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Jimi Hendrix Was Briefly in a Band With Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong

Within the early Sixties, Jimi Hendrix and Tommy Chong had one thing in frequent: they had been each musicians taking part in in bands. Though Hendrix’s legacy lives on in his music, Chong went on to realize international recognition alongside Cheech Marin as a half of the movie-starring comedy duo Cheech & Chong. Whereas Chong was a musician, he was joined by Hendrix in his band.

Jimi Hendrix | Bettmann/Getty Photographs

Jimi Hendrix performed in a number of small bands

Jimi Hendrix performed backup guitar for a quantity of fashionable artists in the early Sixties, from Little Richard and Ray Charles to Ike and Tina Turner and The Isley Brothers. He quickly started taking part in in bands of his personal.

Hendrix performed in numerous bands as a younger grownup. These teams included The Velvetones, The Kasuals, and the King Casuals.

Jimi Hendrix was as soon as in a band with Tommy Chong

Whereas he was a member of The King Kasuals, Hendrix determined to go to his grandmother Zenora in Vancouver. It was right here the place Tommy Chong was taking part in lead guitar as a half of Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. The band was signed to Motown Information, headed by legendary file government Barry Gordy.

Chong mirrored on the early days of the band’s profession in a 2006 interview with Tuscon’s KLPX. “We were in England,” he remembered. “Barry [Gordy] liked our band a lot, Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. And we were playing in this little club and there was no one in there.”

“Hendrix came in, and when he opened the door it was like God appeared,” Chong continued. “He had like 300 people behind him and packed the joint. And he’d just come in by himself, walked up to the stage, and he goes, ‘Hey, Tommy, how are you doing, man? Mind if I sit in?’ And I was in shock!”

“[In] my comedic mindset, I wanted to say, ‘Sorry, man, but maybe the last set,’” he mentioned. “But I said, ‘Yeah, come on!’ And I handed him my guitar and he goes ‘No no, I want to play bass.’ So he played bass, and he played for the whole set.”

“Hendrix told me that he was stationed in Seattle, and we had a club in Vancouver, Canada, and he used to come up almost every weekend and sit in our club and listen to us play,” he added.

In keeping with Philip Norman’s 2020 guide Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix, Hendrix started taking part in with Chong’s band commonly at a membership in Vancouver known as Dante’s Inferno. As a result of Chong was the lead guitar participant in the band, Hendrix took a backseat taking part in rhythm guitar.

Jimi Hendrix went on to change into a rock star, whereas Tommy Chong was a film star

Hendrix would go on to kind his personal band, The Jimi Hendrix Expertise, in the mid-Sixties. In a span of lower than two years, they launched three albums: Are You Skilled, Axis: Daring as Love, and Electrical Ladyland. The group disbanded in 1968, however Hendrix continued to play with different musicians till his demise in 1970.

Chong, in the meantime, started a completely new profession as a comic alongside Cheech Marin. The duo launched comedy albums and motion pictures about cannabis-fueled adventures, with 4 of their comedy albums incomes nominations for the Grammy Award for Greatest Comedy Album.

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