Story Behind A Classic Jimi Hendrix Song And A Young Music Fan’s Obsession With It

Published on: 31 Jul, 2017
Updated on: 1 Aug, 2017

Former Guildford journalist Dave Reading looks at the complex background to a song that became a rock ’n’ roll legend

The oddly-named Cafe Wha? in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York, has a unique place in rock ‘n’ roll history. Its reputation for staging gigs by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and other top names is only part of the story. The club’s most endearing claim to fame lies in a 1966 encounter that had a profound, long-lasting effect on the development of rock music.

Jimi Hendrix graces the cover of the excellent book Legends on Tour – The Pop Package Tours of the 1960s, by Martin Creasey. Aldershot’s ABC cinema is featured with many bands who played there including Hendrix. But did he ever play Guildford?

There’s a small group of us in Guildford who have talked about making a kind of pilgrimage to Café Wha? because of its association with a rock legend we never had the chance to see. During the blues boom of the 1960s we turned up regularly at the Wooden Bridge, Guildford, and the Gin Mill, Godalming, where we were enthralled by great musicians: among them Peter Green, Chicken Shack, Jethro Tull, Savoy Brown, Ten Years After, Duster Bennett, and Free. But there was one musical genius who eluded us. That man was Jimi Hendrix.

When a radio DJ announced recently that it was 50 years exactly since the Hendrix phenomenon began, I decided to do some digging and a fascinating story emerged about Hendrix and the song that made him famous.

In August 1966 Chas Chandler, bass player with the Animals, was looking for a new direction. The Animals had been playing gigs across the US and this was to be their final tour. Chandler had some time free in New York and was told there was a promising young black guitarist playing at Cafe Wha?

The place was a subterranean, badly-lit cavern so when Chandler turned up, he must have looked bizarrely out of place – a 28-year-old, 6ft 4in tall Geordie in an immaculate white suit. The rest of the audience consisted of a couple of dozen cool-looking teenagers sipping Green Tigers, a seventy-cent mix of carbonated water and lime. He looked like what he was: a manager-type checking out the talent.

Chandler found his new direction that summer afternoon. The guy on stage fronting his band, the Blue Flames, was the unknown Hendrix. As the band launched into its first number, Chandler couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He realised he was watching a performance by a potential superstar: one who’d been inexcusably overlooked by the recording world and the best guitarist he’d ever seen.

By late September, Chandler had brought Hendrix to London. By October, the Jimi Hendrix Experience had been formed, with Chandler as manager. And by the end of the year, Hendrix was being touted as the hottest musician in Britain. The story goes that Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend began to wonder if their careers were safe.

The number Hendrix had opened with at the Wha? – the one that had enthralled Chas Chandler – was Hey Joe. Arguably this one song was responsible for changing Jimi Hendrix’s life and altering the course of rock ‘n’ roll history. The song tells a dark tale of jealousy and murder in a question-and-answer format.

Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun of your hand?
Hey Joe, I said where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?
I’m goin’ down to shoot my old lady,
You know I caught her messin’ ’round with another man.

The background to the song is plagued by controversy. Tim Rose, who recorded Hey Joe in early 1966, claimed it was an old Appalachian song that he’d heard as a boy. In an interview with Jools Holland, he said he added verses to it and changed the melody, adopting the same C-G-D-A-E chord sequence later used by Hendrix.

But, there is a conflicting story that exists in parallel with the one Tim Rose put forward. In 1954, or thereabouts, a young American singer named Niela Miller wrote a passionate folk song called Baby, Please Don’t Go To Town. The song arose from “a deep well of hurt”, according to the sleeve notes accompanying the album on which the track appears. The song is the singer’s clever response to her man’s emotionally abusive streak. It intends to provoke his jealousy and guilt. The female protagonist flirts with men at the bar and stays out all night, knowing that, with any luck, her behaviour might wake her man up to how much he really cares. Miller’s song shares remarkable similarities with Hey Joe, containing the same distinctive chord progression and same question-and-answer format.

Baby, what you gonna do in town?
I said, Baby, what you gonna do in town?
I’m gonna sit at the bar with my feet tucked in
Drinkin’ all the beer and whisky and gin
And lookin’ at the young men always hangin’ round.
Lookin’ at the young men always hangin’ round.

Miller is adamant that her boyfriend at the time, another folk singer called Billy Roberts, used her song as the basis for one of his own. She claims he used the same question-and-answer format, changed the melody only slightly, put different words to it – and thus it became Hey Joe.

Whatever the case, somewhere along the line, Jimi Hendrix discovered the song and fell in love with it. He may have heard Tim Rose’s version or perhaps it was the one recorded by Billy Roberts. Some say it was the 1965 version by Los Angeles garage band the Leaves.

Niela Miller left the music business a disillusioned woman in 1966. She considered suing Billy Roberts but was advised there would be too many complications – not least the fact that a third singer, Dino Valenti, was also credited with writing Hey Joe. The rumour persists that Roberts assigned the rights to Valenti so that the latter would have some income upon his release from jail for drug offences.

Some Hendrix pressings credit Roberts as author, while others show it as “Trad. arr. Hendrix”, but it’s beyond dispute that Roberts registered the copyright of Hey Joe in the US in 1962. And so we have a story of claim and counter claim – not uncommon in the history of songwriting. As music journalist Lester Bangs observed, it appears that everybody and his brother claimed to have written Hey Joe.

Whatever the truth about who did or who didn’t write Hey Joe, there is a clear line between the song and the launch of Hendrix’s spectacular career.

For a small group of us who were active in the Guildford music scene, the song became an obsession. Eventually, we got our chance to see Hendrix at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. We set off from Guildford in an old Land-Rover but it broke down on the A3. We never did get there. Hendrix died three weeks later.

[Ed: At the talk and music evening, Guildford the Rock ‘n’ Roll Years [see: Time Travel Back to the Musical 1950s and 60s at The Keep Pub], led by David Rose at the Keep pub on Monday, July 24, among the comments from members of the audience was one from a guy who said he saw Jimi Hendrix play at the Harvest Moon Club, within the Rodboro Buildings, in Guildford. There are several websites that list known Hendrix gigs and unfortunately Guildford is not mentioned. The nearest gig to Guildford listed that he played was in Aldershot on April 27, 1967. Can anyone confirm a Guildford date?]