Cleveland Indians Quiz (1901-2002): 1) Name the six whose
uniform is retired. 2) Name the only two in franchise history to
be selected MVP. 3) Who is the single season RBI leader? 4)
Who is the last 20-game winner? 5) Who is the last to throw a
no-hitter? 6) Who is the only player with 1,000 RBI in an
Indians uniform? Answers below.
Hendrix
Well, let’s see if I can do this justice….the Jimi Hendrix story.
He was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on 11/27/1942 in Seattle,
WA. His mother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, his father
a gardener, with the latter changing his son’s name to James
Marshall Hendrix when Jimi was four. [Once Hendrix was
performing, he went from Jimmy to Jimi.]
Jimi was interested in music at an early age (as were 99.99% of
the artists I’ve profiled in this space….so this is a throwaway line
I’ll try and omit in the future), particularly R&B. He’d sit
around trying to play guitar along with the records. He also took
a shine to drugs in his youth, getting high on codeine syrup, and
as a high school “student,” using the term loosely, he was once
jailed for joyriding in stolen cars, which is how he ended up in
the army, a judge having suggested it.
Jimi enlisted as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne in Fort
Campbell, Kentucky, and in his spare time he kept up with his
guitar playing. He was left-handed so he turned his “axe” upside
down. Soon word spread on the base that he slept with, and
spoke to, his guitar, and basically he was shunned by almost
everyone. No matter, since his army career was cut short when
he broke his ankle during what was to be his last jump and he
was granted an honorable discharge because of “medical
unsuitability.” [One source I read said he suffered a back injury.
I wouldn’t stay awake at night over this discrepancy, however.]
Hendrix began to focus on his music and quickly developed into
one of the best guitarists around. He toured with the Marvelettes
and Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions in ’62 and later that
same year got a gig in Vancouver with Bobbie Taylor & The
Vancouvers.
The following year he backed up Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson,
and later James Brown’s Famous Flames, among others, before
relocating to New York where he played the club circuit with the
Isley Brothers. After that, it was with Little Richard and his
band.
While his reputation as a great musician was growing, it wasn’t
really until the summer of 1966 that Hendrix’s career began to
take off. He tried his hand at singing with a group working Café
Wha! in New York’s Greenwich Village and was spotted by
Charles “Chas” Chandler, then a member of the Animals.
Chandler thought Jimi was awesome (as did rocker Richie
Havens, a fixture on the Village scene in those days) and
convinced him to move to London. It was here that Chandler set
Hendrix up with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding; the 3
forming the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Mitchell had been a child actor in television commercials at age
10, then developed as a drummer, where he had been part of
Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames (these guys were great, just
never met with overwhelming success in the States). For his
part, Redding was a former art school student who had taken up
guitar and when Hendrix asked him to become part of the
Experience, Redding switched to bass, realizing he wouldn’t be
as good as Hendrix anyway. Redding also had an Animals
connection, having once auditioned for them.
In late ’66, the Experience debuted at the Olympia in Paris,
where they were a huge hit, after which it was one record crowd
after another across Europe. They signed a contract with Reprise
Records for $40,000 in the spring of ’67 and had a string of Top
Tens in England; “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze,” and “The Wind
Cries Mary” among them. “Purple Haze,” with its allusions to
mind-altering drugs, was taken up as an anthem for the new
“love generation.”
It was also at this time that Hendrix got his idea of setting his
guitar on fire after each performance. On one UK tour with Cat
Stevens, the Walker Brothers and Englebert Humperdinck, he
suffered minor burns to his hands, a lesson to all of you, boys
and girls.
In May ’67, the LP “Are You Experienced?” was released and
immediately shot to #2 on the UK album charts, being held back
from the top slot only by the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper.” Then at one
of the European sites, Hendrix met the Monkees, who were
impressed, so they asked him to tour with them in one of the
more bizarre match-ups in rock ‘n’ roll history. But more on this
later.
We now progress to June 16, 1967, the opening day of the 3-day
Monterey Pop Festival in California. Promoters approached
songwriter John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas about
headlining the single most important concert in the evolution of
the genre. Phillips, Lou Adler, attorney Abe Somer, Terry
Melcher and Johnny Rivers all put in $10,000, along with San
Francisco promoter Bill Graham and Paul Simon.
Following was the final bill for the event:
Grateful Dead, The Association, Johnny Rivers, Simon and
Garfunkel, Big Brother & the Holding Company featuring Janis
Joplin, the Steve Miller Blues Band, Buffalo Springfield, Eric
Burdon and the Animals, Beverly, the Paupers, Lou Rawls, the
Electric Flag, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Paul
Butterfield Blues Band, the Who, Al Kooper, Canned Heat,
Country Joe and the Fish, Otis Redding backed by Booker T. and
the MGs, Moby Grape, Hugh Masekela with Big Black,
Jefferson Airplane, Laura Nyro, Ravi Shankar, the Blues Project,
the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds, and the Beach Boys.
50,000 fans paid $3-$6.50 for their ticket, if you can believe it,
plus you had Augustus Stanley Owsley III and his batch of
“Monterey Purple” acid custom-cooked for the occasion! I mean
to tell ya, is this a great country or what? [Of course this last
statement is a bit disingenuous, since I was all of 9 at the time
and didn’t have a clue the concert was going on, let alone what
“Monterey Purple” was. I did like the Beach Boys and the
Animals at the time, however.]
Speaking of the Beach Boys, they didn’t show, bagging out at the
last minute, but the concert is perhaps best known for two acts.
Monterey was the coming out party in America for the Who,
with Pete Townshend smashing his guitar and Keith Moon
demolishing his drums for the first time on the American stage at
the crescendo of “My Generation.”
The other big act was Jimi Hendrix, who won a backstage coin
toss for the right to follow the Who for his own U.S. stage debut,
not an enviable position to be in. But, as described in Timothy
White’s “The Nearest Faraway Place” (the definitive story of the
Beach Boys, incidentally):
“Hendrix concluded his performance with a feedback-fueled
rethinking of the Troggs’ 1966 hit ‘Wild Thing,’ tossing in a few
bars of Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’ as the song barked and
scampered to a peak. Then Hendrix rubbed his Stratocaster
suggestively against the tall bank of amplifiers, feedback in full
shriek, loosed his guitar strap, laid his axe on the stage, and
doused it with lighter fluid. He planted a kiss on its smooth
finish and then set it aflame, staggering offstage into history.”
“You’ll never hear surf music again,” Hendrix had warned
earlier in his set. Well, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say rock was
never the same afterwards. Newspapers, TV and word of mouth
turned him into an overnight sensation.
But back to the Monkees. They had asked Hendrix to tour with
them in the U.S., so, a few weeks after Monterey, the Experience
was sharing a stage with them. Well, you can imagine, folks,
this was a train wreck from the beginning. Hendrix’s antics
didn’t play real well with the teenyboppers and after just 8 gigs
the group was forced off the tour.
The Experience met with far greater success on their own, selling
out virtually everywhere in the world during 1968-69. Their
Reprise albums “Are You Experienced?” “Electric Ladyland,”
and “Axis: Bold as Love” all went platinum. Billboard named
Hendrix Artist of the Year for ’68; Playboy, 1969.
But Hendrix was also losing control of his personal life during
this period. In January ’68, during a tour in Sweden, he was
incarcerated for wrecking a hotel room while reportedly fighting
with Redding. Then in May ’69, he was arrested at Toronto’s
airport for heroin possession and released on $10,000 bail. [He
was later acquitted on this charge, testifying he had “outgrown”
drugs.]
The Experience split up around the time of the Toronto arrest and
Hendrix got another group together to play “Woodstock” in
August. He was paid $125,000 for his performances there, the
highest fee of any artist, and as you all know from your music
history, the concert was highlighted by Jimi’s rendition of “The
Star Spangled Banner.”
After Woodstock, though, it was basically straight downhill.
During a performance in Madison Square Garden, January 1970,
drummer Buddy Miles said to the audience, all of two songs into
the act, “I’m sorry. We just can’t get it together.” To which Jimi
replied, “That’s what happens when Earth f—- with space.
Never forget that” and walked off the stage. Then a few months
later at his last appearance in his hometown of Seattle, he was
totally abusive to his fans.
So it wasn’t a surprise to anyone following Hendrix’s career that
he died on September 18, 1970, just 27, in his girlfriend Monika
Dannemann’s London apartment, having left a message on his
old friend Chas Chandler’s answering machine, “I need help bad,
man.”
When he was discovered he had lost consciousness and was
officially pronounced dead on arrival. The inquest into his death
revealed that Hendrix had died from inhaling his own vomit. It
also didn’t help that when he was put in the ambulance, he was
seated, not lying down. [Source: “Rock Lives,” Timothy White]
Eventually it came out that Hendrix had taken 9 tablets of
Vesparax, a drug that was normally consumed in ½-tablet doses,
while downing other depressants, tranquilizers and lots of beer.
Yup, that’ll do it.
Days after his death, Reprise released a record of Monterey with
one side Hendrix and the other Otis Redding, while other LPs of
his topped the charts, including “The Cry of Love,” “Rainbow
Bridge,” and “Hendrix in the West.” Even more followed after
that.
And just a word on Noel Redding, the bassist who died about 10
days ago in County Cork. There is a classic royalties story
involving him, Redding having accepted a final $100,000 in 1970
after being told there would be no more releases of Hendrix’s
material following Jimi’s death. Doh!!! He was fighting for more
up to his last day.
[Additional Sources: “They Can’t Hide Us Anymore,” Richie
Havens; “The VH1 Rock Stars Encyclopedia;” “The Encylopedia
of Pop, Rock and Soul,” Irwin Stambler.]
Stuff
–LeBron James has a $75 million sneaker deal with Reebok on
the table. Nice way to start adulthood.
*And this just in…make it $90 million. LeBron signed with Nike,
which upped the offer.
–Let’s Go Tigers……9-35 through Wednesday. I’m definitely
heading out there this summer. Plus it’s the 100th anniversary of
the Ford Motor Company, after all.
–For the record, as I noted in my last “Week in Review,” Annika
Sorenstam will shoot 75-76 and miss the cut.
–The government of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahearn is trying
to reduce the amount of advertising on alcohol, as well as add
health warnings. Having quaffed more than a pint or two in this
lovely country, I can’t really disagree. Had stricter warnings
been on the labels when I’ve been there, I never would have had
a drop….really, I swear.
Actually, residents of Luxembourg drink more than those in
Ireland, probably because they keep thinking, “What the heck am
I doing in Luxembourg?”
–Mad cow aside, I assume many of you will be cooking up
burgers this weekend, just as I will. So here’s a simple idea,
courtesy of the New York Times Magazine; the “Flay Burger,”
named after a famous chef in these parts.
Season your ground chuck patty with salt and pepper. Cook in a
sauté pan on high until medium rare, 2 to 3 minutes on each side.
Spread mayo and mustard on the bun. Place a slice of Swiss
cheese on the bottom of the bun. Top with the meat, a slice of
smoked ham, another slice of cheese, 2 sliced pickles and the top
of the bun.
Cook until cheese has melted on a heated sandwich press (like
your George Foreman Grill).
Bingo! A great burger.
Personally, ever since I saw Emeril and his blue cheese burger,
that’s what I’ve been making. Take two patties and throw a mess
of blue cheese in between. Then squish the patties together, pop
‘em onto your George Foreman Grill and presto! Serve with
beer.
Top 3 songs for the week of 5/22/71: #1 “Joy To The World”
(Three Dog Night) #2 “Never Can Say Goodbye” (The Jackson
5) #3 “Brown Sugar” (The Rolling Stones)
Cleveland Indians Quiz Answers: 1) Retired #’s: Earl Averill,
#3; Lou Boudreau, #5; Larry Doby, #14; Mel Harder, #18; Bob
Feller, #19; Bob Lemon, #21. 2) Boudreau, 1948, and Al Rosen,
1953, are the only to win a MVP award. 3) Manny Ramirez is
the single season RBI leader with 165 in ’99. 4) Gaylord Perry is
the last 20-game winner, 21-13 in ’74. 5) Len Barker is the last
to throw a no-hitter, a perfect game in 1981. 6) Earl Averill is
the only Indian with 1,000 career RBI….1,084.
Next Bar Chat, Monday.
