Wednesday, July 8, 2009

January 25, 1964 Little Theater, College of San Mateo Folk Festival, San Mateo, CA: Black Mountain String Band

The article from the San Mateo Times of January 25, 1964 advises that “The Black Mountain String Band from Palo Alto will present bluegrass music in the style of Bill Monroe with five-string banjo, guitar and mandolin.” Almost certainly, the banjoist is Jerry Garcia, with David Nelson and mandolin and probably Sandy Rothman on guitar (although possibly Eric Thompson was still in the group). In other guises, this group was called The Black Mountain Boys.

Other acts of modern interest include Berkeley’s Pat Kilroy, later of The New Age, and The Liberty Hill Aristocrats, featuring Rodney and Peter Albin. Belmont’s Stephen Ehret was later in the group Wildflower.

2 comments:

  1. It also says "Feature attraction of the show is Jesse Fuller."

    Jesse Fuller is the musician who wrote "The Monkey and the Engineer" and "Beat It on Down the Line" as well as "San Francisco Bay Blues" (covered by many people including Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonen solo and with Hot Tuna).

    Here's a performance of him playing SFBB on guitar accompanying himself with his unique "fotdella":
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKumuirtwbo

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here's the program for that show, which I attended.
    http://www.thewildflower-sf.com/prologue.htm

    ReplyDelete