Jimi Hendrix - Ellis Auditorium, Memphis, 1969

This poster is promoting The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, on April 18 featuring Jimi Hendrix, Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. The Experience performed a double show at Ellis’ North Hall. The opening act was “Fat Mattress”, Noel Redding’s new group. Jimi set fire to his guitar after the last encore. Burdened with an exhaustive schedule of personal appearances, the tense relationship between Hendrix and bassist Noel Redding further deteriorated. Frustrated, Hendrix reached out to old friend Billy Cox in the backstage at this Experience concert in Memphis. “We met when the Experience played in Memphis,” Cox explains. “He told me that he wanted me to be his bass player. He said he’d take care of me and everything would be okay and so I gladly accepted. I went back to Nashville, closed my publishing company, dropped everything else and left for New York.” Three days after the backstage meeting in Memphis, Cox joined Hendrix at the Record Plant recording studio in New York. So The Band of Gypsys was born.