Fact #97007
When:
Short story:
James Marshall Hendrix, later to become Jimi Hendrix, writes My Diary with Rosa Lee Brooks at The Wilcox Hotel, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Full article:
Rosa Lee Brooks (singer/songwriter) : Jimmy sang the first verse, 'I know that I will never love again, I know that I will be my only friend' as he started playing what he called a 'love note'. The rest of the words were written by me.
My mother owned a restaurant, with a house in the back. She loved Jimmy, right away, and that was where we worked on the song, getting the arrangement together. We knocked on a lot of doors, trying to get hired as an Ike And Tina kind of thing. We were Jimmy and Rose, and this song was our baby.
Jimmy and I were back in the California Club one night and Billy Revis (owner of r'n'b label, Revis Records) was there. I told Jimmy who he was and we both went to him and told him we had a song we would like him to hear. Billy gave us his home address and asked if we would come by the following day, which we did. We played the song for him there, and he loved it. He asked if we could get some additional voices and instruments together, and we said yes. Major Lance's band was in town, performing at Ciro's on the Strip. Jimmy was the kind of guy who would walk backstage and introduce himself. We wound up partying with them that night, and Big Francis the drummer and Alvin the bass player agreed to come and do it.
I had known Arthur (Lee, later of Love), before I met Jimmy. Arthur was an up-and-coming musician, with a band called The American Four, just started, but he really didn't have much going for him musically at that time. I thought he'd be good to get in on backing vocals, along with the girls from the Honey Cone.
I went to pick Arthur up at his mother's house on 29th and Arlington Street on the day of the session. When Jimmy saw him, he became very jealous. Jimmy hardly spoke to Arthur, thinking that he and I had something more than a friendship going on. Arthur got into the back seat of my 1959 Chevy Impala, and Jimmy was up front. All was quiet during the trip, except when Jimmy spoke to me.
Arthur Lee : Jimmy Hendrix was one of the first long-haired black cats I'd ever seen. He had a suit like a priest, a hoodlum priest, with his hair directly in place and runned-over shoes.
Rosa Lee Brooks : The session took about two hours maximum, in Billy Revis's garage, which he'd converted into a studio, over on Haas Street. We nailed the song in just two takes. If you listen, you can hear that the horns and the backing voices are very loose, because they weren't really familiar with the song. Jimmy and I were the only ones who had much chance to rehearse it. Arthur Lee contributed a nice falsetto backing vocal, and he helped arrange all the back-up vocals, but that was all he did.
When we'd recorded My Diary, Billy Revis said,'Well, we need a b-side.' We didn't actually have any other songs, but Alvin from Major Lance's band had been showing us the steps of a new dance called the U-T, in which you make the shapes of a U and a T, so Jimmy and I just wrote a little dance tune called Utee right there in the garage.
People have claimed that Jimmy's rock roots didn't start until he got to London and that's just not true. If you listen to Jimmy's lead and rhythm guitar on Utee (b-side of My Diary) you hear that he was way ahead of his time. He was playing his own style of rock music long before he went to England.
With Jimmy and me, it had been love at first sight, and we spent three beautiful months together. I looked after him. We were so close in spirit, we could communicate without talking.
Rosa Lee Brooks : The day Jimmy left for New York, towards the end of March, it was raining. He told me later that One Rainy Wish was written about that day, and about the things he'd learned while he was with me. If you listen to the intro, you'll find it's almost identical to the intro of My Diary.
Jimi Hendrix : I went to New York and won first place in the Apollo amateur contest, you know, $25. So I stayed up there, starved up there for two or three-weeks. I'd get a gig once every twelfth of never. Sleeping outside between them tall tenements was hell. Rats runnin' all over your chest, cockroaches stealin' your last candy bar from your very pockets. I even tried to eat orange peel and tomato paste.
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My mother owned a restaurant, with a house in the back. She loved Jimmy, right away, and that was where we worked on the song, getting the arrangement together. We knocked on a lot of doors, trying to get hired as an Ike And Tina kind of thing. We were Jimmy and Rose, and this song was our baby.
Jimmy and I were back in the California Club one night and Billy Revis (owner of r'n'b label, Revis Records) was there. I told Jimmy who he was and we both went to him and told him we had a song we would like him to hear. Billy gave us his home address and asked if we would come by the following day, which we did. We played the song for him there, and he loved it. He asked if we could get some additional voices and instruments together, and we said yes. Major Lance's band was in town, performing at Ciro's on the Strip. Jimmy was the kind of guy who would walk backstage and introduce himself. We wound up partying with them that night, and Big Francis the drummer and Alvin the bass player agreed to come and do it.
I had known Arthur (Lee, later of Love), before I met Jimmy. Arthur was an up-and-coming musician, with a band called The American Four, just started, but he really didn't have much going for him musically at that time. I thought he'd be good to get in on backing vocals, along with the girls from the Honey Cone.
I went to pick Arthur up at his mother's house on 29th and Arlington Street on the day of the session. When Jimmy saw him, he became very jealous. Jimmy hardly spoke to Arthur, thinking that he and I had something more than a friendship going on. Arthur got into the back seat of my 1959 Chevy Impala, and Jimmy was up front. All was quiet during the trip, except when Jimmy spoke to me.
Arthur Lee : Jimmy Hendrix was one of the first long-haired black cats I'd ever seen. He had a suit like a priest, a hoodlum priest, with his hair directly in place and runned-over shoes.
Rosa Lee Brooks : The session took about two hours maximum, in Billy Revis's garage, which he'd converted into a studio, over on Haas Street. We nailed the song in just two takes. If you listen, you can hear that the horns and the backing voices are very loose, because they weren't really familiar with the song. Jimmy and I were the only ones who had much chance to rehearse it. Arthur Lee contributed a nice falsetto backing vocal, and he helped arrange all the back-up vocals, but that was all he did.
When we'd recorded My Diary, Billy Revis said,'Well, we need a b-side.' We didn't actually have any other songs, but Alvin from Major Lance's band had been showing us the steps of a new dance called the U-T, in which you make the shapes of a U and a T, so Jimmy and I just wrote a little dance tune called Utee right there in the garage.
People have claimed that Jimmy's rock roots didn't start until he got to London and that's just not true. If you listen to Jimmy's lead and rhythm guitar on Utee (b-side of My Diary) you hear that he was way ahead of his time. He was playing his own style of rock music long before he went to England.
With Jimmy and me, it had been love at first sight, and we spent three beautiful months together. I looked after him. We were so close in spirit, we could communicate without talking.
Rosa Lee Brooks : The day Jimmy left for New York, towards the end of March, it was raining. He told me later that One Rainy Wish was written about that day, and about the things he'd learned while he was with me. If you listen to the intro, you'll find it's almost identical to the intro of My Diary.
Jimi Hendrix : I went to New York and won first place in the Apollo amateur contest, you know, $25. So I stayed up there, starved up there for two or three-weeks. I'd get a gig once every twelfth of never. Sleeping outside between them tall tenements was hell. Rats runnin' all over your chest, cockroaches stealin' your last candy bar from your very pockets. I even tried to eat orange peel and tomato paste.