Lonnie Youngblood
A great sax player and the only top notch musician I ever met that owned a real club with a legit liquor license. Lonnie Youngblood would of probably just been a NYC local legend if not for his hiring of a guitar player named Jimi around 1964-66. All Hendrix freaks know about the terrible quality recordings of pre-psychedelic unknown Hendrix.
What made the Lonnie Youngblood recording the best is they jammed, and Hendrix took a lot of solos. The Isley Bros, and Curtis Knight recordings didn’t have much soloing, if any at all.
A few cuts on the pictured below LP were some of the baddest ass rhythm playing Hendrix ever recorded! So as a 13-year-old kid who wore out this LP then bought another one I never thought I would get to know and jam with Lonnie.
Lonnie played with everybody, James Brown, Ben E. King, Jackie Wilson, Sam &
Dave. He then bought a club called THE MARK IV in Jamaica Queens. Lonnie made
his fame as a regular at THE CLUB BARON in HARLEM where he got the nickname
PRINCE OF HARLEM allegedly for being in a famous French photo coffee table book
about Harlem.
Ricky Williams who I played with off and on from 1976-80 knew Lonnie well and had
played drums for him a few times, Ricky is one of the greatest keyboardists of our time,
best clavinet player alive, the man could get feedback from a Clavinet! When I joined
him we played The Mark IV regularly and Lonnie would come up and jam every now and
then. No wild stories about this club, Lonnie was a great guy and ran a tight ship where
he didn’t allow knuckleheads in his club. So nothing stupid happened.
The Hendrix recordings are mixed with some studio live tracks depending on the LP,
there were probably 5 different ones. Lonnie had cut a few studio singles that were
released Go Go Shoes, Soul Food with Jimi but you got to find the gritty live recordings
to hear the best badass Hendrix before fame. Hendrix kept in touch, and they would
jam every time he was in NYC; thus, the famous picture that Lonnie put on the cover,
he pressed up his own copies to sell and sold rights to about 5 small labels LOL.
The problem was this was pre-psychedelic Hendrix just a Strat through a Twin/Super
reverb, no pedals. It seems these other record labels thought it was too bare and didn’t
sound like The Experience, so they brought in some sad ass guitarists to overdub
some lame fuzz and Wah tracks over the incredible Hendrix tracks!!! I didn’t know
this until I bought every one of these shit LPS. The only good one is the one I have
pictured showing a famous Hendrix jamming. Some LPs didn’t even have Lonnie on
the cover of his own record!
Lonnie tried to sue Martin Scorsese for using some music on this LP in the Jimi
documentary without paying him...couldn’t find out what happened. Since Ricky moved
to Miami in the 1980's I kind of drifted away from the outer borough funk clubs then I went full rock in 1981. Around 1986 I had come back from LA for a visit and I drove by that area and the club had been sold.
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