Wynona McDonald

OCTOBER 15, 1970 3:10PM ET LONDON — Jimi Hendrix is dead at age 27. The exact nature of the death is still vague, and a coroner’s inquest is to be held in London September 30th. Police, however, say it was a drug overdose. They say he took nine sleeping pills and died of suffocation through vomit. According to Eric Burdon [The Animals, War], Hendrix left behind for the girlfriend in whose apartment he died what Burdon called a “suicide note” which was a poem several pages in length. The poem is now in the possession of Burdon, the last musician with whom Hendrix played before he died. Said Burdon: “The poem just says the things Hendrix has always been saying, but to which nobody ever listened. It was a note of goodbye and a note of hello. I don’t think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to.” “I’ve been going through a whole stack of papers, poems and songs that Jimi had written, and I could show you 20 of them that could be interpreted as a suicide note,” he continued. He went off stage and came back, playing the background to ‘Tobacco Road.'” That song was his last. Hendrix had been for some time attempting to become more independent in his business affairs. He saw Electric Lady as a step toward that goal. Burdon says that a week before Hendrix died, Jimi told him he was going to get new management. “The few good things Jimi got, he really deserved. Even more things, as far as I’m concerned. When I left the Band of Gypsys, I know Jimi was extremely unhappy,” “Both he and I felt that the three-way function of manager – artist – agent was quite likely to fall apart, because the times are different than they once were in show business. People outside the circle mistook this for discontent, but it wasn’t, because Jimi was intelligent and bright enough. If he wanted to split, he would have split. “He realized that the only way he could get what he wanted, helping the Panthers, and setting up an anti-ghetto project in Harlem, was to die and hope that someone else would take care of the business for him using the things that he left behind, his music and his last poem, to make the money,” stated Burdon. Jimi’s affairs were in a state of confusion at the time. At one point his road manager, Jerry Stickles, said that the day Hendrix died, he (Stickles) had called Dick Katz, his European agent, to tell him that Jimi wanted to do another European tour and a British tour as soon as possible. Katz lined up a German tour and some British dates that day before he heard the news, according to Stickles. At another point, however, Stickles said that at Jimi’s request he made airline reservations to return to the States September 21st, because Jimi wanted to finish up some recording for a new album by the Experience. (All that needed to be done on that album was the mastering, which Hendrix was going to do himself at Electric Lady.) None of Jimi’s friends or associates except Burdon, at first, would discuss the matter, and in the absence of a complete report, the London press chose to carry instead pure sensationalism. One Sunday paper had an “exclusive story” by a groupie which told of five-in-a-bed orgies with Hendrix. In America, the first report – spread across the country primarily by FM radio within hours after his death – was that Hendrix had died of a heroin overdose. American newspapers generally carried the story of his death on the front page Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. September 26th, Radio Geronimo in England played unreleased Hendrix material the entire evening, including a tape of Jimi with Buddy Miles and the Last Poets, and another unreleased live album. The funeral was to have been Monday, September 28th, in Jimi’s hometown of Seattle, Washington. James Marshall Hendrix was born November 27th, 1945. On the day of his death, his father, James, a landscape architect, talked about his son’s childhood. The Hendrix family lives in a simple house with lawn and garden in the better part of Seattle’s black neighborhood, near Lake Washington. The mantel is covered with pictures, guitar straps, magazine clips and other evidence of Jimi’s illustrious career. Mr. Hendrix has remarried, and has two daughters by that second marriage. He also has a 22-year-old son, Leon, by the first marriage. The last time the family saw Jimi was on July 26th, the day after Leon began doing time for grand larcency. As always when he was in Seattle, Jimi stayed at the Hendrix house that weekend. Mr. Hendrix recalled that Jimi first became interested in music when he was 10 years old. His father remembers going into Jimi’s room one night in the dark and tripping over a broom. He asked Jimi why the broom was there, since he obviously wasn’t using it to clean up his room. “That’s my guitar, Dad,” Jimi had answered. “I’m learning how to play it.” When he was 11, his father bought him a cheap acoustic guitar, and at 12, Jimi got his first electric guitar. He learned quickly, and was playing in bands at 13. When he was 14, that first electric guitar (inscribed “Jimmy”) was stolen, and he was unable to replace it until his sophomore year at Garfield High. Members of Jimi’s bands were quite surprised when he became a star, because he seemed the least likely person in any of his groups to make it. He was then only an average musician, and gave no indication of the almost compulsive creativity that he showed later. He was also known for being very shy and reserved. He displayed no stage presence at all. Jimi quit Garfield High in the middle of his senior year and went to work as a handyman for his father, who was then doing mostly gardening and lawn jobs. One day as they were working, Jimi told his father that he felt the work was a drag, and that he’d just decided to join the Army instead. This was in 1963. He left Seattle within a few days and joined the 101st Airborne Division, stationed in the South. His father remembers going into Jimi’s room right after he left, seeing the guitar, and expressing surprise that Jimi hadn’t taken it with him. Sure enough, a few days later he got a call from Jimi, who said the Army was driving him mad and he needed his guitar “right away.” Except for a photo he received in the mail, that was the last time Mr. Hendrix heard from his son until Jimi reached England in 1966. Using the name Jimmy James, he played for six months with a New York group called the Blue Flames. At various times, he backed Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, and Wilson Pickett. “I got tired of feeding back ‘In the Midnight Hour,'” he told an interviewer in 1968. “I was a backing musician playing guitar.” He also played with a group called Curtis Knight and the Squires, and, after he became a star in 1967, Capitol Records embarrassed him by releasing an album called Got That Feeling; Jimi Hendrix Plays, Curtis Knight Sings, an album that was poorly recorded and of no historical value. It revealed only traces of the Hendrix artistry. Hendrix said: “The Curtis Knight album was from bits of tape they used from a jam session, bits of tape, tiny little confetti bits of tapes … it was done. Capitol never told us they were going to release that c***. That’s the real drag about it. It shows exactly how some people in America are still not where it’s at, regardless. You don’t have no friend scenes, sometimes makes you wonder. A few days later, James Hendrix, Sr., received a phone call at about 4 a.m. “It’s me, Jimi. I’m in England, Dad,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “I met some people and they’re going to make me a big star. We changed my name to J-i-m-i.” Surprised, his father asked why he’d changed his name, and Jimi replied that it was “just to be different.” Mr. Hendrix remembers telling Jimi that if he was really calling from London, the call was going to be very expensive. They both started crying over the phone. “We were both so excited I forgot to even tell him I’d remarried,” his father says. Once in England, Hendrix formed a new band. Noel Redding, who had come to audition as guitarist in the Animals, met Hendrix through Chandler. “Can you play bass?” was the first thing Jimi asked Redding. He never had before, but he immediately became bassist, and sometimes-guitarist, with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Mitch Mitchell, another Englishman, was picked as drummer. Six weeks after he left New York, four days after forming his trio, Hendrix opened at the Olympia in Paris, on the bill with French pop star Johnny Halliday. They took off on a tour of Europe. Eight days after the Beach Boys broke an attendance record by playing to 7,000 in two shows at the Tivoli in Stockholm, the Experience drew 14,500 for two shows. Now it was time to return to America. With several hit singles and a successful album in Europe behind him, Hendrix made his U.S. debut in 1967 at the Monterey International Pop Festival. Few in the audience knew that, until nine months ago, Hendrix had lived his whole life in this country. Few knew anything about him except that this “freaky black English bluesman” was making his “American debut.” Lou Adler, with John Phillips, co-producer of the festival, said he heard of Hendrix from Paul McCartney – “He told me about some guy in England playing guitar with his teeth.” Adler decided on Hendrix and the Who as the “new” acts to be introduced to the Monterey audience. In the liner notes to the live recording of Jimi’s performance (ironically, it was the last Hendrix recording to be released before his death), Pete Johnson of Warner Brothers writes what happened: “Their appearance at the festival was magical; the way they looked, the way they performed and the way they sounded were light years away from anything anyone had seen before. The Jimi Hendrix Experience owned the future, and the audience knew it in an instant.”

Ollie Mary Marie (Morris) Hendrix was born in 1912, and died at age 58 years old in 1970. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Ollie Mary Marie (Morris) Hendrix.

Liliane Segal of Lyon, Rhône County, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes France was born on April 1, 1934 in Paris, Paris County, Île-de-France, and died at age 9 years old on February 12, 1944 at Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Concentration Camp and Museum 20 Więźniów Oświęcimia, in Oświęcim, Powiat oświęcimski County, Małopolskie Poland.

William Carl Hosler attended school at Sugar Grove School Located in Green Township Section 26 at the northwest corner of 500E and 500S, this became a residence in 1949 and was demolished in 2001. From 1944 to 1949 Huckleberry and Green Schools housed the primary grades, while Green Center, Charter Oak and Sugar Grove educated the upper grades. In 1954 Green Center Consolidated School opened. Today students from Green Township attend school in Churubusco, Whitley County.

Patrick Leno was born to Angelo Leno (1910-1994) and Catherine (Muir) Leno (1911-1993). His father was born in Manhattan, New York and his mother was born in Greenock, Scotland. He was the older brother (by ten years) of Jay Leno. Patrick was a Vietnam War veteran and an attorney. Jay Leno was quoted in 2009 saying: “My brother went to Yale and was one of the top 10 students in the country,” Mr. Leno said. “I think my mother was always embarrassed that her first son didn’t do better than the second son. And whenever I’d give my mother an expensive gift, she’d say, ‘Don’t tell your brother.’ And she’d hide it.” Mr. Leno said that while he loved his brother, “there was an awkwardness” that remained until Patrick’s death in 2002. “We couldn’t have been more different,” Mr. Leno said. “I think my mother was always surprised that it turned out the way it did.” Despite the discrepancy in their life paths, reports say that the brothers were close. To see an article about their relationship, click on Patrick Leno died in 2002 from Cancer.

Charly Baumann, Circus Trainer of Big Cats, Dies at 72 Charly Baumann, a German-born trainer of big cats, died on Jan. 24 in Sarasota, Fla., where he lived. He was 72. He was listed as HEINZ BAUMANN. Mr. Baumann made his reputation as a circus trainer of performing tigers in a spectacular Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus act that eventually included 16 tigers. He said he was the first trainer to teach five prostrate tigers to roll over simultaneously. His tigers also learned to stand on revolving glass globes, leap through blazing hoops and walk on their rear legs. A longtime trainer of lions, Mr. Baumann decided to switch to tigers in 1957 after watching a German circus act. It persuaded him that the tiger, with its ''soft, smooth, catlike'' movements was ''the most beautiful creature of all.'' He then acquired eight tigers and started teaching them tricks. The transition, he once wrote, ''was like going from drums to a violin.'' Comparing lions with tigers was akin to ''studying the difference between hard and soft,'' he wrote in his 1975 autobiography, ''Tiger, Tiger.'' ''Lions were heavy'' and teaching them tricks required ''sharp, deliberate movements,'' he wrote. But tigers were ''light'' and responded best to ''delicate, smooth'' gestures. Training tigers was slow and difficult because unlike lions, which live together in communities, tigers are solitary beasts, living alone in the wild and generally avoiding one another's company except in the mating season. In 1964 Mr. Baumann and his tigers moved to the United States from Germany, joining the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Mr. Baumann spent the next two decades with the circus, becoming its star animal trainer. ''I truly became the tiger trainer I had always dreamed of being,'' he wrote of that time. He gave his last performance in the ring in Cleveland in 1983. By then he had also moved into circus management, becoming performance director before his retirement in 1991. Heinz E. Baumann was born on Sept. 14, 1928, in Berlin, where his father was a movie stuntman and the owner of a riding stable. The Nazis sent his parents to concentration camps for helping a Jewish patron escape to Spain. His father died in the gas chambers of Bergen-Belsen; his mother survived Ravensbruck. After spending time in an orphanage, Mr. Baumann joined the German navy. He was captured by American forces but escaped when an unexploded bomb went off, blowing a hole in the prison camp fence. Back with his mother in Berlin, he scavenged for food until she got the first of many circus jobs, shoveling manure. He learned lion training from Willi Hagenbeck, the German trainer at Circus Bügler, who did not use physical force but taught his animals their tricks by rewarding them with morsels of meat. The animal acts Mr. Baumann presented were calm and elegant, stressing the empathy between trainer and beast. They contrasted starkly with the macho style of trainers like Wolfgang Holzair and Clyde Beatty, who sought to terrify the audience by staging mock confrontations with their animals. In his 1980 book ''Behind the Big Top,'' David Lewis Hammarstrom cited ''the gracious Charly Baumann'' as a fine example of ''civilized behavior between man and beast.'' In 1952 Mr. Baumann moved to Circus Roland, which he built up over the next decade into a major European attraction with the aid of one of its owners, Ada Auredan, who became his mistress and helped him develop a Tarzan-like physique with a high-protein diet. Sympathy for his lions and tigers was not to save Mr Baumann from accidents, however. He suffered many maulings, the worst in 1963 when a powerful tiger called Assur put him in the hospital for six weeks. In some ways Mr. Baumann's retirement and death represent a turning point in the development of the modern circus. Animal trainers are members of a fast-declining profession. ''Charly Baumann belonged to a dying breed,'' said Ernest Albrecht, editor of Spectacle, a circus magazine. ''There aren't many animal trainers left.'' The animal rights movement and popular distaste for caging wild animals is one factor, said Mr. Albrecht. Then there is the spectacular success of animal-free circuses like Cirque du Soleil. But Mr. Baumann belonged to the world of animals and adjusted his tactics. In Britain during the 1950's he was prohibited from taking a whip into the tiger cage, so he ostentatiously exchanged it for the orchestra conductor's baton before each performance and ''conducted'' his tigers instead. He is survived by his wife, the former Araceli Rodriguez, a Spanish-born showgirl.

Diahann Carroll Born July 17, 1935 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA Died October 4, 2019 in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (complications from cancer) Birth Name Carol Diahann Johnson Height 5' 5" (1.65 m) Mini Bio (1) One of television's premier African-American series stars, elegant actress, singer and recording artist Diahann Carroll was born Carol Diann (or Diahann) Johnson on July 17, 1935, in the Bronx, New York. The first child of John Johnson, a subway conductor, and Mabel Faulk Johnson, a nurse; music was an important part of her life as a child, singing at age six with her Harlem church choir. While taking voice and piano lessons, she contemplated an operatic career after becoming the 10-year-old recipient of a Metropolitan Opera scholarship for studies at New York's High School of Music and Art. As a teenager she sought modeling work but it was her voice, in addition to her beauty, that provided the magic and the allure. When she was 16, she teamed up with a girlfriend from school and auditioned for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts show using the more exotic sounding name of Diahann Carroll. She alone was invited to appear and won the contest. She subsequently performed on the daily radio show for three weeks. In her late teens, she began focusing on a nightclub career and it was here that she began formulating a chic, glamorous image. Another TV talent show appearance earned her a week's engagement at the Latin Quarter. Broadway roles for black singers were rare but at age nineteen, Diahann was cast in the Harold Arlen/Truman Capote musical "House of Flowers". Starring the indomitable Pearl Bailey, Diahann held her own quite nicely in the ingénue role. While the show itself was poorly received, the score was heralded and Diahann managed to introduce two song standards, "A Sleepin' Bee" and "I Never Has Seen Snow", both later recorded by Barbra Streisand. In 1954 she and Ms. Bailey supported a riveting Dorothy Dandridge as femme fatale Carmen Jones (1954) in an all-black, updated movie version of the Georges Bizet opera "Carmen." Diahann later supported Ms. Dandridge again in Otto Preminger's cinematic retelling of Porgy and Bess (1959). During this time she also grew into a singing personality on TV while visiting such late-nite hosts as Jack Paar and Steve Allen and performing. Unable to break through into the top ranks in film (she appeared in a secondary role once again in Paris Blues (1961), a Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward vehicle), Diahann returned to Broadway. She was rewarded with a Tony Award for her exceptional performance as a fashion model in the 1962 musical "No Strings," a bold, interracial love story that co-starred Richard Kiley. Richard Rodgers, whose first musical this was after the death of partner Oscar Hammerstein, wrote the part specifically for Diahann, which included her lovely rendition of the song standard "The Sweetest Sounds." By this time she had already begun to record albums ("Diahann Carroll Sings Harold Arlen" (1957), "Diahann Carroll and Andre Previn" (1960), "The Fabulous Diahann Carroll" (1962). Nightclub entertaining filled up a bulk of her time during the early-to-mid 1960s, along with TV guest appearances on Carol Burnett, Judy Garland, Andy Williams, Dean Martin and Danny Kaye's musical variety shows. Little did Diahann know that in the late 1960s she would break a major ethnic barrier on the small screen. Though it was nearly impossible to suppress the natural glamour and sophistication of Diahann, she touchingly portrayed an ordinary nurse and widow struggling to raise a small son in the series Julia (1968). Despite other Black American actresses starring in a TV series (i.e., Hattie McDaniel in "Beulah"), Diahann became the first full-fledged African-American female "star" -- top billed, in which the show centered around her lead character. The show gradually rose in ratings and Diahann won a Golden Globe award for "Best Newcomer" and an Emmy nomination. The show lasted only two seasons, at her request. A renewed interest in film led Diahann to the dressed-down title role of Claudine (1974), as a Harlem woman raising six children on her own. She was nominated for an Oscar in 1975, but her acting career would become more and more erratic after this period. She did return, however, to the stage with productions of "Same Time, Next Year" and "Agnes of God". While much ado was made about her return to series work as a fashionplate nemesis to Joan Collins' ultra-vixen character on the glitzy primetime soap Dynasty (1981), it became much about nothing as the juicy pairing failed to ignite. Diahann's character was also a part of the short-lived "Dynasty" spin-off The Colbys (1985). Throughout the late 1980s and early 90s she toured with her fourth husband, singer Vic Damone, with occasional acting appearances to fill in the gaps. Some of her finest work came with TV-movies, notably her century-old Sadie Delany in Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years (1999) and as troubled singer Natalie Cole's mother in Livin' for Love: The Natalie Cole Story (2000). She also portrayed silent screen diva Norma Desmond in the musical version of "Sunset Blvd." and toured America performing classic Broadway standards in the concert show "Almost Like Being in Love: The Lerner and Loewe Songbook." She then had recurring roles on Grey's Anatomy (2005) and White Collar (2009). Diahann Carroll died on October 4, 2019, in Los Angeles, California. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / [contact link] Spouse (4) Vic Damone (3 January 1987 - 12 September 1996) ( divorced) Robert DeLeon (25 May 1975 - 31 March 1977) ( his death) Fredrick (Fredde) Jack Glusman (21 February 1973 - 20 July 1973) ( divorced) Monte Kay (26 February 1956 - 14 January 1963) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Trade Mark (1) Sweet, sultry voice. Trivia (42) In the 1960s she was engaged to Sidney Poitier. Won first prize on TV's Chance of a Lifetime (1952). She and actor Billy Dee Williams were high school classmates at The New York City High School of Music & Art, the school that in the 70s merged with the High School of Performing Arts, featured in "Fame" (1982), to become Laguardia High School. In the early 1970s, engaged to TV interviewer David Frost. Was a model for Ebony Fashion Fair. Mother of Suzanne Kay, media journalist (born 9 September 1960). Mother-in-law of Mark Bamford. Grandmother of two. Honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. Won Broadway's 1962 Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical) for "No Strings," in a tie with Anna Maria Alberghetti for "Carnival."

Daisy Olive (Cisco) Lairson of Modesto, Stanislaus County, CA was born on February 16, 1924, and died at age 87 years old on March 15, 2011.