Performers will honor Whisky a Go-Go founder

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 by some of the musicians whose careers he boosted and will get 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.”

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randy.lewis@latimes.com