John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues, he developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Some of his best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'", "Crawling King Snake", "Dimples", "Boom Boom", "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer". Several of his albums, including The Healer, Mr. Lucky, Chill Out, Don't Look Back, were album chart successes in the U. S. and U. K; the Healer and Chill Out both earned him Grammy wins as well as Don't Look Back, which went on to earn him a double-Grammy win for Best Traditional Blues Recording and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. Hooker's date of birth is a subject of debate. Most sources give 1917, though at times Hooker stated he was born in 1920. Information in the 1920 and 1930 censuses indicates that he was born in 1912.
In 2017, a series of events took place to celebrate the purported centenary of his birth. In the 1920 federal census, John Hooker is seven years old and one of nine children living with William and Minnie Hooker in Tutwiler Mississippi, it is believed that he was born in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in Tallahatchie County, although some sources say his birthplace was near Clarksdale, in Coahoma County. He was the youngest of the 11 children of William Hooker, a sharecropper and Baptist preacher, Minnie Ramsey. In the 1920 federal census and Minnie were recorded as being 48 and 39 years old which implies that Minnie was born about 1880, not 1875, she was said to have been a "decade or so younger" than her husband, which gives additional credibility to this census record as evidence of Hooker's origins. The Hooker children were homeschooled, they were permitted to listen only to religious songs. In 1921, their parents separated; the next year, their mother married William Moore, a blues singer, who provided John Lee with an introduction to the guitar.
Moore was his first significant blues influence. He was a local blues guitarist who, in Shreveport, learned to play a droning, one-chord blues, strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time. Another influence was Tony Hollins, who dated Hooker's sister Alice, helped teach Hooker to play, gave him his first guitar. For the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician. Among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Catfish Blues". At the age of 14, Hooker ran away from home never seeing his mother or stepfather again. In the mid-1930s, he lived in Memphis, where he performed on Beale Street, at the New Daisy Theatre and at house parties, he worked in factories in various cities during World War II getting a job with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943. He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district, on Detroit's east side.
In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce. Hooker's popularity grew as he performed in Detroit clubs, seeking an instrument louder than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar. Hooker was working as janitor in a Detroit steel mill when his recording career began in 1948, when Modern Records, based in Los Angeles, released a demo he had recorded for Bernie Besman in Detroit; the single, "Boogie Chillen'", became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949. Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting traditional blues lyrics, he composed original songs. In the 1950s, like many black musicians, Hooker earned little from record sales, so he recorded variations of his songs for different studios for an up-front fee. To evade his recording contract, he used various pseudonyms, including John Lee Booker, Johnny Lee, John Lee, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, the Boogie Man.
His early solo songs were recorded by Bernie Besman. Hooker played with a standard beat, but instead he changed tempo to fit the needs of the song; this made it difficult to use backing musicians, who were not accustomed to Hooker's musical vagaries. As a result, Besman recorded Hooker playing guitar and stomping on a wooden pallet in time with the music. For much of this period he toured with Eddie Kirkland. In Hooker's sessions for Vee-Jay Records in Chicago, studio musicians accompanied him on most of his recordings, including Eddie Taylor, who could handle his musical idiosyncrasies. "Boom Boom" and "Dimples", two popular songs by Hooker, were released by Vee-Jay. Beginning in 1962, Hooker gained greater exposure when he toured Europe in the annual American Folk Blues Festival, his "Dimples" became a successful single on the UK Singles Charts in 1964, eight years after its first US release. Hooker began to record with rock musicians. One of his earliest collaborations was with British blues rock band the Groundhogs.
In 1970, he recor
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which respect an establishment of religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights; the Bill of Rights was proposed to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification. The First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states—a process known as incorporation—through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Everson v. Board of Education, the Court drew on Thomas Jefferson's correspondence to call for "a wall of separation between church and State", though the precise boundary of this separation remains in dispute.
Speech rights were expanded in a series of 20th and 21st-century court decisions which protected various forms of political speech, anonymous speech, campaign financing and school speech. The Supreme Court overturned English common law precedent to increase the burden of proof for defamation and libel suits, most notably in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Commercial speech, however, is less protected by the First Amendment than political speech, is therefore subject to greater regulation; the Free Press Clause protects publication of information and opinions, applies to a wide variety of media. In Near v. Minnesota and New York Times v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected against prior restraint—pre-publication censorship—in all cases; the Petition Clause protects the right to petition all branches and agencies of government for action. In addition to the right of assembly guaranteed by this clause, the Court has ruled that the amendment implicitly protects freedom of association.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. In 1776, the second year of the American Revolutionary War, the Virginia colonial legislature passed a Declaration of Rights that included the sentence "The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, can never be restrained but by despotic Governments." Eight of the other twelve states made similar pledges. However, these declarations were considered "mere admonitions to state legislatures", rather than enforceable provisions. After several years of comparatively weak government under the Articles of Confederation, a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia proposed a new constitution on September 17, 1787, featuring among other changes a stronger chief executive. George Mason, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the drafter of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, proposed that the Constitution include a bill of rights listing and guaranteeing civil liberties.
Other delegates—including future Bill of Rights drafter James Madison—disagreed, arguing that existing state guarantees of civil liberties were sufficient and that any attempt to enumerate individual rights risked the implication that other, unnamed rights were unprotected. After a brief debate, Mason's proposal was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations. For the constitution to be ratified, nine of the thirteen states were required to approve it in state conventions. Opposition to ratification was based on the Constitution's lack of adequate guarantees for civil liberties. Supporters of the Constitution in states where popular sentiment was against ratification proposed that their state conventions both ratify the Constitution and call for the addition of a bill of rights; the U. S. Constitution was ratified by all thirteen states. In the 1st United States Congress, following the state legislatures' request, James Madison proposed twenty constitutional amendments, his proposed draft of the First Amendment read as follows: The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.
The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments. The people shall not be restrained from peaceably consulting for their common good; this language was condensed by Congress, passed the House and Senate with no recorded debate, complicating future discussion of the Amendment's intent. The First Amendment, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was submitted to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, adopted on December 15, 1791. Thomas Jefferson wrote with respect to the First Amendment and its restriction on the legislative branch of the federal government in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies between Ma
Dorothy Kilgallen
Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was an American journalist and television game show panelist. After spending two semesters at the College of New Rochelle, she started her career shortly before her 18th birthday as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal. In 1938, she began her newspaper column "The Voice of Broadway", syndicated to more than 140 papers. In 1950, she became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, continuing in the role until her death. Kilgallen's columns featured show business news and gossip, but ventured into other topics, such as politics and organized crime, she wrote front-page articles on the Sam Sheppard trial and the John F. Kennedy assassination. Kilgallen was born in Chicago, the daughter of newspaper reporter James Lawrence Kilgallen and his wife, Mae Ahern, she was Roman Catholic. Dorothy had a sister, six years her junior; the family moved to various regions of the United States until 1920, when the International News Service hired James Kilgallen as a roving correspondent based in New York City.
The family settled in New York. Dorothy Kilgallen was a student at Erasmus Hall High School. After completing two semesters at The College of New Rochelle, she dropped out to take a job as a reporter for the New York Evening Journal; the newspaper was owned and operated by the Hearst Corporation, which owned International News Service, her father's employer. In 1936 Kilgallen competed with two other New York newspaper reporters in a race around the world using only means of transportation available to the general public, she came in second. She described the event in her book Girl Around The World, credited as the story idea for the 1937 movie Fly-Away Baby starring Glenda Farrell as a character inspired by Kilgallen. In November 1938, Kilgallen began writing a daily column, the "Voice of Broadway," for Hearst's New York Journal-American, which the corporation created by merging the Evening Journal with the American; the column, which she wrote until her death in 1965, featured New York show business news and gossip, but ventured into other topics such as politics and organized crime.
The column was syndicated to 146 newspapers via King Features Syndicate. Its success motivated Kilgallen to move her parents and Eleanor from Brooklyn to Manhattan, where she continued to live with them until she got married. On April 6, 1940, Kilgallen married Richard Kollmar, a musical comedy actor and singer who had starred in the Broadway show Knickerbocker Holiday and was performing, at the time of their wedding, in the Broadway cast of Too Many Girls, they had three children, Richard "Dickie", Kerry Kollmar, remained married until Kilgallen's death. Early in their marriage and Kollmar both launched careers in network radio. Kilgallen ran her radio program Voice of Broadway, broadcast on CBS during World War II, Kollmar worked a long stint in the nationally syndicated crime drama in which he played Boston Blackie. Beginning in April 1945, Kilgallen and Kollmar co-hosted a WOR-AM radio talk show, Breakfast With Dorothy and Dick, from their 16-room apartment at 640 Park Avenue; the show followed them when they bought a neo-Georgian brownstone at 45 East 68th Street in 1952.
The radio program, like Kilgallen's newspaper column, mixed entertainment with serious issues. Kilgallen and Kollmar continued doing the show from their home until 1963, long after the terminations of other radio shows on which each had worked without the other. Kilgallen was among the notables on the guest list of those who attended the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Kilgallen became a panelist on the American television game show What's My Line? in 1950, telecast from New York City on the CBS television network until 1967. She remained on the show for 15 years. Though Kilgallen and Frank Sinatra were good friends for several years and were photographed rehearsing in a radio studio for a 1948 broadcast, they had a falling out after she wrote a multipart 1956 front-page feature story titled "The Frank Sinatra Story." In addition to the New York Journal-American, Hearst-owned newspapers across the United States ran the story. Thereafter Sinatra made derogatory comments about Kilgallen's physical appearance to his audiences at nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas, though he stopped short of mentioning her name on television or during interviews for magazines and newspapers.
Kilgallen covered the 1954 murder trial of Sam Sheppard, a doctor, convicted of bludgeoning his wife to death at their home in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village. The New York Journal-American carried the banner front-page headline that she was "astounded" by the guilty verdict because of what she argued were serious flaws in the prosecution's case. At the time of the Cleveland jury's guilty verdict in December 1954, Kilgallen's sharp criticism of it was controversial and a Cleveland newspaper dropped her column in response, her articles and columns in 1954 did not reveal all she had witnessed in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. Nine years after the verdict and sentence, after the judge had died, she claimed at an event held at the Overseas Press Club in New York, that the judge had told her before the start of jury selection that Sheppard was "guilty as hell." Attorney F. Lee Bailey, working on a habeas corpus petition for his client Sheppard, attended the Overseas Press Club event, heard what Kilgallen told the crowd, asked her if she would help him.
"Some days lat
Odetta
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, guitarist, a civil and human rights activist referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted of American folk music, blues and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, Janis Joplin. Time magazine included her recording of "Take This Hammer" on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music." Odetta was born in Alabama. She grew up in Los Angeles, she studied music at Los Angeles City College while employed as a domestic worker. She had operatic training from the age of 13, her mother hoped she would follow Marian Anderson, but Odetta doubted a large black girl would perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Her first professional experience was in musical theater in 1944, as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester.
In 1949, she joined the national touring company of the musical Finian's Rainbow. While on tour with Finian's Rainbow, Odetta "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San Francisco", after 1950 she concentrated on folksinging, she made her name playing at the Blue Angel nightclub in New York City, the hungry i in San Francisco. At the Tin Angel in 1954 in San Francisco, Odetta recorded Odetta and Larry with Larry Mohr for Fantasy Records. A solo career followed, At the Gate of Horn. Odetta Sings Folk Songs was one of the best-selling folk albums of 1963. In 1959 she appeared on Tonight with a nationally televised special, she sang "Water Boy" and a duet with Belafonte, "There's a Hole in My Bucket". In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. called her "The Queen of American Folk Music". In 1961 the duo Harry Belafonte and Odetta made number 32 in the UK Singles Chart with the song "There's a Hole in the Bucket", she is remembered for her performance at March on Washington, the 1963 civil rights demonstration, at which she sang "O Freedom".
She described her role in the civil rights movement as "one of the privates in a big army." Broadening her musical scope, Odetta used band arrangements on several albums rather than playing alone. She released music of a more "jazz" style on the Blues and Odetta, she gave a remarkable performance in 1968 at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert. Odetta acted in several films including Cinerama Holiday. In 1961 she appeared in an episode of the TV series Have Gun, Will Travel, playing the wife of a man sentenced to hang, she was married twice, first to Dan Gordon and after their divorce, to Gary Shead. Her second marriage ended in divorce; the blues singer-guitarist Louisiana Red was a former companion of hers. In May 1975 she appeared on public television's Say Brother program, performing "Give Me Your Hand" in the studio, she spoke about her spirituality, the music tradition from which she drew, her involvement in civil rights struggles. In 1976, Odetta performed in the U. S. Bicentennial opera Be Glad Then, as the Muse for America.
The production was directed by Sarah Caldwell, the director of the Opera Company of Boston at the time. Odetta released two albums in the 20-year period from 1977 to 1997: Movin' It On, in 1987 and a new version of Christmas Spirituals, produced by Rachel Faro, in 1988. Beginning in 1998, she returned to touring; the new CD To Ella, was released in 1998 on Silverwolf Records, followed by three releases on M. C. Records in partnership with pianist/arranger/producer Seth Farber and record producer Mark Carpentieri; these included Blues Everywhere I Go, a 2000 Grammy-nominated blues/jazz band tribute album to the great lady blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s. C. Handy Award-nominated band tribute to Lead Belly; these recordings and active touring led to guest appearance on fourteen new albums by other artists between 1999 and 2006 and the re-release of 45 old Odetta albums and compilation appearances. On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts.
In 2004, Odetta was honored at the Kennedy Center with the "Visionary Award" along with a tribute performance by Tracy Chapman. In 2005, the Library of Congress honored her with its "Living Legend Award". In mid-September 2001, Odetta performed with the Boys' Choir of Harlem on the Late Show with David Letterman, appearing on the first show after Letterman resumed broadcasting, having been off the air for several nights following the events of September 11; the 2005 documentary film No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese, highlights her musical influence on Bob Dylan, the subject of the documentary. The film contains an archive clip of Odetta performing "Waterboy" on TV in 1959, as well as her "Mule Skinner Blues" and "No Mo
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield, known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician, cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues", an important figure on the post-war blues scene. Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson, he was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon; these songs included "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I'm Ready".
In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960. Muddy Waters' influence is incalculable, on blues as well as other American idioms—such as Rock and roll and Rock music. Muddy Waters' birthplace and date are not conclusively known, he stated that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915, but other evidence suggests that he was born in Jug's Corner, in neighboring Issaquena County, in 1913. In the 1930s and 1940s, before his rise to fame, the year of his birth was reported as 1913 on his marriage license, recording notes, musicians' union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest in which he stated 1915 as the year of his birth, he continued to say this in interviews from that point onward; the 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920, suggesting that his birth year may have been 1914.
The Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid-1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1913. His gravestone gives his birth year as 1915, his grandmother, Della Grant, raised him. Grant gave him the nickname "Muddy" at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. "Waters" was added years as he began to play harmonica and perform locally in his early teens. The remains of the cabin on Stovall Plantation where he lived in his youth are now at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi, he had his first introduction to music in church: "I used to belong to church. I was a good Baptist. So I got all of my good moaning and trembling going on for me right out of church," he recalled. By the time he was 17, he had purchased his first guitar. "I sold the last horse. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty and paid about two-fifty for that guitar.
It was a Stella. The people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago." He started playing his songs in joints near his hometown on a plantation owned by Colonel William Howard Stovall. In August 1941, Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Muddy recalled for Rolling Stone magazine, "and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. On he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said,'I can do it, I can do it.'" Lomax came back in July 1942 to record him again. Both sessions were released by Testament Records as Down on Stovall's Plantation; the complete recordings were reissued by Chess Records on CD as Muddy Waters: The Complete Plantation Recordings.
The Historic 1941–42 Library of Congress Field Recordings in 1993 and remastered in 1997. In 1943, Muddy Waters headed to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician, he recalled arriving in Chicago as the single most momentous event in his life. He lived with a relative for a short period while driving a truck and working in a factory by day and performing at night. Big Bill Broonzy one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago, had Muddy Waters open his shows in the rowdy clubs where Broonzy played; this gave Muddy Waters the opportunity to play in front of a large audience. In 1944, he bought his first electric guitar and formed his first electric combo, he felt obliged to electrify his sound in Chicago because, he said, "When I went into the clubs, the first thing I wanted was an amplifier. Couldn't nobody hear you with an acoustic." His sound reflected the optimism of postwar African Americans. Willie Dixon said that "There was quite a few people around singing the blues but most of them was singing all sad blues.
Muddy was giving his blues a little pep." Three years in 1946, he recorded some songs for Mayo Williams at Columbia Records, with an old-fashioned combo consisting of clarinet and piano. That year, he began recording for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. In 1947, he played guitar w
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American rock guitarist and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music". Born in Seattle, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the U. S. trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965, he played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who in turn interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", "The Wind Cries Mary".
He achieved fame in the U. S. after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the U. S.. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27. Hendrix was inspired musically by American roll and electric blues, he favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, was instrumental in popularizing the undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units, such as fuzz tone, wah-wah, Uni-Vibe in mainstream rock, he was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously.
In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year, in 1968, Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year; the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time. Jimi Hendrix had a diverse heritage, his paternal grandmother, Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, was one-quarter Cherokee. Hendrix's paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, was born out of an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny, a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, or Illinois, one of the wealthiest men in the area at that time. After Hendrix and Moore relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, had a son they named James Allen Hendrix on June 10, 1919.
In 1941 after moving to Seattle, Al met Lucille Jeter at a dance. Lucille's father was Preston Jeter, whose mother was born in similar circumstances as Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix. Lucille's mother, née Clarice Lawson, had African Cherokee ancestors. Al, drafted by the U. S. Army to serve in World War II, left to begin his basic training three days after the wedding. Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on November 1942, in Seattle. In 1946, Johnny's parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix, in honor of Al and his late brother Leon Marshall. Stationed in Alabama at the time of Hendrix's birth, Al was denied the standard military furlough afforded servicemen for childbirth, he spent two months locked up without trial, while in the stockade received a telegram announcing his son's birth. During Al's three-year absence, Lucille struggled to raise their son; when Al was away, Hendrix was cared for by family members and friends Lucille's sister Delores Hall and her friend Dorothy Harding. Al received an honorable discharge from the U.
S. Army on September 1, 1945. Two months unable to find Lucille, Al went to the Berkeley, home of a family friend named Mrs. Champ, who had taken care of and had attempted to adopt Hendrix. After returning from service, Al reunited with Lucille, but his inability to find steady work left the family impoverished, they both struggled with alcohol, fought when intoxicated. The violence sometimes drove Hendrix to hide in a closet in their home, his relationship with his brother Leon was precarious. In ad
