From Somers Point to Monterey

Monterey Pop – June 1967 – Ushering in the Summer of Love

From Somers Point to Monterey

When Joe Walsh of the Nomads, Jimmie Johnson of the Starliters and Richie the Black Hippie left town at the end of the Summer of ‘65, when they got to the crossroads at the Somers Point Circle they went in different directions, Joe headed west in his VW van, excited about being a freshman in college – Kent State, Ohio, while Jimmie and Richie went north to New York City.

Jimmie, the Starliters’ guitarist stayed with Joey Dee and the Pepperment Twist boys for a few more months, as part of the house band at the Pepperment Lounge, an uptown joint popular with the straight college crowd. Ritchie the Black Hippie, who played guitar and sang on Schriver’s Pavilion drifted back to the Village – Greenwich Village – the hip downtown area that was for New York City what Heights-Asbury was in San Francisco, Venice was for Southern California and Rittenhouse Square and South Street were in Philadelphia – hippie magnets.

Richie followed Napoleon, the only other black hippie in the Ocean City boardwalk scene in the summer of ’65. Like Richie, Napoleon was tall and thin and sported a big black afro hair do, who made a living selling his hip art on the boardwalk in the summer and on MacDougle Street in the Village in the fall and winter. Napoleon would do things like a psychadelic day glow Elvis on black velvet.

Richie and Napoleon shared a room they rented by the week and Richie got a steady gig at the Café Au Go Go, where Buzzy Linhart performed and  John Hammond, Jr. played traditional blues and folk music. Yea, the same John Hammond, Jr. who was in Albert Grossman’s office and affirmed secretary Mary Martin’s answer to Bob Dylan’s question of - who was the best rock & roll band in the world at that moment?

Levon and the Hawks was The answer Mary Martin uttered out, and John Hammond backed her up, saying he caught them on the road in Ontario when they backed rockabilly Ronnie Hawkins, and yes, they are the best he’s ever seen, which got Levon and the Hawks the full time job of backing Bob Dylan when he “went electric.”

It was harder for Jimmie to get a gig.

Wearing his fancy suits he wore as a Starliter, Jimmie occassionaly wandered downtown to catch Hammond and Richie at the Café Au Go Go and he auditioned for a number of  jobs playing solo  until he finally got one.

Jimmy was tired of playing the same songs every night with Joey Dee and the Starliters and wanted to strike out on his own, but he struck out the first few times he tried out for a gig. One afternoon Jimmy caught a ride to North Jersey where he auditioned as a solo act at a truck stop bar off the Turnpike. While he sat on a bar stool on an empty stage and played a few songs for the manager, Les Paul, with his son in tow, stopped into the bar for a cold one and a coke for his son and picked up a schedule for when he was to play there, as Les was a respected entertainer who played guitar while his wife sang, mainly dainty, slow ballads that the long distance truck drivers loved.

Some years earlier, while tinkering with his guitars, Les Paul invented the solid body electric guitar, guitars that were now being officially marketed as Telecasters.

Sitting there in the dark and empty bar, drinking and talking with the manager as he audition Jimmie, Paul noticed that the tall, thin black dude on stage was playing one of his guitars – a Les Paul Stratocaster. And he noticed that he was playing it in a totally different and unique way – the way it was designed to be played. Paul wanted to compliment the young man but he had other business to conduct in the city and didn’t want to interfere with his audition.

While driving to New York City with his son Les Paul thought about the audition some more and after finishing up his business in the city he stopped at the truck stop bar again and asked the manager what happened to the black guitarist, as he wanted to talk to him.

Sorry, the manager said, he didn’t get the gig, too loud and erratic.

He only said his name was Jimmie.

Unable to get a steady gig as a solo act, Jimmie put a band together – Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, and began to make a name for himself in the downstairs basement underground club Café Wha?

John Hammond, Jr. played all the clubs in the Village, and caught up to Jimmie one night when he was at the Gaslight and between sets walked across the street to the Club Wha? John began to slip Jimmie a few bucks to join him on stage and jam for an hour.

When word of Jimmie’s guitar antics got out, other bands would go out of their way to see him, including the Rolling Stones, the Animals and Mike Bloomfield, who played guitar on Dylan’s recording of “Like A Rolling Stone,” the hit song of the summer of ’65, and a song that Jimmie would adopt as his own.

Two of the Stones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, and Linda Keith – Keith Richard’s wife, stayed around to chat with Jimmie one night after his show, and it was a show more than just a performance. While the Stones continued on their tour of the States, Linda stayed behind and went to the Café Wha?every night, and Jimmie moved into her fancy hotel suit. She brought Jimmie a brand new left handed Stratocaster, also invented by Les Paul, and she nursed him back to a more healthy constitution.

She also introduced Jimmie to Chas Chandler, a manager with the Animals, who with his partner former British Army commando Mike Jeffery, signed Jimmie to a record contract and took him to England.

They arrived in England on September 21, 1966, and even though Jimmie couldn’t get a work permit, that wouldn’t stop him from playing. On October 15, 1966 Jimmie sat in with jazz rock organist Brian Auger and the Oblivion Express at Blaises Club, beginning a series of London shows that are now popular bootleg collector tapes.

After open auditions for a drummer and bassist, who thought they were auditioning for the Animals, bassist Noel Redding was chosen along with cocky and brash drummer Mitch Mitchell to form the Jimi Hendrix Experience (JHE), premier in Paris at the Olympia on October 18, 1966 before 14,500 Parisians.

While Joe Walsh had left the Nomads to go to Kent State Ohio, where as a student he formed the “power trio” that became The James Gang, Jimi would lead the ultimate power trio – the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Mick Jagger’s girlfriend Maryanne Faithful had heard about Jimi from Linda Keith and began to attend Jimi’s shows with Brian Jones, the nominal “leader” of the Rolling Stones who introduced the band to the American blues classics and jazz, but had not much to do with their recordings at the time.

While fine tunning their act, Noel and Mitch would egg Jimi on by calling him “nigger” and “coon,” and by mid-June 1967 – the Jimi Hendrex Experience would go to America, premiering at the “First” Monterey Pop Festival, and Brian Jones, while not performing, would have the honor of introducing America to the Experience.

As one of the most recognizable Stones, Brian Jones caused something of a stur among the crowds while walking around the fairgrounds in a flowing flower print robe, with a Buddweiser in one hand and Nico in the other. Nico, the lead singer of the Velvet Underground, when she came to Philadelphia, performed at the Second Fret, a small, below ground coffee house on Sanson Street near Rittenhouse Square. Now she was walking hand in hand with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones at the First International Monterey Pop Festival, representing some of the foreign contingent.

When the Beatles came to Atlantic City in August 1965 they were surrounded by Beatlemania, thousands of cheering and screaming girls, and only got a breather when they slipped into Cape May and stayed unobtrusively at the Lafayette Hotel on the beach for two days and a night before appearing in Philadelphia.

When the Rolling Stones came to Atlantic City George Hamid, the owner of Steel Pier, picked them up at the airport in his convertible and drove them to the boardwalk where they got some pizza and hot dogs and walked around without being noticed. Now, two years later, Brian Jones was a celebrity on par with the Beatles, was drawing a crowd, and loved it as he danced around the grounds with Nico.

Jones was listed as being on the Festival charity board along with Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Brian Wilson, Donovan, Johnny River, Smokey Robinson and John Phillips of the Mama and the Papas, the idea being that the bands would play for their expenses only, and all profits would go to the charity, and that’s pretty much the way it went except for the out of pocket payments to Ravi Shankar and Country Joe McDonald and the Fish.

The whole festival was put together in less than six weeks by John Phillips and his manager Lou Adler, and the former Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, manly with $45,000 provided by ABC for the movie rights.  

The Monterey Fairgrounds, where the Monterey Jazz and Folk Festivals are also held, officially only holds some 7,000 people, and that was the paid attendance, but they say there were over 20,000 people within earshot of the stage where Brian Jones took the microphone and said, “Direct from England – appearing in the States for the first time – Jimi Hendrix – the Jimi Hendrix Experience.”

With such a short intro, Jones let the music speak.

“Killing Floor,” “Hey Joe,” and then beginning with the opening cords of “Wild Thing,” Jimi suddenly switches to the opening notes of Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”

“Once upon a time you dressed so fine, didn’t you?”