[Slowhand] Musicians Will Honour Whisky Founder Elmer Valentine - (No EC Content)

[John Mills]

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=28188

Musicians Will Honor Whisky Founder Elmer Valentine
Posted: 2009-01-11
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SOURCE: All About Jazz Publicity

Man behind the Whisky and Roxy will have a street named for him.
Elmer Valentine, founder of the Whisky a Go-Go and co-founder of the Roxy
nightclubs on the Sunset Strip, will be memorialized.

On Jan. 26 some of the musicians whose careers he boosted will join in and a
street in West Hollywood renamed in his honor. Valentine died last month at
age 85.

Johnny Rivers, John Mayall and J.J. Cale are among performers who will play
at the Whisky for the event that Lou Adler, Valentine's longtime friend and
business partner, is helping to organize.

"It's great that those three were the first to confirm," Adler said Friday.
"Johnny Rivers, of course, was the opening act at the Whisky and had a lot
to do with establishing the place. And J.J. -- he originally was Johnny
Cale, but Elmer made him use J.J. and told him, 'We can't have two Johnnys
on the marquee.' "

A stretch of Larrabee Street near the corner of Sunset Boulevard, where the
Whisky sits, will be christened Elmer Valentine Way, Adler said. "It wasn't
difficult at all," he said. "I just called [West Hollywood Mayor Pro Tem]
Abbe Land. She's been around a long time, and they pushed it right through.
They realized it was important, and he deserved it."

The Whisky was the focal point of L.A.'s rock scene in the '60s and much of
the '70s, giving over its stage to future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acts
including the Doors, the Byrds, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Love, Buffalo
Springfield, Talking Heads and Elvis Costello.

"The Whisky was Mecca," Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist for the Doors, once
said. "It was the place in Los Angeles. It was probably the place in the
entire country."

randy.lewis at latimes.com