On July 17, 2014, two New York Police Department officers confront Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American father of six, for illegally selling cigarettes. Garner dies after losing consciousness as a police officer locks him in an illegal chokehold, and within hours, a video …read more
On July 17, 1967, one of the oddest musical pairings in history comes to an end when Jimi Hendrix dropped out as the opening act for teenybopper sensations The Monkees.
The booking of psychedelic rock god Jimi Hendrix with the made-for-television Monkees was the brainchild of Hendrix’s manager, Mike Jeffery, who was seeking greater public exposure for a young client who was a budding star in the UK, but a near-unknown in his native United States. It was in the UK, in fact, that Monkee Mike Nesmith first heard a tape of Hendrix playing while at a dinner party with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton. Nesmith and his fellow Monkees Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz became instant Jimi Hendrix fans, and after witnessing his legendary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, they encouraged their own manager to invite the little-known but highly respected Jimi Hendrix Experience to join their upcoming U.S. tour.
Hendrix himself appears to have had no direct input on the decision, though he’d made his opinion of the Monkees clear several months earlier in an interview with Melody Maker magazine: “Oh God, I hate them! Dishwater….You can’t knock anybody for making it, but people like the Monkees?” Nevertheless, Hendrix joined the tour in progress in Jacksonville, Florida, on July 8. Predictably, the reception given to the now-legendary rock icon by the young fans of the bubblegum Monkees was less than worshipful. As Mickey Dolenz later recalled, “Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps and break out into ‘Purple Haze,’ and the kids in the audience would instantly drown him out with ‘We want Daaavy!’ God, was it embarrassing.”
Jimi Hendrix managed to get through a total of only seven dates with the Monkees, culminating in his final show on July 17, 1967, which may or may not have ended with Hendrix saluting the crowd with his middle finger. There was no truth to the widely circulated rumor that he’d been kicked off of the tour after protests by the Daughters of the American Revolution that his show was “too erotic.”
Source: history.com
Article Title Jimi Hendrix drops out as opening act for The Monkees Author History.com Editors
Website Name HISTORY
URL https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jimi-hendrix-drops-out-as-opening-act-for-the-monkees Date Accessed July 17, 2023 Publisher A&E Television Networks Last Updated July 15, 2020 Original Published Date November 16, 2009
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On July 17, 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and a time of unparalleled racial tensions in the United States, the nation loses one of the last towering figures of the civil rights movement. John Lewis, former Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a chief …read more
1212 – The Moslems were crushed in the Spanish crusade.
1453 – France defeated England at Castillon, France, which ended the 100 Years’ War.
1785 – France limited the importation of goods from Britain.
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to the British at Rochefort, France.
1821 – Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.
1862 – National cemeteries were authorized by the U.S. government.
1866 – Authorization was given to build a tunnel beneath the Chicago River. The three-year project cost $512,709.
1867 – Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, MA. It was the first dental school in the U.S.
1898 – U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter took Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
1917 – The British royal family adopted the Windsor name.
1920 – Sinclair Lewis finished his novel “Main Street.”
1941 – The longest hitting streak in baseball history ended when the Cleveland Indians pitchers held New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio hitless for the first time in 57 games.
1941 – Brigadier General Soervell directed Architect G. Edwin Bergstrom to have basic plans and architectural perspectives for an office building that could house 40,000 War Department employees on his desk by the following Monday morning. The building became known as the Pentagon.
1945 – U.S. President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II. During the meeting Stalin made the comment that “Hitler had escaped.”
1946 – Chinese communists opened a drive against the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
1950 – The television show “The Colgate Comedy Hour” debuted featuring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
1954 – The Brooklyn Dodgers made history as the first team with a majority of black players.
1955 – Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA.
1960 – Francis Gary Powers pled guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
1966 – Ho Chi Minh ordered a partial mobilization of North Vietnam forces to defend against American air strikes.
1975 – An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit. It was the first link up between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
1979 – Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled to Miami in exile. (Florida)
1986 – The largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history took place when LTV Corporation asked for court protection from more than 20,000 creditors. LTV Corp. had debts in excess of $4 billion.
1987 – Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and rear Admiral John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress at the “Iran-Contra” hearings.
1995 – The Nasdaq composite stock index rose above 1,000 for the first time.
1997 – After 117 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 stores.
1998 – Biologists reported that they had deciphered the genome (genetic map) of the syphilis bacterium.
2008 – In China, construction of the Shanghai World Financial Center was completed.
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