LIVE DATES
Listed here will be all documented Carl Holmes & the Commanders live appearances. For now this is a work in progress but as there's been a lot of interest in a photo that has been circulating in recent years I'll add everything that I know about it here as a start...
Friday 27 May 1966???
"Junior Prom"
Gymnasium, Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua, New Castle, Westchester, New York, USA
A possible Carl Holmes and the Commanders -gig that may have featured Jimi Hendrix on guitar. Two photographs that partially show the band on stage were published in Quaker 1967, the Horace Greeley High School yearbook. The claim that the band on stage would be Carl Holmes and the Commanders seems to first have been made on Facebook on 7 June 2021 in the group "Old Guitars in B&W". A posting from that date featured a close up detail from one of the photos and stated that "The band that played the 1966 HGHS junior prom was Carl Holmes and the Commanders" and "First hand accounts of people who were there confirmed that it was him and that he did his guitar tricks (playing with teeth, etc) during the gig."
A CLOSE-UP DETAIL OF THE SUPPOSED CARL HOLMES & THE COMMANDERS -SHOT
The date fits, Jimi was playing with Carl Holmes and the Commanders around this time. Also, if you compare this very fuzzy picture to the photo of Curtis Knight & the Squires at the Village Purple Onion taken at around the same time there are many similarities. The guitar looks like it might be the same one in the Commanders -picture, the guitar player is left handed and does play an upside down Stratocaster. The suit that Jimi is wearing at the Village Purple Onion looks the same, the guitar player in the possible Commanders picture is also standing stage right.
Though the time period fits the exact dates and sequence of events during late May 1966 are very confusing - within a period of 10 days Jimi possibly / supposedly played with Curtis Knight, Wilson Pickett, Carl Holmes & the Commanders and King Curtis & Bonnie Floyd (see Timeline). I am not saying he didn't play with these bands / artists, what I am saying is that so far there is no definite proof for any of these gigs / sessions taking place on these dates... So, the general "vibe" of the faceless guitar player is very much reminiscent of Jimi and the dates and places might fit but so far that's all - the band in the picture above hasn't yet been confirmed to be Carl Holmes and the Commanders nor has the guitar player been confirmed to be Jimi.
Again, the Facebook posting seems to have been the original source for both the picture and the story behind it. I tried to get in touch with the person who (as far as I can tell) put together the information, probably based on eyewitness accounts, but I didn't get any reply.
I searched for the date of the 1966 Junior Prom at Horace Greeley High School and found a contemporary newspaper news item about the "Junior Prom". From this we get the exact date, Friday 27 May 1966, but unfortunately the article does not say anything about the program for the night.
May 28, 1966 The Reporter Dispatch (White Plains, New York) Newspapers.com
I would very much like to find a print source ie an ad or a news item from 1966 stating that Carl Holmes and the Commanders appeared at the "Junior Prom" but so far such a source has not turned up. So I'm including this gig & picture here in the hope that someone can confirm or debunk the theory that this was a Carl Holmes and the Commanders -gig with Jimi Hendrix on guitar - I do believe that it might be him but this hasn't been properly confirmed yet as it's not possible to see anybody's faces in the currently available picture(s)...
It would also be great to have proper scans of the complete yearbook pages / spreads. The digital version online has been cropped with a heavy hand - hence the gray bar in the image above, the area around the binding of the pages has been cut out. And the image is also heavily compressed so I'd very much like to have higher quality 300dpi scans from the original book. If you can help please contact me at