Lithofayne Pridgon: <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nJimi Hendrix\u2019s<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n original \u2018foxy lady\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n![\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/foxy-01.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018They were bold and daring, yet endearing at the same time, and they allowed me to just be who I was\u2019: Lithofayne Pridgon reflects on the famous men in her life. Photograph: Jeff Burton for the Observer<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nSam Cooke, Sly Stone and Little Willie fought for her attention. Jimi Hendrix loved her so much he wrote songs about her. In a rare interview Lhofayne Pridgon tells Chris Campion the unvarnished story of Harlem\u2019s wildest music scene \u2013 and how she came to be Hendrix\u2019s greatest muse<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Chris Campion<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
N<\/span><\/span>ever been kissed until she met \u201cFever\u201d singer Little Willie John. Seduced by Sam Cooke at only 16. Pined for by\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/a>\u00a0as the one woman he loved but could never hold on to. Lithofayne Pridgon, the unacknowledged inspiration behind Hendrix\u2019s \u201cFoxy Lady\u201d, has held some of the most charismatic and talented performers of their day in her sway, and befriended many others \u2013 a roll call that includes Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Ike Turner and James Brown. She was also Etta James\u2019s best friend.<\/span><\/p>\nShe\u2019s most closely associated though with Hendrix, her lover dating back to 1963, before he was a guitar-slinging R&B sideman to acts such as the\u00a0Isley Brothers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Little Richard<\/a>, back when he still wore a process and spelled his name with two \u201cm\u201ds and a \u201cy\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\nTo the men in Lithofayne\u2019s life, she was muse and confidante. Yet, it\u2019s clear Lithofayne Pridgon is as formidable and compelling a character as anybody she was associated with. In the liner notes she wrote for\u00a0Blues to the Bone<\/em>, Etta James\u2019s 2004 album of blues covers, Lithofayne described herself and her friend as \u201cprobably among the first liberated, modern day, black females\u201d. When she hears it back now, talking over pancakes at a breakfast spot in her adopted hometown of Las Vegas, she demurs. \u201cIt was just something I wanted to say, you know, but we were liberated, for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBallsy and badass, she is possibly the most streetwise septuagenarian you\u2019ll ever meet. She has a filthy laugh that barrels out whenever something tickles her and an easy manner that draws you into her confidence. She also has a low tolerance for bullshit that finds her quick to shoot down anything that rankles.\u00a0Ahmet Erteg\u00fcn<\/a>, who offered her a deal with Atlantic in the 70s \u2013 after hearing her sing and play self-penned songs characterised by the same fierce intelligence and sharp wit she displays in person \u2013 used to tell her she was \u201crefreshing\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cFayne was a party girl, she liked to have a good time,\u201d says Winona Williams, a former Wilhelmina model and girlfriend of Paul McCartney and David Bowie, who first met Lithofayne on the late-60s New York music scene through Hendrix and remains one of her closest friends. \u201cStill, to this day, you can\u2019t tie her down. Her spirit just roams free.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/foxy-02.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018We had lots of cop friends, lots of hustler friends, lots of music friends\u2019: with James Brown in the 1960s. Photograph: Courtesy of Lithofayne Pridgon<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\nShe has given only a handful of interviews in the 45 years since Hendrix\u2019s death, because she doesn\u2019t trust anybody else to tell her story right. A born raconteur, she has been writing her memoir, centred on her life with Hendrix in Harlem in the early 60s, where music folk and underground figures mixed freely. \u201cWe had lots of cop friends, lots of hustler friends, lots of music friends,\u201d she says. She says it makes her laugh when people talk about the peace and love of the 60s. That wasn\u2019t the 60s she knew, not in Harlem, not anywhere. \u201cI knew people that shot other people up with battery acid,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\nTo hear her talk about the people she knew \u2013 whether Hendrix, Cooke, Etta James or any of the others \u2013 is like hearing about them for the first time, stripped of the mythology that surrounds them. She makes no attempt to varnish their personalities. Yet, she is utterly non-judgmental, as honest and self- deprecating about herself as she is about others. If anything she\u2019s too modest.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what would attract them to me,\u201d she says, genuinely bemused. \u201cHeaven knows, there were much prettier girls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nJust about the only sight you can catch of Lithofayne in her prime is in the 1973 documentary\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/em>. She\u2019s a captivating presence: hip, expressive and perpetually animated; slim and fine-boned, with her hair stacked up on her head in a mass of thickly twined curls and locks. She was filmed for the documentary sitting by the pool in the Bel Air mansion Sly Stone had purchased from\u00a0John Phillips<\/a>\u00a0of the Mamas and the Papas.<\/span><\/p>\nLithofayne was living there at the time. Sly had brought her out from New York towards the end of 1971 \u2013 at the height of his fame and all the craziness that came along with it \u2013 telling her he wanted to record her. As he\u2019d never even heard her sing, she suspected he had other intentions in mind. \u201cI told him from the beginning, \u2018Yeah, if you want to do this, we can do it. Fine with me \u2013 platonic.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe wrote a few songs, including one called \u201cPlacidyl Syl\u201d, a reference to both Sly\u2019s birth name (Sylvester) and his taste for pharmaceutical sleeping aids, but he never did get around to producing her.<\/span><\/p>\nInstead, she found herself mothering him. On one occasion, she returned to Bel Air from visiting Etta James to find his flunkies standing around on the lawn, fearful to go inside because Sly had shot the place up. Lithofayne walked into the house alone and found Sly sitting in the lotus position in the middle of his bed, a gun by his side.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhere you been?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI almost lost my fuckin\u2019 mind. Don\u2019t ever go off like that again.\u201d She told him: \u201cPeople keep asking, what did you do before you got me?\u201d \u201cTell them muthafuckas I\u00a0suffered<\/em>,\u201d Lithofayne says, mimicking Sly\u2019s gravelled bass voice. At that point she realised his dependency had taken a dangerous turn. \u201cI thought, oh shit, it\u2019s time to go.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/foxy-03.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018Don\u2019t ever go off like that again\u2019 \u2026 Sly Stone. Photograph: NBC\/NBC via Getty Images<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nIn the event, that decision was made for her. Her father called, shortly thereafter, with a tipoff from a friend in the LAPD. \u201cHe said, \u2018Honey, you better get out of there. They got the house under surveillance.\u2019 I said, \u2018For\u00a0what<\/em>?\u2019\u201d She didn\u2019t have to be warned twice. At the beginning of December 1972, the house was raided by armed cops and Sly was arrested for failure to produce identification. \u201cI think I was just protected,\u201d she says now. \u201cUniversally-protected \u2014 I know I have it in my chart \u2014 because I was very stupid. I could have been in any of many of the things I\u2019ve known to go down. And here I am about to be 75-years old.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nLithofayne Pridgon was born in 1940, in a place called Dirty Spoon, a neighbourhood in the city of\u00a0Moultrie<\/a>, southwest Georgia. \u201cAbout a full square mile of poor people\u201d is how she describes it. \u201cNot just blacks, but poor.\u201d Located between the railroad line and a cemetery, Dirty Spoon was an alley with a dip at the end, shaped like a spoon. The women in Dirty Spoon, she says, \u201cdrank moonshine and partied. And most of them didn\u2019t have husbands. All the loose ladies were in Dirty Spoon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nEven so, her mother was sent away to Missionary College in Springfield, Massachusetts, for bearing Lithofayne out of wedlock. She rarely saw her father, Eddy Clay, a hoofer with the Katherine Dunham Dancers and Eartha Kitt, who was usually out on the road or playing on Broadway. Lithofayne was an only child, her parents never married. \u201cJust about the only thing they had in common was me.\u201d She was raised, for the most part, in a more well-to-do section of the city called Crosstown, by her paternal grandmother, said to be the illegitimate child of Henry Ford who kept a winter home in Georgia, several counties north. \u201cOld man Henry Ford is supposed to have been my great granddaddy,\u201d Lithofayne says. Although the Ford lineage was never definitely proven, her grandmother had a sizeable portfolio of land in Moultrie for reasons that couldn\u2019t be explained \u2014 she earned money by taking in washing at a dollar a load. She tried to instil in Lithofayne the idea that Dirty Spoon was \u201cfull of decadence and the dregs of humanity\u201d. But the people who lived there and the lives they led, so free and wild and fun, continued to have a strong hold on her imagination.<\/span><\/p>\nSummers were spent in Massachusetts with her mother, who worked at MassMutual life insurance and led an active social life in the company of musicians passing through town on the\u00a0chitlin\u2019 circuit<\/a>. \u201cShe was a notorious cook, always had a big apartment,\u201d says Lithofayne. \u201cAll these guys liked to come to her house and hang out.\u201d Not wanting a child in tow to cramp her style, she would pass off Lithofayne as her sister.<\/span><\/p>\nTowards the end of 1955, fresh off his first hit \u201cAll Around the World<\/a>\u201d, Little Willie John, the 5ft 4in singing dynamo from Detroit \u2013 now considered to be the missing link between big band-era rhythm and blues and the performer-driven soul music of the 60s \u2013 came to play the Roseland Ballroom in Holyoke, Massachusetts. \u201cMy mama was going with the band leader,\u201d says Lithofayne. \u201cSo that\u2019s how I met Willie. My first kiss and everything. And his daddy was travelling with him. I remember he had a silver streak through his hair. Teenager, and his daddy had a silver streak through his hair, so\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0had a silver streak through his hair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Jimi](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/foxy-04.jpg\")
<\/a>Jimi and Lithofayne outside the Apollo, 1969. Photograph: Courtesy of Lithofayne Pridgon<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\nHe was 17, she was two years younger. \u201cI bragged to everybody I knew him,\u201d she says. When her cousin in Dirty Spoon told her Willie John was going to be playing nearby, she contrived a reason to travel south to see him again.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI believe that was the time I met James Brown. Willie John introduced me,\u201d she says. \u201cHe used to call me \u2018Little Sister\u2019.\u201d She would remain friends with Brown, even touring with the James Brown Revue in the 60s, but it was Little Willie John who stole her heart: \u201cHe was totally uninhibited. Super free spirit. Wasn\u2019t scared, didn\u2019t feel threatened by anything or anybody. Totally streetwise. And he could sing his ass off.\u201d John would provide her entry into another world, just like Dirty Spoon but bigger \u2013 Harlem.<\/span><\/p>\nBy the time she arrived, the area was past its jazz-age heyday, but still fizzing with excitement and opportunities to have fun. The first time she went, at 16, Willie John took her to the Cecil Hotel, a five-floor apartment hotel above famed restaurant and jazz spot\u00a0Minton\u2019s Playhouse<\/a>, where all the music folks would stay, hang out and party. That\u2019s where she was introduced to Sam Cooke, at a party in a suite occupied by a man named \u201cCripple Lou\u201d, who ran the hotel. \u201cHe was an ex-cop from the New York City Police Department,\u201d she says, \u201cand he was missing some toes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe was used to Willie John showing her off. \u201cHe had no problem displaying me,\u201d Lithofayne says. She was young but self-assured for her age and in control. \u201cHe\u2019d call me his woman, and I wasn\u2019t anybody\u2019s woman.\u201d That night, he wanted to show her off to Cooke. Later that evening, as she walked through a darkened room in the suite, Cooke was waiting for her, at the window, pretending to look out on 118th Street. She didn\u2019t see him as she hurried through. \u201cHe reached out and snatched my hand,\u201d she says. \u201cI was startled at first.\u201d She recognised him from the silhouette cast by the light of the street lamps. \u201cImmediately, when I saw it was him, it was like all the fear was gone. When he pulled me close to him and kissed me, hell yeah, I just melted in his arms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nJust to recall it gives her a thrill. As she talks, Sam Cooke\u2019s \u201cYou Send Me\u201d begins to play in the diner and gives her another thrill. \u201cIt\u2019s Sam,\u201d she says delightedly, interrupting her flow the second his voice starts singing, as if she\u2019d just caught sight of him walking through the door. She listens, smiling, rapt by a memory. \u201cIt makes tears run down, this one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
original \u2018foxy lady\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n<\/a>\u2018They were bold and daring, yet endearing at the same time, and they allowed me to just be who I was\u2019: Lithofayne Pridgon reflects on the famous men in her life. Photograph: Jeff Burton for the Observer<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nSam Cooke, Sly Stone and Little Willie fought for her attention. Jimi Hendrix loved her so much he wrote songs about her. In a rare interview Lhofayne Pridgon tells Chris Campion the unvarnished story of Harlem\u2019s wildest music scene \u2013 and how she came to be Hendrix\u2019s greatest muse<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Chris Campion<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
N<\/span><\/span>ever been kissed until she met \u201cFever\u201d singer Little Willie John. Seduced by Sam Cooke at only 16. Pined for by\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/a>\u00a0as the one woman he loved but could never hold on to. Lithofayne Pridgon, the unacknowledged inspiration behind Hendrix\u2019s \u201cFoxy Lady\u201d, has held some of the most charismatic and talented performers of their day in her sway, and befriended many others \u2013 a roll call that includes Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Ike Turner and James Brown. She was also Etta James\u2019s best friend.<\/span><\/p>\nShe\u2019s most closely associated though with Hendrix, her lover dating back to 1963, before he was a guitar-slinging R&B sideman to acts such as the\u00a0Isley Brothers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Little Richard<\/a>, back when he still wore a process and spelled his name with two \u201cm\u201ds and a \u201cy\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\nTo the men in Lithofayne\u2019s life, she was muse and confidante. Yet, it\u2019s clear Lithofayne Pridgon is as formidable and compelling a character as anybody she was associated with. In the liner notes she wrote for\u00a0Blues to the Bone<\/em>, Etta James\u2019s 2004 album of blues covers, Lithofayne described herself and her friend as \u201cprobably among the first liberated, modern day, black females\u201d. When she hears it back now, talking over pancakes at a breakfast spot in her adopted hometown of Las Vegas, she demurs. \u201cIt was just something I wanted to say, you know, but we were liberated, for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBallsy and badass, she is possibly the most streetwise septuagenarian you\u2019ll ever meet. She has a filthy laugh that barrels out whenever something tickles her and an easy manner that draws you into her confidence. She also has a low tolerance for bullshit that finds her quick to shoot down anything that rankles.\u00a0Ahmet Erteg\u00fcn<\/a>, who offered her a deal with Atlantic in the 70s \u2013 after hearing her sing and play self-penned songs characterised by the same fierce intelligence and sharp wit she displays in person \u2013 used to tell her she was \u201crefreshing\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cFayne was a party girl, she liked to have a good time,\u201d says Winona Williams, a former Wilhelmina model and girlfriend of Paul McCartney and David Bowie, who first met Lithofayne on the late-60s New York music scene through Hendrix and remains one of her closest friends. \u201cStill, to this day, you can\u2019t tie her down. Her spirit just roams free.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>\u2018We had lots of cop friends, lots of hustler friends, lots of music friends\u2019: with James Brown in the 1960s. Photograph: Courtesy of Lithofayne Pridgon<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\nShe has given only a handful of interviews in the 45 years since Hendrix\u2019s death, because she doesn\u2019t trust anybody else to tell her story right. A born raconteur, she has been writing her memoir, centred on her life with Hendrix in Harlem in the early 60s, where music folk and underground figures mixed freely. \u201cWe had lots of cop friends, lots of hustler friends, lots of music friends,\u201d she says. She says it makes her laugh when people talk about the peace and love of the 60s. That wasn\u2019t the 60s she knew, not in Harlem, not anywhere. \u201cI knew people that shot other people up with battery acid,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\nTo hear her talk about the people she knew \u2013 whether Hendrix, Cooke, Etta James or any of the others \u2013 is like hearing about them for the first time, stripped of the mythology that surrounds them. She makes no attempt to varnish their personalities. Yet, she is utterly non-judgmental, as honest and self- deprecating about herself as she is about others. If anything she\u2019s too modest.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what would attract them to me,\u201d she says, genuinely bemused. \u201cHeaven knows, there were much prettier girls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nJust about the only sight you can catch of Lithofayne in her prime is in the 1973 documentary\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/em>. She\u2019s a captivating presence: hip, expressive and perpetually animated; slim and fine-boned, with her hair stacked up on her head in a mass of thickly twined curls and locks. She was filmed for the documentary sitting by the pool in the Bel Air mansion Sly Stone had purchased from\u00a0John Phillips<\/a>\u00a0of the Mamas and the Papas.<\/span><\/p>\nLithofayne was living there at the time. Sly had brought her out from New York towards the end of 1971 \u2013 at the height of his fame and all the craziness that came along with it \u2013 telling her he wanted to record her. As he\u2019d never even heard her sing, she suspected he had other intentions in mind. \u201cI told him from the beginning, \u2018Yeah, if you want to do this, we can do it. Fine with me \u2013 platonic.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe wrote a few songs, including one called \u201cPlacidyl Syl\u201d, a reference to both Sly\u2019s birth name (Sylvester) and his taste for pharmaceutical sleeping aids, but he never did get around to producing her.<\/span><\/p>\nInstead, she found herself mothering him. On one occasion, she returned to Bel Air from visiting Etta James to find his flunkies standing around on the lawn, fearful to go inside because Sly had shot the place up. Lithofayne walked into the house alone and found Sly sitting in the lotus position in the middle of his bed, a gun by his side.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhere you been?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI almost lost my fuckin\u2019 mind. Don\u2019t ever go off like that again.\u201d She told him: \u201cPeople keep asking, what did you do before you got me?\u201d \u201cTell them muthafuckas I\u00a0suffered<\/em>,\u201d Lithofayne says, mimicking Sly\u2019s gravelled bass voice. At that point she realised his dependency had taken a dangerous turn. \u201cI thought, oh shit, it\u2019s time to go.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>\u2018Don\u2019t ever go off like that again\u2019 \u2026 Sly Stone. Photograph: NBC\/NBC via Getty Images<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nIn the event, that decision was made for her. Her father called, shortly thereafter, with a tipoff from a friend in the LAPD. \u201cHe said, \u2018Honey, you better get out of there. They got the house under surveillance.\u2019 I said, \u2018For\u00a0what<\/em>?\u2019\u201d She didn\u2019t have to be warned twice. At the beginning of December 1972, the house was raided by armed cops and Sly was arrested for failure to produce identification. \u201cI think I was just protected,\u201d she says now. \u201cUniversally-protected \u2014 I know I have it in my chart \u2014 because I was very stupid. I could have been in any of many of the things I\u2019ve known to go down. And here I am about to be 75-years old.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nLithofayne Pridgon was born in 1940, in a place called Dirty Spoon, a neighbourhood in the city of\u00a0Moultrie<\/a>, southwest Georgia. \u201cAbout a full square mile of poor people\u201d is how she describes it. \u201cNot just blacks, but poor.\u201d Located between the railroad line and a cemetery, Dirty Spoon was an alley with a dip at the end, shaped like a spoon. The women in Dirty Spoon, she says, \u201cdrank moonshine and partied. And most of them didn\u2019t have husbands. All the loose ladies were in Dirty Spoon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nEven so, her mother was sent away to Missionary College in Springfield, Massachusetts, for bearing Lithofayne out of wedlock. She rarely saw her father, Eddy Clay, a hoofer with the Katherine Dunham Dancers and Eartha Kitt, who was usually out on the road or playing on Broadway. Lithofayne was an only child, her parents never married. \u201cJust about the only thing they had in common was me.\u201d She was raised, for the most part, in a more well-to-do section of the city called Crosstown, by her paternal grandmother, said to be the illegitimate child of Henry Ford who kept a winter home in Georgia, several counties north. \u201cOld man Henry Ford is supposed to have been my great granddaddy,\u201d Lithofayne says. Although the Ford lineage was never definitely proven, her grandmother had a sizeable portfolio of land in Moultrie for reasons that couldn\u2019t be explained \u2014 she earned money by taking in washing at a dollar a load. She tried to instil in Lithofayne the idea that Dirty Spoon was \u201cfull of decadence and the dregs of humanity\u201d. But the people who lived there and the lives they led, so free and wild and fun, continued to have a strong hold on her imagination.<\/span><\/p>\nSummers were spent in Massachusetts with her mother, who worked at MassMutual life insurance and led an active social life in the company of musicians passing through town on the\u00a0chitlin\u2019 circuit<\/a>. \u201cShe was a notorious cook, always had a big apartment,\u201d says Lithofayne. \u201cAll these guys liked to come to her house and hang out.\u201d Not wanting a child in tow to cramp her style, she would pass off Lithofayne as her sister.<\/span><\/p>\nTowards the end of 1955, fresh off his first hit \u201cAll Around the World<\/a>\u201d, Little Willie John, the 5ft 4in singing dynamo from Detroit \u2013 now considered to be the missing link between big band-era rhythm and blues and the performer-driven soul music of the 60s \u2013 came to play the Roseland Ballroom in Holyoke, Massachusetts. \u201cMy mama was going with the band leader,\u201d says Lithofayne. \u201cSo that\u2019s how I met Willie. My first kiss and everything. And his daddy was travelling with him. I remember he had a silver streak through his hair. Teenager, and his daddy had a silver streak through his hair, so\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0had a silver streak through his hair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>Jimi and Lithofayne outside the Apollo, 1969. Photograph: Courtesy of Lithofayne Pridgon<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\nHe was 17, she was two years younger. \u201cI bragged to everybody I knew him,\u201d she says. When her cousin in Dirty Spoon told her Willie John was going to be playing nearby, she contrived a reason to travel south to see him again.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI believe that was the time I met James Brown. Willie John introduced me,\u201d she says. \u201cHe used to call me \u2018Little Sister\u2019.\u201d She would remain friends with Brown, even touring with the James Brown Revue in the 60s, but it was Little Willie John who stole her heart: \u201cHe was totally uninhibited. Super free spirit. Wasn\u2019t scared, didn\u2019t feel threatened by anything or anybody. Totally streetwise. And he could sing his ass off.\u201d John would provide her entry into another world, just like Dirty Spoon but bigger \u2013 Harlem.<\/span><\/p>\nBy the time she arrived, the area was past its jazz-age heyday, but still fizzing with excitement and opportunities to have fun. The first time she went, at 16, Willie John took her to the Cecil Hotel, a five-floor apartment hotel above famed restaurant and jazz spot\u00a0Minton\u2019s Playhouse<\/a>, where all the music folks would stay, hang out and party. That\u2019s where she was introduced to Sam Cooke, at a party in a suite occupied by a man named \u201cCripple Lou\u201d, who ran the hotel. \u201cHe was an ex-cop from the New York City Police Department,\u201d she says, \u201cand he was missing some toes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe was used to Willie John showing her off. \u201cHe had no problem displaying me,\u201d Lithofayne says. She was young but self-assured for her age and in control. \u201cHe\u2019d call me his woman, and I wasn\u2019t anybody\u2019s woman.\u201d That night, he wanted to show her off to Cooke. Later that evening, as she walked through a darkened room in the suite, Cooke was waiting for her, at the window, pretending to look out on 118th Street. She didn\u2019t see him as she hurried through. \u201cHe reached out and snatched my hand,\u201d she says. \u201cI was startled at first.\u201d She recognised him from the silhouette cast by the light of the street lamps. \u201cImmediately, when I saw it was him, it was like all the fear was gone. When he pulled me close to him and kissed me, hell yeah, I just melted in his arms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nJust to recall it gives her a thrill. As she talks, Sam Cooke\u2019s \u201cYou Send Me\u201d begins to play in the diner and gives her another thrill. \u201cIt\u2019s Sam,\u201d she says delightedly, interrupting her flow the second his voice starts singing, as if she\u2019d just caught sight of him walking through the door. She listens, smiling, rapt by a memory. \u201cIt makes tears run down, this one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
![\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/GUARDIAN.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018They were bold and daring, yet endearing at the same time, and they allowed me to just be who I was\u2019: Lithofayne Pridgon reflects on the famous men in her life. Photograph: Jeff Burton for the Observer<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sam Cooke, Sly Stone and Little Willie fought for her attention. Jimi Hendrix loved her so much he wrote songs about her. In a rare interview Lhofayne Pridgon tells Chris Campion the unvarnished story of Harlem\u2019s wildest music scene \u2013 and how she came to be Hendrix\u2019s greatest muse<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Chris Campion<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n N<\/span><\/span>ever been kissed until she met \u201cFever\u201d singer Little Willie John. Seduced by Sam Cooke at only 16. Pined for by\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/a>\u00a0as the one woman he loved but could never hold on to. Lithofayne Pridgon, the unacknowledged inspiration behind Hendrix\u2019s \u201cFoxy Lady\u201d, has held some of the most charismatic and talented performers of their day in her sway, and befriended many others \u2013 a roll call that includes Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Ike Turner and James Brown. She was also Etta James\u2019s best friend.<\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s most closely associated though with Hendrix, her lover dating back to 1963, before he was a guitar-slinging R&B sideman to acts such as the\u00a0Isley Brothers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Little Richard<\/a>, back when he still wore a process and spelled his name with two \u201cm\u201ds and a \u201cy\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n To the men in Lithofayne\u2019s life, she was muse and confidante. Yet, it\u2019s clear Lithofayne Pridgon is as formidable and compelling a character as anybody she was associated with. In the liner notes she wrote for\u00a0Blues to the Bone<\/em>, Etta James\u2019s 2004 album of blues covers, Lithofayne described herself and her friend as \u201cprobably among the first liberated, modern day, black females\u201d. When she hears it back now, talking over pancakes at a breakfast spot in her adopted hometown of Las Vegas, she demurs. \u201cIt was just something I wanted to say, you know, but we were liberated, for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Ballsy and badass, she is possibly the most streetwise septuagenarian you\u2019ll ever meet. She has a filthy laugh that barrels out whenever something tickles her and an easy manner that draws you into her confidence. She also has a low tolerance for bullshit that finds her quick to shoot down anything that rankles.\u00a0Ahmet Erteg\u00fcn<\/a>, who offered her a deal with Atlantic in the 70s \u2013 after hearing her sing and play self-penned songs characterised by the same fierce intelligence and sharp wit she displays in person \u2013 used to tell her she was \u201crefreshing\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFayne was a party girl, she liked to have a good time,\u201d says Winona Williams, a former Wilhelmina model and girlfriend of Paul McCartney and David Bowie, who first met Lithofayne on the late-60s New York music scene through Hendrix and remains one of her closest friends. \u201cStill, to this day, you can\u2019t tie her down. Her spirit just roams free.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018We had lots of cop friends, lots of hustler friends, lots of music friends\u2019: with James Brown in the 1960s. Photograph: Courtesy of Lithofayne Pridgon<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n She has given only a handful of interviews in the 45 years since Hendrix\u2019s death, because she doesn\u2019t trust anybody else to tell her story right. A born raconteur, she has been writing her memoir, centred on her life with Hendrix in Harlem in the early 60s, where music folk and underground figures mixed freely. \u201cWe had lots of cop friends, lots of hustler friends, lots of music friends,\u201d she says. She says it makes her laugh when people talk about the peace and love of the 60s. That wasn\u2019t the 60s she knew, not in Harlem, not anywhere. \u201cI knew people that shot other people up with battery acid,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n To hear her talk about the people she knew \u2013 whether Hendrix, Cooke, Etta James or any of the others \u2013 is like hearing about them for the first time, stripped of the mythology that surrounds them. She makes no attempt to varnish their personalities. Yet, she is utterly non-judgmental, as honest and self- deprecating about herself as she is about others. If anything she\u2019s too modest.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what would attract them to me,\u201d she says, genuinely bemused. \u201cHeaven knows, there were much prettier girls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Just about the only sight you can catch of Lithofayne in her prime is in the 1973 documentary\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/em>. She\u2019s a captivating presence: hip, expressive and perpetually animated; slim and fine-boned, with her hair stacked up on her head in a mass of thickly twined curls and locks. She was filmed for the documentary sitting by the pool in the Bel Air mansion Sly Stone had purchased from\u00a0John Phillips<\/a>\u00a0of the Mamas and the Papas.<\/span><\/p>\n Lithofayne was living there at the time. Sly had brought her out from New York towards the end of 1971 \u2013 at the height of his fame and all the craziness that came along with it \u2013 telling her he wanted to record her. As he\u2019d never even heard her sing, she suspected he had other intentions in mind. \u201cI told him from the beginning, \u2018Yeah, if you want to do this, we can do it. Fine with me \u2013 platonic.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She wrote a few songs, including one called \u201cPlacidyl Syl\u201d, a reference to both Sly\u2019s birth name (Sylvester) and his taste for pharmaceutical sleeping aids, but he never did get around to producing her.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, she found herself mothering him. On one occasion, she returned to Bel Air from visiting Etta James to find his flunkies standing around on the lawn, fearful to go inside because Sly had shot the place up. Lithofayne walked into the house alone and found Sly sitting in the lotus position in the middle of his bed, a gun by his side.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhere you been?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI almost lost my fuckin\u2019 mind. Don\u2019t ever go off like that again.\u201d She told him: \u201cPeople keep asking, what did you do before you got me?\u201d \u201cTell them muthafuckas I\u00a0suffered<\/em>,\u201d Lithofayne says, mimicking Sly\u2019s gravelled bass voice. At that point she realised his dependency had taken a dangerous turn. \u201cI thought, oh shit, it\u2019s time to go.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Don\u2019t ever go off like that again\u2019 \u2026 Sly Stone. Photograph: NBC\/NBC via Getty Images<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In the event, that decision was made for her. Her father called, shortly thereafter, with a tipoff from a friend in the LAPD. \u201cHe said, \u2018Honey, you better get out of there. They got the house under surveillance.\u2019 I said, \u2018For\u00a0what<\/em>?\u2019\u201d She didn\u2019t have to be warned twice. At the beginning of December 1972, the house was raided by armed cops and Sly was arrested for failure to produce identification. \u201cI think I was just protected,\u201d she says now. \u201cUniversally-protected \u2014 I know I have it in my chart \u2014 because I was very stupid. I could have been in any of many of the things I\u2019ve known to go down. And here I am about to be 75-years old.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Lithofayne Pridgon was born in 1940, in a place called Dirty Spoon, a neighbourhood in the city of\u00a0Moultrie<\/a>, southwest Georgia. \u201cAbout a full square mile of poor people\u201d is how she describes it. \u201cNot just blacks, but poor.\u201d Located between the railroad line and a cemetery, Dirty Spoon was an alley with a dip at the end, shaped like a spoon. The women in Dirty Spoon, she says, \u201cdrank moonshine and partied. And most of them didn\u2019t have husbands. All the loose ladies were in Dirty Spoon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Even so, her mother was sent away to Missionary College in Springfield, Massachusetts, for bearing Lithofayne out of wedlock. She rarely saw her father, Eddy Clay, a hoofer with the Katherine Dunham Dancers and Eartha Kitt, who was usually out on the road or playing on Broadway. Lithofayne was an only child, her parents never married. \u201cJust about the only thing they had in common was me.\u201d She was raised, for the most part, in a more well-to-do section of the city called Crosstown, by her paternal grandmother, said to be the illegitimate child of Henry Ford who kept a winter home in Georgia, several counties north. \u201cOld man Henry Ford is supposed to have been my great granddaddy,\u201d Lithofayne says. Although the Ford lineage was never definitely proven, her grandmother had a sizeable portfolio of land in Moultrie for reasons that couldn\u2019t be explained \u2014 she earned money by taking in washing at a dollar a load. She tried to instil in Lithofayne the idea that Dirty Spoon was \u201cfull of decadence and the dregs of humanity\u201d. But the people who lived there and the lives they led, so free and wild and fun, continued to have a strong hold on her imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n Summers were spent in Massachusetts with her mother, who worked at MassMutual life insurance and led an active social life in the company of musicians passing through town on the\u00a0chitlin\u2019 circuit<\/a>. \u201cShe was a notorious cook, always had a big apartment,\u201d says Lithofayne. \u201cAll these guys liked to come to her house and hang out.\u201d Not wanting a child in tow to cramp her style, she would pass off Lithofayne as her sister.<\/span><\/p>\n Towards the end of 1955, fresh off his first hit \u201cAll Around the World<\/a>\u201d, Little Willie John, the 5ft 4in singing dynamo from Detroit \u2013 now considered to be the missing link between big band-era rhythm and blues and the performer-driven soul music of the 60s \u2013 came to play the Roseland Ballroom in Holyoke, Massachusetts. \u201cMy mama was going with the band leader,\u201d says Lithofayne. \u201cSo that\u2019s how I met Willie. My first kiss and everything. And his daddy was travelling with him. I remember he had a silver streak through his hair. Teenager, and his daddy had a silver streak through his hair, so\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0had a silver streak through his hair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Jimi and Lithofayne outside the Apollo, 1969. Photograph: Courtesy of Lithofayne Pridgon<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n He was 17, she was two years younger. \u201cI bragged to everybody I knew him,\u201d she says. When her cousin in Dirty Spoon told her Willie John was going to be playing nearby, she contrived a reason to travel south to see him again.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI believe that was the time I met James Brown. Willie John introduced me,\u201d she says. \u201cHe used to call me \u2018Little Sister\u2019.\u201d She would remain friends with Brown, even touring with the James Brown Revue in the 60s, but it was Little Willie John who stole her heart: \u201cHe was totally uninhibited. Super free spirit. Wasn\u2019t scared, didn\u2019t feel threatened by anything or anybody. Totally streetwise. And he could sing his ass off.\u201d John would provide her entry into another world, just like Dirty Spoon but bigger \u2013 Harlem.<\/span><\/p>\n By the time she arrived, the area was past its jazz-age heyday, but still fizzing with excitement and opportunities to have fun. The first time she went, at 16, Willie John took her to the Cecil Hotel, a five-floor apartment hotel above famed restaurant and jazz spot\u00a0Minton\u2019s Playhouse<\/a>, where all the music folks would stay, hang out and party. That\u2019s where she was introduced to Sam Cooke, at a party in a suite occupied by a man named \u201cCripple Lou\u201d, who ran the hotel. \u201cHe was an ex-cop from the New York City Police Department,\u201d she says, \u201cand he was missing some toes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She was used to Willie John showing her off. \u201cHe had no problem displaying me,\u201d Lithofayne says. She was young but self-assured for her age and in control. \u201cHe\u2019d call me his woman, and I wasn\u2019t anybody\u2019s woman.\u201d That night, he wanted to show her off to Cooke. Later that evening, as she walked through a darkened room in the suite, Cooke was waiting for her, at the window, pretending to look out on 118th Street. She didn\u2019t see him as she hurried through. \u201cHe reached out and snatched my hand,\u201d she says. \u201cI was startled at first.\u201d She recognised him from the silhouette cast by the light of the street lamps. \u201cImmediately, when I saw it was him, it was like all the fear was gone. When he pulled me close to him and kissed me, hell yeah, I just melted in his arms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Just to recall it gives her a thrill. As she talks, Sam Cooke\u2019s \u201cYou Send Me\u201d begins to play in the diner and gives her another thrill. \u201cIt\u2019s Sam,\u201d she says delightedly, interrupting her flow the second his voice starts singing, as if she\u2019d just caught sight of him walking through the door. She listens, smiling, rapt by a memory. \u201cIt makes tears run down, this one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>