The Presidents (3)

American soul sextet formed by Alphonso Young in Louisville, Kentucky in 1960. Alphonso Young had been playing guitar in Louisville for years, when he formed the Presidents there in 1960. Things really started to take off for the young musician. The Presidents had a loyal following and they enjoyed both friendship and rivalry with bands like The High Hatters and the Imperials. Their sometimes bizarre variety shows included everything from soft-porn strip teases by exotic dancers to acts of freakish strength. According to legend, one of their friends could hold a table in his teeth, while a young lady danced on top. Playing in bars like Mo's place and Yeager's Hilltop Inn, Young honed his craft, blending early blues-rock with a tender ear for country-western music. Hoping to score a hit, the band headed to Detroit, where they planned to cut a record at the then-fledgling Motown studios. But on the way, they decided to stop in Indianapolis. They played a gig there, which inspired them to head back to Indiana as soon as possible. The band cut a demo in Motown, which was then housed in a well-padded garage, and headed back to Louisville. When word got around that they were thinking of moving to Indianapolis, their Louisville friends laughed. The Presidents left anyway — and soon enough, the High-Hatters and the Imperials followed. "We were the first rock band to hit Indianapolis on Indiana Avenue," boasts Young. By the summer of '61, the band had moved down the street to George's Place, where crowds grew so large and fierce, the bar owner was forced to break the night into successive 45-minute sets so that crowds could be rotated through the club. At a band contest in Indiana in 1962 Jimi Hendrix asked Young to back him up. "Man, I never had nobody back me up the way you backed me up," Jimi told him. "You backed me up into the wall. You know, I've been around a lot of guitar players and you play some chords. You play some good chords with rhythm. I didn't like the picking too much, but I loved the chords. If you are ever in Clarksville, come down south and see me." It was shortly after this that Jimi broke his ankle (because of it getting out of the army) — and Young broke his news to the Presidents: "I'm leaving and I'm going to Clarksville." Young returned to the Presidents in 1963. While they were on tour in Spain in 1969, they also recorded three singles for Penelope Discos, featuring Manuel Alejandro.