In search of the Jimi Hendrix legacy
By Basil Okafor
Saturday March 11, 2006

February 5, 1967. The Flamingo Club, London, England, is packed to its capacity with the movers and shakers of the rock music world. The select audience has gathered to witness the premiere of what has come to be easily rock ‘n’ rolls’ greatest phenomenon, to date.

The man opens his act in heavy tempo, gradually meandering the exotic sounds of his stratocaster guitar and voice, through various musical movements. At some point sounds, Eastern-like and well beyond the range of the guitar confound the audience, bringing an occultic and mystical dimension into the act. Nobody has ever played the guitar like this.

Thin, sexy, flying hair cut at the forehead with a bandanna – a trademark of his Cherokee-Indian heritage; outlandish garb and bathed in the iridescent glow of stage lighting, the nightmarish figure twists to the powerful rhythm of his music.

Suddenly, he lifts his stratocaster to his teeth. A weird sound like that of a tortured animal erupts from the speakers. In a blinding flash, moments later, he lifts the vibrating instrument high into the air and sends it crashing into the amplifier. The wailing sounds reach an ear-splitting crescendo: “I’m gonna sacrifice somethin’ I really love,” mumbles the guitarist, in a frenzy.

The performer is neither hurt, nor electrocuted. The spectacle is as terrifying as it is disturbing, but it is also beautiful.

A stunned audience finally finds its voice. Then, erupts in a deafening ovation, unprecedented in the history of the hip Flamingo crowd. Jimi Hendrix, the wild man of pop music has arrived…
May 23, 1990, Seattle, Washington. This solitary passenger sits in a metro bus driven by Mike Tagawa, a Japanese-American and a 1962 graduate of Garfield High School, Seattle. Tagawa is delighted beyond words that the reporter has travelled all the way from Africa, in search of the legacy of the late Jimi Hendrix, his city’s hero.

But Hendrix, long dead, remains not just one city’s hero, but a worldwide figure, with a cult following in some circles. As the reporter would find out only days later, a Church of Jimi Hendrix, solely dedicated to the worship of the guitar genius, actually exists in San Francisco, California.

As driver and his lone passenger head south in the direction of Skyway District where Al Hendrix, the late rock hero’s father lives, the excited duo recall the life and times of the legendary guitarist who had died 20 years earlier, at the youthful age of 27. The desperate search around America for the Jimi Hendrix legacy was slowly and finally winding down to a successful climax…
Please, read on:

SEATTLE!
Elegant, exotic, mystical!
There was no knowing the ways of the Seattle rain. Now, it poured. Then, it abated. Then, tiny droplets came pelting the window panes unrelentingly, their silvery rivulets dribbling their way down the sills, evoking memories of ‘Rainy Day’, one of Jimi Hendrix’s smash hits, during his short, but eventful life.
Outside, on the lawns of house number 11832, the lazy day dragged on:
“Rainy day, dream away,
Let the sun take a holiday…
Rainy day, rain all day,
Ain’t no use in getting’ uptight.
Just let it groove its own way,
Let it drain your worries away…”

In another hour or so, I should be bound for San Francisco on a scheduled flight. But Al Hendrix, unhurried like the Seattle rain, spoke in measured tones as he recalled the magical moments that made the life of his legendary son and his relationship with the rock hero even beyond the grave.

The old man cleared his throat elaborately and began, “I wouldn’t exactly say the ghost of Jimi still haunts this house, but I’ve seen him in my dreams a couple o’ times since he passed away.”
My search for Al Hendrix began in a seedy night-club in downtown Washington D.C. Someone, there, remembered seeing Buddy Miles (the drummer in Jimi’s The Band of Gypsies) playing keyboards in a show, “a coupla years back”. And that was the closest I came, so far, to any traces of old Hendrix.
A few days later, on the flight to Chicago, Captain Steven Ilk, of the City of Port Angeles Police Department in Washington State, who sat right next to me, knew for certain, that Jimi came from Seattle. But then, I had read that many years ago.

Steve, as he soon became to me, painted many scenes of the enchanting beauty that was Seattle. Such sophistication as the city had, we both agreed could have helped bring out the genius in young Jimi and inspire his elegant poetry. “You’ll see,” he concluded.

When we went our separate ways at O’Hare Airport, tantalising images of Seattle on my mind, beckoned like some El Dorado, the music of David Lanz and Paul Speer (a gift from Steve) fuelling my determination. But no one else I met in Chicago had any more information to offer, on Jimi.

In Minneapolis, (incidentally Miles’ hometown) a young man who sold odds and ends in a mystical shop near the University of Minnesota, (from incenses, to portraits of Albert Einstein, to Amerindian bandannas and the music of Jimi Hendrix) said that if I had a few more days to spend in Minneapolis, he could “turn up with somethin’”.

A few more days, however, as I sat in the office of Sergeant Patrick Moriarty, of the Seattle Police Department, the very first clue turned up. According to Moriarty, (himself an ardent fan of Jimi’s) Hendrix attended the Garfield High School, “just down the road”, so he suggested I enquire about his family there. He gave me directions to the school and I was grateful.

The next day, at the University of Washington, Professor Alan Marlatt (another fan of Jimi’s) had his secretary phone up Garfield High. A female voice at that end said the school couldn’t possibly have the information I was looking for, but I still made an appointment to see the principal the next day.
Back at the hotel, that evening, I called up a local, FM-radio rock station, but there was no response. This was to be my last night in Seattle and I waited desperately for any response from all of the contacts I had made throughout the day.

The previous day, my colleagues and I had been hosted in their home by a kindly Nigerian couple, Mr. and Mrs. Onum Esonu. Esonu, an urban planner for the Pierce County, promised to use his vast contacts to assist in locating Jimi’s father. So also did Mr. Larry Lockwood, an Amerindian cultural and dance teacher, whom I met earlier in the day during a visit to the Chief Leschi High School on a Puyallup Indian tribe reservation in Tacoma, a few miles down the road from the Boeing Village, close to the Canadian border.

I stood frustrated at my window, gazing down the junction of 6th and Seneca and the breathtaking, scenic beauty that was Seattle. The pressures of the day’s running around were beginning to take their toll and the back of my neck felt like I had just been spared from being garroted.
Suddenly, about 10 floors down below, the hotel’s Bell Captain was leaning over a car parked in front of the hotel’s entrance. He appeared to be in an argument with the car’s driver. In his left hand, he held a thick volume with a whitish cover. In a flash, my mind went straight to the Seattle White Pages that lay on my locker.

That was it! “Why didn’t you think of it all along?” I heard myself exclaim. I flipped through the pages and found several Hendrixes, then proceeded to call them, one after the other. When I phoned up a number listed after James A. Hendrix, a mellifluous baritone voice came through on the answering machine…“Hellow, this is Al Hendrix…if you’ll please leave your message, I’ll call you back…”
After about three hours that seemed like eternity and not daring to leave my room, even for supper, the telephone jangled. Pa James Al Hendrix was on the other end of the line and sounded as excited as I was. He had received visitors or pilgrims from all over the world but never from Africa, his ancestral home – he being of Amerindian and African-American parentage.

The next morning, as we sped our way to Jefferson on 23rd, the curious cab driver kept eyeing me over, sizing up my Adire caftan under my top coat, with cap to match. Unable to hold back his curiosity any longer, he suddenly spoke up:

“You must be from Africa!”
“Sure,” I replied.
“My name’s Tony. Sometimes, they call me Bunkie…say, man, what brings you to these parts?” he pursued, his applejack hat shaggily perched on his head.
“I am a journalist and I am looking for the father of Jimi Hendrix.”

Taken aback by my response, his eyes widened a little: “Holy cow! Well, you could be lookin’ for a pin in a goddamned haystack. This is a big city, you know, but good luck, anyway.”
As I stepped out of his cab in front of Garfield High, Tony or Bunkie, still humming his hero’s ‘Rainy Day’, waived two dollars off my bill, “for Jimi”.

It was for me, very touching, that Americans never forgot their history and their heroes. Never forgot the men and women who contributed one way or the other in building their great country.
Almost everybody I spoke to, young or old, black or white, knew about Jimi Hendrix – a man who had died 20 years earlier – and spoke about him with pride glowing in their eyes. People of my generation, in particular and those a little older, spoke about him with fond memories. I thought about my own country and the plight of our heroes, past.

In America, even a beggar would not fail to remind you that he is an American when the occasion calls for it. Earlier, as I left the hotel, a junkie had noticed me and sidled up to where I stood waiting for a cab.
“Can you give a brother a quarter?” he said, in a low tone.
Silence from me.

“Please…just a quarter,” his tone moving one notch higher.
Silence.
“Can’t you give a brother a quarter?” his voice sounding almost impatient now.
Silence.

“Or, you guys ain’t got quarters over there, in Africa?” he snapped.
“I don’t have a quarter,” I retorted, breaking my silence.
“Whatchoo guys got, then?”
“Naira and kobo.”
“What’s that?”
“Money.”
“Bullshit! Never heard of ‘em.”

“Hey!” I fired back, “Don’t gimme that sass, man, that’s our goddamn money you’re talking about like that!”

“I don’t care, man, I only says I never heard of ‘em,” he thundered, as he swaggered off.
At Garfield High, the principal, Mr. Perry Wilkins, an African-American, remembered Jimi and proudly took me to the school’s library to photograph a bust of the guitar hero, dedicated to his memory. The same school also produced another musical giant, Quincy Jones, and Mr. Wilkins also took me to photograph the Quincy Jones Auditorium.

Moments later as I waited for a southbound bus to Skyway District, where Al Hendrix lived, the mighty hands of Fate again interfered in my search.

I needed a number seven bus, but as the chill came on, like the persistent Seattle rain ensured, I hopped into the very next metro bus I saw. There were only two passengers in the metro – a schoolboy, who tried as best he could to answer my questions and an elderly man with hostile eyes who sat at the tail end of the bus. When the schoolboy disembarked, I decided to approach the driver himself.
His eyes almost popped out of their sockets when I explained who I was and where I was headed for: “Well, I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed, “my name’s Mike Tagawa and I am a 1962 graduate of Garfield High, I knew James Hendrix very well.”

At the next stop, Tagawa powered down his metro bus to a total stop and for the next 15 or so minutes, told the story of James, as he knew him.
As a student of Garfield High young Hendrix, because of his exotic looks, his prowess on the guitar and his amiable nature, was something of a local celebrity. Particularly, he was very popular amongst the girls, who loved his fancy clothes.

Said Tagawa, “He was very quiet, fanciful and artistic, though he was a below average student. In fact, he wore a special hairdo for which the students nicknamed him Wrink or Hood. And one thing was for sure: you would always catch James playing the guitar.”

Hendrix also played in the hand of another talented student, Webb Lofton, whose group was known as the Rocking Kings. As was his constant habit, young James often played the guitar during sports – though he loved sports. One day, the gym coach, Mr. Bill Diambri caught the young guitarist “at it”. The coach called James into his office and let him play the guitar. The man was so impressed that he allowed James play the guitar during gym hours, if he so wished.

At the home of Al Hendrix, later, the old man corroborated Tagawa’s impressions of young James.
Said he, “He was on the shy side and not really good with school work. Matter of fact, he dropped out of school, but he also liked sports.”

Al Hendrix, who, like his late son, also dropped out of school and served in the army, loved sports too. In fact, he was such an ardent golfer that a whole section of his second living-room was filled with trophies he won playing golf. The senior Hendrix was once, also, in the entertainment business, as a tap-dancer and Jimi’s mother was actually his professional dance partner.

He recalled how he bought Jimi his first guitar: “He used to fool around with the broom, pretending it was a guitar – we did that too, as kids – so, when I found he could play, I bought him an electric guitar.”
But, never did Al Hendrix imagine the kind of worldwide adulation and fame that were to come his son’s way. According to him, some journalists (from Germany and from France) called recently. And the recording companies and radio stations that still paid him royalties on Jimi’s works have kept in touch.
In fact, on the wall of another section of his other living-room, which served as a Jimi memorial, a plaque of honour presented to him recently by a Seattle radio station, hung resplendent, among the five odd, gold albums and cassettes Jimi won in his short career, before he was wasted, an alleged victim of drug overdose.

Those gold albums, indicated Pa Hendrix, were not the original ones. The first set was removed by burglars but the recording companies quickly replaced them. (Jimi Hendrix mementoes have become museum pieces, worldwide and are worth a lot of money).

As I wound up my visit, Al Hendrix recalled his many conversations with Jimi; about reincarnation, Unidentified Flying Objects, UFOs, and other galaxies. He showed me a photograph of Jimi’s son by a Swedish woman, when mother and son came calling a couple of years back. Then, suddenly, he dashed into an inner room and came back with a souvenir – one of the several silk scarves Jimi had used or stage!

As he proceeded to autograph the gift for me, I thought, like the great Abraham Lincoln once did: “I claim not to control events, but rather, events have always controlled me.”
First published in Weekend Concord in 1992