thomas dunne books.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

jimi Hendrix: a brother’s story. Copyright © 2012 by Leon Hendrix

with Adam Mitchell. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States
of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com

Design by Kathryn Parise

ISBN 978- 0-312- 66881-5 (hardcover)

eISBN 978-1-250-01237-1 (e-book)

First Edition: May 2012

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R A I N I E R V I S TA P R O J E C T S

O ne of my earliest memories is of my older brother and me run-

ning around in the field next to where we lived at the Rainier
Vista housing projects in Seattle, Washington. Our dad, Al Hendrix,
and our mama, Lucille, held daily parties at our home and typically
instructed us to go out and play whenever the place got too crowded
and we started getting in the way. I couldn’t have been more than two
years old at the time, while my brother was six or seven. As we ran
around, we were still able to hear the commotion inside—the tinkling
sound of ice being dropped into cocktail glasses and the howling
laughter echoing from the living room. When I stopped and looked
in through the front picture window every once in a while, our par-
ents seemed as happy as could be. But most of the time that couldn’t
have been further from the truth. Both Dad and Mama were big
drinkers, who loved to be the life of the party. Later in the day, when
the booze wore off, life was a completely different reality. That’s when
the shouting and cussing started.
At that time, their relationship was rocky to say the least, but

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things didn’t start out that way. Early on, the two of them had
plenty of good times. Mama was just a kid when she met Dad. She
hadn’t yet turned seventeen years old back when he asked her along
to a dance at the Washington Club. Being six years older, Dad
wasn’t sure it was going to work out between them, but time told a
different story. Both of them loved to dance and party, so they
quickly grew close. Before long, they were inseparable. Dad found
work in the Seattle downtown area busing tables at a restaurant on
Pike Street called Ben Paris, then ground it out as a day laborer at an
iron foundry until he eventually left and moved on to Honeysuckle’s
Pool Hall. Overall, their life together was good.
Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and everything changed.
The U.S. government sent Dad his draft notice around the same time
that Mama found out she was pregnant with her first child. They
had to make the best of this tough situation. Dad knew he was going
to be leaving soon, so he and Mama got married in a quickie cere-
mony on March 31, 1942. They were officially husband and wife for
less than a week before Dad checked into the armory at Fort Lewis
and was later sent on to basic training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
Dad was stationed at Camp Rucker in Alabama when he received
the telegram from Mama’s sister, our aunt Delores, telling him that
his child had been born. He was now the proud father of a beautiful
baby son, whom Mama named John Allen Hendrix. After Dad
shipped out overseas in early January of 1943, Aunt Delores did her
best to send him photos of his boy every so often so he could see
how big he was growing, but it was hard for Dad to focus on any-
thing but the war. He was always on the move and was stationed in
the Fiji Islands, Guadalcanal, and then New Guinea.
Back home in Seattle, times were tough for Mama. She left her
parents’ house to move in with a friend and was soon struggling to
make ends meet and take care of her little boy. Mama was only a

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young kid herself and fell into a routine of going out and partying.
She bounced around from one living arrangement to the next until
the burden got to be too much. Unable to take care of her little boy,
Mama was forced to do something drastic. After a brief time with
Grandma Clarice and Grandpa Jeter, Dad’s baby boy ended up in
the care of a woman named Mrs. Walls for another short time,
until she unexpectedly passed away. Fortunately, her sister, Mrs.
Champ, came and took responsibility for little Johnny. When
Mrs. Champ brought him back to where she lived in Berkeley, Cali-
fornia, she sent Dad a letter letting him know of the situation. No
matter what was going through his mind, he was halfway around the
world and couldn’t do much about what was going on back home in
Seattle. Now his boy was living in California, and our mama, well,
Dad wasn’t exactly sure where she was spending her time.
When Dad finally got back from the war in September of 1945
and returned to Seattle, his first order of business was to make his
way to Berkeley to get his boy. My brother wasn’t at all happy to be
taken from the home he was used to living in for close to the first
three years of his life. Suddenly, a stranger whom he’d never seen
before, except maybe in a blurry war photo, showed up at the door
one day and told him he was his father and was taking him to a far-
away place. No young boy was going to react well to that type of
news. And that wasn’t even the worst part. As soon as the two of
them returned to Seattle, Dad marched my brother down to the
King County office and legally changed his name from John Allen
Hendrix to James Marshall Hendrix. Not only had my brother been
taken away from the people he had come to know as family, but he
was also being told his name wasn’t going to be Johnny Allen any-
more, it was going to be Jimmy.
Dad wasn’t back in Seattle’s Central District area long before Mama
showed up where he was living with my brother at Aunt Delores’s

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house in the projects of Yesler Terrace. I’m sure Dad didn’t know
what to think about everything that had happened while he was
gone in the military all those years. But he still loved her. No mat-
ter what she did or how many times she disappeared to do her thing,
I don’t believe Dad ever stopped loving her. So, they reconciled and
decided to give it another go. The back-and-forth pattern was re-
peated often throughout our childhood.
When I came along, Leon Morris Hendrix, on January 13, 1948,
Dad and Mama’s fighting was put on hold for a while because Dad
was overjoyed to have another baby boy in the family. Because of the
war, he’d missed my brother’s early years and was now being pre-
sented with a second chance to be a father to an infant son. Not long
after I was born, the four of us moved into a two-bedroom place at
3022 Genesee Street in the Rainier Vista projects, a former military
housing facility. During the war, the military had put up barracks
all over the city of Seattle for all of the army and navy personnel
because the government thought that Japan was going to invade the
country. When the war ended, the facilities became low-income
housing for mostly black and Jewish families.
Just shy of a year after I came into the picture, Mama gave birth
to another boy, whom she and Dad named Joseph Allen Hendrix. I
was too young to remember much of Joe, but I do know that the
added mouth to feed put even more strain on our parents’ relation-
ship. Also, Joe was born with serious health problems, including a
cleft palate, one leg shorter than the other, and a clubfoot. These
issues were going to cost plenty of money to treat and Mama and
Dad couldn’t afford it. For help, Dad turned to his mama, our
grandma Nora Hendrix, and eventually decided that the best thing
was to send the three of us to live with her in Canada for the sum-
mer of 1949. The short break was enough time for Dad and Mama
to get things temporarily sorted out. Unfortunately, everything was

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just as complicated when the three of us returned to the Rainier Vista

projects at the end of the summer. The financial situation hadn’t
changed much. Dad and Mama still couldn’t afford to get Joe the
medical attention he needed.
In the fall of 1950, not long after my brother was setting off to
attend second grade at Horace Mann Elementary, Mama had a baby
girl that she named Kathy Ira. Not only was Kathy born four months
premature, but Mama and Dad also learned she was blind. Our par-
ents now had four children to care for, two of which had special
needs. After trying to hold it together for the next year, there was no
choice but to place Kathy in foster care.
In October of 1951, shortly after Kathy was made a ward of the
state, Mama gave birth to another daughter she named Pamela. Still
scraping by to try to take care of Jimmy, Joe, and me, Mama and
Dad were forced to give her to foster care as well.
By then, my brother had begun his third-grade year at Rainier
Vista Elementary School and our family was still living in our small
two-bedroom apartment. Since he hadn’t yet received the proper
medical care, Joe still struggled with his health problems. If there
was any possibility of him being able to get around without a limp,
he needed an operation on his leg. It was a surgery Mama and Dad
didn’t have the money to pay for.
Our place in the projects remained the site of an ongoing party
where people came and went at all hours. Whenever my brother and
I sneaked back inside from playing in the fields, we made our way
around the room stealing the last drops of beer out of the discarded
bottles on the floor and the coffee table. Many people thought it was
funny to see me swigging away on a bottle in the middle of the
party. I might have believed we were being sneaky and pulling a fast
one, but I later found out that Dad and Mama purposely left three
or four sips in the bottom of a beer bottle for us. I was especially

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hyperactive for my age, and they found the little bit of alcohol kept
me calm. After a couple hits of beer, I became a quiet, obedient, and,
eventually, tired little boy.
Many people don’t understand that while growing up, my brother
was always called Buster, and rarely Jimmy. He only got used to be-
ing called Jimmy much later when he was older and more comfort-
able with himself and his surroundings. During his childhood,
Jimmy was the name our dad gave him after he got out of the army.
Whenever Dad insisted on using it, my brother threw a fit. They
constantly went back and forth about it.
“That’s not my name,” my brother cried out. “My name’s Johnny!”
“I am telling you for the last time, boy, your name is James Mar-
shall Hendrix!” Dad shouted back. “Jimmy is your name!”
My brother eventually realized Dad wasn’t ever going to let him
use the name Johnny as long as he was around. So, my brother
needed to find an alternative that didn’t drive Dad crazy every time
he heard it. Not long after we saw the fi rst Flash Gordon serial, my
brother got the idea for the name Buster from the leading man, Larry
“Buster” Crabbe.
On Saturdays, Dad sometimes gave us some change to walk down
to the Rainier Vista field house to see one of the serial movies they
were showing. It wasn’t easy because my brother typically needed
to beg Dad for the money to buy the tickets. Even if he intended to
eventually fork over the change, he usually made us wait for it for a
while. Whenever Dad answered “No,” we knew it was a definite re-
fusal, but whenever he told us “Maybe,” we knew were almost as
good as there. But then came the waiting. Sometimes he’d keep us
guessing as long as an hour until finally reaching into his pocket and
giving us the change.
For a nickel, we’d be able to get in, and for another nickel we’d each
buy a small bag of popcorn. Our favorites were the Flash Gordon

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serials because they featured spaceships and rockets that magically

flew through space. Maybe “magically” is taking it a little far. The
strings that held the toy rocket up were completely visible, and
they used lit matches for rocket boosters as the spaceships sped
across the tiny black-and-white frames on the screen. My brother
and I saw fifteen minutes each week and couldn’t wait to come back
the next Saturday to see the next episode. It probably took two
months of going to the activity center before we saw the whole story
play out. The serials were a great escape and allowed us to dream of
far-off worlds millions of miles away from our hard life growing
up in the projects.
From that point on, my brother insisted our whole family call
him Buster. Some other members of the family attributed the name
to other things, but in my brother’s mind he was going to be called
after his hero, Buster Crabbe. If one of our family members didn’t
address him by the proper name, my brother wouldn’t even respond.
Dad got tired of having the same old argument with him and de-
cided to go along with the program. He didn’t have much of a
choice. Since my brother didn’t want to be Jimmy at the time and
wasn’t allowed to be Johnny, he was going to be Buster.
He ran around as the character night and day for a while and
even made a cape out of an old rag. “I’m Buster, savior of the uni-
verse!” he started yelling whenever we were out playing in the field.
He truly thought he had superpowers . . . for a while anyway. One
afternoon, I stood looking up at him as he climbed onto the roof of
our single-story project house, which must have been around ten
feet high, and jumped off, flapping his arms. He quickly realized he
didn’t have any superpowers and fell to the ground with one of the
loudest thuds I’ve ever heard. I was happy to see him spring back up
to his feet, but his arm was bleeding.
When Dad, inside the house, heard him crying, he came storming

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out of the front door. “Are you crazy, boy?” he yelled. “What are you
doing jumping off the roof?”
“But, I’m Buster Crabbe,” my brother told him through his tears.
To me, at that young age, my brother was a sort of superhero.
Daily, he protected and watched over me. When I was hungry, he
helped me find something to eat. Whenever our parents fought, he
wrapped his arm around my shoulder and comforted me.
Being left alone in the house after Dad set off to work first thing
in the morning, Mama usually started partying with her friends,
who stopped by throughout the day. It was all fine and good until
Dad’s quitting time later in the evening. After hitting a bar or two on
his way back from work, Dad usually wasn’t happy to return home to
find unfamiliar people hanging out in his house. If he was in a bad
mood and had no interest in joining the party, he’d boot everyone
out and go off on our Mama. It soon became a constant. The long
days of our Dad’s and Mama’s drinking only lead to loud argu-
ments later at night. By evening, all the laughter routinely turned into
shouting. Sometimes the arguments seemed to go on forever. Dad
wasn’t violent with our mama and never put his hands on her, but she
possessed a fiery temper when she was drinking. Mama didn’t hesi-
tate to bust him upside the head with a beer bottle or anything else
that was around when she was angry. My brother and I learned to
keep quiet when our parents argued. Being a little over five years
younger, I always followed my brother’s lead. As soon as Buster and
I realized they were going to get into it with each other, we closed
the door to the back bedroom and waited it out. When things
turned especially nasty, we stepped inside the closet and shut the
door. In the darkness, we listened to the muffled shouting, hoping
for it to end.
“It’s going to be okay, Leon,” my brother told me, draping an
arm over my shoulder and drawing me in closer.

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He knew speaking up only made everything worse. Sometimes

we’d hide in the closet for up to an hour, until Dad and Mama even-
tually got tired and passed out.
Neither of us ever knew what to expect. Our parents got along
well with each other for short periods, but it never lasted. Three
weeks of good would be canceled out by one week of bad, and things
continued to get worse. Our dad was always begging Mama to stay
with us, but she couldn’t take the turmoil in the house any longer.
Although they loved each other passionately, they couldn’t live
under the same roof, and our mama had to move out. By the late fall
of 1951, Dad told her he was filing for divorce, taking custody of us,
and there wasn’t anything she could do. Mama wouldn’t be able to
support us on her own, so she had to listen to him. Besides, she was
having enough struggles with her own demons by then. Not only
did the marriage unravel, but the burden of trying to look after
three boys was also too much for Dad to handle. In order to ensure
Joe could get the medical attention he needed, he and Mama real-
ized they were also going to have to give him to foster care. In the
summer of 1952, Joe suddenly wasn’t around any longer. He was in
his crib one day and gone the next. It would be many years before
our paths would cross again.
Despite another heartbreaking experience of having to give up
one of their children to foster care and their divorce, Mama and
Dad couldn’t stay separated for long. Even though she moved out,
my brother and I woke up every so often to hear her cooking
breakfast in the kitchen. As soon as we caught the sweet smell
of  pancakes and sausages, we knew Mama was home. They may
always have insisted they were done with each other, but they
were never done for good. There was no way they could live to-
gether, but they couldn’t completely stay away from each other
either. Whenever Mama showed back up at the house, things were

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good for about a minute. She was gone again almost as fast as she
arrived.
What I didn’t discover until years later was that Mama gave birth
to another son not more than a few weeks after my fifth birthday, at
the beginning of 1953. Like three of her children before him, the
baby, whom she named Alfred, was born with disabilities and was
given to foster care. At that time, it was hard for my brother and I
to know what was going on with her. We didn’t see Mama for long
stretches of time until out of the blue she’d appear at our front door
and plead with our dad to see us. It was a few months before she
moved into an apartment by the Rainier Brewery with her mother,
our grandma Clarice Jeter, and finally we began to spend more time
with her. Since Dad didn’t have a car, he walked Buster and me the
thirteen blocks from our place in the Rainier Vista projects to
visit Mama after work, while he was on his way to Edison Tech on
Twenty-third and Yesler, where he was attending weekly classes
to  become an electrician. Because Mama’s place was directly over
the Rainier Brewery, the strong, sweet smell of hops and barley filled
the entire building. The odor was impossible to get away from. To
this day, every time I smell hops I think of her.

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