JIMI Hendrix, his mother a Cherokee Indian and his father a municipal gardener, played Darlington in February 1967. Darlington won, Hendrix lost a guitar. Several claim to know the thief, none - even now - will identify him. Suffice that the guitar was smuggled from an upstairs kitchen, down a fire escape, twice changed colour, was pinched again on the High Row and is thought still to be rocking round the town clock.

Van Morrison, no such misfortunes, played the Majestic Ballroom at much the same time and Long John Baldry, it's recalled, brought his Steam Packet band to the Skerne Park Hotel.

Redoubtable rumour also suggests that the Steam Packet's stowaway pianist was the young Elton John, or Reg Dwight, or whatever identity in those early days he assumed. Outrageous, surely?

But to return to Jimi Hendrix and the Experience, booked at the Imperial Hotel for £90 and watched for just ten shillings a ticket - though by then his debut single, Hey Joe, was number four in the hit parade.

"The R&B Club's policy of picking groups before they mature fully proved a success last night," observed The Echo's reporter, his review sitting uncomfortably alongside another for the Glaxo Laboratories Sports and Social Club's production of Spice of Life.

The Experience experience proved too much for our man, however. Though he managed to spell Jimi, he made a hell of a mess of Hendricks.

The night that the wild man of popular music appeared at the Imperial was touched upon two weeks ago in the Gadfly column, subsequently reprised by so many that - like Hendrix - they assume a bigger stage.

Christine Garstin from Richmond was among youngsters who frequented the Bolivar, the Imperial's basement bar (and a fount, memory suggests, of Watney's egregious Red Barrel.)

"There were about 40 of us, mods, hippies and musicians, all happy people. The wonderful Nick Ridley was manager, a party raver who entertained the celebrities from the La Bamba night club across the road and who didn't know the meaning of the phrase 'Time, gentlemen please'."

Sheila Hay writes also, though rather less enthusiastically. "He played the drums more than he played the guitar and kept losing the drum sticks which flew into the audience. I don't know who booked him, but I was really cross about it because I only wanted to dance and couldn't dance to his music."

Chiefly, however, Hendrix echoes through the mood music memories of Dave Adams and Kenny Beagle, whom we brought together for a very happy hour - a sort of verbal jam session - in the Britannia. Dave, born in Ferryhill - where his grandma has already planned her 100th birthday party in July - has been an entertainer since leaving school at 15, played a mean guitar, has circumnavigated two heart by-passes and is now among the region's most sought after comedians and after dinner speakers. His car registration's B16 LAF; he's a B16 LAD an' all.

Kenny Beagle owned several pubs, now has the Newbus Arms Hotel near Hurworth, but at 51 claims to be semi-retired. Both vividly remember the Hendrix show. There is talk, too, of groups like the Concordes and the Crusaders, of Smokey Brown and Freddie "Fingers" Lee, of the Cavern Club (the one at the Station in Hurworth Place) and of the Corner Caf in Scarborough. "Great venue, sounded cosy but must have held about 9,000," says Dave.

Hendrix, he recalls, was booked by Brian Deighton, blew up a couple of amplifiers and was madder yet when the guitar walked off down the fire escape.

"He went down the Bolivar and was really kicking off about it, going berserk. People were trying to pacify him, but he was very volatile."

Even before the theft, however, Hendrix had made his mark. "Groups all wore suits in those days, but he turned up in a sort of black cloak," recalls Kenny. "He had trouble getting his gear set up and was swearing like I've never heard anyone swear in my life. He was different from anything before or since, of course - the governor, no doubt about that."

Discovered in Greenwich Village by Chas Chandler of the Animals, Hendrix subsequently had a number one hit with Voodoo Chile, reached the top ten with Purple Haze and All Along the Watchtower, was found dead in a London hotel room in 1970.

He had swallowed 18 times the recommended amount of sleeping tablets, washed down with a large amount of vodka. The coroner recorded an open verdict: like the case of the stolen Fender, the Jimi riddle remains.

KENNY Beagle's other claim to fame isn't just that his name's next to Peter Beardsley's in the index to The Golden Boy, Wilf Mannion's biography, but that he's in the book's opening sentence.

"Just like any other football fan, Kenny Beagle went to work with a heavy heart..." It was 1973, the morning after England's 1-1 draw with a Polish side inspired by goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski - Cloughy's clown - ensured we'd miss the World Cup finals.

Kenny had worked at ICI Wilton for three days, hardly given a thought to the friendly feller in the welly boots who made the workers' tea.

"First time I played at Wembley I scored a hat trick," said the previously reticent tea man. "Stupid old so-and-so," thought Kenny.

It was only then that someone told him the modest Mannion's identity. "An amazing little chap, just so unassuming," says Kenny. "We became quite pally after that."

Wilf died last year. George Hardwick, his team mate for Middlesbrough and England, receives the Freedom of the Borough of Redcar and Cleveland on May 23 at the same time as Vera Robinson, Redcar's redoubtable historian. The column has been invited, too. Some freedom of speech thereafter.

OFF on another football, our last column (April 12) wondered if non-swearing Eppleton goalkeeper Barry Goodwin, 43, might be the only man alive who still uses the phrase "Jeepers". Last week, perchance, we saw him holding the fort for the Hetton-le-Hole based club in the Albany Northern League second division game at Thornaby when, pure accident, he took the most almighty kick in the face.

Blood everywhere, it was the fifth broken nose of a long career. Barry picked himself up, dusted himself down, resumed his place between the sticks. "Dear me," he said. Honest.

THAT last column also mentioned that Darlington hotelier Mike Dalton and his brother-in-law Peter Robinson were organising a charity event for Ward 42 at Darlington Memorial - the haematology unit - where staff saved Mike's wife's life. It raised £1,223 - "and was a fantastic night as well".

WITH a suggestion that it might make a few paragraphs in the John North column, Steve Leonard from Middleton Tyas loans the book that he bought for 75p at a second hand shop in South Shields.

Entitled Wanderings in South America, it's an account of the adventures of Charles Waterton, a prominent 19th Century naturalist and bird nester who in the 1790s was educated by the fearsome Fr Storey at the Roman Catholic school in Tudhoe, near Spennymoor. Steve draws attention to the Tudhoe Mouse, a ghost that did "an immensity of mischief" and to the large black horse that arose from the pond opposite the Old Hall whenever death or "sudden ill" was to befall the village.

Isn't the pub at the top end of Tudhoe called the Black Horse to this day?

It's to Tudhoe's Easter customs in the late 18th Century that our eye is particularly drawn, however, to jarping and to "Pasche eggs".

It's where the Gadfly column has been laying this past fortnight. One good turn, this one is being transferred in the opposite direction.

....so finally, back to the alternative entertainment in Darlington's pubs and to the true story of the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman at the Tuesday night quiz in the Pennyweight. Ian Cross, the Englishman, had looked in with visiting pals Andrew McCaffrey (the Scot) and Dave Fleck.

Dave hoped there might be some sports questions, Andrew - "possibly tongue in cheek" - expressed the wish that he might be able to make use of his nuclear physics degree.

As if awaiting aeons, the £50 snowball question duly rolled round: "If you weigh ten stones on earth, how much would you weigh on the sun?" Ian reports back: "After several minutes consternation and insisting the question should refer to mass, not weight and how you would burn up on entering the sun's atmosphere or die through lack of oxygen, Andrew finally went through a complicated mathematical formula involving ten to the power of whatever and confidently suggested 100 million stones." The answer was about 80 stones. "Much to the chagrin of the only nuclear physicist in the room, his answer was read out as the one furthest away from being correct."

Or as it almost suggests in the fourth chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke, nuclear physician heal thyself.