"Little Doug and The Pharaohs"
from: Joke em' (if they can't take a fool!) 
a book and c.d. by Jimmy Rabbitt
Copyright 2001 by The Pellett 
Music & Arts Company
Aspen, Colorado

	"Excuse me while I kiss my ass!" Nobody laughed but Jimi! Not
Robin Hood, Not Sir Douglas, not Miss Cinderella, not the Warner
Brothers record executive acting as his personal hand maiden, not the
"foxey vixen" at his knee, who had every man in the room not so secretly
lusting for her.  Not my groupie girl friend who not so secretly lusting
over Jimi, not any of the mixture of cowboys and creatures and clowns
assembled in my living room in the Hollywood Hills that night in 1969!
It was so quiet, you could have heard a name drop!
	I don't know why the others were struck dumb at that moment, but I had
seen Jimi Hendrix do some pretty amazing things over the last few years,
and I figured we had a hell of a show coming!  What Jimi had said in his
own cosmic way, to warn us that he was about to do some self-indulging!
He reached into his crushed velvet jacket pocket and whipped out a tape
of some new stuff he had just recorded with Mitch Mitchell and Noel
Redding. There, I did hear names dropping again!  But nobody hardly ever
mentions them, and since they weren't there, I'll just flash the peace
sign, show my poetic license, mention Elvis and get on with the story! 
	The music was was incredible, we were stoked, and Jimi was excited!
Excited like a kid who knew he was about to get an A+ on his class
project!  He hadn't had a new album since "Electric Ladyland" had gone
to number one almost a year earlier, and you could almost hear the cash
registers ringing in the mind of the Warner Brothers executive. The
music was brand new, crazy, wild and youthful, and he was as always a
combination mystic and "everyman"! I had seen the same effect on people
back in 1967 when he played the "Axis Bold as Love" demo tape for Johnny
Winter, Jimmy Vaughn, Delbert McClinton and some of us mere mortals in
my apartment in Dallas. There go those names again, look out, cover
your head!
	I don't know what ever happened to those tapes, they could have been
released during the 1971 exploitation flurries after he died,  I've
never heard some of those!  But I know it wasn't "The Cry of Love", he
and Billy Cox played that record on my show on the ABC fm "Love Radio"
Network early in 1971. Look out, names are dropping like flies!  But
Billy is another often unsung hero of the times! Where is that poetic
license anyway, John Lennon must have borrowed it, or maybe Wink
Martindale, Keith Moon or Frank Zappa!
	I spent several very long weekends, stoned and sorry, (actually anyone
who knows me, knows I spent a lot of weekends like that!) searching
through the Jimi Hendrix C.D. Boxed Set, but to no avail. There was a
lot of good stuff that I had never heard, some I wish I hadn't, some I
know Jimi wishes we hadn't, but not those songs I remember from that
night. Maybe they were there, maybe they just sounded different all
these many life times later! Maybe that mystery album I remember never
existed! But whenever I hear one of those "new age guitar Stranglers"
who's six string education ended with the "Smash Hits" album, I wish
they could have been there to hear whatever we heard that "smokey" night
back in 69'.  Not only would their music be better for it, but I could
drop their names too!
	The whole thing had started earlier in the evening when Jimi and "the
Warner Brother's" guy were cruising' for girls in a big white Cadillac
Limousine, listening to me on the radio while  driving by folks like
Paul Newman, Van Dyke Parks, and Tommy Smothers on the streets of
Hollywood. 1 think I'll save the "Warners" guy's name for the payola
part of this book, and just say that radio was different back then in
the "stonedage" of 1969!
	It was at KRLA!  The line up included Harry Shearer, Richard Beebe, and
my comic news team the "Credibility Gap", that featured Lenny and
Squiggy of "Laverene and Shirley" and a bunch of other big comedy names
I'll also drop later in our story! Casey Kashm was the weekend man, just
reaching for those stars himself! Shadoe Stevens was a top 40 announcer,
I guess somethings never change! I was "the rabbitt" as in, hold the
peace sign up to the light and what do you see on the wall? Just a
"psychedelic cowboy" on the night shift, mixing rock and roll, country,
oldies, folk and blues records, with sound effects and bullshit thinly
disguised as radio art. But it was working! I had Jimi Hendrix, a masked
Warner Brothers record executive and a car full of "teenybopers"
listening, didn't I?  After nearly a solid hour of "The Jimmy Rabbitt
All Electric Memorial Experience", included many uninterrupted minutes
of laughing ladies, police sirens wailing, marching soldiers, crying
babies, women screaming, records spinning backwards, and me fading in
and out with dozens of his own hits, Jimi had decided that I was sending
him a personal message over the radio! He had the record guy call me on
the "hotline" and say he was coming over to my house after midnight. 
Jimi Hendrix was coming to help me with my problems!
	The problems that sent our friend the super star rushing to my side
that night, turned out to be scratchy records! He thought that I had
worn out all my records, and was running away all my listeners! He and
the record guy had stopped by the warehouse in Burbank and filled the
limo trunk with the first of hundreds of deliveries that didn't stop
till I had two promotional (free) copies of everything, yes I said
everything, on every one of the Warner Brothers family labels. As Carl
Segen would say "Billions and Billions" of records delivered right to my
door! I never forgave him!  Do you know how many albums Frank Sinatra
had? Or the Association, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, or Trini
Lopez?  The kind of stuff that Hollywood garage sales were overstocked
with well into the 90's, and the kind of names I need to drop right now!
	My problems solved, the Lone Ranger and his mystic friend disappeared
into the limo.  I never really knew what medication Jimi had prescribed
for himself that night that allowed him to focus in on the surface noise
when all we heard was music, but it was the thought that counts. As the
limo lights faded into the Hollywood night, Doug Sahm came running
downstairs from his room, out of the house and into the darkness!  He
had gone to roll a joint, and had missed his chance to,
as he said "finally get Jimi Hendrix really stoned!" "Right Doug", I
laughed, "like he really needs your help!" Oh well, even as a kid,
little Dougie always did have high aspirations, and a band called "the
Pharaohs"!