STORIES FROM JEFFERSON STREET
Jimi Wanted to Play the Blues Like Johnny Johnny Jones, Blues guitarist
I met Jimi Hendrix in the early 60s when he was stationed at Ft. Campbell and I was playing the club scene on Jefferson Street. In 1962 I was working with the Imperials at the New Era Club. One night I saw this young kid watching me. He asked to hold my guitar. I don’t usually let anybody hold my guitar. If they don’t know what they are doing they will drop it. But I let him and during intermission he tangled with it.
Johnny Jones
After the Army he came to Nashville. I was the reason he came to Nashville. He wanted to play the blues like I did.
I was raised near Memphis and I played the Delta Style Blues. Jimi wasn’t raised in the deep south so he didn’t have the low- down-blues feeling. You had to have been raised and learned to play way down below the Mason Dixon Line to have the feeling. He was the only blues artist I know who wasn’t from the deep south who learned to play the blues. He had listened to Muddy Waters from his father’s records and he wanted to play the blues my way.
We had “head cutting” sessions at my club. I was top dog. Other guitar players could come in and challenge me. Jimi was playing at the Steal Away at 14th and Jefferson and every time he learned some new licks, he came into my club “head hunting.”
Jimi was about six years younger than I am. One night he and his friend Larry Lee came into my club and Larry said to me, “He is going to wear you out tonight.” I said, “Bring it on.” Larry pulled in some little old amp on wheels. My amp was a 15 inch JDL. We started swapping licks. He was playing great. But I was getting all of the applause because I was so much louder. I can’t say he was out-played but he was out-amped.
People told me that Jimi never forgot that. They said the reason he played so loud was my fault. I don’t know if that is true but I do know that the first money he got he spent on $30,000 amps.
Jimi stayed here a couple of years. Joel Vradenburg, who owned clubs on Printer’s Alley, bought Dr. Brown's Club and named it the Club Baron. It is now the Elks.
Jimi lived that guitar. I was coming out of the movie at the Ritz once and met Jimi coming in – carrying his guitar with him. He knew how to make his instrument talk. That is what made him so dynamic. Some people have their instrument talking, but it is not telling the truth. Playing an instrument is like writing a letter - you have to have punctuation. You have to put a period at the end of a sentence.
When he left Nashville I took Hal Nessbitt on drums, and Billy Cox, and got some horns from Tennessee State and kept the King Casuals. I still play -- at Third and Lindsley and at the Boogie Blues bar. Not many places to play the blues around here.
I was playing in Europe two or three times a year until 9/11. Now I don’t fly.
