Cafe Wha?
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Cafe Wha? is a club in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York City that has been home to various musicians and comedians. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, Kool and the Gang, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and many others all began their careers at the Wha? During the 1960s, it was owned by Manny Roth, uncle of rock singer David Lee Roth.
A little known appearance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience occurred on a weekend in early August 1967. Are You Experienced? had not yet been released in America but word of their recent Monterey Pop Festival appearance was beginning to spread. The Café Wha? had scheduled Eric Burden and The Animals along with Richie Havens for a Friday night show, but when people began to arrive they learned that Burdon had cancelled due to a sickness with one of the band members. Instead, Richie Havens would headline the show with the Jimi Hendrix Experience as the opening act. Their set consisted of most of what would be on their American debut, played with incredible energy on the small club stage. The performance was so powerful that when it came time for Havens, he slowly walked to the stage dragging his sitar behind him, turned to the audience and muttered “How do you follow something like that?”. Not to be out done, he too played a great set. The reason for this rare appearance of the Experience was speculated to have been a favor from Hendrix to the club owner for a fee of a few hundred dollars. There was also the connection between The Experience manager, and former Animal, Chas Chandler and Eric Burden. Whatever the reason, it was a night to be remembered by the audience lucky enough to have been there.
Cafe Wha? is located at 115 MacDougal Street, between Bleecker and West 3rd Streets, and is about two blocks from Washington Square Park.
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