Tag Archives: Woodstock Birthdays

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox

From a 10/29/23 FB post: Hello everyone, Happy Sunday!!! Been back home a few weeks, getting back into the rhythm. Thank you for your prayers and well wishes.
Happy birthday: born October 18, 1941

Old Army Buddy

A July 12, 1969 article entitled Jimi Hendrix Has a Brand New Bass in Rolling Stone said in part: Jimi Hendrix has named an old Army buddy as the bass player he may soon be recording with and hinted during a recent visit to Los Angeles that as soon as contracts allow, the Jimi Hendrix Experience may make the transition from trio to creative commune.

The bassist is Billy Cox, who was stationed with Hendrix at Ft. Campbell, Ky., several years ago when both were in the Army and then for three years following the service, in the Clarksville, Ky., and Nashville areas. Since that time, Cox has remained in Nashville, playing pickup dates and touring occasionally with Wilson Pickett, Gene Chandler and most recently, Buddy Miles.

Wheeling, West Virginia

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox
That’s me, age three with hatchet in hand, Wellsburg, West Virginia. Wonder what I was knowing? That’s my friend, Jimi, Memphis, 1969. A lot was going on with him, at that time, and NONE of it good. After a few years of not seeing each other, Jimi had made it big and he had called me to meet him in Memphis. In the early years, we always planned and talked about making it and being big together. So, there I was in Memphis, on the side of the stage, watching my old friend, sing about chopping down a mountain with the edge of his hand. Soon I would be on stage with him. ~The Last Gypsy, Billy Cox

From his siteBilly Cox was born in Wheeling, West Virginia. His father was a Baptist minister and teacher of mathematics and his mother was a classical pianist. Billy was blessed with the best of both worlds. One world revolved around the strong intellectual discipline of his father and the other world revolved around the loving tenderness and sensitivity of his mother.

Billy Cox

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox

Woodstock

Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock was Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. Yes, he had a band behind him, but Jimi’s talent and showmanship always shone so brightly, other band members were often in the shadows, so Billy’s presence at Woodstock is more of a footnote.

Having said that, he is a part of, albeit momentarily, of what is perhaps Woodstock’s most famous song: the Star  Spangled Banner.

From a May 2023 Bassplayer magazine article Billy said:  “If you listen to the recording you hear me playing the first five or six notes,”  “Then I thought, ‘Wait a minute – we never practiced this.’ So I immediately stepped back, and it was bang – such a great thing that Jimi did.”

He continued: That [Woodstock] was great; it was the first big gig I played with Jimi. We came around the back way and looked out on that crowd – it was the largest crowd I’d ever played in front of. Mitch said, ‘Hell, I don’t know whether I want to go out there!’ Jimi said, ‘We’ll give to them and they’ll give back to us, and we’ll have a good time.’ It was great, it was exhilarating.”

From the same article: Onstage with Hendrix during his first serious gigs and for his very last performances, Cox’s low-end support aptly complemented Hendrix’s guitar stratospherics. “A bloody marvellous bass player – has soul and feel for days,” noted Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer. “Billy was Jimi’s confidante and buddy – and a wonderful human being.”

Hall of Fame

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox

From his site: legendary bassist and Musicians Hall of Fame inductee Billy Cox, is synonymous with almost any reference to Jimi Hendrix and Rock-n-Roll history. From their army days, Billy would always have an extended friendship with Jimi Hendrix. The kindred spirits would have a musical chemistry that was nurtured over the years as both performed regularly as sidemen for the most prominent blues and R&B acts of the day. The bond between the two men would write a new chapter in music history.

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox

Billy Cox and his Hendrix Experience band at the Allen Blues Festival

Billy Cox has released four solo albums:

  • Nitro Function, 1971
  • Last Gypsy Standing, 2009
  • Old School Blue Blues, 2011
  • Unfiltered, 2014

From WikipediaToday, Billy Cox owns a video production company. He has produced numerous blues and a myriad of gospel shows. He co-authored the books, Jimi Hendrix Sessions and Ultimate Hendrix with John McDermott and Eddie Kramer. Billy has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors among which: In 2009 Billy Cox was inducted into The Musicians Hall Of Fame; Billy received The Founders Award in 2010. It was given by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen and in 2011 Billy was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall Of Fame. Billy released his latest album, Old School Blue Blues, in 2011 and continues to tour with “The Experience Hendrix Tour” each year and his own Band of Gypsys Experience. He released the single Run featuring the androgynous singer and songwriter Marlon Alarm in November 2011.

Hendrix Bassist Billy Cox

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Robert Hall Bob Weir

Robert Hall Bob Weir

Happy birthday to you…

October 16, 1947

Jimmy come lately

I quickly admit that I was not much of a Dead fan until my brother-in-law George directed me to the Internet Archives site [Internet Archive Grateful Dead] with its hundreds, no, thousands of Dead recordings. I learned the letters SBD (soundboard), AUD (audience), Matrix (someone’s incredible mixing of both a SBD and and AUD), and BB (a Betty Board as in Betty Cantor-Jackson, onetime soundboard tech for the Dead).

I also learned that, and this was the tipping point for this penurious person, I could download any file I wanted for free. That generosity did not last. Today, only the audience recordings are still available for free download. Many of those are simply outstanding recordings. The soundboards are available to listen to, but not to download.

Robert Hall Bob Weir

Get to the point

I didn’t get the Dead because I was familiar only with the Dead’s studio work, which didn’t do much for me. Yes their two 1970 masterpieces, Workingman Dead and American Beauty, both made my 8-track collection, but by 1971 I was married, by 1973 a father, and working two or three jobs. Concerts were rarely part of the budget.

Robert Hall Bob Weir

Bob Weir

When the Dead began to play in 1965, Bob Weir was just 17. Even by the counterculture’s egalitarian standards, Weir was still a kid.

The kid had not been a good student. His behavior defined the then American education’s definition of the poorly performing student: a lazy misfit. Fortunately, while in the system he met John Perry Barlow. Fortunately, Weir knew enough to get kicked out of the system and back to his hometown of San Francisco.

And fortunately, he met Jerry Garcia, too. Instruments in hand, they morphed from Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions into the electric Warlocks, and quickly tripped from there into the Grateful Dead.

Faced with the daunting task of playing beside the genius guitar playing of Garcia, Bob became one of rock’s best rhythm guitarists. He became the co-lead-vocalist with Garcia, and with old school friend Barlow wrote many of the Dead’s best songs such as…

  • Black-Throated Wind
  • Cassidy
  • Looks Like Rain
  • Lost Sailor
  • Mexicali blues
  • The Music Never Stopped
  • Saint of Circumstance
Robert Hall Bob Weir

Keeps on truckin’

Following the demise of the original Dead after Garcia’s death in 1995, Weir continued to play music: sometimes with other Dead band mates, sometimes with others.

In 2016, Weir released Blue Mountain. 

The Pitchfork site had this to say about it: As Weir’s sixth studio full-length outside the Grateful Dead, Blue Mountain functionally serves as a reboot for the guitarist, whose solo sensibility long ago veered far from Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s cosmic Americana and into the AOR waters of 1978’s Heaven Help the Fool (made with Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olsen), the pastel fusion of Bobby and the Midnites in the ’80s, and the dense jam-jazz of Ratdog in the ’90s. With an ambient C&W production that often subsumes lead guitar into the reverb swirl (and occasionally swallows Weir), Blue Mountain will likewise probably prove inseparable from the historical period in which it was recorded. But, unlike Weir’s previous albums, Blue Mountain also finally seems like the right album at the right time for Weir. Quietly adventurous, wise, and a welcome late-career turn, Blue Mountain builds an ethereal home for a rhythm guitarist who was tempered in the chaos-friendly environs of Dead.

Don’t just read about it, though. I’m listening to it as I write this and it is sounds are smooth and soothing.

And he’s still out there performing.

Robert Hall Bob Weir

John Winston Ono Lennon

John Winston Ono Lennon

October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980
“Here Today” by Paul McCartney (1982)

John said…

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”

“Nothing you can know that isn’t known. Nothing you can see that isn’t shown. Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be. It’s easy.”

“All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

“Love, Love, Love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

“Keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V., And you think you’re so clever and classless and free, But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

“Love is free, free is love. Love is living, living love. Love is needing to be loved”

“Woman Is the nigger of the world.”

“Love is the answer and you know that for sure. Love is a flower you got to let it grow.”

“God is a concept by which we measure our pain”

“In the middle of the night, in the middle of the night i call your name. Oh Yoko, oh Yoko, my love will turn you on.”

“Here I stand head in hand, Turn my face to the wall. If she’s gone I can’t go on, Feeling two-foot small”

“And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown. So I lit a fire, isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?”

“Love is all and love is everyone. It is knowing, it is knowing…”


John Winston Ono Lennon

In My Life…In Our Lives

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

In my life I love you more

John Winston Ono Lennon

We miss you everyday, John

John Winston Ono Lennon