Let’s go hear some music!
Well, Jimi passed on going down to the restaurant opting to stay in the his room with several of his new found friends and a couple of guys from our club so a few of us, their guys, and Mitch and Noel descended on the unsuspecting restaurant staff and proceeded to give them about 45 minutes of complete, but colorful, confusion. Items as common as mustard drew questions from the Englishmen “why do Americans put Mustard on everything?” referring to two of our guys who were putting it on their hot-dogs and hamburgers. “Ketchup too, probably put it on ice cream!” They were definitely the focus of attention the restaurant and were relishing the stares from the “normal” patrons.
After our little journey to the restaurant we went back up to Jimi’s room where Jimi and the others were enjoying themselves with a variety of substances all geared to bring on fun and frivolity! We all kind of stood around jabbering for a few minutes then a plan was hatched. Jimi had heard that blues legend Bobby Blue Bland was playing that night at the Warehouse, a large nightclub not far from the hotel and could we go there?
By now the limo was gone so it was back to the cars we had so Jimi and Mitch and their road manager Gerry and six of us split up into three cars and shot several blocks away to the club. We got to the door and the sign said Bobby Blue Bland was indeed playing but it was the next Wednesday! Undaunted we proceeded to enter the club to catch the band who was performing and I will never forget the look of disbelief on the their lead singers face when he saw Jimi Hendrix sitting down at a table not far from the stage. Jimi tipped his hat to the singer and the poor guy just about dropped. He regained his composure long enough to finish the song then announce that it was break time! Gracious as ever, Jimi walked over to the stunned band and introduced himself and offered to buy them a round. They all shook hands and made small talk for a minute then Jimi returned to the table and the party was officially on.
The Warehouse was a big place with a couple of barrooms, one for rock music one for soul and blues music. We were in the soul/blues room which had three African American waitresses who were looking at us like we were from another planet. Since I had the cash for the “welcoming” party I ordered several pitchers of beer from the one of the waitresses and after she brought them over I went to pay her and she motioned for me to follow her. I followed her back up to the bar and the other two women came over and the question was; “who is that brother in the wild hat?” They had probably never even seen a picture of Jimi Hendrix since they were much more soul music girls than rocker girls so when I told them who it was they just looked at one another and shrugged. “Okay then have you heard Foxy Lady?”I asked. Two answered at the same time “Oh yeah! That is a cool song, is that really the dude that sings it? He’s kinda cute.” I assured them he was and they managed to make a trip or two to our section every few minutes from then on, smiling the whole time!
The night was flying by and it was closing time before we knew it so Jimi and a few others said they wanted to stop and get something to eat before calling it a night. There were several people who were very cosmically high and food wasn’t something they were thinking about but the whole group decided to head to the Carl Greer Inn just down the road. Everyone insisted I invite the waitresses, which I did, and they showed up and joined us a little later. That was a double take for the night staff I can tell you, we were in fine form; loud, happy, colorful and stoned, then on top of it the three women from the club show up all styling and looking Foxy and adding some more flash to our circus!
After we all finished Jimi handed me a bunch of money under the table and insisted; “pay for it with this, man,” so I paid up and we were off into the night. When we left the crew from the restaurant and the other patrons who had been watching the whole scene started waving good-bye and cracking up. I don’t think they’d experienced anything like that before!
As we glided back into the hotel parking lot I saw more girls waiting and as we got out of the cars to say goodnight to Jimi and company I knew that the band and traveling entourage weren’t going to be calling it a night soon. So those of us who were leaving shook hands with all the guys and vowed to have a great concert that evening!!