I remember a few years back driving home from work one day, the local radio station had an old time Radio DJ on for a short interview...His name is Pat O'Day...the interview lasted for more then an hour with one short commercial break in the middle.
Most of the interview was talking about musicians he had dealings with and one of those was Jimi. Pat O'Day used to have a dance club in North Seattle that would have live bands play for dances on Saturdays for the local teens...kind of an American Band Stand kind of deal.
As different bands played there, they always seem to have issues with their amps blowing fuses and the guitar players caused the live portion of the dances to end, and DJ's had to play records...One day it happened again and Pat O'Day in his normal alcoholic rage got quite upset at the band and was about to kick them out as he was tired of the lead guitar guy always blowing his amp fuses and never bringing enough when this young black boy about 13 or 14 approached Pat and asked if he could fill in.
Pat was taken aback and was about ready to blow him off, but decided for no reason to ask him if he knew any of the songs...The young boy responded he knew all of them.
At the time, Jimi saved the day and a lot of other Saturdays as he became the lead reserve guitar player for a lot of bands...Pat only knew him as Jimi for a long time. He played there for a few years until the club closed.
Flash forward to the later 60's...Pat O'day was a concert promoter and had to have the Black American guitar player from the UK come over and play in the US. When Jimi came, Pat didn't even know it was the same kid until they met back stage at a concert in Houston, TX and Jimi told him who he was...Pat was quite shocked needless to say.
When Jimi died, he was pretty broke and so was his family here in Renton, WA...Pat paid to have his body flown back and also paid all the funeral expenses.
Lot of other cool stories he told too about other rock legends from the day...
