Jimi Hendrix Episode 3: Harlem Shakedowns, Drug Kingpins, and Restless Crowds

Jimi Hendrix was the most famous guitar player on the planet but on the streets of Harlem, none of that mattered. He had to navigate dope slingers, gangsters, semi-crooked hype men and a disgruntled audience, pelting him, one of the greatest musicians of all time with eggs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Seven Club is the production of I Heart Radio
and Double Elvis Media. Jimmie Hendricks died at the age
of and he lived a life that was as challenging
as it was fulfilling. I can give you twenty seven
reasons why that statement is true. Eleven would be the
number of emotions his guitar would cause you to feel

(00:21):
everything from joy to pain, sorrow to ecstasy, and everything
in between, sometimes all in the same three notes. One
more would be the number of recurring dreams that would
haunt him, where he'd find himself chasing after his dead mother, Lucille.
She passed away when Jimmy was only fifteen, before he
truly got to know her. Two would be the number

(00:41):
of guns pointed at him on a Harlem street corner
when he objected to some local hustlers promoting a show
of his that he hadn't even agreed to play. Another
one would be the New York City drug kingpin who
wanted Jimmy on his payroll, slinging dope as and means
to supplement his income from music in Twelve would be
the number of months he would have left to live
after a restless crowd pelted him with eggs and bottles

(01:04):
on stage during a neighborhood street festival. All totally on
this our third episode of season one. Street hustlers and
gun toting gangsters, kingpins, angry crowds, haunting dreams and always searching.
Jimi Hendrix. I'm Jake Brennan and this is the twenty
seven close. He's like twenty seven little one with bill

(01:56):
brawls like always, guys, they got more than three hundred
and fifty fople mostly dung Engle, showed up to hear
the greatest rock loops in the country. Jimmi Hendrix slid
his dope money through the slot at the top of
the door to the blown out five story building on

(02:17):
a hundred and twenty f Street in Harlem. The slot
had a rusty metal flap that squeaked when he stuck
the cash through and felt the hand on the other
side grab it on mark slot on marked building. He
waited for what seemed like an eternity. It lasted all
of fifteen seconds. When the time was up, the slot

(02:38):
was pulled back violently and out popped the gloved hand,
and Jimmy took a small baggy of cocaine from the
anonymous dealer inside and was quickly on his way. Harlem
is open frontier, lay ahead tenements squished together in varying
shades of nineteen sixty nine, drap the fire escapes like
existential urban sculptures, clinging to the brick facade, Trash collecting

(03:01):
on the recesses of curb corners and overflowing in the
cans on the wide sidewalks. For every building occupied by
a small bodega, there were three more shackled and gates
plagued by peeling paint, makeshift signs left by someone who
spotted the opportunity. Dope is death in times like these,
Christ is what you need. Heroin Jesus, What was even

(03:24):
the difference? Jimmie Hendricks wondered this to himself as he
shuffled down a hundred and twenty five, flanked by his friends,
to hark Alim and his twin brother Ton de Rat,
two of the first people he met when he arrived
in Harlem five years earlier in nineteen sixty four. They
stood watch while Jimmy made his transaction at the slot
in the door. Everyone called them twins. They called themselves

(03:48):
to ghetto fighters. Their parents called them Arthur and Albert
Allen Valentine's Day Babies. They were born and raised in Harlem.
The twins were hardcore musicians, drug dealers, scensters. As teenagers,
they joined Robert Ironhood Bradley's Gladdy Years bodybuilding crew, and
they got big quick. They knew how the streets worked,
how the game worked, how the game was played, and

(04:10):
how to adapt to stay alive. And that's what the
body building was all about, adapting. And they were helpful
to have around, especially in Harlem. As Jimmy was once
again about to be reminded. The trio made their way
up the unofficial thoroughfare of Harlem and came upon a
kid hanging a poster with Jimmy's face on it. Late

(04:32):
teens tops haphazardly pasting the sheet with broad, disaffected strokes,
and the poster was promoting a show that Jimmy was
playing the following week, It's Small As Paradise over on
Seventh Avenue. This was news to Jimmie Hendricks. Jimmy wasn't
playing a show at Small Ast next week. The hell,
Jimmy thought, this guy hanging posters up and down the

(04:52):
street with my face on them? The show next week
as small as I am playing no show at Smalls.
Jimmy and the twins stood there analyzing this, gazing on
the wall. The kid turned and saw Jimmy look back
at the poster. Back to Jimmy put two and two together, smirked,
and then split bolted, dropped the sloppy poster brush and

(05:14):
hit the pavement in the sprint. Jimmy hollered after it
was stopped without missing a beat, tour after the kid.
The kid was fast and Jimmy, with his two packet
day lung, struggled to keep up. Yellow cabs peppered the
middle of the street as they ran, a constant streak
of yellow and Jimmy's peripheral vision the sidewalk was crueled
neath Jimmy's feet as they slammed down under the pavement.

(05:35):
The twins kept pace, monitored obstructions, gave directions. Out of
the way, motherfucker, Watch out for that car. He's gonna
turn here. No wait, ship, he's going straight down down
the one to five. They darted in and around. Small
crowds of people pooled throughout the long stretch of a
long jeans, flat caps, hands and pockets, waiting for a bus.
Waiting for the man. All you do is slow me down,

(05:56):
and I'm trying to get to the other side of town.
Acrosstown traffick legit trio held pace on the kid. Past
the old Blumstein building, passed Wilbur's Wigs and Big Brother Grocery.
A fat man hung out of a tenement window, shirtless.
A toddler and a new white dress clung to her
mother's purple bell bombs and the chase did not phase
any of them. The kid hit across street just as

(06:19):
a blue station wagon was turning off the main drag.
He caught the hood of the car and flipped over
on the other side, stumbled as he tried to regain
his footing and fell to his knees. It was all
Jimmy and the twins needed to catch up till Jimmy
grabbed the kid's arm and held him against the wall
the dilapidated store from and the twins flanked him. Jimmy,
let the kid have it. What's this all about? Man?

(06:42):
He struggled for his breath, and the kid did not.
He just sat there, smirking. His chuck. Tailors were so
scuffed up and street worn that they weren't even a
shade of white anymore. The laces freight at the top
where they had been haphazardly nodded. He wrote his hands
all over his jeans to get the residual poster glue out,
shook his head as if Jimmie Hendrix was intruding on him,

(07:03):
holding him up from getting his work done. The kid
didn't even know who the funk Jimmie Hendrix was. Jimmy
tried again, I'd playing Small's next week. You did take
that ship down off the wall back there, and the
kid did not say a word. Wouldn't dignify Jimmy's curbside outrage.
The twins weren't focused on Jimmy squabble. Instead, their focus

(07:26):
was on the three dudes standing nearby, backs up against
the wall, suddenly just there, and one was all kinds
of devonair, the other two in turtlenecks. They read black, militant,
not quite panthers, more sheep than scary. The devonair want
to skewed that revolution jab for pool Hall, tough striped
blue short sleeve, button up in a pork pie hat.

(07:49):
And the three of them were far enough away to
plead ignorance, but close enough to definitely be aware. Jimmy
kept calling out the kids bullshit. The kid just stood there,
still smirking, saying nothing, and the trio wall flowers came
to life and walked right up to the scene. Turtle
Nights followed behind the pork pie hat. As they approached,

(08:09):
slowly confidently, Jimmy realized how screening was. He'd acted impulsively
and this kid wasn't just some kid. He was mobbed
up and these wall flowers walking towards him. We're about
to bring this whole scene to the next level. What's

(08:45):
the matter? You're too good to players show? The wallflower
with the pork pie hat asked, calm but definitely offended.
Too good for this show, Too good for you, big shot.
You're a big shot, Jimmie Hendricks, big fucking shot. The
Leaning Twins knew these guys, knew these thugs by sight.
The one with the pork pie hat was Mookie Harlem, gangster,

(09:06):
bad dude, but they could reason with him. The other two,
Tabby and Good Doctor, they were hit men out of Detroit.
Tabby and Good Doctor had drawn little revolvers held tight
at their side so not to attract too much attention,
and we're pointing them right at Jimmy. Jimmy had no idea.
He just kept on preaching the injustices that this fucked
up situation. Whoa tunde Rock called out to Mookie, where'd

(09:31):
you get that hat? And tunder Rock felt around in
his pocket for his piece, put his hand on it,
just to know it was there and ready. And Jimmy
had no idea That twins were packing at all times.
It was how the game was played. It was adapting.
The Twins appealed to their history with Mookie. The mooky
gesture to Jimmy, he didn't give two ships about him

(09:52):
or anybody else, but this show was happening whether or
not he wanted to be there. And this was a
direct order from fat Jack Taylor, the Fat Man, Harlem
drug kingpin. No ship. The Twins worked for the Fat
Man too. That kind of hurt that the Fat Man
would do them like that, But their allegiance was with Jimmy.
The Fat Man wants to show in Harlem. Will we'll
do a show in Harlem, but not like this. There's

(10:14):
another way. Jimmy let the Twins clean up the mess
and stood a few feet away as he arguing and
negotiating continued. He been in and out of Harlem, a
loot over the last few years, felt a connection to
the neighborhood, into the twins. In moments like this, though
hard boiled, street tough, he felt like he didn't belong,
like he was pushed around, taking advantage of made to

(10:36):
feel less. Then this wasn't the harm that he thought.
He knew the fake gas poster would come down off
the building's wall, but he didn't feel victorious. Two Harker
shot a glance over at Jimmy, emotion with his eyes
that everything would be okay. Jimmy's face, in return, was dejected.
He had that face, that face that summoned strangers, that

(10:56):
face that made fast friends. His guard was always down,
he had no guard. A child of poverty and neglect,
a true wanderer, Jimmy broadcast a desire to belong through
his face, a glimpse of optimism, a dash of trustworthiness.
Over the course of his twenty seven short years, that
face would attract a legion of admirers, confidence users, hangers

(11:18):
on girlfriends, bandmates, druggies, hippies, dreamers, managers, mafiosos, some prostitutes,
some true friends too, friends like the Leaves, Taharka and Tonderra.
When Jimmy met the twins, their music career was on
hold so they could pursue a faster, easier means of
making ends meet, like slinging dope for Fat Jack. Fat

(11:40):
Jack owned music clubs, a fast food joint called Fat
Jack's Chipman House, and record labels Rojack and Taster, among
others you never heard of, and Harlem music went hand
in hand with vice. Drugs and prostitution funded the music
clubs where Jimmy would play. Drugs and prostitution paid the
rent of the twins apartment where Jimmy would crash. Drugs

(12:01):
and prostitution passed the time where Jimmy would otherwise be idle.
Vice ruled everything around Jimmy Hendricks in the autumn of
nineteen sixty nine. The twins were there to guide him
through it. Harlem in the nineteen sixties was decades removed
from its creative renaissance earlier in the century. The black
middle class was leaving for Brooklyn queens and the Bronx,

(12:24):
and most of the white population had left years earlier.
Crime was on the rise and housing conditions had deteriorated dramatically.
In nineteen sixty eight alone, the city's Department of Buildings
received five hundred calls a day about rats and busted
heaters and backed up toilets. Riots broke out in nineteen
sixty four after a black kid was shot by a

(12:44):
white cop, and then again in nineteen sixty eight when
Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated. Throughout the twentieth century,
crime had a grip on Harlem. As conditions worsened in
the sixties, gangsters, black locals sun enterprising out on their own,
and others sticking to the long standing, mostly peaceful tradition
of working for the Italian men downtown. No matter the type,

(13:06):
they all exploited the most vulnerable of their neighbors with drugs, prostitution, numbers,
and whatever. Flinn Flamm Fat Jack was the enterprising local
type of gangster. He approached Jimmy after seeing him hanging
around the Twins. People like you. He told Jimmy you
should sling dope with Taharka and Tondera, and Jimmy refused.

(13:30):
Not big, boss man, you ain't big, You just tall.
That's about all he was loyal to the music and
nothing else, partly because he just wasn't that good at
anything else. Give him a broom and ask him to
sweep the floor, and he'd to suck it up. Give
him a paper hat and ask him to take lunch
orders at a burger joint. He sucked that up. Give
him a guitar, and the guitar he would suck that up, too,

(13:52):
but in a completely different way, and the best way possible.
That guitar was it for Jimmy Andricks. It was nearly everything,
and it handled nearly everything for him. It anyway. He
had that face to ensure that the other ten percent
would fall into place. Of course, the downfall to having
that face and that trustworthiness is that everyone wants a piece,

(14:13):
Everyone comes calling, especially when you were the most famous
black musician on the planet. Jimmy was a guitar god,
a sex symbol of voodoo child, a certified card carrying
member of the Freak Flag movement, a psychedelic visionary, and
the most recognized black performer there was, first as an
ex pat in England and then in his native US.

(14:34):
Bigger than Sly, bigger than Marvin, Bigger than the hardest
working man in show business. Harlems adopted Georgia Peach, Mr
Please Please Please, the original JB. James Brown. So a
bunch of African American organizations wanted Jimmy to play for them,
fat Jack among them, and they wanted Jimmy to be
their poster boy. Fat Jack wasn't alone. The Black Panthers

(14:55):
came calling Jimmy a politically ambivalent army. Vent always declined
this trip was his and he wasn't about to get
it knotted up in some other trip, but he was
bothered by the accusations from the black community that he
was making white music for white people. Even the historic
Apollo Theater turned him down when he tried to book
a show there, and they didn't need that many white

(15:15):
people hanging around. Meanwhile, the Underworld in Harlem would do
just about anything to get Jimmy on their show bill,
even if it meant sending out Mookie and his Detroit
triggerman to bring the artist into the fold. A free
street fair in Harlem seemed like the perfect compromise. The
all day festival would benefit the United Block Association, a
community engagement organization helping underprivileged youth. Jimmy and the band

(15:40):
would not get paid for playing. The idea was he'd
be giving back to the neighborhood and getting the goons
off his back in the process. The event would feature
an eclectic roster of acts that, while not as world
renowned as Jimmy, represented a particular slice of the black
musical landscape. In nine particular acts from fat Jack record

(16:00):
labels like R and B, singer Big Maybel, and Chuckle Luck.
Jimmy would be the headliner. Jimmy could bring some of
that peace, love and music vibe to the mean streets
of New York. He could attempt to be all things
to all people. Play for them, mugget up for them
from the stage, guitar and ten smile, something like that.

(16:21):
When Jimmy and Gypsy's Son and Rainbows got ready to
take the u B a outdoor stage at the intersection
of Lenox Avenue in A hundred and thirty ninth Street
on September five, it was midnight. Big Maybel just wrapped
up her set. People hung out of the tenement windows
surrounding the concert area and hollered for more. She refused
to encore. The stage sat empty, the crowd boob Mitch

(16:46):
Mitchell Jimmy's drummer filled the void of the empty stage
first and sat down behind his kid. The black crowd
took one look at this white dude with the massive
afro and booed lauda. They wanted Jimmy for themselves. He
was Harlem's Harlem didn't need some white drummer with a
wanna be black afro patronizing them. They could have their
own street festival without any help from the white man,

(17:07):
thank you very much. Jimmy's the longest strade around his
shoulder plugged in thought about his hero Bob Dylan and
the crowds in England booing him, calling him Judas and
Jimmy was only two chords into the opening number when
the first glass bottle swared past his head and exploded
in a defiant crash behind the stage. We'll be right

(17:29):
back after this word word word. Jimmy was eyeing a
little miss Strange from the stage. She was a couple
of rows back and impossible to ignore, which was why
Jimmy had his eyes wide open, which was a good
thing because without them being opened, he never would have
seen the glass bottle hurrowing straight at him. Fucking unreally

(17:50):
thought he was one of the biggest black entertainers on
the planet, and he was getting shipped thrown at him
in harlemm of all places. The bottle smashed flat against
his martial lamp. Glass show are shot all over the stage. Damn,
this would be harder than he thought. And then the
eggs came and they smashed against the front of the stage.
The sloppy egg entered slowly ran down their faded wooden structure,

(18:14):
eggs sucking eggs. That's how this is gonna go. Jimmy Hendrix,
fresh from blowing minds at Woodstock, getting pelted with eggs
and Harlem Gypsy's Son and Rainbows, started their set atop
the four ft tall stage at the ub A Harlem
Street Fair and it immediately felt like a disappointment. The
crowd of five thousand people that danced and sang all

(18:35):
day long, the gwindled two me or five hundred. The
peaceful vibe at wood Stock and taking the last train
to nowhere spilled and they were throwing eggs, tossing bottles.
They want a big maple back. Jimmy stepped to the microphone.
This music might stut loud and funky, but that's what's
in the air right now? And Jimmy dug in fire
to Foxy Lady, to Redhouse. All the shitty was feeling

(18:57):
at the moment, disappointment, regret, confusion, it is I are
to connect. He man handled his left hand strong strap,
bending it through his will and spitting out a version
of the Star Spangled Band or the Leo Fender never
could have imagined in his wildest dreams, then the Voodoo Child.
He looked back at Mitch mitchigal Niche with his mouth
wide open, arms flailing around the drum kit like he

(19:18):
was yelling at someone, and warned them of an oncoming disaster.
You give his eggs and bottles, We give you this.
And Jimmy duggan deeper posture, straight back, bent ever so slightly,
pointing his guitar to the sky, held tight against his chest,
and made it scream of the crowd, dug in fully.
Less than two d people stood in the crowd by

(19:39):
the time the show was finished. Each one of them
went home and told the first person they could find
about how fucking great Jimmy Hendrix was that night. Jimmy
was used to being an underdog, to being the odd
man out, understanding that he was one of those things
that is not like the others. To being simultaneously loved
and a vile, a black man, a drift and the
sea of white musicians, a black man on stage in

(20:01):
front of white audiences, the leader of a band had
stuck out like a weird, freaky caboose on the tail
end of a prim and proper pop tour. This guy
was most certainly not like the others. When Jimmy Hendricks
first arrived in London in nineteen sixty six, he up
ended white British rock royalty pretty much immediately. Eric Clapton,

(20:25):
Pete Towns and Keith Richards. Jimmy smoked them all left
their jaws on the floor of the Regent Street Polytechnic.
They're probably still there. Every guitar player in the London
scene in nineteen sixty six remembers their lives the same way.
Before Jimmy and after Jimmy Clapton is God, God, meet
Jimmy Hendricks. Thanks for your service. Jimmy'll take it from here.

(20:48):
He opened a show with the title track Sergeant Pepper's
The Only Hearts Club Band, just three days after it
was released. Paul McCartney stood in the audience, shuffed for sure,
but suddenly unsure of himself too. And London musicians at
the time weren't just impressed. They were confused, frightened, demon
Pete Towns and pondered life behind the room. Jeff Beck

(21:11):
considered a career in interior design. Brian Jones turned to
Alistair Crawley. Chas Chandler quit playing in the Animals to
manage Jimmy and Eric Clapton asked Jimmy if he needed
a roadie. How does a human being play guitar like that?
Never mind that he's playing it behind his back or
with his teeth, They're making goddamn love to it right
there in front of everyone. How does it sound like that?

(21:34):
Plus that groove, that feel he could even sing and write?
And then there were the kids who saw Jimmy opened
for the Monkeys in the summer of nineteen sixty seven,
when he brought his band to Jimmie Hendrix experienced the
States for the first time. The experience were rounded out
by Noah Redding on bass and Mitch mitchellan drums. Two
white British kids, their afros and flamboyant fashion choices rival Jimmy's.

(21:58):
Their psychedelic blues based rock and roll was a future
shock to every audience. It was beastly, heaving, otherworldly, a
heavy trip of oa wah guitar and avalanche drums, tongue
flailing and pelvis thrusting that made Elvis seem like a
g rated bedtime story. Jimmy played his guitar. Jimmy lift
his guitar. Jimmy fucked his guitar. Jimmy lit his guitar

(22:20):
on fire. Jimmy had a term for it, science fiction
rock and roll. The monkeys were everything the experience were not.
They sang pretty pop tunes about trains and cuddly toys.
People say the monkey around, okay. They were originally a
construct for a TV show and gradually turned into real musicians,

(22:41):
but they never lived down there in authentic beginnings, some
fantasy assembled by a television executive, fodder from preteens for
those who lived a sheltered life, for those who wouldn't
know counterculture if it's snapped them in the ass with
the tied eye head him. Jimmy called them the plastic
beetles playing Jane. American teens came rushing home for Monkey
shows that summer and laid a serious trip on her

(23:03):
little brothers and sisters. I just saw this guy play
guitar with his fucking teeth. Oh shit, no ship. Jimmy's
talent was too intense, and despite the seeming novelty of
his music, odd live pairings and confounded audience, Jimmy Hendrix
eventually broke through the world began to see Jimmy the
way those early audiences did, as an intensely talented freak

(23:26):
of nature who was the physical manifestation of the words
star and he was endlessly compelling. Just as each gob
smacked teen wondered who is he, Jimmy asked himself the
same question. Who am I A sideshow attraction, a freak,
a god, a man out of time? Are these my people?
Is this where I'm meant to be? Is this who

(23:46):
I'm supposed to be? After the U B A gig
in Harlem, Jimmy was still asking himself those same questions,
still reaching out and grabbing for something, but never quite
grasping it. He thought back on the tour with the
Monkeys and the short lived but explosive life with the experience,
the shock of it, the audacity the newness of it,

(24:06):
the far out nous. It was a real trip to
turn white London on his head and then make head
spin in America. But he also thought about the u
b A, about Harlem, about the Black Panthers. In life
as a black man in the United States, one year
after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Jimmy was
a black man. He was a blues man. He was

(24:26):
raised on muddy waters and Holland Wolf And maybe he
should just be him, just him, no pyrotechnic artifice, no histrionics,
no pandering, no smoking mirrors, just be real, just stand
there and play, play the blues, play who he was.
He loved Mitch Mitchell like a brother, loved his playing.
But maybe the Harlem crowd was right to boo him.

(24:47):
Maybe Jimmy needed to stop being everything to everybody and
just be him. But who was he really? It was
a question his own mother would have a hard time
man swerring if she was still around. In times like
these ponderous times when his own identity eluded him, Jimmy
thought of his mother, thought of Lucille. His mind would

(25:10):
go back to the beginning piece together the moments of
his life, try to understand the present. And there was
only one place he could find the seal these days,
and he tried to go there often, no matter how
emotionally gnawing the trip was. Jimmy saw his mother, Lucille,

(25:48):
and his dreams. Each time he'd fall asleep would be
another chance to search out Lucille, to say hello one
last time, to hear her voice again, to steal back
some of the times they have been stolen from her,
still one from them. He'd find her in some dark
recess of his mind, deep in his subconscious down to
Seattle Alley, inside a neighbor's house, in the passenger seat

(26:10):
of a car, on the other end of a telephone,
he dreamed to search her out, to hunt her down.
He had already lost her, but he was terrified that
he would forget her forever. He'd holler after her as
she walked down a foggy street, and his dreams begged
her to stay on the phone a little bit longer,
always asking her to return to him, to not be
so far away. Every dream was the same, the setting

(26:34):
would be different, but Lucille was always transitioning, always leaving,
always on her way out, leaving him behind Lucille, Please
come back where you belong. He'd been dreaming of his
mother for over ten years now, but he never had
this particular dream. And there was a large caravan of

(26:54):
people riding animals through a desert. The desert sand was
deep orange, like tan green rind that you could sift
through and let run through your hands. And there were
no clouds in the pale blue sky. And the camel
riders wore colorful turbans, scarves, and ropes, and their adventurous
color palettes provided a stark contrast to the monochrome field
of camels and sand. And there was Lucille up on

(27:19):
one of the camels, half of her face obscured by
a thick teal scarf. She brought up the rear of
the line like a weird little caboose, And the wind
kicked up lightly, and the riders held their hands near
their eyes. The sun sat high, and the sky so
high up that you couldn't see it. It was just
pale blue, far and wide. Jimmy followed behind on foot,

(27:41):
trudging through the sand dunes and struggling to keep up
with the procession of camels. He wore an embroidered dashiki
a headband. In the dream, he couldn't feel the heat
of the desert, didn't sweat, didn't run out of breath,
but he still seemed unable to get as close to
the seal as he wanted. Every time he pushed forward,
she seemed to get a little farther away. A lonely

(28:04):
green tree sprouted from the middle of the open desert expands.
It's leafy canopy looked like Jimmy's afro, blown out and
bushy and threatening to topple. The tree. Skinny frame and
the caravan continued past the tree, but Lucille stopped for
a moment. She sat atop the camel's back, fast in
the tree shade and looked out onto the horizon. I'll

(28:24):
see you later, Jimmy, she said, Where are you going?
Jimmy asked her. She didn't answer. She never answered that question,
no matter how many times Jimmy would ask her. Every
time she come to him in a dream, Jimmy would
ask that same question. It was always near the end
of the tream. Jimmy would toss out that request that
refrain the sill. I've been good to you, Please don't

(28:47):
leave me alone. Lucille just stared ahead as the caravan
continued its desert climb, and then she was moving again.
She had somewhere else to be, closer and closer to
the desert horizon, I said. Jimmy would have to wait
until the next three follow her again, asked that question again,
But now she was gone. Jimmy was fifteen when his

(29:11):
mother died. She was a heavy drinker. Her spleen ruptured
hemorrhage cirrhosis. She was thirty two. Looking for his mother
was something Jimmy had grown used to, even when she
was alive. She would disappear for days at a time,
out on a bender, out partying with friends, out meeting
you strangers. She leave him with neighbors or family. She

(29:33):
was in and out of hospitals. Jimmy's father, al was
largely absent during his early years, stationed halfway across the
country in the Army. This left the parenting to Lucille,
a teenager who liked the party and was ill prepared
to assume full duties as a caretaker. Lucille was living
with her parents when she became pregnant with Jimmy. Al

(29:54):
It shipped out. Her folks were on welfare unable to
support a pregnant teenage daughter, she went down to Jackson
Street in Seattle, lied about her age, and picked up
a job waitressing at the Bucket of Blood and then
from his speakeasy Giant. She rubbed elbows with pimps and prostitutes,
junkies and drug dealers, some of the sketchiest clientele in

(30:15):
the city. She loved it. Sometimes she become the club's
entertainment too. She'd sing for tips. She hit her age,
hit her growing belly, and made that money. Lucille's mother
and Jimmy's grandmother, Clarice Lawson, was the daughter of a
little rock slave in a Cherokee Indian two oppressed groups
of people living under the genocidal thumb of the late

(30:37):
nineteenth century American government. Clarice and her husband relocated to
the Pacific Northwest after witnessing a lynching in Arkansas. When
Jimmy was born in nineteen forty two, Seattle was home
to the government's latest boat with systematic oppression. As Japanese
Americans were herded into internment camps following the bombing of
Pearl Harbor. Lucille's head wasn't in all uh. She kept

(31:01):
to herself, stuck to herself, was typically too carried away
with her own drama to get involved in anyone else's.
Jimmy had heard all the stories about his mother. They're
often more vivid than his own memories. Since so much
of his childhood moments he could recall didn't involve her,
he needed some stories for himself. He looked for in
his mind the hardest when he was looking for himself,

(31:23):
moments like the gig at the Salvation Club, like the
U b A Festival, or when he was out on
the streets of Harlem or arriving in London for the
first time. Jimmy was always searching, just like he was yesterday,
just like he would be tomorrow, just like he was
when he was eighteen and found himself handcuffed by two
Seattle be cops, And just like he was when he

(31:44):
went searching for himself and the most unlikely of roles,
Private James Marshall Hendricks, paratrooper for the first airport in
the U. S. Army. The twenty seven Club is scored

(32:09):
and co written by me Jake Brennan. Zeth Lundy is
the lead writer, editor and co producer. The twenty seven
Club is mixed and engineered by Sean Kleen and Matt Bowden,
both of whom lent their considerable music talent to the
scoring of the series, as well additional music and score
elements by Ryan Spreaker. The twenty seven Club is produced

(32:29):
by myself for Double Elvis in partnership with iHeart Radio.
Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot
com on the twenty seven Club series page. The twenty
seven Club is released weekly every Thursday. Season one features
twelve episodes on Jimmy Hendricks In season two will feature
twelve episodes on Jim Morrison. If you like what you here,

(32:50):
please be sure to subscribe to the twenty seven Club
on Apple podcast the I Heart Radio app, or wherever
you get your podcasts, and if you'd like to win
a free twenty seven Club poster designed by a man himself,
Nick Gonzalez, then leave a review for twenty seven Club
on Apple Podcasts or hashtag subscribe to seven Club on
social media, and we'll pick two winners each week and

(33:11):
announce them on the Double Elvis Instagram page that's at
Double Elvis. You're gonna want to give that a fall off,
so get out there and please spread the word about
the Seven Club. As always, you can find me blabbing
about other crazy rock stars on my other podcast, disgrace Land,
and you can talk to me per usual on Instagram
and Twitter at graceland Pod. One way or another, I

(33:32):
hope to be talking to you soon. Until then, what
that fear is