I first met Jimi Hendrix in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was stranded
with no money. He had been working as a guitarist with a feller named Georgeous George, a black guy who sported a blonde wig and wore those fabulous clothes that he made himself.

My bus was parked on Auburn Avenue, and Jimi was staying in this
small hotel. He had watched me work and he just loved the way I wore those headbands around my hair and how wild I dressed. My manager (Bumps Blackwell), who knew Jimi's folks in Seattle, rang Mr. Hendrix (Jimi's father) to see if it was okay for Jimi to join us. Al Hendrix told Bumps, "Jimi just idolizes Richard. He would eat ten yards of shit to join his band." So he came with me. He wasn't playing my kind of music, though. He was playing like B.B. King, blues. He started rocking though, and he was a good guy. He bagan to dress like me, and even grew a mustache like mine.

I will never forget Jimi loading his belongings on the bus. His
guitar was wrapped in a potato sack. It only had 5 strings on it.
Jimi to me was never a precision guitarist. I know he was not a
reading musician in those days, though he played well by ear. I
regarded him as being innovative, creative, and something of a
stylist. He would sometimes play with his teeth and then put the
guitar behind his neck and play with his fingers. This brought raves
from the audience. Once that tour ended I didn't see any more of Jimi, and I don't know whether he went back to Atlanta with Georgious George.

NEXT TOUR:

MARQUETTE: (member of the band) - Richard didn't hide Jimi. He used to allow him to do that playing with the teeth things and take solos. It became part of the act. If Richard had been trying to supress him, he wouldn't have allowed that. The only thing he wouldn't allow his musicians to do was to play at someother place when we were in town  to do a show. He didn't want people to say "Oh, yes, those were the same guys that we saw last night at such and such a club."

Richard taught Hendrix a lot of things, and Hendrix copied a lot of
things from Richard. That's where he got the charisma. Richard used to say "Look, don't be ashmed to do whatever you feel. The people can tell if you're phony. They can FEEL it out in the audience. I don't care if you're wild, I don't care if you're quite. They'll know if you're
putting yourself into it, whatever it is."

Some musicians take to life on the road as though they were born to it. Jimi Hendrix was not one of those. The tour was taking them to a lot of out of the way places. In the south they were getting caught up in the atmosphere generated by the civil rights disorders. Often Richard flew from one venue to the next while the band traveled by bus. Jimi Hendrix was not happy, though he loved to play. His unhappiness showed itself in deliberate flouting of the band rules and in bad timekeeping. He had to go, Richard's brother, Robert, who was managing the tour, wielded the ax.

ROBERT PENNIMAN: I fired Jimi, who was using the name Maurice James all the time I knew him. He was a damn good guitar player, but the guy was never on time. He was always late for the bus, and flirting with the girls, stuff like that. It came to a head in New York, where we had been playing the Apollo, and Hendrix missed the bus for Washington, DC. I finally got Richard to cut him loose. So when Hendrix called us in Washington, D.C., I gave him the word that his services were no longer required. We had some words. I explained why we were doing this. I was running the road for Richard, and I didn't accept that kind of bullshit.

I have read that Richard canned him in England and left him stranded
there. It makes better reading that way, sells books and things, but
it's a damn lie, I know. I canned Hendrix myself in New York.
Later--years later--I was flying someplace to meet Richard and the
program on the headset kept listing "Jimi Hendrix.." Well I had been
reading about this guy making all this money, like a hundred thousand
dollars for 45 minutes, and I mentioned it to Richard. He said,
"Robert, do you know who that is?" He let me hang for a couple of
minutes; then he said, That's Maurice James." I had never related Jimi Hendrix to Maurice james until then.