As a caveat, please read the addendum of 9 December 2020 at bottom, which documents a polite challenge to the claim that Jimi Hendrix appeared on my father's TV show. I still believe Hendrix appeared on the program and in the image capturing the event, but, in all fairness, the dissent is worth noting. — SKB
❧
I am indebted to Steve Rodham of the Jimi Hendrix fanzine Jimpress for permitting me to reprint my below article from the Summer 2020 issue (Issue 117). I have added additional images and adapted the article's style and formatting to this blog. Back-issue and subscription information for Jimpress can be found here. I am also obliged to noted Hendrix scholar Joel J. Brattin, professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, for sharing his research with me and for putting me in contact with Steve at Jimpress. Finally, I thank Brett Judice, Danny Alvarado, and KLFY-TV 10, Lafayette, La., for providing me with a high-resolution scan of the photo that inspired this article.
 |
| The Summer 2020 issue of Jimpress, the Jimi Hendrix fanzine. |
❧
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT:
“A MILLION MILES AWAY . . .
AND RIGHT HERE IN YOUR PICTURE FRAME”* —
A PREVIOUSLY UNNOTICED JIMI HENDRIX PHOTOGRAPH, 1965
*lyric excerpt from Jimi Hendrix, "Voodoo Chile," Electric Ladyland (1968).
by Shane K. Bernard
In early 1965, an as-yet-unknown Jimi Hendrix appeared on my father's weekend teen-age dance program called Saturday Hop. Hendrix, however, did not sing or play guitar on the show. As far as anyone knows, he merely stood there, at attention, dressed as a British soldier of the "Queen's Guard" (to use the unit's formal name). He wore a dress tunic, dark pants, and a tall bearskin hat. Fortunately, a black-and-white still photograph captures the occurrence — but only in late July 2019 did anyone realize Hendrix appeared in that image. Until then, his presence there, at that time, in that TV studio, in that fantastic costume, was entirely unknown. How this photographic revelation came to be is a complicated story — one that takes some time for telling and for Hendrix to take center stage.
In orange lingerie?
 |
| The Photograph. Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix on the set of my father's live TV dance program, 1965. Hendrix is the faux British guard at far left. (Courtesy Brett Judice, Danny Alvarado, and KLFY-TV 10, Lafayette, La.) |
In orange lingerie?
The story began, for me at least, in mid-March 2017 with an unexpected phone call from best-selling crime-fiction novelist James Lee Burke. His imaginary Cajun detective, Dave Robicheaux — played on the big-screen by Alec Baldwin and Tommy Lee Jones — routinely solves crimes in and around the real-life town I call home, New Iberia, Louisiana.
 |
| James Lee Burke's first novel, The Neon Rain (1987). |
As a fellow writer (I pen non-fiction) I claim only to be an acquaintance of Burke. I've never met him in person, but we've corresponded or spoken by phone a few times over the years. Oddly, we've never discussed writing and on that occasion two years ago we spoke about music. It was then that Burke related this story: in the mid-1960s, long before he published his first novel The Neon Rain (1987), Burke worked in Lafayette as a reporter for the Daily Advertiser newspaper. At that time, my father, "swamp pop" musician Rod Bernard — who scored a national hit in 1959 with the ballad "This Should Go On Forever" — held day jobs as both a deejay and program director at KVOL 1330 AM of Lafayette.
Every Saturday, however, Dad hosted an American Bandstand-style live-TV dance program variously called Saturday Hop, The Rod Bernard Show, and later The Shondells (after Dad's band, not to be confused with Tommy James' better-known group of the same name). Burke explained that Dad once managed to snag a performance by Little Richard, who had come to Lafayette for a live concert elsewhere in town. When Dad introduced Little Richard to the teen-aged dancers and to the viewers at home, the flamboyant rock 'n' roll icon, surrounded by an adoring, flag-waving entourage, promptly marched onto the low-budget set dressed in women's clothing. As I recorded after my conversation with Burke: "Little Richard came out dressed in drag, wearing orange lingerie and earrings, and behind him was his 'posse,' dressed in bellhop uniforms and waving an American flag in one hand and a Little Richard flag in the other."(1)
 |
| Rod Bernard performing on the Saturday Hop set, poster advertisement, ca. 1965. (Author's collection) |
Every Saturday, however, Dad hosted an American Bandstand-style live-TV dance program variously called Saturday Hop, The Rod Bernard Show, and later The Shondells (after Dad's band, not to be confused with Tommy James' better-known group of the same name). Burke explained that Dad once managed to snag a performance by Little Richard, who had come to Lafayette for a live concert elsewhere in town. When Dad introduced Little Richard to the teen-aged dancers and to the viewers at home, the flamboyant rock 'n' roll icon, surrounded by an adoring, flag-waving entourage, promptly marched onto the low-budget set dressed in women's clothing. As I recorded after my conversation with Burke: "Little Richard came out dressed in drag, wearing orange lingerie and earrings, and behind him was his 'posse,' dressed in bellhop uniforms and waving an American flag in one hand and a Little Richard flag in the other."(1)
 |
| Dad and fellow swamp pop vocalists Warren Storm (center) and Skip Stewart (right) on the Saturday Hop set, ca. 1965. (Author's collection) |
Now this was the mid-1960s in south-central Louisiana: the deepest of the Deep South. A place where Brown v. Board of Education would not be heeded until around 1969 — about fifteen years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued that decision ostensibly ending segregation throughout America. Certainly, thought Burke as he watched the show unfold on TV, this would not go down well with Lafayette's many white, generally conservative inhabitants.
 |
| Little Richard on Dad's show, 1965. (Courtesy Brett Judice, Danny Alvarado, and KLFY-TV 10, Lafayette, La.) |
On the Monday after the show Burke called my father and asked if KLFY had received any complaints. "No," Dad replied, "there had been no complaints" — meaning, he added, Lafayette viewers were either unconcerned about the spectacle "or no one watches my show."
The wonder of social media
In July 2019, more than two years after Burke told me this story, a life-long friend, Alan Benit, sent me a screen shot of a photo that, to my astonishment, captured that very appearance — Little Richard lip-syncing on Dad's show. Alan had spotted the black-and-white image in a recent Facebook posting by Cecil Doyle of KRVS 88.7 FM, a public radio station at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Doyle had originally posted the image on Facebook in 2010. He, in turn, had obtained it at least nine years earlier from music scholar and Lafayette native Ryan Brasseaux (now on faculty at Yale University). Brasseaux cannot offhand recall his source, but a print of the image hangs in KLFY's lobby — the same station that broadcasted my father's show in the 1960s. And that print may very well be the ultimate source of the digital image circulating on the Internet.(2)
 |
| Local swamp pop/soul band Lil' Bob & the Lollipops, on the set of Saturday Hop, ca. 1965. (Courtesy the Johnnie Allan Collection, Acadiana Manuscripts Collection, University of Louisiana at Lafayette) |
Regardless of provenance, no one seemed to realize that an entertainer even more legendary than Little Richard appeared in the image. It certainly did not come to mind on my first viewing: I thought only of Burke's story, with its references to bellhops and orange lingerie. Clearly, I reasoned, Little Richard and his entourage had either changed costumes during the program — quite an effort for a regional show in a small to medium market — or Burke had misremembered, and there had been no bellhops or orange lingerie. But one cannot fault Burke: already in his 80s when we spoke, the novelist was, after all, recalling an obscure event from over a half-century earlier. Besides, Burke's memory contained more than a grain of truth: Little Richard had, as usual, dressed extravagantly for the show (albeit in dark slacks and a shiny lamé jacket), and his entourage had, in fact, carried flags and worn uniforms. (Moreover, early in his career, Little Richard had indeed performed in drag.)(3)
I soon posted the Little Richard image on my own Facebook page, dedicated to south Louisiana history. I also posted photographs from the period showing my father and other musicians on the same dance program set. And clearly it was the same set: the theatrical "flats" (oblong wooden frames covered in canvas) sporting musical motifs — a trumpet here, a guitar and a musical note there — were definite giveaways. A careful study of those images, including the one featuring Little Richard, reveals that some of the flats had been autographed by Dad's musical guests. (One can only wonder what happened to all those autographs.)
 |
| Dad performing on the set of Saturday Hop, ca. 1965. (Author's collection) |
Hendrix – on Dad's show?
The Little Richard image proved extremely popular on my Facebook page and attracted the attention of Scott Longon. As is often the case on social media, I'd never met Scott and, in fact, I didn't know anything about him. Regardless, Scott saw the Little Richard image and in response posted this intriguing question: "Shane, could the picture be from January 1965 when Jimi Hendrix was playing in Little Richard's back[ing] band?" Scott followed up with the comment, "Hard to tell if Hendrix is in the picture with those hats" — referring to the tall bearskin hats of the Queen's Guard. Scott was skeptical, posting again a short time later, "Well, further research indicates the guys in the uniforms were extras and not with the band."(4)
But I was not so sure: I scanned the faces of those ersatz British guardsmen standing stiffly at attention around Little Richard. And it struck me: Jeez, that guardsman on the far left sure as hell looks like Jimi Hendrix!
 |
| Detail of Hendrix in British guard uniform, Dad's show, 1965. (Courtesy Brett Judice, Danny Alvarado, and KLFY-TV 10, Lafayette, La.) |
It was Jimi Hendrix — at that time spelling his name Jimmy Hendrix and performing under the pseudonym Maurice James. And despite initial doubts, it was Scott who had found crucial evidence proving, or almost proving, it was Hendrix. As unlikely as it seems, Hendrix's official Facebook page had once posted, and still had in its timeline, front and back scans of a postcard Hendrix had mailed to his father from Lafayette. Postmarked January 25, 1965, and advertising the Lafayette Holiday Inn (only six months earlier the Civil Rights Act had guaranteed black Americans equal access to public hotels), the postcard read in Hendrix's own hand, "I'm playing with Little Richard. . . . We're in Louisiana now."(5)
 |
| Postcard mailed by Hendrix from Lafayette, La., on January 25, 1965. (Source: Jimi Hendrix Facebook page) |
That postmark date, January 25, 1965, happened to be the same day Little Richard played a concert in Lafayette. This show fell three days after "Little Richard and his Royal Show" had performed at the Bamboo Club in not-too-distant Lake Charles, Louisiana — and only two days after Little Richard could have appeared (with Hendrix in tow as a British guardsman) on Dad's live Saturday TV show broadcasted from Lafayette.
Incidentally, no ads for Little Richard's Lafayette show of the 25th appeared in newspapers, perhaps because it was, as a German fan site records, a strictly "Private Function." Someone who attended the show, however, recounts it took place at a recreation hall run by Immaculate Heart of Mary, a Catholic church serving primarily African American congregants. The church property sat then, as it does today, on the corner of Surrey and 12th streets in Lafayette.(6) (See below Addendum of 19 October 2020.)
 |
| Advertisement, Lake Charles American Press, January 22, 1965. |
Incidentally, no ads for Little Richard's Lafayette show of the 25th appeared in newspapers, perhaps because it was, as a German fan site records, a strictly "Private Function." Someone who attended the show, however, recounts it took place at a recreation hall run by Immaculate Heart of Mary, a Catholic church serving primarily African American congregants. The church property sat then, as it does today, on the corner of Surrey and 12th streets in Lafayette.(6) (See below Addendum of 19 October 2020.)
 |
| Immaculate Heart of Mary, corner Surrey and 12th, Lafayette, La. (Source: Google Maps) |
To further remove doubt about the image actually showing Hendrix, one need only consult Joel J. Brattin's article in the June 2011 issue of UniVibes. In that issue Brattin — a professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a noted Hendrix scholar — published a fuzzy screen shot of Hendrix in a British palace guardsman uniform. As Brattin wrote, "Three of Little Richard's band members (including a 22-year-old Jimmy Hendrix), attired in (red?) uniforms and wearing tall bearskin hats intended to remind viewers of British guards, stand stiffly at attention in the background, never moving at any point."
 |
| Hendrix in British uniform on American Bandstand, March 6, 1965. (Source: UniVibes magazine) |
Captured nearly six weeks after Hendrix would have been photographed on my father's show, the image Brattin described shows Hendrix with Little Richard on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Like that image, the newly identified Saturday Hop image of January 23, 1965 (the inferred date Hendrix and Little Richard appeared on Dad's show), will help to flesh out a murky period in Hendrix's life — a period just before his swift rise to true rock 'n' roll royalty. On a more personal level, however, I'm now able, every so often, to glance over at my teen-aged son — himself a budding rock and blues guitarist — and remind him anew each time of the stranger-than-fiction epiphany: "Dude, Jimi Hendrix was on your Paw-Paw's show!"(7)
Addendum of 19 October 2020
Addendum of 19 October 2020
Bam Arceneaux kindly sent me this vintage poster image advertising a gig for Little Richard and "The Royal Guards" at New Iberia's long-defunct Oriental Club. The performance was booked for Saturday, January 23 — and, as mentioned, the 23rd did indeed fall on a Saturday that year. So it seems Little Richard played more than one show in the Lafayette area during his early 1965 visit to the area, and would have performed, with Jimi Hendrix on guitar, at the Oriental Club the same day he lip-synced on my father's live TV program in nearby Lafayette.
 |
| Poster, Oriental Club, New Iberia, La. (Courtesy Bam Arceneaux) |
Addendum of 9 December 2020
In pursuit of historical objectivity I point out that Caesar Glebbeek, editor of the Jimi Hendrix magazine UniVibes, does not believe the photo of Little Richard at KLFY-TV 10 in January 1965 shows Jimi Hendrix. In emails to me of December 2020, Glebbeek observed, "Just to let you know that in the TV show image, we do NOT see Jimi Hendrix." He added, "Jimi Hendrix was with Little Richard in Lafayette, of course[,] in late January 1965 but as a guitarist [not also as a British guardsman]. . . . [Regarding] the photo at your dad[']s TV show, [it is] NOT Jimi as guard. . . . Jimi was paid by LR [Little Richard] 50 dollars per show, and he would not be going to stand as guard as he was not being paid to do that. It would also be out of character for Jimi to go along with a silly thing like guard[-]standing..."(8)
Rather, Glebbeek asserts that the British guardsman who appears to me to be Hendrix is actually a different person; and that this different person appears in another circa 1965 photo of "Little Richard and His Royal Show" (aka "His Royal Company" and "The Royal Guards"). Here is a comparison of the two images (at left, a detail from the photo taken on the set of my father's show; at right, a detail from the other photo):
 |
| The same person or not? |
In other words, Glebbeek affirms that Hendrix was in Lafayette playing guitar with Little Richard that weekend in January 1965, but does not believe Hendrix appears in the photo of Little Richard on my father's show taken that same weekend — Hendrix being possibly out-of-frame, back at the hotel, or somewhere else.
I politely disagree, if only because the British guardsman in question looks (in my opinion) not quite like the other, albeit similar guardsman, but he does look (again, in my opinion) exactly like Jimi Hendrix. In fact, I had examined the different circa 1965 photo of "Little Richard and His Royal Show" about a year ago when researching my blog article, and while I noticed a similarity between the guardsman in question and the person I believe to be Hendrix, I did not think it noteworthy because to me they were clearly two different people.
Niko Bauer of EarlyHendrix.com concurs, noting on his website, “[A]ccording to the author [Bernard] the photo features a cameo by Jimi as one of Little Richard's Royal Guards. I agree with him, the person in the picture looks exactly like Jimi Hendrix: the eyebrows, the eyes, the nose, the cheeks, the lips, the chin - even though the picture is a bit fuzzy they all match. He either is Jimi Hendrix or an exact lookalike. Jimi would also later make another cameo appearance as a Royal Guard in an episode of ‘American Bandstand’ broadcast on the 6th of March 1965.”(9)
Incidentally, for what it is worth I ran the images in question through the "Compare-a-Face" app on FamilySearch.org (which is decidedly not what the app is designed for, though as others have pointed out it can be gamed for such a purpose). When I compared the above two British guardsmen images to each other, the match rate was an impressive 99 percent! Could it be, however, that the identical tunic, chin strap, and busby in each image contributed to such a high ranking? One would think not, if the app only looks at faces themselves — but is that even how the app works? I don't know. But I do know that when this third image, which is definitely of Hendrix, is compared to the image of the person on my father's show, the match score is 93 percent. Not too bad.
The only conclusion I can glean from this experiment: that the person in the Saturday Hop photo may or may not be Jimi Hendrix — and I already knew that!
I do, however, concur with Glebbeek's suggestion that "As for the 'private fuction' in Lafayette, that is wrong info also . . . [A] Mix up with LR's [Little Richard's] days as preacher when he left RandR [rock'n'roll] music." I think this is a real possibility, because it strikes me as odd that a Catholic Church would have sponsored a Little Richard rock'n'roll concert. It would have made more sense for the church to have sponsored a later Richard visit, once he had become a Christian preacher. If so, then the source who remembered attending the concert at the Catholic Church slightly misremembered the event as a rock'n'roll concert instead of a religious event.
Regardless of all this, we know for certain that Little Richard appeared on my father's TV show on January 23, 1965, and we now know he appeared at the Oriental Club in New Iberia that very same day, undoubtedly with Jimi Hendrix on guitar — events explaining Little Richard's visit to the Lafayette area that weekend over a half-century ago.
❧
Notes
(1) Shane K. Bernard, New Iberia, La., to Shannon E. K. Bernard, New Orleans, La., 5 March 2017, email correspondence.
(2) Cecil Doyle, Facebook posting, 1 August 2019, www.facebook.com, accessed 4 August 2019; Brett Judice, Assistant Chief Engineer, KLFY-TV 10, Facebook posting, ca. July 2019, www.facebook.com, screenshot [image and text] sent to Shane K. Bernard by Alan Benit, 25 July 2019; Ryan Brasseaux, to Shane K. Bernard, New Iberia, La., 12 August 2019, email correspondence.
(3) See for instance Richard Harrington, "'A Wopbopaloobop,'" Washington Post, 12 November 1984, www.washingtonpost.com, accessed 14 August 2019. As Harrington noted, "Little Richard had started his career performing in drag at southern roadhouses. . . ."
(4) Scott Longon, Facebook posting, 29 August 2019, www.facebook.com, accessed 4 August 2019.
(5) Jimi Hendrix Facebook page posting, 25 January 2013, www.facebook.com, accessed 6 August 2019.
(6) Tour information for various musicians including Little Richard, 1965, on the website "Celebrating the Life and Times of Chuck Berry — Mr. Rock 'n' Roll," http://www.mbhomepage-design.de/tour1965.htm, accessed 17 August 2019. This site lists Little Richard as performing at a "Private Function" in Lafayette, Louisiana, on 25 January 1965. Advertisement for "Little Richard and His Royal Show," Lake Charles (Louisiana) American Press, 22 January 1965, p. 1; Francis Pavy, to Shane K. Bernard, New Iberia, La., 31 July 2019, Facebook private message. A noted Lafayette-based visual artist, Pavy is acquainted with a source who attended Little Richard's concert of 25 January 1965 at the church hall.
(7) The local newspaper's TV listings confirm that my father's live dance program, called Saturday Hop, did indeed air on Saturday, 23 January 1965, on KLFY from 12 to 1 p.m. Television listings, Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, La.), 22 January 1965, p. 12.
(8) Caesar Glebbeek, Popiglio, Toscana, Italy, to Shane K. Bernard, New Iberia, La., 7 December 2020, e-mail correspondence.
(9) EarlyHendrix.com, 14 August 2024, http://www.earlyhendrix.com/live-dates#littlerichard23jan1965, accessed 15 August 2024.
