a sister named D*** Shame.\u00a0 We almost had to be hauled away because we laughed so much.\u00a0 But when he started, we stopped laughing, because this cat could sing his butt off. \u00a0 He was a great blues singer – one of many we learned from.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The late hours spent at gigs with the Kasuals helped end Jimmy\u2019s career as a soldier.\u00a0 He was written up for sleeping on duty enough that when coupled with his \u2018health complaints\u2019 (dizziness, pain and pressure in the left chest, loss of weight, frequent trouble sleeping) finally led to his honorable discharge in July 1962.\u00a0 Having served two years of his three year hitch, he hung around playing Kasual gigs waiting for Cox to muster out a month later.\u00a0 Hendrix had blown his $400 severance pay giving him little choice but to stick around Clarksville.\u00a0 He supplemented his meager gig pay by sneaking back on base for meals or to borrow a bunk to sleep in.\u00a0 Calling an SOS to Al for help would be an admission of failure he decided he could do without.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In Part 2 of Johnny Allen Hendrix, we will pick up the story as Jimmy\u2019s post Army life bounces him around like he was living inside a pinball machine.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Jimi in the backline jiving with the Buddy and Stacy band in 1965 – taken from Night Train show.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Johnny Allen Hendrix lived anything but a charmed life in his early years.\u00a0 He was born on November 27, 1942 at Seattle\u2019s Harborview Hospital while his father, Al, was stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama.\u00a0 The Army feared he would go AWOL to see his new son so they locked Al in the stockade just 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