Fact #118252
When:
Short story:
As Purple Haze enters the UK single chart, Jimi Hendrix sells a blue-white Stratocaster guitar at Selmer’s Music Store, Charing Cross Road, London, UK. Paul Kossoff, later to form Free, is working as a sales assistant in the shop. In the evening, The Jimi Hendrix Experience (billed as Jimmi Hendrix Experience) plays at The Guildhall, Southampton, earning a fee of £175.Full article:
Paul Kossoff : He had an odd look about him and smelled strange. He started playing some chord stuff like in Little Wing, and the salesman looked at him and couldn’t believe it. Just seeing him really freaked me out. I just loved him to death. He was my hero.
(Source : Guitar Player, 1976, interview by Steven Rosen)
Oliver Keen (musician) : I got a telephone call from Harry Moore, then manager of Selmer's music shop, Charing Cross Road, London, UK. On arriving in the shop, Harry told me they had just got a second-hand Fender Stratocaster in the shop… 'Well,' he says, 'we even have the fellow who's trading it in as well.' Down to the back of the shop where the guitar section was we go. Harry introduces me to Chas Chandler … Chas in turn introduces me to Jimi. 'Play him a few bars,' says Harry. Jimi, dressed in a long black leather overcoat, strolls over to the amplifier, picks up this blue-white guitar and gives us all a blast of some blues… Here was Jimi Hendrix, helping to sell his own guitar, and he did. I signed the hire purchase form. Total cost eighty-nine pounds sterling.
(Source : http://www.jimihendrix-lifelines.net/photos-11/photos-42/styled-167/index.html)
Dave Gregory (guitarist, XTC) : I was fourteen years old, living in Purton, Wiltshire, I’d been playing guitar for about three months, when I first heard Hendrix.
At that time, our heroes were Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. As far as we were concerned, these two Surrey boys were the best blues guitarists on the planet. I remember people telling me to go back and listen to Elmore James and Son House and Muddy Waters but they were clumsy old buggers and I wanted to listen to young men.
We didn’t have a tv until March 1967, and the first Top Of The Pops that I tuned into on our spanking new Bush black and white telly had The Jimi Hendrix Experience doing Purple Haze. It was like, "Oh my God, I thought I was getting on with this guitar thing." And here was this outlandishly-garbed man with his guitar upside down making these astounding noises which I thought was the most amazing thing ever.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, January 2015)
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(Source : Guitar Player, 1976, interview by Steven Rosen)
Oliver Keen (musician) : I got a telephone call from Harry Moore, then manager of Selmer's music shop, Charing Cross Road, London, UK. On arriving in the shop, Harry told me they had just got a second-hand Fender Stratocaster in the shop… 'Well,' he says, 'we even have the fellow who's trading it in as well.' Down to the back of the shop where the guitar section was we go. Harry introduces me to Chas Chandler … Chas in turn introduces me to Jimi. 'Play him a few bars,' says Harry. Jimi, dressed in a long black leather overcoat, strolls over to the amplifier, picks up this blue-white guitar and gives us all a blast of some blues… Here was Jimi Hendrix, helping to sell his own guitar, and he did. I signed the hire purchase form. Total cost eighty-nine pounds sterling.
(Source : http://www.jimihendrix-lifelines.net/photos-11/photos-42/styled-167/index.html)
Dave Gregory (guitarist, XTC) : I was fourteen years old, living in Purton, Wiltshire, I’d been playing guitar for about three months, when I first heard Hendrix.
At that time, our heroes were Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. As far as we were concerned, these two Surrey boys were the best blues guitarists on the planet. I remember people telling me to go back and listen to Elmore James and Son House and Muddy Waters but they were clumsy old buggers and I wanted to listen to young men.
We didn’t have a tv until March 1967, and the first Top Of The Pops that I tuned into on our spanking new Bush black and white telly had The Jimi Hendrix Experience doing Purple Haze. It was like, "Oh my God, I thought I was getting on with this guitar thing." And here was this outlandishly-garbed man with his guitar upside down making these astounding noises which I thought was the most amazing thing ever.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, January 2015)