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11/4/2018
Jimi Hendrix
a trip down memory lane
I be trippin. Bottom line: I heard Jimi Hendrix play in concert in 1966 but I only realized it a week ago when I read this article in the Daily Gazette. But I remember watching the Ronettes for sure as well as some of the other memory bits, some clear, some foggy, some perhaps confabulated. It is so shocking to merely have a vague memory of an event 52 years ago and then to realize it was something important and you were a part of the beginnings of a truly huge artist's career. Rolling Stone Magazine calls him the Greatest Guitar Player of All Time. I asked many people about the event but their memories were sort of in a purple haze. The frat guy we stayed with could barely recall the weekend AT ALL. Is MONUMENTAL too big a word? Like going to Woodstock as Jimi and John Sebastian of the Spoonful did three years later.
Yes, 1966 was before the information highway was paved. In fact, back then in the dirt road days of information technology we barely had FM radio, our college TV was black and white static. Still, I had to rely on old school technology newsprint to bring me up to speed. You can see the "Men of Union College who gave their lives in the Great War 1914-1918" inscription that is the smoking gun connection to the Memorial Chapel. I pieced together this story primarily from the research library but also by contacting people who were there.
What is interesting is not that I saw him, I've seen other top notch talent and more dramatic performances. But he is one of "THE" renowned premier guitarists, I like him and more importantly that I was able to retrieve this memory and verify it without the benefit of my own photographs. We've all been at some important event where we wish we should have cold have documented it better. And it makes a nice story. I've left out the Vietnam War references that dominated the news at the time.
We attended the Feb 26, 1966 Saturday night concert at Union College's Memorial Chapel. All for probably about $12. The Ronettes were the headliners with the Drifters both being backed by Jimmy James as he was called then (and Maurice James and the King Casuals) with the Jimmy Soul band as well as the Lovin Spoonful . Jimi had played the Friday night at the field house gym with Jack Ely and the Kingsmen and later at the Delta Upsilon fraternity. Hendrix grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional family. He had been struggling for the prior four years after washing out of the Screaming Eagles 101st Airborne Paratroopers. He kicked around all over the south and northeast barely staying alive in various band situations. It wasn't until the summer that year Sept '66 when he formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience in England just after a time in Greenwich Village that really launched his career as a front man. Although he was heavily into drugs he sadly and tragically died from a combination of booze and sleeping pills in England 1970. He was like a shooting star or a roman candle. A quick rise up, spectacular and beautiful then poof - nothing.
Ronnie of the Ronettes was about to marry controlling Phil Spector, the Wall of Sound major music mogul who's now in jail for murder.
Snagged the great color shot off the internet that one of the alums had posted. For the rest I went to the Union College Shaffer Library yearbooks and student newspapers.
Jimi had developed a distinctive style to survive and was in backup bands at the trendy Cheetah Club in Manhattan, thus the convenient attire. He was in the midst of playing with hustler Curtis Knight and the Squires there but also the more prominent King Curtis and the Kingpins. He wore black because it wouldn't show the dirt as he couldn't afford to wash it often. He was probably in dozens of bands including the Lovers (above), the Lovelights and many others.
We were in there somewhere??? The campus newspaper's post weekend edition in the Jimi Album is worth a read ( & with plenty of time capsule photos). Farewell to the Days of Wine and Roses: Snow storm on Fri. Booze abundant. Jimmy Soul in orbit. Student body loses inhibitions and "dirty dancing ensued". Bands, Booze and Broads. Everyone high. FIRST ever rock concert in chapel. Some pews in Chapel were bruised and damaged. Spoonful too loud. One listener said they looked like queers. But good time had by all.
I have to mention the Lovin Spoonful, "Summer in the City" etc. although they broke up a few years after. Always liked their music and John Sebastian as a talented musician. His anti-war performance of "I had a dream" at Woodstock was a favorite (not for everyone's tastes) I used to play on my kids record player to get them asleep. In an interview this summer in Woodstock he tells of how he serendipitously hopped on a helicopter in Albany for an impromptu performance at that seminal event.
This was the Delta Chi, DX house (Raymond North) back then where we stayed. We were able to stay there as my college roommate knew a guy there. We met up with a couple of girls we knew from another college for a double date at Union. I went back to this dorm last week but the co-ed who came to the door said it is all a sorority Sigma Delta Tau now.
I had driven my sketchy '58 Chevy on the trip from SU to Union College. We brought a couple other guys to drop off in Delmar at their parents homes. Maybe 20 miles outside of Schenectady my generator light came on. I knew I was running off only the battery and soon the car would die. Went to Williams Auto Parts salvage yard (to become apartments) and walked down their snowy junk yard road just a bit and spotted a '55 buick. The generator looked right except the oil filler cap was on the bottom side. So I bought it and swapped it out in the parking lot between the frat and the field house. I still have the Army 30 cal ammo box that I carried in the trunk that held my emergency crescent wrench, pliers, screwdrivers, knife, tape and wire.
We went to a frat party that night, not too wild, very groovy. There was a Batman Theme party that was hot on TV that year. They had a Bat Cave covered with crepes paper hanging down obscuring the entrance to the basement bar and I think cutouts of Batman and Robin.
Drinking age was 18 then so alcohol was no problem. Here you might notice all the Schaefer Beer that was popular and there was a major bottling plant in Albany (right next to the I-90 I-787 Interstate that I was to later work on- could smell that mash cooking from the work site). There theme was, "It's the one beer to have when you're having more than one." Guess that was the case here.
In my mind I was thinking the Batman Party was at another nearby frat something like this on Lenox Road behind the football field. Union was an all men's college in '66 but went co-ed. The current rebuilt Theta Delta Chi is the Edwards House on Lenox Road. Frat members were banned from living here for two years due to hazing violations including kidnapping. Oh well.
There was demolition of certain frats on Lenox Rd to make way for new construction, this one FIJI.
Jimi Hendrix BBC Documentary excellent
East Portland Jimi post Jeffrey Hedquist '67
Jeff Hedquist '67 fav concert DJ WRUC college radio station
Barry Newman Wall Street Journal writer editor of Union newspaper Concordiensis '67 Poly Sci, excellent
Jimi back up Buddy & Tracy '65
Theta Delta Chi international
M80 military designation for use in (7.62mm x 51mm diameter-casing length ) 30 caliber M-14 rifle and M60 machine guns as well as Winchester 308 rifles. Had to study this when one landed in a house on my street.
ammo cans site another ammo can site
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