The late Jimi Jamison will be honored August 21st at the Hard Rock Cafe. A bronze bust of the lead singer of Survivor, Target, and Cobra will be displayed in a new custom showcase. A special wall will feature Jamison memorabilia.
The event also will be the release party for Rock Hard, a deluxe CD edition on the Iconoclassic Records label of Jamison’s unreleased album from 1990.
Performers will include John Cafferty, Jim Peterik, Ronnie McDowell, Jimmy Davis, Todd Poole of Roxy Blue, and Deb Jam Band fronted by Jamison’s wife, Debbie Jamison.
A longtime Jamison friend, Scott Innes, a promoter and a voice-over actor for movies and characters, including Scooby-Doo, was instrumental in having the bust commissioned after the entertainer died September 1, 2014.
“Jimi and I became best friends when I worked at FM-100 in 1989, and we started a 25-year friendship,” Innes said in an interview from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Jamison confided in Innes. “There’s an old saying, ‘You can’t be a superstar in your own hometown.’ And that bothered Jimi. It bothered him for years. Here is the Hard Rock in Memphis and there was nothing about Jimi Jamison or Survivor in there.”
Jamison participated in charity events Innes held for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “He had a passion for St. Jude and I did, too.
“He used to tell me — he was joking — ‘Man, when I die, you’re doing my funeral.’ When he died, his family asked me to help out. I said, ‘I want to do an event at Hard Rock because Jimi always wanted to be in there. And, by golly, we’re going to put him there.’”
Julien Salley, Hard Rock general manager at the time, had some memorabilia installed. But Innes wanted more. “I wanted to have a bust. When you have a bust done, that means you’re a somebody. You don’t just make a bust of somebody that’s nobody. So that, to me, solidified that Jamison was a rock star.”
Innes got donors, including Lynyrd Skynyrd and Johnny Van Zant, to help pay for a bust sculpted by Matt Glenn from Big Statues in Provo, Utah.
They held the bust unveiling, but, Innes says, “As things happen in life, there was nowhere to put it currently in the Hard Rock. It ended up living in the basement.”
That’s when Gwen Smith went to work. Smith, a longtime friend of Jamison’s, worked on tributes for the Memphis entertainer for years.
Smith kept in contact with Hard Rock about putting the bust back on view. In addition to talking to Zak Abdallat, the club’s general manager at the time, Smith also met with Hard Rock vice presidents from the corporate office.
Finally, Abdallat told her they were going to have a custom case built for the bust and hold a tribute, she says.
“I don’t know anybody who’s got a voice like that,” Smith says. “It was so rich and soulful. Of course, he had that Southern drawl and everything, but he had so much feeling in the way he sang.
“He was so appreciative of his fans. When I would go to shows with him, the rest of the band would go back to their room. He would stand there and get a picture made with everyone. He gave autographs to the last one. I was so impressed with that.
“His fans loved him and he loved them.”
Smith asked Innes to produce the tribute. Innes plans to serve bowls of jambalaya, one of Jamison’s favorite dishes, at the event.
“It’s going to be a party,” he says. “A big family reunion of Jimi’s friends, band members.”
And, he says, “In the end, we walk away with Jimi in the Hard Rock, where he should have always been because he was a rock star. And now that bust will solidify what I have always known: that Jimi is the eye of the tiger.”
Jimi Jamison Memphis Hard Rock Reveal at 6 p.m., August 21st, at the Hard Rock Cafe at 126 Beale Street. Doors open at 5 p.m. Reveal at 7 p.m. Free admission.