I Made a Promise to a Ghost and I Plan on Keeping It

Part 3: Discovering Devon Wilson

I hesitate to say it was intuition that helped me identify my supernatural companion in Rm. 829 of the Chelsea Hotel.

But what’s so wrong with intuition?

When it comes to spectral encounters there are no indisputable scientific facts. No peer-reviewed studies. No experimental control group. But don’t we use our feelings to prove we’re in love, to believe in a higher power, and to sense injustice?

Often my female intuition is my only empirical data.

You’ll have to take my word for my ghostly rendezvous over those two nights in 2010. But I can assure you, when the death announcement popped up on my screen, it was a bone-chilling experience that made my Hotel Chelsea chance meeting feel all too real:

Devon Wilson, girlfriend of Jimi Hendrix plunges to her death from an 8th-story window at the Chelsea Hotel.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. That pull toward the window in my hotel room. Devon Wilson had been noted as falling from the 8^th floor of the Chelsea only a few months after Hendrix died. The voice in my head that said, “Jump.”

Had Wilson invaded my room that evening? Or more accurately had I invaded hers?

I read the words on the now-defunct webpage again to make sure they were real:

Devon Wilson, girlfriend of Jimi Hendrix plunges to her death from an 8th-story window at the Chelsea Hotel.

I’ve since read articles claiming Wilson dove out of a 9th-floor window and even one stating she was on the 7th floor. Regardless, the tragic consequences are the same. And the aftermath leaves me with little doubt—Devon Wilson was the ghost beckoning me during my hotel stay.

Finally, I had her name.

I typed “Devon Wilson” into my Google search bar. Up popped a black-and-white photo of a stunning black woman wearing a low-cut top with her hand resting on her neck as she smiled and stared out at the camera. The picture was of a 1960s woman who was completely self-possessed. Yet, what I saw in her eyes was the opposite of what each article parroted about Devon Wilson.

Instead of feeling like I was meeting up with an old friend, one whose origin story I could investigate and feel good about presenting to the world, my research led me to the stereotypical hoopla of hanger-on status. Each post I read regurgitated Wilson’s connection to well-known rock musicians along with insinuations of drug and prostitution ties.¹

Here we go again.

Just as with Nancy Spungen, there were few details that humanized Devon Wilson. Again and again, she was reduced to some hustler hellbent on destroying a musical icon. Or she was considered a fringe associate to some famous man, primarily Hendrix. And every story turned her into a villainous depiction of a witchy woman potentially responsible for Hendrix’s demise, but with no proof.²

To the world at the time of her death, Devon Wilson was seen as nothing but a malicious super groupie. Maybe even someone so degenerate that she deserved what befell her. 

In the world of twisted history, it’s stories like these that stick. Especially to women.

I was disappointed, but I wasn’t surprised.

Hadn’t I learned about this playbook in my writing group with Rosemary Daniell? Here was an author who had won numerous awards for her poetry and memoirs, yet her short-lived romance with Deliverance writer and Poet Laureate James Dickey held sway over her reputation for years. There were plenty of other female writers I’d been introduced to through Daniell and her decades-long writing group Zona Rosa. Women who were better known for their adjacency to well-established men than their own writing. Like Joyce Maynard whose work arguably exceeds the work of her one-time romance with J. D. Salinger. But no matter how many books Maynard writes or how many of those books get turned into movies, magazine interviewers will never let readers forget about her long-ago association with a man who was perhaps the most famous abusive recluse.

But at least here in the 21^st century, we women still have our pens, right?

We may get stuck in the shadows, but as writers, we keep scripting our stories in hopes they may find their way to the right audience.

Devon Wilson wasn’t a writer, though.

She didn’t leave behind her own story; in 2011 I could only find a smattering of her details online. And nothing in her own words. I wanted more, damn it! But reaching dead end after condescending dead end led me to put her story on pause for over a decade.

I wish I could say in 2023 there was more information available about the real Devon Wilson. Unfortunately, when I picked up her story again, my research still felt stuck.

I know Wilson was born in Milwaukee in 1943. Beyond that, what you’ll find is mostly speculation passed off as fact:

• Maybe she was the inspiration behind Hendrix’s unflattering song Dolly Dagger.

• Maybe she was part of the Electric Ladies who sometimes sang backup at the music studio.

• Maybe she was Hendrix’s love interest turned partner who dabbled with drugs and prostitution to keep him interested.

• Maybe she jumped from an 8^th (or 7^th or 9^th) story window at the Hotel Chelsea. Or maybe she was pushed. Or threatened. Or…

Modern-day mythology swirls around the few facts we know about Devon Wilson. Yet much of what’s available about her is conjecture. Almost like she wasn’t a woman trying to stay relevant in a man’s world, but a bad girl used to take on all the sins of the 60s.

I stumbled upon an article written by Shane Woolman that promised to “correct misinformation” about Wilson. But I could only track down the introduction to Part 1 and a slice of Part 2.

In the portion I read, Woolman describes Wilson’s protective nature towards Hendrix, as she storms into a studio with attitude and throws her weight around. The implication is that Wilson had no business behaving in an authoritative way, yet would anyone criticize a man for acting authoritatively on Jimi Hendrix’s behalf? It’s astounding the inherent bias in such a short snippet of an article. There is one account after another of studio musicians and journalists describing Devon Wilson in an unflattering tone. Her role as a music consultant for another well-known performer is even put into quotation marks as if Wilson's consulting is too unbelievable to be true.³

Yet, we see Wilson appear alongside famous rock artists throughout her short life.

Woolman’s article makes it clear she had a strong singing voice and “participated in studio sessions.” He even states she spent time recording backing vocals for a song entitled “Keep on Groovin’,” but explains that her vocals on “Message from Nine to the Universe” were removed before the song was released on the LP.

I could never ascertain the reason for her erasure, which makes Devon Wilson seem even more like a ghost. A soul written in disappearing ink. But I tracked down the playlist for Jimi Hendrix And The Band Of Gypsys – Before The Fillmore Rehearsals⁴ and found her name listed on backing vocals for two versions of “Keep on Groovin’.”

Despite the negative spin on so much of her short life, it seems quite clear Wilson participated in the business end of rock music, she wasn’t just a groupie. But you’d never know it based on the way she’s presented in the press.

As with her inexplicable life, uncovering details about Wilson’s death leads to more mysteries than it solves. Why is Devon Wilson's death not being dissected as a cold case on true crime podcasts by every amateur online sleuth? Her story certainly has the makings for an award-winning one:

• High-profile rock boyfriend(s). Check.

• Super groupie status. Check.

• Mysterious circumstances. Check.

• A haunted hotel. Check.

Her death most definitely fits the bill for an unsolved case that needs more attention.

I thought I struck narrative gold when I discovered devonwilson.org—an entire website dedicated to the lady herself. It looks like someone named Cheri Wilson (perhaps a relative?) was in the process of crafting a work about the other Wilson as recently as 2021. Unfortunately, not much has been updated on the site or on a subsequent Facebook page since 2021. There are a number of reasons why the author could have paused her writing. In one post, she mentions hitting a legal snag. I understand why writing, especially works of non-fiction, might become stalled, but few readers do.

What troubled me was one of her Facebook posts with a link to a New York Times article. The caption read, “We believe Devon Wilson possibly ended up at Harts Island.” The article describes a mass grave where over a million people are believed to be buried. And the thought of Wilson being dumped there is a heart-wrenching bookend. But to add insult to injury, several men in the comments section, who neglected to react to the Harts Island article, aggressively clamored for a copy of the book about Devon Wilson instead. They were also clearly agitated that the writer had paused her book process.

It’s as if Devon Wilson functions as a commodity even in her own death.

Again, I found myself at a breaking point over the slant of her story. But just when I thought all was lost, I gained valuable information from an unlikely source—my husband’s research.

Not surprisingly, I divorced my last husband after his ghost dismissal at the Hotel Chelsea and I’ve since remarried. I met my current husband at a writer’s salon, and he’s been my right hand when it comes to editing and research, as well as my steady partner now for 7 years.

I have to applaud him for cracking this case open in a way I couldn’t. No, I still don’t have the big answers, like how Devon Wilson died at the Hotel Chelsea. And I don’t even know much about her as a person during her short tumultuous life. But what my husband found was the most enticing bit of information about Wilson to date and introduced me to yet another fascinating player in this 1960s saga.

“Check out this song link,” he emailed me.

Enter Betty Davis.

No, not Old Hollywood Bette Davis. Betty Davis, the wild, no fucks given funk musician of the 1970s. The Betty Davis who was married to Miles Davis for half a second, but whose red-hot musical sensibilities could light his Kind of Blue album on freakin’ fire! Davis is attributed with titling Miles Davis’s album Bitches Brew when his career had taken a nose dive and he was trying to resuscitate it.⁵

Betty Davis and Devon Wilson were friends. It’s not hard to find a picture of Miles Davis flanked on either side by Devon Wilson and Betty Davis attending Jimi Hendrix’s funeral. The picture is that iconic.

But Davis had something Wilson did not.

A microphone.

And this microphone gave Betty Davis a voice and a platform to tell the truths we weren’t hearing anywhere else in the world.

Davis’s performances were so aggressively groundbreaking she’s been documented as getting fired as the opening act for KISS because the boys in the band thought she would steal their thunder.

I can’t help thinking if Davis were alive today, she’d be crowned as burlesque royalty.

At her musical heights, she embodied sexuality, humor, and a take-charge persona that outshone established male stars. Davis must have understood her transformative role incredibly well, not only for herself but for other women, particularly women of color, who were existing on the fringes of the music industry during this revolutionary time. But it’s her abiding devotion to sisterhood that truly sets her apart. You see, she crafted a song about Devon Wilson entitled “Stepping in Her I. Miller Shoes.” Go have a listen.

No, not later. Go listen. Now.

In “Stepping in Her I. Miller Shoes,” Betty Davis gives us an insight into Devon Wilson in a way we never get from male writers and musicians. In that one song, Davis puts all the so-called super groupie articles to shame. Allowing the realness of Wilson’s character to seep through Davis’s voice and into the ether. Davis documents Wilson as both a “Black Diamond Queen” and a woman “abused by many men.”

It’s the sacred feminine that women like Devon Wilson evoke when captured in a song by someone like Davis. There’s no one else like Davis. You can’t identify this essence using charts or data or even by plucking it from a few well-documented historical sources. You must absorb it. In fact, this atomic female spark may be what so many men feared back in the late 1960s and what many of them are still afraid to face today. And it might explain why so many articles demonize women like Davis, Wilson, and Spungen—women who were emerging before the world was ready for them to take the stage.

No, I don’t have all my facts straight about Devon Wilson. But her friend Betty Davis infuses the spirit of this mysterious woman into her music in a way that’s exponentially more powerful than all the articles written about Wilson. And that’s something you need to feel to believe.

Devon Wilson and Betty Davis have certainly transformed my creative process. As a female writer, I’m never again going to disregard my intuition in favor of presenting facts with disputable slants and biases. I’m forever grateful to both for being the frontrunners of this bold brand of femininity.

Now do yourself a favor and go listen to every song you can get your hands on by Betty Davis and enjoy your funkiest All Souls Day yet!

1. https://www.rocksoffmag.com/devon-wilson/

2. https://nypost.com/2013/06/30/check-out-time/

3. https://shanewoolman.uk/spotlight-on-devon-wilson-part-2/

4. https://www.discogs.com/release/23288327-Jimi-Hendrix-And-The-Band-Of-Gypsys-Before-The-Fillmore-Rehearsals

5. https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/betty-davis-sexual-revolution/#:~:text=It's%20one%20of%20the%20few,to%20the%20late%20Devon%20Wilson