The Hendrix Experience

I was 19 years old when I spent an hour with Jimi Hendrix.  It was during the Summer of Love 1967.  

At 3:00 in the afternoon, the limousine carrying Jimi Hendrix and the Experience rolled up to the WBAL-TV studios, over an hour before he was to appear on The Kerby Scott show to perform his latest hit, “Hey Joe.” 

I was one of Kerby’s assistants on the show.  Part of my responsibility was to take the guests into the green room and make sure they were comfortable while they waited for their time on the show.  Jimi and his band set up their equipment and did a quick soundcheck. With still an hour to showtime, I was asked to keep them entertained until then.

First, a little background:  The Kerby Scott TV show was created on WBAL-TV 11 in 1967 as the new Baltimore dance show.  The original dance show was The Buddy Deane Show on WJZ-TV 13.  As any Baltimore native knows, the film Hairspray is a true depiction of what happened on The Buddy Deane Show.  The names were changed to protect the innocent; thus Corny Collins was born. 

As we sat in the Green Room waiting for showtime, Jimi talked to me about experimentation.  He talked about how he strived to get a different guitar sound on every song he recorded.  “Purple Haze” had a completely different sound than “Foxey Lady” or “Hey Joe.”  He said that you could listen to Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley and always know who it was playing; he wanted to make every song sound different.

Jimi and his compatriots, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, talked to me about the recording of the album Are You Experienced?  Jimi said he wanted to get a completely dissident sound for the song “Purple Haze.”  He talked about using an interval of flattened fifth d5 tone.  This was just the part of the conversation that was way out of my league.  But I followed along as much as I could.

After talking about everything from flower-power to transcendental meditation to the embarrassment of being the opening band for the Monkees show in Florida just weeks earlier, we turned our talk to the upcoming appearance on The Kerby Scott TV show.  Typically, the show would open with staff announcer Royal Parker introducing the show and ending with, “And now, here’s Kerby Scott…”  The camera would show Kerby standing at the podium and he would do his opening talk letting people know who was on the show and introduce the first song for dancing.

Today, however, would be different.  When the show started, when Royal introduced Kerby, the camera would show Jimi standing behind the podium.  And so it was.  Jimi Hendrix stood there staring into the camera, which after a few uncomfortable moments widened the shot to show Kerby standing next to him and the show was off and running.

Twenty minutes into the show, Jimi and the Experience performed “Hey Joe” and then did an on-camera interview with Kerby.  When the segment was over, they grabbed their gear and I led the Jimi Hendrix Experience out of the building.  The limo whisked them away and the Kerby Scott Show continued on as if this moment of greatness never happened.  But all us knew that we had just witnessed true genius.

To see the Jimi Hendrix Experience perform "Hey Joe," click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUPifXX0foU