Born in born in Cape Town, South Africa on 19 April 1942
Why is Woodstock so famous when there were so many other similar festivals in 1969?
The answer has several parts, but the two of the major pieces are: the movie, the recording.
The idea of a movie was at first thought one too difficult, but Michael Wadleigh and his crew did an amazing job capturing the sights and sounds of the iconic event.
The idea of recording the event was also a fortunate one. So many people saw the film and purchased the music that even the staggering number of 500,000 actual attendees expanded into the millions.
Bill Hanley did the live sound at Woodstock. The father of outdoor concert sound, his expertise enabled those at the concert to hear it no matter where they sat.
While obviously related, the person sending the sound out to a crowd and the person recording the sound have two different jobs. Eddie Kramer recorded Woodstock.
Pye > KPS > Olympic Studios
Eddie Kramer was born in South Africa and studied classical piano, cello, and violin as a child, eventually attending the South African College of Music.
He moved to England when he was 19. There he recorded local jazz groups in a home-based studio, plus installed hi-fi equipment as a hobby.
In 1964 he joined Pye Studios, and recorded a variety of artists including Sammy Davis Jr., Petula Clark and The Kinks
In 1965 Kramer established the sophisticated KPS Studios, which, despite its rudimentary 2-track recording capability, gained such a reputation that in less than a year they were bought out by Regent Sound. They enlisted Kramer to oversee construction of their new four-track studio. [studioexpresso article]
The story is that in early 1967 he was working at London’s famed Olympic Studios. The site had already become a favorite of Britain’s famous young groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The person in charge of assigning projects apparently thought the new trio there to record was a bit too odd and gave the assignment to a young Eddie Kramer.
The trio was the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the collaboration was historic.
Jimi Hendrix hired Kramer to help design Electric Lady in NYC, a dream recording studio that Hendrix himself barely knew, but became a hugely popular studio [Stevie Wonder, Lou Reed, Rolling Stones, Blondie, John Lennon & David Bowie, Patti Smith, AC/DC, Clash, Billy Idol, the Cars, Weezer, Santans, and many more.] Kramer served as its Director of Engineering from 1970 – 1974.
The studio continues to today.
Woodstock
About Woodstock, the same studioexpresso article quotes Kramer: “I arrived at dawn and was struck by the sight of the sun rising over what appeared to be the stage. The show was scheduled to start by lunchtime. That panic pretty much set the tone for the entire concert. All of us in the crew had Vitamin B shots, so that we would be able to stay up for three days. The whole thing was recorded under the most primitive of conditions, but we got it done,” says Kramer. “Woodstock was 3 days of hell and drugs”.
Heavy Metal
Besides Kiss, Kramer worked with other metal bands such as Fastway, Anthrax, Alcatrazz, Raven, Loudness, Triumph, Whitesnake, Ace Frehley’s post-Kiss solo outfit, Frehley’s Comet, and others.
All Along the Watchtower
Recorded between January – June 1968, Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower, Kramer helped create one of the most iconic rock songs of all time.
In the video below, Kramer describes recording the song whose personnel included Dave Mason and Brian Jones. Be ready for some heavy tech talk.
Lately
The most recent highlight in Kramer’s career was an Emmy award for best sound in The American Masters Hendrix documentary “Hear My Train A Comin’.
Kramer is currently working on his memoir, From the Other Side of the Glass.
Meteor17.com
This brief post only scratches the surface of Kramer’s contributions and accomplishments. The site meteor17.com has an excelled timeline about Kramer’s career. The piece puts Kramer’s work into an historic perspective.
It was likely 1967 when we American listeners first heard the then 24-year-old guitarist called Jimi Hendrix. For some, we’d never heard rock played quite that way. And we would never have believed that we would only have three years before he would leave us.
Like all legends, there was a prequel. This post will try to fill in some of Jimi’s story before he became Jimi.
And many thanks to Philip Norman’s biography of Hendrix: Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix. The book provided an invaluable outline for this post.
Buster
James Allen Hendrix, known as Al, met Lucille Jeter. in Seattle. Al and Lucille married on March 31, 1942. World War II had already begun and three days later Al was shipped off to Fort Sill in Oklahoma for basic training.
Lucille gave birth to a son on November 27, 1942. She named him Johnny Allen Hendrix. When he returned from the Pacific, Al worried that perhaps Johnny wasn’t his having had received anonymous letters suggesting infidelity on Lucille’s part.
Al changed Johnny’s name to James Marshall Hendrix, but the youngster later preferred the name Buster. He loved the action movie hero actor Buster Crabbe and wanted that name.
Buster remained Buster until he entered Washington Middle School (Seattle, WA). There he became Jimmy.
Hendrix Before Jimi
Early Bands
After years of begging and “playing guitar” on a broom and on a one-stringed ukulele, Dad Al finally bought an actual guitar for his 12-year-old son. Despite the left-handed Buster having to play the right-handed instrument “upside down,” the guitar (and there were many!) encompassed the rest ofJimmy’s life.
He joined a band called the Velvetones. In 1959 he joined the Rocking Kings; then Thomas and the Tomcats.
In 1948, Ray Charles had moved from Tampa, Florida to Seattle, Washington because he wanted to get as far away from Tampa as possible. It was in Seattle that Charles was “discovered” and he always had a fond spot for the city.
He was performing there in early 1960 and needed some backup players. Jimmy Hendrix was one of those selected.
Hendrix Before Jimi
Army
In October 1960, Jimmy dropped out of high school and shortly afterwards ran into some legal issues and the judge offered him jail-time or the Army. Jimmy chose the Army, specifically the 101st Airborne Divisionwhere he found the challenges both exciting and unnecessary. He was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
He eventually had his guitar with him, of course, and also met Billy Cox. Together they formed the Kasuals and performed locally in their free time. Hendrix’s Army time was too limiting for his play time and by July 1962 he was discharged, honorably, basically for being unfit for the Army.
Hendrix Before Jimi
King Kasuals/Marbles
Cox left the Army (on time) a few months later and together they formed the King Kasuals and lived in Clarksville, Tennessee. They met Larry Lee there. Of course, the three would later be on stage at Woodstock.
Others saw his dedication to practicing guitar to be more of an obsession and nicknamed him “Marbles” as in, losing his marbles.
Hendrix Before Jimi
First recording session
It was at this time that Hendrix was first hired as a session musician. Billy Cox was able to arrange a recording job through a friend, DJ and music producer Bill “Hoss” Allen for Clarence “Frogman” Henry.
Cox and Jimmy did the gig, got paid, and went back to being struggling musicians. Nothing was heard about it again until the mid-90s when Allen asked Cox if he knew what had happened to the recordings? Cox said he didn’t, but told Allen who he might contact.
In a 2017 Facebook post, Cox wrote, “Hoss went off to investigate. He later came back and told me, with mournful–regret: “I can’t believe it. I erased all the tracks that Jimi played on and replaced him because I thought Jimi was playing too loud. I erased millions of dollars!….” I could feel his pain….
Hendrix Before Jimi
Vancouver
Nora Rose Moore
Though Jimmy had a limited relationship with his grandmother, Nora Rose Moore, he loved her and loved being with her.
Frustrated with his lack of success, he visited Nora in Vancouver in December 1962. He joined Bobby Taylor and he Vancouvers, though they already had a lead guitarist, a Tommy Chong. Chong would later leave music and become a far better known comedian and nowadays a cannabis entrepreneur. Chong says that Taylor knew Hendrix, but that Hendrix didn’t play in the band. Hendrix Haze.
Hendrix Before Jimi
Chitlin’ Circuit
By early 1963, Jimmy was back in the states, Nashville, Tennessee specifically. He rejoined Billy Cox and the King Kasuals, which later included Larry Lee.
That didn’t last long and with some reluctance, Jimmy joined Cox and Lee on the informal Chitlin’ Circuit. The extreme segregation that existed, Black musicians had to find venues that would allow them to play.
Jimmy was reluctant because although the Circuit could offer steady work, the accommodations, travel conditions, low pay and living conditions far from comfortable.
Their job was with Bob Fisher and the Bonnevilles who were backing the Marvelettes and the Impressions with Curtis Mayfield.
Jimi would later say, ““The best gig was working with Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. Curtis was a really good guitarist…I learned quite a lot in that short time. He probably influenced me more than anyone I’d ever played with up to that time”
Hendrix eventually joined Solomon Burke‘s band, but his tardiness, scene-stealing style, and general lack of cooperation led to repeated dismissals.
Burke traded him to Otis Redding, but Redding tossed him for the same reasons and Jimmy returned to Nashville.
Hendrix Before Jimi
Isley Brothers & 1964
In January 1964, Jimmy left for New York City. Shortly after his arrival, he entered the amatur night at the Apollo and won first prize: $25. It filled an empty wallet.
Though his work ethic didn’t fit with most band’s rules, his reputation guitar prowess was always his saviour, however temporarily.
The Isley Brothers not only hired him, the first bought him a guitar case (for his earlier guitar carrier, think Chuck Berry and his gunny sack) and then a much better guitar.
Testify
He entered a recording studio for the second time with the Brothers and played on their 2-sided 6-minute “Testify.” And this recording, we have.
Meanwhile, Jimmy leaves, quits, or is fired from the Isley Brothers. and tours with Gorgeous George. While the band was in Washington, DC, Jimmy missed the bus and was left. Luckily, Little Richardhappened to show up with his Upsetters. Jimmy stretched a story about Seattle that appealed to Richard and Jimmy was an Upsetter.
While in LA with the band, Jimmy met Rosa Lee Brooks. Like most women Jimmy met, he told her that she reminded him of his mother and they were an item.
It was 1965 and Jimmy Hendrix decided he would be Maurice James. He quit/was fired from the Upsetters and rejoined the Isley Brothers.
But from the “Can’t live with him, can’t live without him” Department, they fired him and Maurice rejoined Little Richard.
In July 1965, Maurice was on TV for the first time playing behind Buddy and Stacey on “Shotgun. on Nashville’s WLAC Channel 5 television show Night Train.
Shotgun
Homeboy
Now switching between Maurice James, Jimmy James, and Jimmy Jim, Hendric recorded for Mr. Wiggles (aka, Dickie Diamond, aka August Moon, aka Alexander Randolph) on his Homeboy single
How Would You Feel
Next came whatever-his-name was playing for Curtis Knight on a Bob Dylan inspired “How Would You Feel. “
As the Clouds Drift By
And he also backed Jayne Mansfield on her “As the Clouds Drift By,” but the production hides his guitar.
Toward the end of 1965, Jimmy left Curtis and joined Joey Dee and the Starlighters on their country-wide tour. He would quit before Christmas. The routine was just too formal and so boring.
Enter Linda Keith
Diane Carpenter
It was January 1966 and Jimmy James was back in New York. The broke musician sent a postcard to his dad writing: “everything’s so-so in this big, raggedy city of New York. Everything’s happening bad here.”
He’d met the equally downtrodden 16-year-old Diane Carpenter and they moved in together. She earned what she could as a sex worker, but became pregnant by Jimmy and moved home to Minneapolis. On February 11, 1967 give birth to a daughter, Tamika Laurice James, today, Tamika Laurice James Hendrix.
Linda
In May 1966, Jimmy was back with Curtis Knight again playing some gigs at the Cheetah, a small club on Broadway and West 53rd St.
Linda Keith was a model. Her career had begun in 1964 when she was 18 and delivering mail at Vogue House. Her first assignment was to model for hats for a spread in the ‘Observer’.
Her best friend, Sheila Klein, was dating (and later married) Andrew Oldham, the Rolling Stones’ manager. Through him, she met Keith Richards. They had a shared interest in music and became romantically involved. She began accompanying the band to their US tours despite Oldham’s rules of no wives or girlfriends on these tours.
The Stones was about to start their US tour in Lynn, Massachusetts on June 24. Linda Keith had come on her own and stayed with a well-to-do friend Roberta Goldstein who was living with Mark Hoffman.
They Spent the Night Together
One night Linda and Roberta decided to take a walk and ended up at the Cheetah. Linda was astounded by Jimmy’s skill and invited him back to Mark’s apartment. Even after Roberta and Mark retired for the night, Jimmy and Linda talked and played records through the night. She asked him why he didn’t sing? He felt his voice would never measure up to the great singers he’d played with such as Otis Redding.
She asked him if he’d listened to Bob Dylan’s voice and played his “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” She also asked him if he’d like some acid? Though he’d heard of LSD and didn’t think he’d ever use it. At first, he didn’t even know what she meant by acid.
He did try it and had a so-so experience.
Jimmy James and the Blue Flames
Being a part of the music scene meant Jimmy ran into a lot of fellow musicians. One of them was Richie Havens who recommended Jimmy try getting work at the Cafe Wha?
Manny Roth, its manager hired Jimmy. After the first night, his guitar was stolen. Linda Keith came to the rescue and loaned Jimmy Keith Richards’ white Fender Stratocaster.
To make a band, Jimmy found two other players: 15-year-old Randy Wolfand 18-year-old Jeff Baxter. Randy would later become Randy California and help found the band Spirit. Baxter played with many bands including Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, as well as Spirit.
The band did many covers such as the Troggs’ Wild Thing, Wilson Pickett’s In the Midnight Hour, the McCoys’ Hang On Sloopy, and Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone.
The always out-of-money Jimmy sometimes stayed at Mark Hoffman’s apartment which Jimmy nicknamed Red House because of its bright red wallpaper.
Hendrix Before Jimi
Jim
Roberta Goldstein’s father owned a hotel in the Catskills and during the summer of 1966, she invited Jim (another name adjustment) to visit. He did.
On July 28, the Stones tour ended and the band was in New York to visit. Linda pitched Hendrix to their manager Oldham. He watched and was impressed. So impressed he was worried. Would having such a talent be toxic to his star band? Brian Jones, the band’s leader and guitarist, didn’t need such a threat. Linda, still Keith’s girlfriend, and Jimmy seemed too close.
The Animals rode the coattails of the Beatles British invasion with their interpretation of the American blues classic, House of the Rising Sun.
In 1966 they were opening for another British band, Herman’s Hermits. Money disagreements put the band on the verge of breaking up and the tour would be the last of the original group.
Chas Chandler
Chas Chandler was the band’s bassist and he’d decided to pursue production.
On August 2, after the Animals played on Cape Cod , they flew back to New York City. Chandler met Linda Keith at a club called Ondine‘s. She told him about Hendrix. The next day, Chandler went to the Cafe Wah? to listen.
Linda took him for a afternoon for two reasons: 1) that Jimmy wouldn’t be distracted, and 2) fewer customers would be there to recognize and distract the well-known Animal bassist.
One of the songs Jimmy played was “Hey Joe,” his “Hey Joe” as the song had been worked and reworked a couple of times by others.
Chandler immediately offered to manage Jimmy and Jimmy, despite some reservations, immediately accepted.
Reservations
Chandler explained that Jimmy would be coming to the UK alone, not with his Flames. It would be all new territory for Jimmy.
In the meantime, others in New York began to jump on and jump off the Hendrix bandwagon.
Amazing guitarist Mike Bloomfield was thoroughly impressed, but famed producer John Hammond (already discoverer of Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Mike Bloomfield, Pete Seeger, and later Bruce Springsteen) listened and was not impressed.
Hendrix Before Jimi
September 24, 1966
Chas Chandler knew his skills in management limited and asked Mike Jeffrey, the Animals’ manager and a man with many ties, skills, strengths, and legal shenanigans, to help out.
Jeffrey said yes.
On September 24, 1966 Jimi Hendrix arrived in London without a work permit, little money, but more skill on the guitar and showmanship with it (as Eric Clapton for example, would soon see) than any of the British rock guitar icons Jimi admired.
Hendrix Before Jimi
Still I’m Gonna’ Miss You
Suspecting fire where there wasn’t even any smoke and still in love, Keith Richards broke up with Linda Keith whose father had already dragged her back to London because of the “black junkie” he’d heard Hendrix was.
Keith, with help from Brian Jones, would wrote an ode to Linda. They recorded it in November. It became the band’s fourth number-one hit in the United States on March 4, 1967.
Ruby Tuesday
She would never say where she came from Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone While the sun is bright Or in the darkest night No one knows, she comes and goes
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day Still I’m gonna miss you
Thank you Linda
The 2013 film All is by My Side, starring OutKast’s André Benjamin as Hendrix and the British actress Imogen Poots as Linda shows Linda’s role in Hendrix’s life, while he was still performing as Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Director John Ridley told the New York Times he had been inspired by an obscure, late-career Hendrix recording called “Send My Love to Linda” and “the emotional velocity” of this pivotal but little-known chapter in Hendrix’s emergence as a rock star. [Guardian article] [NYT article]
screenshot from the trailer for “Jimi Hendrix — Hear My Train a Comin'” film
I was watching a 2016 interview that Bethel Woods Center for the Arts Museum Curator Wade Lawrence had done with Dale Saltzman and Peter Brown, the two men who had helped create the Bindy Bazaar merchandise area at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair as well as other cloth banners and the yellow cloth coverings over the Food for Love booths.
During the interview, Peter Brown mentioned a New York City venue called The Cerebrum. Brown’s memory of the club was a bit sketchy (“it was some sort of touchy-feely kind of thing in the…in the village maybe…”), but the reference piqued my interest and here we are.
NYC Cerebrum Club
Ruffin Cooper
Ruffin Cooper had helped begin the Cerebrum. PBS’s NYC channel Thirteen had this to say about Cooper: Ruffin Cooper…was a conceptual artist and photographer who came of age in the wildly exciting and tumultuous 1960s. Some unique experiences he had during his life included going to Woodstock in 1969 and living for a time at a New Mexico commune. Later he established himself as an artist in San Francisco, crossing paths with such cultural icons as Dennis Hopper, Allen Ginsburg and Andy Warhol.
It was he along with Richard Currie, Bobjack Callejo, and John Brown that came up with the club’s concept.
NYC Cerebrum Club
Others
In the book Ridiculous!: The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam by David Kaufman, Currie explained that the premise was simply a loft party. “...we’d come in with tambourines and projection equipment and weather balloons. We’d project images, take care of the music, and give them [guests] participatory instruments to play.”
A November 28, 1968 New York Times article by Dan Sullivan described it: A new club called Cerebrum shows you not only what it is, but what in five or ten years it may become: a prospect not altogether reassuring.
NYC Cerebrum Club
Mysterious entry
Cerebrum was located at 428 Broome Street. There was no Cerebrum signage. There was an illuminated bell. You pushed it. A opening in the door slid open. A voice asked your name. Did you have a reservation?
The initial entry was into the Orientation Room. You removed your shoes. you paid the fee–$2 on Tuesdays, $3 on on Wednesdays, and $4 on Thursdays. A white-robed guide, wearing only a white robe, handed a white robe to you. Some followed his example. Others chose not to, but all followed him into the main space.
A ramp let into an elongated all-white room and a white-carpeted runway in the center. Off of the runway were seven floating platforms. Each platform could hold about 6 people.
Each platform had its own collection of sensory items, or headsets to listen with, or tambourines to play with.
The Cerebrum opened in the fall of 1968 and closed the following spring. Here is a video posted by Bart Friedman, one of the guides, about the club. He describes it as “a nightly laboratory for mind bending excursions into film, sound, slides, mist, music, strobes and eroticism. ”
NYC Cerebrum Club
Short-lived
Ruffin Cooper attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. In fact, he went on to become a member of the Hog Farm.
He became a well known San Francisco based photographer of architectural subjects printed in mammoth scale. His show, Creating an Illusion: huge, consecutive photo details compositing the face of the Statue of Liberty, printed on fabric, spanned the length of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC in 1985.
Here is a video about that project.
He died in 1992.
NYC Cerebrum Club
Fillmore East
By the way, the same day that the NY Times had its article on Cerebrum, there was this advertisement next to the article:
So many choices!
NYC Cerebrum Club
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
