Long before Jimi Hendrix played the Pacific Coliseum on September 7, 1968, he had a Vancouver connection.
Jimi Hendrix played the Pacific Coliseum on September 7, 1968. Four years after the Beatles and 11 years after Elvis Presley played Empire Stadium and changed music forever. The difference was that Jimi had a Vancouver connection—his grandmother Nora Hendrix, a one-time vaudeville dancer who moved to Vancouver in 1911 with her husband Ross Hendrix, a former Chicago cop and raised three children. Al, the youngest moved to Seattle at 22, met 16-year-old Lucille, and Jimi was born in 1942.
Story from At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes
According to Jimi Hendrix, the Man, the Magic, the Truth, a biography published in 2004, Jimi lived in 14 different places, including short stints in Vancouver. “I’d always look forward to seeing Gramma Nora, my dad’s mother in Vancouver, usually in the summer. I’d pack some stuff in a brown sack, and then she’d buy me new pants and shirts and underwear. I kept getting taller and growing out of all my clothes, and my shoes were always a falling-apart disgrace. Gramma would tell me little Indian stories that had been told to her when she was my age. I couldn’t wait to hear a new story. She had Cherokee blood. So did Gramma Jeter. I was proud of that, it was in me too.”
According to the Vancouver School Board Archives and Heritage, in 1949, Jimi attended grade 1 at the West End’s Dawson Annex while living at Nora’s house on East Georgia. “It was a long distance to the school so he probably took the bus or streetcar since the fare was only five cents,” notes the VSB.
Shortly after Hendrix left the army in 1962, he hitchhiked 2,000 miles to Vancouver and stayed several weeks with Nora. He picked up some cash sitting in with a group at a local club on Davie Street, now a gay nightclub called Celebrities.*
Six years later, when Jimi Hendrix Experience played the Pacific Coliseum, one reviewer described the band as “bigger than Elvis.” Hendrix, dressed all in white, played hits such as “Fire,” “Hey Joe,” and “Voodoo Child.” At one point he acknowledged his grandmother, who sat in the audience, and launched into “Foxy Lady.”
In 2002, Vincent Fodera renovated the building at Union and Main Street and found dishes and a stove that he believes came from Vie’s Chicken and Steak House, part of Hogan’s Alley where Nora once worked as a cook. Seven years later Fodera opened a shrine for the dead rock star. Locals told him that Jimi used the space for rehearsals and sex.
When Jimi played the Pacific Coliseum in 1968 he was 25. Just over two years later, the man widely recognized as one of the most creative and influential musicians of the 20th century was dead.
- 1022 Davie Street was designed by architect Thomas Hooper for the Lester Dancing Academy in 1911. Hooper also designed the Victoria Public Library, and Munro’s Books Building in Victoria. And in 1912, the same year he designed Hycroft in Shaughnessy, Vancouver’s Winch Building and submitted plans for UBC, he designed Christina Haas’s, Cook Street brothel
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19 comments on “Jimi Hendrix Plays the Pacific Coliseum—September 7, 1968”
Celebrities was also known as the Retinal Circus circa 1968. Didn’t see Jimi there, but I did see the Grateful Dead. And I was at Jimi’s concert at the Coliseum in 68!
Cool!
Zenora Rose Hendrix Moore also lived for a time in a small house on McGill and Wall
Street in Vancouver.
We lived across the street and ‘Aunt Rose’, as I called her, and my Mom were good friends; as children, Jimi and I played together.
Amazing!
. . . saw Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground at the retinal circus, opening for the Collecters (became Chilliwack). Howie Vickers and the Collectors performed a 2 hour version of their “What Love Suite”. When we left the venue after they finished the sun was just coming up 😉
Ive been to the Retinal Circus. One night me and a buddy (we must have been 14 or 15) were at the Circus to see a San Fran group called Notes From The Underground. They were the first concert act Id ever attended that wasnt a local band. The Retinal Circus hosted many great artists. I love the concert ticket price of $3.50 to see Jimi Hendrix. In the early 70s I saw Led Zepplin at the Coliseum and the ticket cost about $12. Those were the days.
Just for fun I put $12 in 1972 dollars into the Canadian inflation calculator and it was worth $69.86 in 2017 dollars. Still a bargain.
Grandfather Ross was a caddy at Quilchena Golf Course till 1934 apparantly. No club house or much at all remains there. Vi’s was a wonderful place where your BYOB was served in the most lovely English bone china.
Vi’s was a fabulous after hours restaurant. My parents had great tales of heading there late at night/ early in the morning for steaks after an evening at The Cave or Paloma’s. They clearly had more stamina then I ever had!
I’d have to double check this with John Atkin, but I recall discussion or overhearing that while Jimi (and his brother Leon who was with him here) were in Vancouver, while their Grandmother was notably known in Strathcona, Jimi and Leon were more often staying with an Aunt, who lived closer to Dawson Elementary, and just a walk away, in the West End.
If anybody can find a class photo of Jimi in his Dawson Elementary days, I’d sure love to see it.
It would make sense, because otherwise why not go to Strathcona school? Looking at the VSB site again it seems that this information originates back to the Terry David Mulligan interview in 1968.
It’s well documented that Jimi played from Seattle to Alaska as he began performing after learning guitar when off duty in the army. That meant gigs in Vancouver with, apparently, bookings in at least one Downtown Eastside establishment near his childhood stomping grounds.
Circa 1975, while working part-time at the City Nights (aka Old Pantages) Theatre, I’d sometimes drop by the nearby Smiling Buddha Cabaret for a nightcap. A musician or three claimed they always had to negotiate hard with the owner who’d try to persuade them to take less “because Jimi (Hendrix ) played here on his way up.”
I will never forget the concert.One of my 1st Big concerts 3 weeks before my 14 th BIRTHDAY
Missed this when you posted it, last year. I too was at that historic concert at the Coliseum, in 1968. When the stage was rushed at the first note, we made it to the very front of the crush.
I can add another personal note to which can’t be deduced from listening to the concert recording (I discovered it a couple of years ago and embedded it in my own story linked here). He kneeled on the edge of the stage and played Foxy Lady to my girlfriend, who was sitting in front of me, beneath the stage. I also have the ticket stub, a treasured memento.
Here’s a poor quality video of Terry David Mulligan interviewing Jimi, Noel & Mitch backstage at the Coliseum (19:20), a hand pulling TDM out of the frame at 19:45 and Hendrix’s query about Dawson Annex at 20:20. Sadly, TDM doesn’t pick up on this great local angle. BTW, by 1968, Dawson Annex had been closed for several years. It was demolished April 1, 1969
“Shortly after Hendrix left the army in 1962, he hitchhiked 2,000 miles to Vancouver and stayed several weeks with Nora…”
This is almost for sure fake info. Jimi’s moves after his army period are well documented, and there is no evidence to suggest that he went all the way to Vancouver. The only time Jimi was in Vancouver as a kid [usually with his brother Leon] was during summer periods. He did go Dawson Annex but the only attendance record that could be found for that is for September 1949. According to Pearl Hendrix, Jimi was at school there the most “for two months” but I believe it must be longer as here is a gab between that Vancouver period and when Jimi went to school in Seattle. Records kept on schools in Saettle are very accurate and complete. The only period not complete [i.e. pre Seattle] deals with the kindergarten period.
Jimi Hendricks started off in vancouver downtown East end skid road vancouver the cabaret called the smilin Buddha.got fired cause played so loud! Lashman manager and his wife Nancy operated the club. My band the j c band came after he was gone. I still have photos when we played there. The stage jimi hendrics played. Now I’m
( solo Joe) Joe chow
My band as house band there 69-70s etc.
Saw Hendrix in Vancouver but left disappointed. The support bands played too long and then Jimi played a short set and apologized for quitting early as he was not feeling well (flu or maybe drugs).
As above, I have a different perspective on the show. While, yes, Hendrix did cut the set short due to the flu, it was a great concert — not just because we (read my girlfriend) got personal attention from the guitar god, but because some renditions were enough to stick with me through the intervening 55 years. Red House in itself was ecstasy, but I think I left my (16 y/o) body during the opening bars of Are You Experienced … I was afterwards!
Hendrix was also miffed at the cretins who kept shouting for standards while he wanted to spotlight more new work from Electric Ladyland. I risked injury to tell them to STFU.
As for the support bands; they were excellent. Eire Apparent were good, Soft Machine were too short–so good I bought their album right after. Still have it.
Vanilla Fudge were almost de rigueur, opening, it seemed, for almost every concert I saw in those days, including The Mothers of Invention and Led Zeppelin.