Song Of The Day - Wednesday, 11/10/2010

Published by Lois Lame, SSALRCYTMVDQJCP & Assistant Editor

Date:  11/10/2010
Post:  1,049

Today's song is Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star Spangled Banner".  This YouTube clip is believed to be a live recording of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock.

Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969.  Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.

During the sometimes rainy weekend, thirty-two acts performed outdoors in front of 500,000 concert-goers.  It is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most pivotal moments in popular music history and was listed among Rolling Stone's 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.

The event was captured in the successful 1970 documentary movie Woodstock, an accompanying soundtrack album, and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock" which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Early on September 18, 1970, Jimi Hendrix died in London. He had spent the latter part of the previous evening at a party and was picked up by girlfriend Monika Dannemann and driven to her flat at the Samarkand Hotel, 22 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill. According to the estimated time of death, from autopsy data and statements by friends about the evening of September 17, he died within a few hours after midnight, though no precise estimate was made at the original inquest.

Dannemann claimed in her original testimony that after they returned to her lodgings the evening before, Hendrix, unknown to her, had taken nine of her prescribed Vesperax sleeping pills. The normal medical dose was half a tablet, but Hendrix was unfamiliar with this very strong German brand. According to surgeon John Bannister, the doctor who initially attended to him, Hendrix had asphyxiated in his own vomit, mainly red wine which had filled his airways, as the autopsy was to show.  For years, Dannemann publicly claimed that she had only discovered that her lover was unconscious and unresponsive sometime after 9 a.m., that Hendrix was alive when placed in the back of the ambulance after half past eleven, and that she rode with him on the way to the hospital; the latter two are denied by the ambulance crew. However, Dannemann's comments about that morning were often contradictory, varying from interview to interview.  Police and ambulance statements reveal that there was no one but Hendrix in the flat when they arrived at 11:27 a.m., and not only was he dead when they arrived on the scene, but was fully clothed and had been dead for some time.

Later, Dannemen claimed that former road managers Gerry Stickels and Eric Barrett had been present before the ambulance was called and had removed some of Hendrix's possessions, including some of his most recent messages. Lyrics written by Hendrix, which were found in the apartment, led Eric Burdon to make a premature announcement on the BBC-TV program 24 Hours that he believed Hendrix had committed suicide. Burdon often claimed he had been telephoned by Dannemann after she discovered that Jimi failed to wake up.

Following a libel case brought in 1996 by Hendrix's long-term English girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, Monika Dannemann committed suicide.



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