← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
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The behind the Song PO taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda Foxy Lady. In music, there are muses and then there are muses. I'm Janda and this bonus episode of the behind the Song podcast is about the force of nature who was an inspiration, most famously to Jimi Hendrix. The woman widely credited with being the inspiration for Foxy lady, the fabulously named and very fantastic Lithophane Pridgeon, also known simply as Faye, one of the most compelling hidden figures in music. A strong black woman whose influence resonated throughout the careers of Hendrix and other R and B and rock royalty, yet who remained pretty much a mystery to the public for for decades. She was born in the dirt poor town of Moultrie, Georgia to unwed parents in 1940. It didn't take her long to get to New York City and it was there that she very quickly began to make her mark. In fact, she was often referred to as the Queen of Harlem, a central figure in the social and creative fabric of the 1960s music scene there. None other than James Brown was a big fan of Pridgens. Her taste, her style and her attitude. She moved through the inner circles of the hardest working man in show business while maintaining her own sense of autonomy. Brown was known for being an incredibly demanding and controlling bandleader, but he had a deep respect for her. By all accounts, he treated her as a peer. She had street cred that just came naturally to her. She became connected with Sam Cooke early on and intensely. She met him when she was just 16 and they developed a deep bond that lasted for years. And as it turns out, this relationship created a bridge between two musical eras because it was Pridgeon who introduced a young, struggling Jimi Hendrix to the already well established Cook, taking him backstage at the Apollo Theater to watch Cook perform. A meeting that happened while Hendrix was still very much searching for his own own break in the industry in the early 60s.
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After his discharge from the army, he was struggling as a backing guitarist for acts like the Isley Brothers, Little Richard, King Curtis and Wilson Pickett. Pridgeon met Hendrix around 1962, when he was just 19, at a party in Harlem. She remembered in interviews that he didn't really cut an impressive figure at the time, mentioning that he carried all his possessions in his guitar case. He didn't even have underwear. Hendrix moved in with her shortly after they met, and she provided him with so much beyond a place to stay. Her connections in the New York soul scene opened doors for him and introduced him to the style and sounds of Harlem. While they were inseparable, she was candid about the challenges of Hendrix's insane jealousy, as she called it. She admitted readily that she was footloose and liked to flirt, and Hendrix struggled with her independence, even getting suspicious if she got out of bed to simply go to the bathroom. For her part, she said that she used to think of her competition not as a woman, but as his guitar because, according to her, Hendrix often slept with his instrument. She's pretty widely known to be the primary source of inspiration for the Wind Cries Mary and of course, Foxy lady who, which she never refuted because she said that Hendrix even gave her pets the name Foxy. She also recalled that when Hendrix first returned to the states from England after his first album, he started peeling off $100 bills and handing them over to her, in her words, like a little kid to prove his success. Their relationship was a real blend of deep affection and the chaotic energy of the era, but her impact on Hendrix's transition from a backup musician to a frontman was undeniable. Lithophane Pridgen also developed a relationship with Sly Stone during one of the most volatile periods of his life. In late 1971, at the peak of his fame and the height of his drug crazed Bel Air bunker period, Stone brought her out to California from New York under the guise of wanting to record her. Once she got there, she said in interviews that she quickly realized he just needed a grounding influence. She told him that their relationship would be totally platonic and moved into his mansion to act more as a mother figure among all the chaos around him. Ultimately, she left that situation when she realized the depth of his dependency was beyond what she could manage once he started waving pistols around in the house. In other words, history has a pretty frustrating habit of labeling influential women like Pridgen as groupies, a term that diminishes their actual role. Lithophane was a cultural taste maker. She possessed a gravity that drew geniuses toward her, offering them a sense of groundedness and a connection to the authentic blues roots that they were trying to electrify. She was also a survivor. Navigating the drug fueled, high stakes world of the 1960s and 70s Music industry required a formidable spirit. In later years, through documentaries and interviews, she reclaimed her narrative, speaking with a sharp wit and a clear eyed perspective on the men she loved and the history they made together. Not surprisingly, her most enduring personal relationship wasn't a romantic interest at all. She maintained a lifelong friendship with another trailblazing lady singer Etta James. Pridgen described the two of them as being among the first liberated modern day black females of their era. They both shared an independent streak and a real sense of self reliance in what was definitely a male dominated industry. Their friendship extended into their work. Pridgen wrote the liner notes for James 2004 blues album blues to the Bone where she reflected on their shared history and their shared love for what she called stomped Down Back Alley Blues. Despite her proximity to all this fame, she maintained her own artistic standards. In the 1970s, she recorded an album for Atlantic Records at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio, but refused to allow its release because she was dissatisfied with the final result. In 1972, Atlantic Records Co founder Ahmet Erdogan, a man with legendary ears for talent who signed everyone from Ray Charles to Led Zeppelin, personally recruited her. He was reportedly captivated by her fierce intelligence and her sharp wit. Unlike many artists who were manufactured by labels, Pridgen was signed as a singer songwriter. She'd been writing her own music for years, often rooted in the blues that she grew up loving. Erdogan sent her to the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound studio in Alabama. She was backed up by the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and Shuggie Otis, a real murderer's row of players. One of the tracks recorded during those sessions was titled Low Down Alley Woman, a song that had greatly displeased Jimi Hendrix years earlier because its lyrics celebrated her unapologetic free living lifestyle. So where's that album now? Still sitting in the vaults at Atlantic Records. She refused to give her permission for it to be released because she didn't like her own performance. She once joked that she was hired for her ability to look the part rather than for her vocal range. At the end of the day, she just wasn't satisfied with the final mixes, so. So she wouldn't allow the label to put her name on something she didn't believe in. She had a low tolerance for anything that was less than great, even when it was her own work. In the decades since, the Faye tape, as it's known, has become a kind of holy grail for Hendrix and soul music historians. Some snippets of her voice have appeared here and there, but the full Muscle Shoals sessions remain unheard by the public. Throughout her life, Pridgen lived with personal health challenges that she managed with the same grit that she applied to everything else she came across. She was born with a congenital heart defect and said that she'd been given expiration dates by doctors more times than she could count. Yet she lived until the age of 80. At the time of her death in 2021, she was living in Las Vegas, focusing on making a memoir out of her incredible life. All along the way, she was a chronicler of her own history and her role in the music world. Her journals and letters, including letters from Hendrix to her during his rise to fame, would no doubt be of huge interest to music fans, but the memoir remains unfinished and unreleased. It all just adds to her mystique. Lithophane's refusal to publish during her lifetime was a deliberate choice. She famously said that she didn't trust anyone else to tell her story right, and in her later years she provided some of her most poignant insights through documentaries like Hear My Train of Comin, where she finally allowed the public to see the woman who had lived a hundred lives in one while she never married. She did have children, who remained protective of all that source material, wanting to make sure it isn't sensationalized. If it ends up in the Smithsonian, where it would easily belong or remain part of her family's private estate, we'll just have to see Lithophane Pridgen reminds us that behind every great man theory in history, there are often individuals like her who provided the spark, the style and the stability necessary for that greatness to grow. She wasn't just a witness to the revolution of rock and soul, she was one of its primary architects in the shadows. She was a woman who could not be tied down and who remained a respected confidant to some of the greatest voices in American music. What a singular woman Lithophane Pridgen was, and what a remarkable life she had. It is amazing to think how one person could connect all these musicians in ways that really mattered, especially in the case of Hendrix. That she would then refuse to release her own music because it wasn't up to her personal high standards kind of says it all about how deeply she felt about the importance of music. I think more people should know about the fantastic Lithophane, and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about her in this episode. If you like it, drop me a like and let me know in the comments. Or better yet, tell a friend thanks for listening to behind the Song on the Way. Much more classic rock and roll.