Lost Live Dead

March 12, 1978: Suffolk Forum, Commack, NY: Jerry Garcia Band/NRPS/Robert Hunter and Comfort

2012-01-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

An ad from the February 20, 1978 edition of the Village Voice, promoting the March 12, 1978 concert by the Jerry Garcia Band, the New Riders of The Purple Sage and Robert Hunter and Comfort

In about 1962, Jerry Garcia, David Nelson and Robert Hunter formed a bluegrass band. The little trio rehearsed in the Belmont, CA living room of David Nelson's parents, with Garcia on banjo, Nelson on mandolin, and Hunter on guitar or bass. Later, with the addition of Norm Van Maastricht on dobro, the group became the Black Mountain Boys and played around what few bohemian folk clubs there were in the Bay Area. The Black Mountain Boys soon evolved into other bluegrass ensembles, usually without Hunter, since his literary talents were far ahead of his musical ones. Nonetheless the trio of Black Mountain Boys that rehearsed in a living room were the first collective band that would slowly lead to the Grateful Dead and its sprawling madness. The 60s happened, and lots of water passed under the bridge, some of it slowly and some of it great torrents. Yet it came to pass 16 years later, in a concrete block of a hockey arena, that the old Black Mountain Boys had an unexpected reunion of sorts. On March 12, 1978, at the Suffolk Forum in Commack, NY, in Easter Long Island, the Jerry Garcia Band, the New Riders of The Purple Sage with David Nelson, and Robert Hunter and his band Comfort all shared the bill.

By 1978, All three of the protagonists had certain degrees of rock stardom, but the arcs of their various bands were all in different states. The Jerry Garcia Band trailed the Grateful Dead in popularity, but it was beginning a steady climb to massive success on its own. The once-promising New Riders had already peaked, while Robert Hunter was just stepping forward in an effort to become a national rock star, an effort he would soon put aside. This post will look at the standing of the three bands at the time of the concert, considering the different paths the musical careers of the three Black Mountain Boys had taken up until this time.

The Suffolk Forum, Commack, NY
The Suffolk Forum in Commack, NY was a hockey and basketball arena that had opened in 1959. It was an old concrete block for the most part. Commack was in Suffolk County, about an hour due East of Manhattan, some ways out on Long Island. It mostly housed minor league hockey and basketball franchises, but it had hosted its share of rock concerts in the 1970s. The Grateful Dead never happened to have played there, but it was the sort of aging dump that could be relatively cheaply rented for concerts, since a bunch of rowdy hippies could hardly cause any meaningful damage to such a venue. Country Joe and The Fish had played there in 1970, Hot Tuna were regulars and many similar acts had come through over the years. The venue had had various names over the years. It had been built as the Long Island Arena, then it was called the Commack Arena, and by 1978 it was called The Suffolk Forum.

Long Island was booming from World War 2 onwards, of course, but the Suffolk Forum was largely passed by. In 1972, the huge Nassau Coliseum was built in Uniondale, one county nearer to Manhattan, and Suffolk Forum took a back seat. Suffolk Forum had a capacity of 4000 for hockey and 6500 for basketball, so the concert capacity was probably around 6000. Nassau Coliseum had a capacity of about 16,000, and with its proximity to the city, it became the primary concert venue. The New York Nets of the American Basketball Association and the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League were also housed in the Nassau Colisuem. The Nets had been housed in Commack for the 1968-69 season, but had moved to the Island Gardens prior to Nassau. By 1978, only the Long Island Ducks of the Eastern Basketball Association used Suffolk Forum as a home arena.

The Jerry Garcia Band, 1978 edition
The Grateful Dead had made their bones on the East Coast thanks to relentless touring. In the 1970-71 period, the Dead had played show after show at tiny college gyms and aging movie theaters, converting the audience to permanent deadhead status one show at a time. They had not played Commack Arena (as it was then known), but they had played the gymnasium at Stony Brook and the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, so there were plenty of fond flashbacks out on the Island. As a result, later in the 1970s, the Grateful Dead were huge on the East Coast, in many ways much more popular than they were out West. In the late 70s, the Dead played big places like Nassau Coliseum, and when they played smaller theaters, they were in Manhattan or Boston, not out in the suburbs, and the shows were instant sellouts.

Jerry Garcia had begun to tour the East Coast in earnest when the Grateful Dead had gone on hiatus in 1974. He had toured with Garcia-Saunders, then the Legion of Mary and then the Jerry Garcia Band. Even though the Grateful Dead had returned to touring in 1976, the Jerry Garcia Band had toured the East Coast again in December 1977. Garcia had just finished the Cats Under The Stars album, although it would not be released until April of 1978. By the end of 1977, the Garcia Band was playing the same types of smaller venues in the suburbs, smaller cities or colleges that the Dead had played in the early 70s. In a few cases, Garcia actually played the same venues, like The Palace Theater in Waterbury, CT. For younger Deadheads, or people who lived a long way from Manhattan or Boston, seeing the Garcia Band in a nearby county or college was a way to get a Dead fix in between tours.

The Garcia Band had booked a big Eastern tour in March of 1978. Probably this tour was intended to support Cats Under The Stars, but for whatever reason the album had not been released yet. Whether there was a practical reason for this or not has never been clear to me. However, since Garcia Band tours were profitable on their own terms, the fact that the record had not yet been released was not catastrophic, even if it was poor marketing. The Garcia Band had played a few warmup gigs in February in the Bay Area, a good sampling of which can be heard on the official Garcia release Bay Area 1978. The national tour began on March 9, 1978 at the Cleveland Music Hall in Cleveland, OH. Suffolk Forum was Garcia's fourth date on the tour.

The 1978 edition of the Jerry Garcia Band included regulars John Kahn and Keith and Donna Godchaux, along with new drummer Buzz Buchanan. Maria Muldaur shared harmonies with Donna, and was considered a regular member of the band. However, Maria's presence was not advertised. In the parlance of the time, if her name was in the ads, it would have been expected that she would be singing "Midnight At The Oasis" and the like, and that wasn't the plan (not that it would have been a bad thing, mind you). Thanks to the newly completed Cats album, the 1978 JGB was the first lineup of the Garcia Band that performed a fair amount of original material along with the traditional cover material that Garcia had always played. Garcia had steadily become a bigger concert attraction each year, just as the Dead had done, and in fact that rise would continue more or less throughout his entire career. Since Suffolk Forum probably had a concert capacity around 6000 it was perhaps the biggest played Garcia had played so far on the East Coast up to that point.

Robert Hunter and Comfort
By 1978, Jerry Garcia's bands were hardly strangers on the East Coast. The real surprise to Easterners would have been the presence of Robert Hunter and his band Comfort. All Deadheads had been surprised when Hunter emerged from the shadows to release two solo albums in 1974 and '75. Bay Area fans had had the opportunity to see Hunter perform with his bands Roadhog (1976) and Comfort (1977), but they had never gone on the road. Hunter had spent the Fall of 1977 working on a studio album with Comfort called Alligator Moon, but for various reasons that project appeared to have been shelved. Nonetheless, taking a band on a true road trip was an expensive proposition, and the ever-loyal Garcia arranged to have Comfort open a number of his East Coast shows, assuring that Hunter and his band could arrive in style. The Suffolk Forum show was the first East Coast show where Hunter and Comfort would open for Garcia.

I have dealt with Comfort's history at length, both in performance and with respect to what little is known about the recording of Alligator Moon, so I will not recap it all here. Unlike on the West Coast, however, where Hunter was, by now at least, an accessible figure to those Deadheads who were curious, conversely, on the East Coast Jerry Garcia's writing partner had never performed in person. In fact, Hunter and Comfort's East Coast debut had been a few days before the Suffolk Forum show, when they headlined a pair of nights at My Father's Place in Roslyn, NY, also in Long Island, on March 9 and 10. So the Deadheads who were most excited to see Hunter in person would have already seen him, but even so, for most of the several thousand attendees at Suffolk Forum, Robert Hunter and Comfort were largely a mystery. Since there had been no pictures of him on his two Round Records solo albums, even Hunter's appearance may have been unknown to most Deadheads.

The ad in the Village Voice (up top) just mentions the Garcia Band and the New Riders, so many patrons may have been quite surprised to find that Robert Hunter himself was opening the show. Indeed, the extant tape of the Comfort show begins with an unknown stage announcer saying (approximately) "we'd like to open with someone who's very dear to us back in San Francisco, Robert Hunter and his band Comfort." This wasn't precisely Hunter's Eastern debut, since that had taken place a few days earlier, but it was certainly Hunter's coming out party in the East.

The New Riders Of The Purple Sage
The New Riders of The Purple Sage had always sold a lot more concert tickets on the East Coast than in the West. The first five New Riders albums had sold a lot of copies and the band had toured up and down the Eastern seaboard. By the mid-70s, however, the New Riders fortunes seemed to have faded. The commercial promise of hippie country rock in the early 70s had been eclipsed by, of all things, actual country music. 'Outlaw Country' of the sort performed by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings was more in the public ear than the New Riders and their ilk, and the Riders status had declined accordingly.

Also, after the departure of Dave Torbert in late 1973, the subsequent New Riders albums (Brujo and Oh What A Might Time) had been letdowns. Torbert's replacement, Skip Battin, was a solid musician, but he lacked Torbert's appeal and songwriting depth. In 1976, Battin had left to join the re-formed Flying Burrito Brothers, and he had been replaced by Stephen Love. Love helped revitalize the New Riders with two pretty good albums (Who Are Those Guys? and Marin County Line), so the band was playing well even if they weren't as successful.

In February, 1978, however, for reasons unknown, Stephen Love and pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage had left the New Riders. The Riders had dates to fulfill, but lacked a quorum, with only John Dawson and David Nelson, the two original members, still on board, along with drummer Patrick Shanahan. Emblematic of the status of original country rock bands at the time, the Flying Burrito Brothers were also in a poor state as well, so for about six weeks in Spring 1978, the two bands joined forces. The three members of the New Riders were joined by the three remaining members of the Flying Burrito Brothers, who included a former Rider (Battin), and they played some shows as the New Riders of The Purple Sage. For March of 1978, the New Riders lineup was

John Dawson-vocals, guitar
David Nelson-lead guitar, vocals
Gib Gilbeau-violin, guitar, vocals
Sneeky Pete-pedal steel guitar
Skip Battin-bass, vocals
Patrick Shanahn-drums

Although from one point of view this lineup was a country rock All-Star team, from another point of view it was an indication that two of the pioneer country rock bands of the late 60s did not even have enough members to field full lineups anymore. However, the Suffolk Forum show in March was the first time that the New Riders had opened for the Jerry Garcia Band, and the payday for opening a show at a 6000-capacity arena ($7.50 a ticket) had to be pretty good, so the the Flying Burritos of The Purple Sage teamed up to make it happen.

The odd interval of the merger of the New Riders and the Burritos in 1978 has left no musical evidence. To my knowledge, not even a setlist has survived, much less a tape. Somebody made a nice audience tape of the Comfort set (thank you, whoever you were), and I think there was a JGB tape as well. I have to assume that the '78 Riders played a few NRPS classics along with some Burrito staples, and presumably some covers that both bands shared, like "Six Days On The Road." I'd love to hear Sneeky Pete let it fly on "Glendale Train," since I'm convinced his steel playing on the Avalon sound system encouraged Garcia to get a pedal steel guitar so he could hear himself. It would be fun to hear Nelson and Dawson picking and singing on some songs like "Devil In Disguise,' as well, just for the variety.

Ironically, presumably one of the end results of the Flying Riders was that some lesser known NRPS songs weren't likely to have been performed. If a setlist does appear, however, I hope that either "Kick In The Head" or "Crooked Judge" made the list, however unlikely that may have been. The appeal to me would be that all three bands would then have played custom written songs, not covers, with lyrics by Robert Hunter, which in itself would have been a first time event.

March 12, 1978: The Suffolk Forum, Commack, NY
The Suffolk Forum may have been an old dump, but the members of the Grateful Dead always played very well in run-down old ice rinks, and the Suffolk Forum seems to have been no exception. The show seems to have run from 8:00 pm until well after 5 in the morning. Hunter and Comfort played a full set, the New Riders got their licks in, and the Jerry Garcia Band probably came on sometime after midnight and let it all hang down with two full sets and an encore. An eyewitness recalls--somewhat vaguely, of course--

We arrived at 2:30, gates opened at 7:30. The coolest crowd in the parking lot - no line or rush to the door, even though it was general admission with an open floor (no seats) - we got right up front. Robert Hunter Band, New Riders, then JGB with Keith and Donna, Bill drumming and also Maria Muldaur singing with ... See MoreDonna. We left at around 3:30 AM and I think the show went on until about 4:00ish. My first "Dead show", I was a H.S. sopohmore - what were our parents thinking?

Another says

I was a HS freshman, managed to get tickets and went with a good friend and 2 girls...one of the girls older sister took us and got us seated in the press box (I have no idea how). I remember venturing down to the floor and hanging right in front of the stage for a while, then back up to the press box...no trouble at all, an amazing crowd. As I recall, NR's played until around midnight, then Jerry came on....we left the show around 3:30-4:00 am, and I recall hearing it went on until around 5:30 but not sure ...

To residents in the distant part of Long Island, a trip into Manhattan to see the Grateful Dead, even if they could get tickets, might have been very difficult indeed. But a trip down the road to spend all night with a couple of members of the Grateful Dead, the New Riders and the mysterious Robert Hunter? Yeah baby. I think precisely because Suffolk Forum was an old venue, there was little concern about letting a bunch of hippies loose until 5:00 in the morning. It wasn't like they were going to be any harder on the place than hockey fans. It was shows like these that put Jerry Garcia in the hearts and minds of the East Coast, making people into Deadheads for life, just as the band itself had done in Port Chester or Stony Brook in the previous decade.

The Wildwood Boys, 16 Years On
In 1962, the three Wildwood Boys were barely in their twenties, with no meaningful employment history and fewer prospects. They had a desire to be musicians or artists, but in choosing bluegrass they would have selected one of the least profitable forms of professional music. As they rehearsed in the Nelson living room, it must have seemed quixotic indeed that the trio would ever make any kind of living from actually playing music.

By the time the Jerry Garcia Band, the New Riders and Comfort convened at the Suffolk Forum in March of 1978, by my count the trio had cumulatively released 31 albums and sold literally millions of records. And the 31 albums doesn't count guest appearances--including on a #1 single--, production credits, Best Of albums and other professional by-products. While Robert Hunter had only released two of those albums, he had written the lyrics for literally dozens of songs, not all of them by the Grateful Dead. Many of those songs had been staples of FM radio for much of the 1970s, and phrases from Hunter's pen, like "what a long strange trip its been" or "driving that train, high on cocaine" were steadily passing into the American vernacular. Nelson was a rock star himself, if not a major one, while Garcia was more and more recognized by a single name, one of the true remarks of American celebrity.

On the night of March 12, 1978, the Garcia Band had played the night before in Providence, RI. Hunter and Comfort would have had the previous night off, and had been playing elsewhere in Long Island. I'm not sure exactly where the New Riders were coming from, but they were definitely on the road. The three bands would have convened on the Suffolk Forum in the afternoon sometime, and the crews would have set about their business, leaving time for the musicians to relax and hang out.

The Jerry Garcia Band had never played with the New Riders per se, but since NRPS had opened for the Dead so many times, Garcia and Nelson had shared the backstage many times. Hunter wasn't unknown at Grateful Dead shows, so they had all been in the dressing room before. Nonetheless, the New Riders did not open for the Grateful Dead as often as they had used to. Garcia, Nelson and Hunter were probably all backstage at New Year's Eve in Winterland on December 31, 1977, but that would have been like a giant office party, where nothing personal probably happened. Prior to Commack, Hunter would have been just a guest, if an honored one: this time, he was on the bill. Other than the crews and the odd visitor, the three Wildwood Boys would have had far fewer distractions than in San Francisco or Manhattan.

The road is a strange place, and musicians and regular folk often think about mundane things like how to get some food rather than historicity. Still, Providence isn't far from Long Island, so Garcia must have got there pretty early in the afternoon. Did Garcia, Nelson and Hunter think about rehearsing bluegrass tunes in a South Bay living room long ago? 16 years earlier, they had been hoping they could actually get paid to do what they were going to do for fun anyway. Here the three were, household names in different ways, as their traveling circuses met up at a hockey arena in Eastern Long Island, a long way from Belmont, CA. It had been a long strange trip indeed, but I wonder if they even noticed.

Aftermath
I can only think of one other instance where Garcia, Nelson and Hunter played on the same bill, and it was a more somber occasion, if a fine concert. On August 28, 1984, at Wolfgang's in San Francisco, all three played at a memorial for Rodney Albin, a close friend of all of them from back in the day, and a member of Comfort. Garcia and John Kahn headlined the show, Nelson played with a one-off bluegrass group and Hunter played his last show with the Dinosaurs. The benefit for Rodney Albin's family made for a fine memorial, but when you see your old friends because somebody passed away, it's not what you think of when you are younger. The Albin event was full of old friends and well wishers, too, making it an oddly less personal event than just hanging out in a hockey arena on the East Coast. I don't know if Hunter and Nelson even remember the Suffolk Forum, but I like to think that at some point each of the Wildwood Boys at least recalled how far they'd managed to get by picking, singing and writing.

The Horn Tour (September 1973 Tour Itinerary)

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

A poster for the September 26, 1973 Buffalo concert by the Grateful Dead

In September of 1973, the Grateful Dead undertook a brief 10-date tour of the East Coast. In retrospect, the unique feature of this tour was that eight of the dates featured a horn section for much of the second set. The horns weren't playing a few set pieces each night, but rather augmenting the band on various numbers and getting their own solos. The two horn players, tenor saxophonist/flautist Martin Fierro and trumpeter Joe Ellis, were both members of Doug Sahm's touring band, who also opened all eight shows. I'm not aware of any publicity or discussion of the horn section at the time of the tour. To my knowledge, the horn section only became known after the fact, when tapes surfaced and the pieces were put together.

Everyone has heard (or can hear) the tapes of the "horn section" shows on the Archive, so I don't need to analyze them musically. However, this post will consider the economic and musical motives and decision making of the Grateful Dead and its members with respect to bringing a horn section on tour. According to Martin Fierro, the horns were not well received, but I think the principal barriers to repeating the experiment were economic. Whether you think it is a good thing or a bad thing that the Dead never went out again with a horn section is moot, and in any case up to you. This post will look at the September 1973 'horn section' tour in its context. As a practical matter, I have included a tour itinerary for the month of September (part of my tour itinerary series), presented below, since it helps to keep the events in mind.

The Grateful Dead, Fall 1973
The Grateful Dead had extracted themselves from their Warner Brothers Records contract around March, 1973, and to the surprise of the entire industry the band had gone completely independent. Jerry Garcia in particular had engaged himself in a wide variety of musical activities, and was in the process of starting his own record company, Round Records. The Dead had a pretty steady income from touring, so that provided the cash to fund their various other endeavours. It seems that the economic plan was that touring would provide cash flow, and album sales would provide profits. It was a good plan, even if it was somewhat naively optimistic.

In September, 1973, amidst the usual heavy pace of Grateful Dead touring, the following projects were known to be underway:

The Grateful Dead had mostly finished recording Wake Of The Flood, slated to be the first release on Grateful Dead Records
Jerry Garcia had recorded a live album at Keystone Berkeley in July, 1973 with Merl Saunders, John Kahn and Bill Vitt. Saunders and Kahn were mixing the album with Bob and Betty, to be released on Fantasy Records (Merl's label) in early 1974
Ned Lagin had moved to California to work on various electronic music experiments with Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia and other members of the band, in the project that would become known as Seastones
John Kahn was beginning to select songs for Garcia's second solo album, which would be recorded in February 1974
Jerry Garcia was working with his bluegrass band Old And In The Way, and there had been an abortive plan to make a studio album with them

The Grateful Dead had also internalized their touring operation. The band had been one of the very first to tour with their own sound system, and while other bands had copied the Dead's lead, the Dead's own system was still state of the art. The band also had an in-house Travel Agency and Booking Agency, so they would not have to be dependent on outsiders. Although both the booking agency and the travel agency were stand-alone businesses, the Grateful Dead were now earning substantial fees in many parts of the country, so instead of sharing 10% with outsiders, they the money went to friends and allies. The Booking Agency was run by Sam Cutler, and besides the Dead the agency also booked the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, the Sons Of Champlin and Doug Sahm. Cutler's agency employed various 'family' members, including various wives (Rick Turner's wife Gail and Spencer Dryden's wife Sally, for example).

The Grateful Dead and Horn Players
Being a rock fan was more atomized in the early 1970s. All we knew was what we read in Rolling Stone, watched on Don Kirschner's Rock Concert or saw in person. Networks of tapers, much less internet message boards, were all but science fictional. Thus to those fans who saw the Grateful Dead in September 1973, it must have seemed quite surprising to have two horn players join the Grateful Dead on stage. Looking backwards, however, it was not unprecedented. Horn players had sat in with the Grateful Dead a number of times in the 1960s. Charles Lloyd had played flute and tenor sax with them a few times, at the Human Be-In and likely at the Rock Garden in 1967. Contrary to popular belief, Lloyd was not the only flautist who sat in with the Dead, as Sanpaku's Gary Larkey sat in on a few occasions in 1969. There are a few other instances of flute and/or sax players sitting in as well, including August 3 and August 28, 1969, even if we haven't definitively identified them.

In the 1970s, however, fans had few sources of information, and almost no tapes circulated, so seeing a horn section with the Grateful Dead would have been a big surprise. The only real clue to fans would have been the Hooteroll? album, where Martin Fierro and a trumpet player (Ken Balzall) had been part of the mix. Sometime in the summer of 1973, the Grateful Dead had included a horn section in the recording of "Weather Report," but Deadheads would not know that until Wake Of The Flood was released in October. Martin Fierro had sat in with Garcia and Merl Saunders on July 19, 1973, but only the most super-connected of Deadheads would have heard about it. Thus from the point of view of East Coast Deadheads in 1973, a saxophonist and trumpeter appearing on stage with the Grateful Dead would have seemed quite abrupt.

Martin Fierro and Joe Ellis
Martin Fierro (1942-2008) and Joe Ellis (1941-2008) were the horn section for the 1973 edition of the Doug Sahm Band. Fierro, at least, had been part of the Sir Douglas Quintet a few years earlier. Fierro was from El Paso, TX. Whether or not he knew Sahm from Texas, when Fierro moved to San Francisco in 1969 he rapidly connected up with the expatriate Texas musicians who had moved to San Francisco. Fierro had played with Mother Earth, a band full of Texans, appearing on their albums and possibly touring with them as well. According to Fierro, he met Garcia at a "drum circle" type jam in Golden Gate Park in 1969.

Fierro had recorded with Garcia and Howard Wales in Fall 1970 on the Hooteroll? album, apparently because Fierro had met Wales in El Paso while the organist was touring with Lonnie Mack. Fierro was also in a part-time band called Shades Of Joy, who opened for the Dead a few times (including February 27 or 28, 1969 and March 5, 1971). Shades Of Joy had a reputation as a pretty far-out improvisational band, featuring Fierro, organist Joachim Young and guitarist Jackie King. I have to assume that Fierro's ability to play with Wales and his jamming with Shades Of Joy gave Garcia confidence that Fierro could play productively with the Dead.

Joe Ellis was raised in Sacramento, but he had moved to San Francisco in the early 60s after a year at Julliard. He was an established jazz trumpeter, touring with Stan Kenton and Ray Price, among others. He also started the Latin Jazz group Ellis Island in the 1970s. He is a familiar name from the backs of albums, for those of you old enough to recall learning about musicians that way. Like many players, I assume Ellis worked paying gigs like the Doug Sahm Band in order to play his own jazz the rest of the time. Sahm was a sophisticated musician, but the horn parts for his band would have been easy for a player of Ellis' caliber. However, Sahm would have paid more than a jazz gig in some cafe, so it was a good way to make a living in music while still playing what you wanted. Stan Kenton was one of the most sophisticated arrangers in jazz, so Ellis would have been well equipped to handle the music of the Grateful Dead.

The Doug Sahm Band, Fall 1973
Doug Sahm had been a somewhat successful recording artist in the 1960s, as leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet, and had had hits with "She's About A Mover" (1965) and "Mendocino" (1968). The talented but mercurial Sahm had moved from Texas to San Francisco, but he had never broken through to the next level of success. As a Bay Area resident, Sahm had become friendly with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. By 1971, however, Sahm returned to his Texas roots and moved to Austin.

By 1973, Sahm had signed to Atlantic Records, who were heavily invested in him and had high hopes for his solo career. That year, Sahm released two solo albums on Atlantic Records. Earlier in the year, he had released his first Atlantic album Doug Sahm And Band to great acclaim, not least because Bob Dylan sang and played on the album, along with Dr. John and many other luminaries. Later in 1973, Sahm would release Texas Tornado, mostly recorded at the same sessions.

Record company orthodoxy at the time was to put bands out on the road opening for better known acts, in the hopes of broadening their audience. Ideally this not only sparked album sales, but created some buzz by getting new fans to request songs on their local FM radio station. As long as a band had a good live act and was willing to tour a lot, there was a lot of potential in this business model. English bands in particular found great success by crisscrossing the country, first third on the bill, then second and finally headlining. Such acts as Dave Mason, Savoy Brown, Climax Blues Band and particularly Foghat won over their fans one concert at a time. A record company using this marketing strategy generally gave their bands "tour support," essentially a cash advance against royalties that allowed bands to afford to be able to tour, even if they were not actually netting any money.

The Doug Sahm Band opened eight dates for the Grateful Dead, from September 11 through September 26. Since the Sahm Band had at least 7 members, the tour only makes financial sense if Atlantic was helping out, but given the fact that Sahm released two albums that year they surely were. A glance at the surviving posters for the mini-tour show that the Sahm Band was only mentioned on one, at The College of William And Mary in Virginia, even though we know they opened all the dates. It's important to remember, however, that posters were no longer an important part of promotions by 1973. Any posters were mostly ceremonial, as the principal advertising was on FM radio and newspapers. The Doug Sahm Band was surely mentioned in any FM radio ads for all the concerts. Each show has an early start time, accommodating the extra band and making a marathon event out of each night.

Sam Cutler's Booking Agency was handling Doug Sahm as well as the Grateful Dead, and the economics of bringing a horn section on tour only make sense if the horn players were already on the tour. Taking two extra musicians and their gear would not necessarily have made good business sense for the Grateful Dead, but since Fierro and Ellis were already on the tour, the economics were different. The Dead didn't "need" an opening act on the tour, as I doubt Doug Sahm sold that many tickets, but with Atlantic helping with expenses, the tour made sense for Sahm and got the horn players out with the band. Incidentally, I am confident that Fierro and Ellis were paid for their participation onstage with the Dead, although I have no idea how much. Musicians are professionals, and don't work for free. Just like a carpenter or web designer, they will help a friend for free for fun, but regular work entails getting paid. If there was a one night jam, nobody got paid, but if players are on stage every night it would have been paid for. However, in this instance, the Dead only had to pay Fierro and Ellis to play, not cover their expenses.

Assessment
Opinions vary on the Grateful Dead's experiment with horns, but it's important to remember that the whole experiment wouldn't have been possible without the Doug Sahm Band opening the tour. There had to be an exact confluence of events: a band with a horn section opening the tour, a cooperative booking agent and record company support for the band. Within a year, there wasn't even any opening acts on Grateful Dead shows anymore, much less a band with horns supported by the record company, so whatever the Dead's plans might have been, the experiment would have all but impossible to repeat.

Some people, myself among them, thought the horn section was well worth trying, even if the musical results were not entirely satisfactory. Others, probably the majority, may have appreciated the experiment in the abstract, but they didn't really like it. I myself wish it had been done again, but with entirely different players. Unfortunately, the economics as described above did not repeat themselves.

In 1973, the Grateful Dead in general and Jerry Garcia in particular were in a period of great experimentation, both the impetus for and a byproduct of their independence from the record industry. Garcia was playing with a bluegrass group and a funky bar band along with the Dead, there was an electronic music experiment afoot with Ned Lagin, and numerous album projects were in the works. Touring with a horn section was something that successful bands had done or would do over the years. Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones, to name just a few famous examples, periodically toured with horn sections in the 1970s. The additional musicians made the arrangements of the songs quite different for those who had seen the bands numerous times.

Unlike the Stones and Springsteen, however, the Dead were about improvisation, and they needed a much higher level of performance to justify the guests. While Fierro and Ellis were good players, any solos they took were essentially subtracting from Garcia's, and that was a trade-off that most listeners didn't want. On top of that, while Fierro had a soulful tenor sax sound that fit in well with the Garcia/Saunders aggregation, I don't feel that he was inventive enough for the Dead. I also think that the tenor sax didn't have a harmonic "space" to play with the Grateful Dead. This is one reason that I think that the most successful reed players with the Dead tended to play flute (like Charles Lloyd or Gary Larkey) or soprano sax (like Branford Marsalis). Tenor players had a harder time fitting into the mix, regardless of their talent level.

Another factor in the Grateful Dead using a horn section on stage was the problem of monitors. The Dead had as extensive experience as anyone with electric instruments, but the technology wasn't really in place yet for merging acoustic instruments with electric ones. One reason that the Dead gave up acoustic performances after 1970 was the difficulty in amplifying the instruments and hearing them on their onstage monitors. The singers had problems with monitors as well. Much of Deadhead criticism of Donna Godchaux (sexism aside) had to do with her off-key harmony singing. Yet she had no such problems with the Garcia Band, since they weren't so loud. The first time out, I'm sure that even the Dead sound crew couldn't get the monitors right. For playing horns in a jazz-like setting, the musicians have to hear the other players, particularly Lesh, Weir and Godchaux, and if they had problems doing that it would not be easy to improvise comfortably. Technology would solve the problems eventually--they were certainly resolved by the time Branford Marsalis started to sit in--but the technology may not have been up to it in 1973.

Garcia, Weir and Lesh were all big jazz fans. Lesh had even been a trumpet player as a teenager. I think they all must have liked the idea of bringing a horn section on the road. I have to think they were conceiving of it as a once-a-year thing, where they would bring horn players on the road for a leg of a tour once each year. This would have made it fun for the Dead and made the shows special for those who saw them. Perhaps with different guests, with a soprano sax player such as Wayne Shorter (Weather Report) or Steve Marcus (Larry Coryell's Foreplay) the concept would have worked. The first time out, however, catching everyone by surprise, the good but not great Fierro and Ellis did not quite pull it off. A formal horn section on tour was never repeated, but it's a credit to the 1973 Grateful Dead that it was tried at all.

September 1973 Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Tour Itinerary
What follows is an itinerary of Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia performances for September 1973 known to me. For other posts in the Tour Itinerary series, see here.

September 1 or 2, 1973: Bluegrass Park, Camp Springs, NC: Bluegrass Festival, including Old And In The Way (OAITW did not play)
JGMF discovered that Old And In The Way with Jerry Garcia was advertised for this North Carolina bluegrass festival, but they do not appear to have played. The fact that Garcia even tried to schedule an East Coast bluegrass show the same month as Garcia/Saunders's East Coast debut and a tour with a horn section is remarkable. I think the logistics of getting Garcia to and from the show were too daunting. Bluegrass festivals were and are run on a shoestring, and they could not have afforded to fly Garcia in and out.

September 5, 1973: SS Bay Belle (New York City Harbor), New York, NY: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders/Bo Diddley/Elephant's Memory/Mission Mountain Wood Band
The Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders band made their East Coast debut at this Hell's Angels party on a boat that sailed around the New York City harbor. Some tickets may have been available to civilians, but most opted to stay safely ashore. There is some film of this event in the movie Hells Angels Forever. I assume that Garcia was well paid to perform at this event.

The SS Bay Belle show was apparently Garcia's debut performance with the Doug Irwin designed Wolf guitar.

September 6, 1973: Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Garcia and Saunders made a more conventional debut at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, about twenty miles from New York City. I believe this event was the first performance by Garcia for John Scher, who generally booked the Capitol. Scher had promoted the Grateful Dead's July 18, 1972 Jersey City show. He became the principal promoter of the Dead and in the New York Metro area.

Keep in mind that the Garcia/Saunders Live At Keystone lp had not been released yet, and the audience would have had very little idea what to expect. There were a couple of live tracks on the first two Merl Saunders albums, but for most fans at the Capitol every song would have been a complete surprise. Bill Kreutzmann played drums for the two September shows. In my mind, the fact that Fierro did not sit in at the Capitol was a sign that he was not yet in town.

September 7, 1973:[venue], Harpers Ferry, WV: Bluegrass Festival, including Old And In The Way (OAITW did not play)
Once again, Old And In The Way was booked but did not play. Since Bill Graham was promoting the Dead at Nassau, he would not have wanted his star attraction tied up at a bluegrass festival a few hundred miles away.

September 7-8, 1973: Nassau Veteran's Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY: Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead's East Coast tour kicked off with two weekend shows at a large hockey arena, the Nassau Coliseum in suburban Long Island. Bill Graham promoted the shows, a rare East Coast venture for him. Nassau Coliseum was the biggest venue the Dead had played in NYC Metro up to this point. I wonder if the shows were sold out? The Nassua Coliseum, capacity 16,000, had just opened in 1972 and the Dead had played there in March of '73.

New York arenas often had prohibitive expenses for overtime and the like, so there was an incentive to run neither long nor late. I assume that is why the Doug Sahm Band did not open these shows, and thus why Fierro and Ellis did not join the Dead for the second sets.

A poster for the Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm concert at the College of William and Mary, September 11 1973

September 11-12, 1973: William and Mary Hall, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA: Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm And His Friends
The Dead played a Tuesday night at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. At the end of the show, Weir announced from the stage that they would be playing the next night as well. For the second night, the chairs were removed, so I assume the first night had reserved seats. The Doug Sahm Band is mentioned on the poster, and six hours of music were promised. Fierro and Ellis made their debut with the Dead, playing on several songs in the second set both nights. They would play much of the second set for the balance of the tour.

September 15, 1973: Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI: Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm Band
Bill Graham promoted this Saturday night show in Providence. The original poster lists two nights, the 14th (Friday) and the 15th. Presumably the 14th was canceled due to lack of interest. Although the Providence Civic Center is quite large, with a capacity of 15,000, the fact that only one show was held seems to be a sign that the East Coast pattern of everyone within driving distance going to every show they could get to was not yet in place.

I think the weekend booking was a misstep by Graham. If he had known that he could only book one night, the Dead might have played somewhere else on Friday. The Grateful Dead were bigger than they had ever been on the East Coast, but still not huge yet. However, this tour may have been one of the first where the Grateful Dead had very specific requirements for the arenas having to do with concrete flooring to support their sound system. The full 'Wall Of Sound' wasn't in place yet, but it was getting close. I note that the band was just playing hockey arenas, with no moderate sized theater shows stuck in between on weeknights. It may also have taken a considerable amount of time to set up and take down the system, so there may had to have been a couple of days between venues. That may account for skipped Fridays or Saturday nights on open dates (e.g. Friday Sep 14 and Saturday Sep 22).

September 17, 1973: Onandaga War Memorial Auditorium, Syracuse, NY: Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm Band
The Dead played a Monday night in Syracuse. The Onandaga War Memorial Auditorium, built in 1951, had a capacity of 8,200.

September 20-21, 1973: The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA: Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm Band
The Philadelphia Spectrum, built in 1967, had a capacity of 18,000. I believe it was the largest indoor arena the Dead had headlined at this point in their career. The Grateful Dead had headlined the Spectrum twice before, on Sept 24 '72 and March 24 '73, but they had never played two nights. Philadelphia loved the Dead, however, as did New Jersey, so it's no surprise that the city was one of their early strongholds.

The Dead played a Thursday and a Friday night at The Spectrum. I assume tickets were not sold for the Thursday show until the Friday show was nearly sold out. Nonetheless I find it strange that they band did not play anywhere on Saturday night, or even Sunday. The choices for dates are strangely off for this tour, and I think either some dates must have fallen through or there sound system setup hampered the Dead's flexibility.

September 24, 1973: Civic Arena, Pittsburgh, PA: Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm Band
The Dead played the very large Pittsburgh Civic Arena on a Monday night. I wonder how much of the 17,500 capacity was filled? Was there a conflict with the arena, so that they couldn't play Saturday or Sunday night? The hockey (NHL) and pro basketball (ABA) seasons would not yet have been underway, so I'm inclined to think that logistical problems associated with the sound system's size forced the bands into some unfavorable days of the week.

September 26, 1973: War Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, NY: Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm Band
The Dead's little tour ended in Buffalo on a Wednesday night. The War Memorial had a capacity of 18,000 as well. However, cities like Buffalo were used to getting big acts on weeknights, so the event may have been pretty well attended. The poster (up top) lists "Grateful Dead and Friends" and advertises a 7pm start, an early time that implies an opening act to the concertgoers.

The horn section experiment ended after this night. Whether or not the band liked the concept musically, going forward they would not have an opening act, nor play the sort of arenas that allowed for six-hour shows, so they never really had a chance to repeat the experiment even if they wanted to. It is remarkable, however, that in the midst of all the Grateful Dead and Garcia were working on in mid-1973, they took the time to consider reconfiguring their live show in a very radical way.

September 30, 1973: Community Center, Stinson Beach, CA: Old And In The Way
The Grateful Dead tour ended on a Wednesday, and the band members presumably flew home on Thursday. By Saturday night, Garcia was playing a bluegrass show at the tiny Community Center in Stinson Beach, near his house. The group was preparing for a sort of mini-tour, and Owsley was going to record them (and did), so this was probably a refresher gig of sorts.

For the month, Garcia had played ten dates with the Grateful Dead, eight of them with two extra members, two shows with Merl Saunders and one with his bluegrass group. In many ways, September of 1973 is one of the most radically diverse months of Garcia's career, and it is often dismissed because Deadheads don't like Martin Fierro. I myself agree that the horn section experiment was not a musical success, but it's still a remarkable effort for a largely improvisational band to bring along two extra players just to see how it would work out.

Jerry Garcia Band Personnel 1975-1995

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The cover to Cats Under The Stars, the Jerry Garcia Band	's 1978 album

So much new information has come to light about the exact personnel configurations of the Jerry Garcia Band that I decided to make a list. It made more sense to publish the list, so here it is. In general, this list supersedes anything on the Jerry Site or Deadbase IX. I have linked to various posts (mine and others) where some information has come to light. In some cases, I have sorted out some information, but I have not yet written the posts yet. If I launch into explanations for everything, the post will be unreadable, so you'll have to take my word for a few things until I finally complete the appropriate posts.

This list is focused on actual members of the Jerry Garcia Band, or substitutions for those members. I have not attempted to include any guests, such as times when Maria Muldaur may have made guest appearances prior to 'officially' joining the band, or some Clarence Clemons appearances in September 1989, and so on. I am concerned about 'first' and 'last' shows for each lineup, but I am not trying to create a thread for discussing shows that are in and of themselves disputed.

The numbering system for each lineup is arbitrary, and only exists in order to facilitate discussing the lineups in the Comments. Anyone with additions, corrections, insights or speculation is encouraged to chime in. I am conceiving of this post as a permanent installation, and I will make changes to the list as new information comes to light.

KEITH AND DONNA with JERRY GARCIA
First show-August 5, 1975 Keystone Berkeley
Last show-August 30, 1975 The Orphanage, SF

Donna Godchaux-vocals
Jerry Garcia-lead guitar, vocals
Ray Scott-guitar
Steve Schuster-tenor sax, flute, congas
Keith Godchaux-electric pianos, vocals
Mike Larsheid-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums

Notes; in the period between the end of Legion Of Mary and the beginning of the Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins (JGB #1), Garcia played a few dates with the Keith and Donna Band. A few of them were billed as "The Jerry Garcia Band." Whether this was a result of confusion on the club owner's part or because the dates were booked before Hopkins was ready is unclear. Since some dates were booked as Jerry Garcia Band, I am including this lineup on my list.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #1
First show-September 18, 1975 Sophie's, Palo Alto
Last show-December 31, 1975 Keystone Berkeley

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Nicky Hopkins-piano, vocals
John Kahn-bass
Ron Tutt-drums
>Gregg Errico-drums (December 31, 1975 Keystone Berkeley only)

Notes: This lineup was usually billed as "The Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins." The lineup also recorded part of Reflections, although Larry Knechtel played many of the piano parts instead of Hopkins. Gregg Errico played the final show because Ron Tutt was playing with Elvis Presley.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #2
First show-January 9, 1976 Sophie's, Palo Alto
Last show-January 10, 1976 Sophie's, Palo Alto

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
James Booker-piano, organ, vocals
John Kahn-bass
Ron Tutt-drums

Notes: I have a lot to say about this, but you'll just have to trust me for now. I do not actually know yet how the Sophie's shows were billed.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #3
First show-January 26, 1976 Keystone Berkeley
Last show-August 12, 1977 Pier 31, SF

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Donna Godchaux-vocals
Keith Godchaux-piano
John Kahn-bass
Ron Tutt-drums

Notes: this lineup recorded Cats Under The Stars, with some help from Maria Muldaur and Stephen Schuster.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #4
First show-November 15, 1977 Keystone Berkeley
Last show-November 3, 1978 Keystone Palo Alto

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Donna Godchaux-vocals
Maria Muldaur-vocals
Keith Godchaux-piano
John Kahn-bass
Buzz Buchanan-drums

Notes: This lineup was billed as 'Jerry Garcia and The Mystery Cats" for a few East Coast shows, but the name never caught on, if it was even intended to.

RECONSTRUCTION #1
First show-January 30, 1979 Keystone Berkeley
Last show-September 22, 1979 Keystone Berkeley

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Ron Stallings-tenor sax, vocals
Ed Neumeister-trombone
Merl Saunders-organ, keyboards, vocals
John Kahn-bass
Gaylord Birch-drums

Notes: Reconstruction was really a different group than the Jerry Garcia Band, but they are included here for continuity. John Kahn had started Reconstruction as a contemporary jazz group, with the idea that Garcia would just be a guest. Shows were often billed as "Reconstruction with special guest Jerry Garcia."

RECONSTRUCTION #2
First show-August 4, 1979 Keystone Palo Alto
Last show-September 29, 1979 Keystone Palo Alto

Carl Lockett-guitar
>Jerry Miller-guitar, vocals (for a few shows, presumably in place of Lockett)
Ron Stallings-tenor sax, vocals
Ed Neumeister-trombone
Merl Saunders-organ, keyboards, vocals
John Kahn-bass
Gaylord Birch-drums

Notes: As Garcia's participation started to wind down, Reconstruction played a few shows without him, but there was very little traction and the group faded away. I have included the later Reconstruction lineup here for continuity. It's possible that the last date was actually September 4 in Bolinas, but I am not pursuing that subject in this post.

A newspaper ad for The Keystones in October 1979 (probably from the SF Chronicle Sep 30 '79)

JERRY GARCIA BAND #11a
First show-October 7, 1979 Keystone Berkeley
Last show-March 27, 1980 Keystone Berkeley

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Ozzie Ahlers-electric piano, synthesizer
John Kahn-bass
Johnny De Foncesca-drums

Notes: Originally, it appears this lineup was designed to co-exist with Reconstruction, but Reconstruction tailed off before the new Garcia Band got started.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #11b
First show-July 18, 1980 The Stone
Last show-August 9, 1980 Keystone Palo Alto

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Ozzie Ahlers-electric piano, synthesizer
John Kahn-bass
Gregg Errico-drums

Notes: Johnny De Foncesca died in an auto accident in the Spring of 1980, and Gregg Errico was brought in as a substitute for a brief tour.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #12a
First show-January 22, 1981 Keystone Palo Alto
Last show- January 23, 1981 Keystone Palo Alto

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
John Kahn-bass
Daoud Shaw-drums

Notes: This lineup seems to have originally been conceived of as a quartet, although they only played two shows in that format.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #12b
First show-January 27, 1981 Old Waldorf
Last show-June 1, 1981 The Stone

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
Jimmy Warren-electric piano
John Kahn-bass
Daoud Shaw-drums

Notes: Jimmy Warren joined the band on their third date, at Garcia's request.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #13a
First show-June 25, 1981 Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Last show- June 26, 1981 Fox-Warfield

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Essra Mohawk-vocals
Liz Stires-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
Jimmy Warren-electric piano
Phil Lesh-bass
Daoud Shaw-drums

Notes: I have a lot to say about these shows as well, but it's too long to summarize. For some reason, Phil Lesh substituted for John Kahn for the debut of the vocalists. There may have been a 'stealth' warmup show with Phil Lesh on bass in Salinas on June 24, as well. For now, you'll have to wait until the full post.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #13b
First show-July 23, 1981 The Stone
Last show-August 23, 1981 Keystone Palo Alto

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Essra Mohawk-vocals
Liz Stires-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
Jimmy Warren-electric piano
John Kahn-bass
>Phil Lesh-bass (August 22, 1981 Fairfax Pavilion only)
Daoud Shaw-drums

Notes: This lineup seems to have been the first iteration of the permanent structure of the Jerry Garcia Band, with Melvin Seals and two female vocalists. Essra Mohawk was Daoud Shaw's wife, and Liz Stires was Jimmy Warren's girlfriend, so the JGB replicated its previous vocal team, using the wife and girlfriend of two band members. Mohawk was a successful songwriter and vocalist in her own right, and may have only planned to be part of the band for a brief time in any case. Phil Lesh filled in for another show in Fairfax, some sort of Benefit that was booked at the last minute.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #14a
First show-September 7, 1981 Concord Pavilion
Last show-September 20, 1981 The Stone

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Julie Stafford-vocals
Liz Stires-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
Jimmy Warren-electric piano
John Kahn-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums

Notes: Local singer Julie Stafford replaced Mohawk on a more permanent basis. Shaw left also, and both of them returned to Philadelphia. Bill Kreutzmann filled in for a few shows, for the first time since the days of the Garcia/Saunders band. I saw the September 7 show, so I am certain about Kreutzmann's presence. I am just guessing about the trio of shows at the Keystones that followed (September 18-20). It's not impossible that Tutt played those shows.

The cover of the Jerry Garcia Band's 1982 album Run For The Roses

JERRY GARCIA BAND #14b
First show-October 25, 1981 Keystone Palo Alto
Last Show-November 20, 1981 Rainbow Theater, Denver, CO

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Julie Stafford-vocals
Liz Stires-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
Jimmy Warren-electric piano
John Kahn-bass
Ron Tutt-drums

Notes: The voice of Steve Marcus on the Grateful Dead Hotline announced this tour as "The Return Of Ron Tutt." Run For The Roses was also recorded during this period, with Tutt playing the drums, and that would not at all have been by chance. Although Roses was not a satisfying album, it was a sign of Garcia's seriousness that the tracks were recorded when Tutt was available.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #14c
First show-December 17, 1981 Keystone Palo Alto
Last show-June 24, 1982 Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Julie Stafford-vocals
Liz Stires-vocals (last show June 22, 1982 The Mosque, Richmond, VA)
Melvin Seals-organ
Jimmy Warren-electric piano
John Kahn-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums

Notes: Kreutzmann returned to the drum chair for the remaining six months of this lineup. Stires left the band two days before the tour ended, for unknown reasons.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #15a
First show-October 13, 1982 The Catalyst
Last show- October 24, 1982 River Theater, Guerneville, CA

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
John Kahn-bass
Gregg Errico-drums

Notes: Jimmy Warren left and was not replaced. It appears that there were plans for new vocalists, but for some reason a few shows were played as a quartet. Gregg Errico returned on the drums.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #15b
First show-October 28, 1982 Rissmiller's, Reseda, CA
Last show-June 5, 1983 Tower Theater, Upper Darby, PA

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
DeeDee Dickerson-vocals
Jaclyn LaBranch-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
John Kahn-bass
Gregg Errico-drums

Notes: My understanding has been that DeeDee Dickerson and Jaclyn LaBranch were singers in the choir for which Melvin Seals was the musical director.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #21a
First show-July 20, 1983 Keystone Palo Alto
Last show-July 24, 1983 Nevada county Fairgrounds, Grass Valley, CA

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
DeeDee Dickerson-vocals
Jaclyn LaBranch-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
John Kahn-bass
David Kemper-drums

Notes: David Kemper began his long run as drummer for the Jerry Garcia Band in July of 1983. Nobody in the band had met him beforehand--Kahn had simply called a producer friend in Los Angeles and asked him who was good. Kemper, who had been a studio musician since 1966, was good alright--really good. He stayed for 10 years.

The cover of the Jerry Garcia Band's 1991 live album, recorded 1990

JERRY GARCIA BAND #21b
First show-September 30, 1983 Country Club, Reseda
Last show-November 19, 1993 Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Gloria Jones-vocals
Jaclyn LaBranch-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
John Kahn-bass
David Kemper-drums
>(Gaylord Birch-drums: Oct 7 '85>Feb 2 '86 see JGB #22)

Notes: Gloria Jones, another choir member, replaced Dickerson. This configuration of the Jerry Garcia Band played more shows than any other lineup, probably more than all the others put together.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #22
First show-October 7, 1985 Keystone Palo Alto
Last show-February 21, 1986The Stone

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Gloria Jones-vocals
Jaclyn LaBranch-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
John Kahn-bass
Gaylord Birch-drums

Notes: Gaylord Birch played 10 JGB gigs during this stretch, all in the Bay Area. I presume that Kemper had another commitment, and since Birch was an established quantity from his time in Reconstruction, he was a comfortable choice as a sub.

JERRY GARCIA BAND #23
First show-February 4, 1994 The Warfield
Last show-April 23, 1995 The Warfield

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Gloria Jones-vocals
Jaclyn LaBranch-vocals
Melvin Seals-organ
John Kahn-bass
Don Baldwin-drums

Notes: For reasons unknown, Kemper was replaced after 10 years by Don Baldwin. Baldwin had played with Melvin Seals and Mickey Thomas in the Elvin Bishop Group in the 70s, and then had joined Thomas in the Starship in the 1980s. Presumably Seals recommended him for the Garcia Band, although Garcia and Kahn would have been familiar with his drumming from the past.

November 28-December 1, 1966: The Matrix: Grateful Dead/Jerry Pond

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Tapes circulate from weeknight Grateful Dead performances at The Matrix in late 1966. The Dead were booked from Monday to Thursday, November 28-December 1. While the tape is a wonderfully clean document for the times, giving a pretty good representation of the band's sound in that era, much focus has been given over the years as to whether the tape is a compilation of the four nights, or from a single night. However, I am going to largely leave that discussion aside and consider why the Grateful Dead were even playing the Matrix on four weeknights, when they would be headlining the Fillmore just two weeks later. In the end, I will make the argument that rather than the tape providing a record of some or one of the shows, in fact the tape was the specific reason the Dead were playing the Matrix in the first place. Whether a compilation of four nights or a couple of hot sets, I will propose that the Grateful Dead played the Matrix in November of 1966 in order to make a demo tape of themselves.

The Matrix, 3138 Fillmore Street, San Francisco
The Matrix had been opened in August of 1965 in order to provide a place for the Jefferson Airplane to play. Marty Balin's father, Joe Buchwald, was one of the three backers. The Airplane rapidly graduated from the Matrix, of course, once they became famous, but in the mid-sixties the Matrix was the first club that encouraged hippie bands to play original music to hippie audiences. The Fillmore and the Avalon were the top of the scene, certainly, but both those venues were generally only open on weekends. Within the confines of the local scene, there weren't many other places to play. Hippies weren't welcome everywhere, and the North Beach clubs had mostly gone topless and preferred bands who simply played Top 40 music to accompany the dancers, and didn't pay well at that. For longhaired bands on the rise in 1966, The Matrix was one of the few available gigs, and all the new bands played there on the way up. The Grateful Dead, for example, had played the Matrix in January of 1966.

The Matrix seated about 100 people, tops, and served beer and pizza. Dancing was against the law, because of an archaic San Francisco ordnance involving "Dance Permits." As a result, fans went to the Matrix to sit and listen, so free-form blues jamming and other kinds of odd noodling was fine. The Matrix generally booked a band and a folksinger from Tuesday through Thursday, and two bands on Friday and Saturday. Sometimes, groups who were popular at the Fillmore or Avalon would play weeknights at the Matrix because it wouldn't conflict with paying weekend shows around Northern California. Whatever modest amount of money a band received for playing at the Matrix to 50 or 100 people, it was more than they would have gotten for rehearsing, as in 1966 there were pretty much no weeknight club dates for long-haired bands.

The Matrix Tapes
The operators of the Matrix, particularly manager/co-owner Peter Abrams, had the foresight to recognize early on that special music was happening in San Francisco, and he began to tape every show at the Matrix starting in mid-1966. Unfortunately, however, tapes of every show were not retained. Recording tape was expensive, as was storage space, so only the "best" tapes were kept, and the balance was taped over. This wasn't charity--the idea was that when the bands became famous, early live tapes of their performances would be very valuable. While the recordings at the Matrix weren't exactly state of the art, in many cases soundboard tapes from the Matrix are the earliest and most primal record of San Francisco rock music.

There are tapes from the Matrix circulating from numerous artists. A few have even been turned into legitimate releases over the years, by The Doors, The Velvet Underground, The Great Society, The Sparrow and Sandy Bull, among others. However, practice at the Matrix was to tape every set of a performer and then to keep either a compilation of best performances, or a tape of the "best" set. One frustrating result is that Matrix tape labels are only generally correct, not specifically. The 1966 Grateful Dead tapes, for example, probably originally said something like "Grateful Dead-November 66" without any specific explanation. I will leave the tape parsing to sharper ears than mine, but the surviving Grateful Dead Matrix tapes, usually dated November 29 and December 1, 1966, likely can not be dated more specifically than that. They are likely complete sets from some nights, with some other songs spliced in, but we can't know for certain without other evidence. This type of selection was true of all surviving Matrix tapes from every band, not just the Grateful Dead.

There are considerably fewer Matrix tapes in existence than is generally believed. Because of confusion over the Matrix's tendency to make compilations, the ravages of time and wishful thinking, many tapes have circulated under a variety of dates. Since it was known that the Matrix taped everything, it was plausible to hope that everything was preserved, but that was not the case. The Matrix had good relationships with the various bands, for the most part, so I doubt that there are Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia tapes that were made at the Matrix that were not known to the Grateful Dead Vault, even if the Matrix owners held the originals. My interest is not in the dating of each November '66 Matrix tape, but in speculating on why the Grateful Dead even played the Matrix at all at that time.

Why Would The Grateful Dead Play The Matrix In November 1966?
The Grateful Dead played The Matrix in January 1966, when they were nobodies. They did not play there again until November 1966, and the Grateful Dead proper did not play there again. Jerry Garcia, on the other hand, seemed to use the Matrix as his private clubhouse from 1968 onwards, dropping by at jam sessions and playing with various casual ensembles like Jerry Garcia and Friends, Mickey Hart And The Hartbeats, a bluegrass band and David Crosby (aka "David And The Dorks"). Clearly the band was welcome at any time, as were most San Francisco groups. Why November of '66?

For once I am not going to make my usual argument and say that the Grateful Dead were scrambling for cash, and would take any paying gig. If that were true, then the Dead would likely have played the Matrix more than just one time, as there were no other weekday gigs to be had in the Bay Area during the 1966-68 period. For one thing, the Matrix was a tiny place, and I doubt that the Dead's relatively huge sound system even fit in the place, much less on the stage. I don't know how much bands got paid at The Matrix, but it wasn't much, and the Dead were starting to accumulate crew members, and they would need gas for the truck and so on, so a Matrix gig may have been barely break even, if that. It just seems to me that if the Dead could make money at the Matrix, they would have played there regularly in 1966-67.

There's another reason I find the November '66 booking odd, and that is the fact that the Grateful Dead were going to be headlining the Fillmore on the weekend of December 9-11, less than two weeks from the Matrix show. I do not know the exact structure of Bill Graham's contracts at the time, but I know in subsequent years his contracts prevented bands from advertising shows within two weeks or a certain number of miles from the Fillmore. I don't know Graham's 1966 protocol, but I can't imagine that he would want his headliners to play a nightclub show 10 days before headlining. The Grateful Dead were an underground sensation in San Francisco in 1966, but they weren't a sellout act. I know that the Dead were playing UC Berkeley on December 2 (at Pauley Ballroom), so Graham's contract couldn't be completely restrictive.

I know that some out-of-town bands who were opening at the Fillmore would play weeknight gigs at the Matrix, so Graham wasn't unsympathetic to the Matrix, but I can't find an instance of a 1966 headliner playing The Matrixso close to a Fillmore date. I have to think Graham formally or informally didn't allow his headline bands to advertise shows in San Francisco a few weeks before a Fillmore show, and that makes the Matrix show all the more mystifying. I would assert that if the Grateful Dead were playing four nights at The Matrix under their own name 10 days before headlining the Fillmore, it was with Graham's tacit or explicit permission, and the reason couldn't exclusively be a quick payday.

The Grateful Dead's Recording Contract
According to Dennis McNally, Joe Smith of Warner Brothers Records agreed to a contract with the Grateful Dead in October of 1966, although it was not completed and signed until some modifications in December 1966. The actual recording of the first album did not commence until January 1967. Thus, at the very least, we know the Grateful Dead had to be thinking about recording their debut album, since they knew it was imminent. The standard thing to do at the time was for new acts to record every single number in their live repertoire, in a straight run through without embellishment. The thinking was that not only could songs be considered for the album, but even songs that were not going to be used might have good ideas for arrangements, tempos, harmonies and other details that could be used on original material. Also, most bands had rarely or never heard themselves play, since "home recording" was not really possible for electric bands.

We know that the Grateful Dead had some live recordings and studio demos from mid-1966, but the band must have known that they had improved enormously since then. The Grateful Dead also had a relatively large repertoire for a new band, and no money, so spending days in the studio recording demos was not plausible. The obvious solution must have been to record one of their live shows, but that was not so easy in 1966. The Dead didn't have recording gear, or much anyway, and it would have cost money to hire an engineer and equipment. The Matrix might have seemed like a perfect compromise. The club was already set up to record everything, and all the Dead had to do was show up. If they got paid a little bit, it would defray expenses, which was better than paying out. Look at the list of songs that survive from the Matrix tape, regardless of what date or dates the tapes might be from [per Deadlists]:

"Nov 29 '66"
Me And My Uncle [3:47] ; Same Thing [11:35] ; Stealin' [2:51] ; Big Boy Pete [2:46] ; One Kind Favor [5:05] ; Early Morning Rain [2:15] ; Cold Rain And Snow [3:04] ; Viola Lee Blues [10:23]

Down So Long [3:29] ; Something On Your Mind [4:36] ; Lindy [2:48] ; Good Morning Little Schoolgirl [10:06] ; I Just Want To Make Love To You (1) [3:18]

"Dec 1 '66"
Minglewood Blues [3:36] ; Betty And Dupree [5:01] ; Next Time You See Me [3:39] ; I Know You Rider [3:58] ; Big Boss Man [3:51] ; One Kind Favor [5:23] ; Alice D. Millionaire [2:48] ; Cream Puff War [9:11]

You Don't Love Me [4:15] ; Beat It On Down The Line [2:29] ; It Hurts Me Too [4:34] ; On The Road Again [2:26] ; Yonder's Wall (1) [#4:01] ; My Own Fault [6:59] ; Down So Long [3:30] ; Cold Rain And Snow [2:56] ; Viola Lee Blues [15:02]

Deep Elem Blues [#4:49] ; Something On Your Mind [5:04] ; Big Boy Pete [3:04] ; Death Don't Have No Mercy [9:41] ; Lindy [2:59] ; Dancin' In The Street [11:14] ; Me And My Uncle (2) [4:11]

Let me apologize in advance if I have not kept up with the latest tape analysis, and included some material that may belong to another date. However, my general point is that the November Matrix tapes seem to include a run-through of everything in the Grateful Dead's live set at the time. Whether they are from two, three or four nights is beside the point. The Dead wanted a recording of every song they did. Whether they specifically wanted to listen to it themselves or wanted it for their future producer wouldn't matter. The key was they were looking for a timestamped recording of their current live act so they could figure out what might work and what might not.

I can't prove any of this, but all the pieces seem to be in place.

The Matrix tape is a compilation, as are all Matrix tapes, but the compilation seems designed to include every working number in their repertoire
The Matrix is one of the few places that could plausibly be used to record four nights of performance designed not to entertain the crowd but to go across their entire songbook
Bill Graham would have been supportive of the Dead getting signed, and might have been amenable to letting them use the Matrix as a recording venue, even at some slight risk to their headline shows in December
And rather more trivially, it might explain the weird false start on "Me And My Uncle," where the band stops and starts over. It would make more sense if the group was treating the shows like a demo session

At this point, probably, nobody remembers why the Grateful Dead played the Matrix. Owsley denied that they even played the Matrix in late 1966, of course, but that was just Owsley, as it seems pretty plain that they played there. Whatever the band's motives, I'm certainly glad they went to the one venue that taped everything and played seemingly every song they knew. In itself, however, that seems like an unlikely thing to do, and that's all the more reason that I think the band had more practical motives for playing the Matrix in November of 1966.

I have always wondered why the Dead never recorded any studio demos in late 1966 that showed the breadth of their material, as was standard practice at the time. It may have been, however, that they had already done the recording at The Matrix prior to the final signing of the Warners contract in December, and they may have already had a tape for producer Dave Hassinger to listen to. If I'm correct, than we may have a rare snapshot of the Grateful Dead's entire repertoire at a single moment in time, itself an all but unseen commodity.

December 31, 1968: Winterland Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Santana/It's A Beautiful Day

2011-12-29T06:00:00.000-08:00

The cover for the video of The Grateful Dead's performance at the last show at Winterland in 1978

The Grateful Dead turned New Year's Eve into a Bay Area institution. If you include Jerry Garcia shows and guest appearances, the Dead played 24 of 26 New Year's Eves in the San Francisco Bay Area, including every year from 1970 to 1991. The Dead were the last of the intact ballroom bands from the psychedelic 60s, and it was an axiom that the Dead carried on the tradition started by Bill Graham of an all-night New Year's Eve show, with rock bands until dawn. New Year's Eve shows at the Fillmore, Winterland or the Avalon in the 60s are always described as "legendary," and they probably were. Yet despite that, we have almost no information about any of those events: no reviews, no eyewitness accounts, no photos, only the most fragmentary of tape evidence and not even any setlists. How do we know the shows were legendary?

Yes, yes, I know, everybody was way gone and no one recalls a thing, and so on. But wasn't that true of every show? Somebody must remember something, right? Therefore, in honor of the title of this blog, I am going to try and assess what little information there is about the Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve show on December 31, 1968. The Grateful Dead played the last show at Winterland exactly ten years later. What do we know about their first New Year's Eve Winterland performance? What can we reasonably assume? Why do we know so little? If we are lucky, I can inspire some long-dormant memories in the Comments, and a vivid flashback or two may eventually give us some real context. I myself think the 1968 New Year's Eve show must have been a remarkable event, and I find it frustrating to have such a high profile show and so little actual information.

What Do We Know About The Grateful Dead's Performance?
We know one very important fact about the Grateful Dead performance on New Year's Eve, 1968, even if it is a frustrating one. We know that the Winterland New Year's Eve show was the first attempt by the Dead's engineers to record the band live on 16-track tape. This was probably the first attempt to record any band live on 16-track tape. The band had been working with Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor at Pacific Recording in San Mateo throughout the fall, recording an album tentatively titled Earthquake Country. They tried working with 8 tracks and then 12 tracks, but did not like the tinny sound that resulted. Ampex was a high tech company located near Pacific Recording, and the band befriended the engineers and persuaded them to deliver one of the first 16-track recorders ever built to Pacific instead of Columbia Studios in Los Angeles.

The band and their engineers even got some of the Ampex engineers to agree to help them sneak the heavy recorder out the door and out to Winterland, which is how the attempt to record at Winterland came about. The Dead, at this point, weren't particularly planning a live album, but just generally experimenting with recording. Since they tried to record most or all shows anyway, it obviously seemed like an interesting experiment to try recording the band in sixteen tracks instead of two, so they snuck the machine out the door and off to Winterland.

Not surprisingly, recording the Grateful Dead in sixteen tracks was a daunting technical exercise that failed. However, the band was enamored enough with the experiment that they chose to try recording at the Avalon Ballroom a month later (January 26, 1969). That time, however, the band got it right, figuring out whatever technical problems had plagued them at Winterland. However, 16-track tape was very expensive and the Dead were famously cash poor, so they simply taped over the Winterland material in order to record at the Avalon. If I have the timeline correct, they also taped over much of the Avalon material, too, when they recorded the subsequent month at Fillmore West, so any traces of the original Winterland show are long gone. We do have Live/Dead to show for it (and the 10-cd Live At Fillmore West), so I'm thankful for that, but any Winterland recordings ceased to exist within a month.

I have to assume also that with their engineering crew working with brand new technology, any efforts to record the band the "regular way" were pushed to the wayside. I have no idea about outputs and inputs, or any of that, but I have to figure that the reputedly huge 16-track Ampex box swallowed up all the available space, and there was neither opportunity nor motive to record a tape using the 2-track recorder they used on the road. It may have been as simple as there being no extra room for the smaller tape deck. I have to assume that any BGP recording equipment was pushed aside also. As a result, though, when the Fillmore West 16-tracks were erased, there appears to have been no other recordings.

Deadbase XI does have a partial setlist for New Year's Eve '68:

Midnight Hour
Dark Star>
St. Stephen>
The Eleven>
Turn On Your Lovelight.

Assuming "Midnight Hour" was actually played at midnight, and that the list was continuous, that sounds like a pretty cool way to start the New Year. However, we know no such thing. First of all, where does the list come from? If it's a memory, I hope whoever it was is reading this blog. In any case, if it's a memory, it's probably just the highlights of the show. The more intriguing possibility is that this list comes from a tape box. Perhaps while the New Year's Eve tape was erased, the tape box was at least still legible? If true, then we would at least have some confirmation that the named songs were actually performed. However, I do not know Deadbase's source for the partial setlist [update: superb research by a Commenter reveals that one piece of tape endures: a recording of "Midnight Hour." However, it seems to have featured members of most of the bands, and so was probably recorded at an early morning jam, not at midnight, so we don't have a clue what was played at midnight. Of course, they could have played the song twice).

The New Year's Eve Order Of Battle
Until about 1970, Fillmore and Fillmore West concerts had a different structure than modern rock concerts. Generally, all three billed bands ("on the poster," I like to say) performed twice, in round robin fashion. The opening act would perform the 1st and 4th sets of the evening, and the headliner the 3rd and 6th sets. Thus while the Grateful Dead typically played two approximately hour long sets on nights they played the Fillmores, the sets were separated by the other two acts. I have been able to estimate a typical schedule for a regular Fillmore West show (based on some research of my own and an eyewitness account of the Saturday, March 1, 1969 show. For those interested in the details, see Appendix 1 below). If the Grateful Dead headlined a Fillmore or Fillmore West show from 1967 to 1969, the evening usually looked something like this:

Opening Act: 8:00-8:45pm and 11:45-12:30am
Second Act: 9:00-10:00pm and 12:45-1:45am
Grateful Dead: 10:30-11:30 and 2:00-3:00am

"Closing Time" was officially 2:00am in San Francisco, but it could be overlooked if there were no drinks being sold (the Fillmores had no bar), no fights and relationships with the cops were good.
Thus while most Fillmore shows ended before 2:00, late running shows for the likes of the Dead were manageable. For many bands, including the Dead, the first sets would be shorter than the allotted time. Headliners like the Dead were probably allowed to play as long as they wanted to for their final set.

With this framework in mind, I have attempted to speculate on what the New Year's Eve 1968 schedule may have looked like. Keep in mind that we have nothing to go on--I don't even know what order the bands came on, or even when the concert started. But here's my educated guess of the evening's running order [update: an eagle-eyed Commenter has noted that the poster identifies the show as running from 9:00pm to 9:00am, so I have revised the pre-midnight timing somewhat]:

It's A Beautiful Day 9:00-9:40
Santana 9:50-10:30
Quicksilver 10:40-11:40
New Year's festivities? 11:40-12:00pm (complete speculation on my part)
Grateful Dead 12:00-1:00am
IABD 1:15-2:00am
Santana 2:15-3:00am
Quicksilver 3:15-4:15am
Grateful Dead 4:30-5:30am
Jam session? 5:30-6:15am (it appears there was a big jam)
Breakfast 6:00am-9:00am

I have assumed that the Grateful Dead started their first set at midnight, presumably with "Midnight Hour," but I may be pasting later experiences onto the past. Maybe the Dead had started at 11:30, and were roaring through "St. Stephen" at midnight, and they turned on strobe lights and set off fireworks. No one actually knows. But there were four bands, and the Dead in their prime, and it was a long night, so something must have happened. Here's hoping my post sparks a long-dormant flashback [update: another Commenter finds a source who recalls that QMS played at midnight, starting out with "Dino's Song."If this memory stands up, then I would invert QMS and the Dead on the proposed schedule].

Appendix 1: Fillmore West Scheduling
I know that all three bands on Fillmore West posters played twice around, so that means there were 5 set changes. Shows generally started at 8:00pm. I know that headliners were told to do two one-hour sets, as this was a crisis for visiting English bands like The Who and Cream, used to doing much shorter shows. In the earlier days of the Fillmore, opening acts played much shorter sets, like 30 or 45 minutes. However, when there were multiple headliners, every headliner probably got an hour.

Based on the lengths of various surviving live tapes (not just the Dead), a lot of bands played first sets considerably shorter than their allotted time, and often second sets as well. Most bands were used to doing 40 or 50 minutes and did not have two hours of material. By 1969, however, even second acts had a number of albums, and were prepared to play two long sets at Fillmore West, so sets probably ran closer to full length. Bands almost all used the Fillmore West sound system, so the set changes were considerably shorter than they would be today. The Grateful Dead were one of the few exceptions to this rule, as they used their own sound system, so I allotted more time for their first set change in my schedules. Keep in mind also that bands had considerably less spare equipment in the early days, and while the set changes were easy, a busted amplifier or something could cause a time consuming headache.

My outline of a Fillmore West schedule was borne out, and to some extent guided by, a detailed description of someone who attended the Saturday, March 1, 1969 show at Fillmore West, featuring the Grateful Dead, Pentangle and Frumious Bandersnatch. Our correspondent had to be out of the Fillmore West by midnight, so I had to speculate more about the late night sets. On that night, the Dead's first set was 45 minutes and the second set was 67 minutes. Keep in mind that their allotted time would also be taken up with some tuning up and stage business prior to the show, usally not preserved on tape.

Appendix 2: Notes On The Other acts, December 31, 1968

Happy Trails by Quicksilver Messenger Service, released in March, 1969

Quicksilver Messenger Service
December 31, 1968 was the last performance of the classic quartet lineup of Quicksilver Messenger Service. John Cipollina (lead guitar), Gary Duncan (guitar, vocals), David Freiberg (bass, vocals) and Greg Elmore (drums) recorded the debut album (released May 1968) and the legendary Happy Trails, released in March, 1969. Happy Trails, recorded in November of 1968, mostly at Fillmores East and West, was the album that immortalized Quicksilver, but that lineup of the band was already gone by the time of its release . Gary Duncan quit the band after the 1968 New Year's show, and he would not return until the next New Year's Eve (at Winterland with the Jefferson Airplane). However, when Duncan returned, he brought singer Dino Valenti with him, and the musical character of Quicksilver was never the same.

However, while it is easy to sentimentalize the final performance of the Quicksilver quartet, in fact they were a tired, unhappy band who had not written or likely even performed a new song in a year. They had been playing the same main numbers over and over for two years, and while they had it down to a powerful formula, it had nowhere left to go. I'm sure that Quicksilver put on a good show New Year's Eve, and it probably sounded like Happy Trails, but only those who were seeing them for the first time would have been really impressed.

Santana
Santana was some months away from signing with Columbia Records, and their debut album would not be released until August, 1969. However, they were a popular local group who were often second billed at the Fillmore West, and they headlined smaller halls around the Bay Area. Given that they did not have an album, they were hardly unknowns. The late 1968 Santana band did not have the same lineup that would be made iconic in the Woodstock movie. In December 1968, Santana was

Carlos Santana-guitar
Gregg Rolie-organ, vocals
David Brown-bass
Doc Livingstone-drums
Marcus Malone-congas

By March 1969, Livingstone and Malone would be replaced by Michael Shrieve, Mike Carabello and Chepito Areas.

We do have a pretty good idea of how Santana sounded at the time--a very good idea, in fact. Santana had played Fillmore West just two weeks earlier, co-headlining with The Grass Roots for four nights from December 19-22. In 1997, Columbia Legacy released a two-cd set of highlights of Santana's performances that weekend as Live At The Fillmore West '68. While not as incendiary as the version of Santana which would follow, they were already a terrific band, and way ahead of their time, so they must have rocked the house in a big way. While Quicksilver was just repeating themselves, Santana was very much a New Thing, and the crowd must surely have recognized it.

It's A Beautiful Day
It's A Beautiful Day, just like Santana, had not yet released their first album, but they were a popular live attraction already. Just a month earlier (November 28-30), IABD had co-headlined a weekend at Fillmore West with the new British band Deep Purple (who had a hit with "Hush") and San Francisco funksters Cold Blood. It's A Beautiful Day had formed in late 1967, and had been through a variety of players, but the lineup had stabilized by the end of 1968 into a powerful group.

Patti Santos-vocals
David LaFlamme-electric violin, vocals
Hal Wagenet-lead guitar
Linda LaFlamme-organ
Mitch Holman-bass
Val Fuentes-drums

It's A Beautiful Day's first album was released in mid-1969, to huge acclaim, and it got massive FM airplay in San Francisco and elsewhere. Songs like "White Bird" and "Hot Summer's Day" were staples of FM rock radio for many years. However, due to serious management disputes between bandleader David LaFlamme and manager Matthew Katz, a series of lawsuits has made the band's albums, particularly the first one, very difficult to get on cd. As a result, IABD was never really able to capitalize on the resurgence of interest in classic rock bands in the '80s and 90s.

Wolfgang's Vault has several nice recordings of IABD from mid-1968, performing most of the first album. Although subsequent performances were no doubt more nuanced, it is clear from these tapes that IABD had their whole sound completely figured out, which is why their first album was so good. In many ways, It's A Beautiful Day was one of those groups like The Doors or Devo who have their musical identity completely determined by their first album, but were unable to progress much beyond it. IABD was probably pretty impressive to the Winterland crowd, as they were already at their high water mark.

Millard Agency
In 1968, the Grateful Dead were booked by the Millard Agency, the talent agency wing of Bill Graham's music industry empire. Graham had loaned the Dead some money in mid-68, and they had apparently agreed to be booked by Millard in return. Among the other groups booked by Millard at the time were Santana, It's A Beautiful Day, Cold Blood, Elvin Bishop and Aum. It was not a coincidence that those groups regularly appeared with the Dead during the 68-69 period. New Year's Eve 1968 was a big deal, by any standard, and with the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver topping the bill, the show was going to sell out. Graham's bookers had the sense to make sure that their own agency's bands were on the bill that night, to make sure they got heard. To be fair, Santana and It's A Beautiful Day were terrific live acts that must have gone over well with the crowd, but there was a distinct business reason to choose them over other local acts.

Appendix 3: Fillmore West, December 31, 1968-Vanilla Fudge/Richie Havens/Cold Blood
BGP inaugurated another New Year's Eve tradition in 1968, namely having multiple concerts in the Bay Area, rather than just a single event. Besides the high profile Dead/QMS show at Winterland, another concert was held at the Fillmore West. The Fillmore West was about a mile from Winterland, and less than half the size, but it was still a substantial hall for the era. I think the three bands were chosen specifically because they appealed to a somewhat different audience than typical Dead or Quicksilver fans. Vanilla Fudge were the inventors of "Heavy Rock" and had a very East Coast style; Richie Havens was a mostly solo folk artist, and local favorites Cold Blood played horn driven funk. Although both concerts were advertised on the same poster, I think the Fillmore West bands were selected to appeal to people who wanted to attend a New Year's Eve rock concert, but not by San Francisco band. Admittedly, Cold Blood were local, but they weren't an "acid rock" band, and in any case they were booked by Millard, so they were going to be on this high profile bill.

I'm not particularly interested in the '68 Fillmore West New Year's Eve concert, per se. However, once again we know absolutely nothing about the show. If any information surfaced about the concert, it might be possible to triangulate a little bit about the Winterland show, with respect to set lengths, New Year's celebrations or special add-ons. Once again, all information about any San Francisco New Year's Eve concerts in the 1960s seems to have gone down the rabbit hole, with only the faintest traces left at the surface. New Year's Eve in San Francisco must have been truly legendary, because no one seems to remember a thing. Here's to hoping there's still some flashbacks yet to come.

December 31, 1982: Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland, CA: The Dinosaurs

2011-12-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

My notes from the Dinosaurs' performance in Oakland on December 31, 1982

The December 31, 1982 Grateful Dead show is usually recalled for a variety of reasons. Most prominent of those reasons is the third set, when Etta James and the Tower Of Power horns joined the Dead for a high-energy R&B set that harkened back to the Pigpen era. The 1982 New Year's Eve show was also the last Dead show at the old Oakland Auditorium Arena, before it was upgraded to become the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. One fact of the show that usually gets overlooked, however, was that it was the only Grateful Dead show where Robert Hunter performed as the opening act. Hunter performed as part of his then-new group The Dinosaurs, which featured veterans of bands that had been the Grateful Dead's peers and rivals in 60s San Francisco. An old arena, an old band, and what was left of their old friends: at the time, enjoyable as the show was, it was a nostalgic look back that in itself would not be repeated. This post will look at Robert Hunter and The Dinosaurs opening set on New Year's Eve 1982/83, in the context of the Grateful Dead's history.

Robert Hunter and The Dinosaurs
Robert Hunter had returned to live performance in late 1975. He had had two bands, Roadhog in 1975 and '76, and Comfort in 1977 and '78. Hunter then scaled back to tour as a duo with bassist Larry Klein, and from 1979 he had toured as a solo artist, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. Comfort, a fine live band, had opened some Jerry Garcia Band shows in the Spring of 1978, and Hunter had opened some Jerry Garcia Band shows as a solo act in 1980. On a 1980 swing through the East Coast, Hunter had not only opened for Garcia, but each night he joined the Garcia Band for two of his own numbers, "Tiger Rose" and "Promontory Rider." Yet Hunter had never performed with or even performed on the same stage as the Grateful Dead. Given that the Grateful Dead didn't have many opening acts in the 1975-82 period, perhaps that is not at all surprising.

In July of 1982, Barry "The Fish" Melton, formerly of Country Joe and The Fish, invited former Big Brother and The Holding Company bassist Peter Albin to play a one-off gig in Marin County. In response to some kind of good natured heckling from the crowd, Melton remarked from the stage that the band was just "a bunch of old Dinosaurs." Although both Melton and Albin were under 40, they felt a long way from the Avalon and Woodstock, when their bands headlined and their albums were bestsellers. This inspired Melton to form a group of players from that era to play occasional gigs in the style that brought them to fame in the first place. Their first show was August 13, 1982, at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco. The initial lineup of The Dinosaurs was

Barry Melton-lead guitar, vocals (ex-Country Joe and The Fish)
John Cippolina-lead guitar (ex-Quicksilver)
Peter Albin-bass (ex-Big Brother)
Spencer Dryden-drums (ex-Jefferson Airplane)

The band was joined by a variety of guests of similar vintage. Stepping on stage at The Old Waldorf for a number or two were ex-Charlatan guitarist Michael Wilhelm, ex-Stained Glass (and High Noon) organist Jim McPherson and ex-Quicksilver drummer Greg Elmore. Robert Hunter was apparently enticed on stage to join Melton in singing their joint collaboration "Jesse James." The band played another well-received gig in Southern California, at The Roxy on September 18, but I don't think they had any guests, since all their old friends mostly lived up North. Nevertheless, At the time, psychedelic rock seemed all but extinct, so calling a collection of original Fillmore guys "Dinosaurs" seemed appropriate. More shows were booked.

By December, Robert Hunter had returned from a solo tour of the East Coast, and he threw in his lot with The Dinosaurs. Hunter's presence gave the Dinosaurs a connection to perhaps the five most iconic San Francisco bands of the 60s. The Dinosaurs played another show on November 21, at the Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati. I don't know if or how many friends dropped by, but Cotati was a nice safe place to figure out what they were doing. The Dinosaurs "re-debuted" with two shows on December 10 at The Old Waldorf, then San Francisco's most high profile rock club.

Since many of the older San Francisco musicians were hardly working anymore, it turned out that they were very available for guest appearances. One of the perhaps unexpected dynamics of The Dinosaurs was that the concept was a perfect platform for old friends to get together on stage, since the fan base of all those groups was by now largely the same. Although the five Dinosaurs, now including Hunter, were the core group, both Old Waldorf shows featured numerous guests who each sat in for a number: Merl Saunders, Country Joe McDonald, Mickey Hart, David Nelson, Greg Elmore, Dave Getz (Big Brother drummer), Sam Andrews (ex BB guitarist, now playing saxophone) and Michael Wilhelm. Nicky Hopkins sat in on piano for the entire late show. Old friend Dan Hicks (an ex-Charlatan himself) opened the shows. Given that almost none of the band members or guests had record contracts or current albums at the time, there was a fair amount of attention given to The Dinosaurs. When it was announced that The Dinosaurs would open for the Grateful Dead on New Year's Eve, for some Deadheads at least, certainly including me, there was a fair amount of interest. It was also a strangely appropriate throwback to the New Year's Eve concerts of the 1960s.

New Years Eve at The Fillmore and The Avalon
On December 31, 1966, the first full year of psychedelic rock in San Francisco, Bill Graham Presents had put on a legendary show at the Fillmore, featuring the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The poster bragged that the event would run from 9pm until 9am, including breakfast. A dozen blocks away, at the Avalon, Chet Helms held a similar extravaganza, featuring Country Joe And The Fish, Moby Grape and Lee Michaels. Big Brother and The Holding Company put on their own New Year's Eve concert at the Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. New Year's Eve was thus established as a night when the psychedelic crowd raved all night, all over town, or so it seemed.

Of course, not a soul remembers a thing about any of these New Year's concerts. There is a brief tape fragment of a jam from the Fillmore, but other than that I know of no tape, no review and no first-hand eyewitness account of any sixties New Year's show in San Francisco, save a Hot Tuna tape from 1969. Once I was at an Avalon reunion, in April of 1994, and Barry Melton and Jerry Miller led the Dinosaurs through a great version of Moby Grape's "Murder In My Heart For The Judge." After the song, Melton fondly reminisced from the stage, "I remember doing about a 63-minute version of that with Moby Grape one New Year's Eve." After pausing to let that sink in, Melton wryly added, "it as probably about 4 minutes, but it seemed like 63." All the participants seemed sure they had a good time, even if they are not certain what it actually consisted of.

Although the action had moved to Winterland by 1967, there was always a blowout show in San Francisco on New Year's Eve, headlined by a couple of major bands: the Airplane, Big Brother and Quicksilver in 1967, the Dead and Quicksilver in '68, the Airplane and Quicksilver in '70, with appropriate supporting acts. No one remembers anything about any of those shows either. By 1970, the New Year's Eve franchise was effectively bequeathed to the Grateful Dead, and in some form or another the Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia had performed on New Year's Eve in the Bay Area ever since.

By 1982, The Grateful Dead were the last of San Francisco's psychedelic squadrons still riding the range. Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother were gone, and after a brief and interesting reunion in 1978, Country Joe and The Fish were emeritus as well. Jefferson Airplane had morphed into the Jefferson Starship, but although a few old Airplaners were still on board (Grace Slick, Paul Kantner and David Freiberg), the music that Starship was very far from anything that used to get played at the Fillmore. That left the Dead, still exploring the path they set out for themselves 17 years earlier, long after their peers had faded away or stepped off. In that respect, the Dead were very much like a coelacanth, a prehistoric fossil still living in modern times, so it was appropriate that the Dinosaurs were opening for the Fillmore's only non-fossilized life.

The Dinosaurs
The Dinosaurs were a fun, lively band. Melton and Cipollina were both excellent lead guitarists, and Albin and Dryden were a solid rhythm section. Hunter and Melton shared most of the lead vocals, with Cipollina and Albin taking an occasional turn. The Dinosaurs made no specific effort to have a 60s San Francisco sound, because they didn't need to. They just played their music, and it just so happened to remind you of the Fillmore and the Avalon. Given that the New Year's Eve concert with the Dead was the highest profile the band had ever (or would ever) play, they invited a few of their friends to join in. Of course, those friends had pedigrees as well, but that too was simply a byproduct.

As far as I know, the Oakland New Year's Eve show was the Dinosaurs fifth booked date, although some of the dates had featured early and late shows. Now, saying it was their fifth show is slightly misleading, since all of the band members except Dryden and Hunter had other ensembles, and sometimes they played together, so some members had played together many times. As a result, given the standards of psychedelic blues in general, the band members were pretty comfortable with their material. While a few connected tapers had heard some recordings (it's not impossible that I had, too, by that time), in general the experience of hearing the Dinosaurs was quite new to the audience.The Dinosaurs came on stage some time after 8:00pm and played about an hour.

Dinosaurs Setlist, Oakland Auditorium Arena, December 31, 1982
"Who Makes The Moves"-Melton and Hunter shared vocals on this original song.
"One Way Out"-Hunter sang lead on this venerable blues song, made famous by the Allman Brothers. Hunter didn't really have the voice for it, but that didn't really matter. For this song, the Dinosaurs were joined by Nicky Hopkins, looking healthy and playing a Yamaha electric grand piano, similar to the kind Keith used to play (no mirror for Nicky this time). Hopkins was living at least part time in the Bay Area, and playing regularly with John Cipollina in one of his many bands. Hopkins, too, had played New Year's Eve in San Francisco (in 1969 with Quicksilver). Hopkins played throughout the rest of the show.
"Love"-This was an old Barry Melton song from the Country Joe and The Fish days, I believe from their debut album.
"Promontory Rider"-Hunter sang one of his more recognizable electric songs, recognizable not least because he had performed it with the Jerry Garcia Band in 1980.
"I Can't Dance"-Melton sang another old song from his own career. Melton in particular said later that he never had any intention of writing new songs for the Dinosaurs.
"Save The Whales"-Country Joe McDonald came on stage to sing his biggest solo hit.
"Street Life"--Hunter sang a song that would turn up on his Amagamalin Street album a few years later. Hunter, unlike Melton, used the Dinosaurs to try out all sorts of new songs.
"Level With Me"-Melton sang this one. I'm not sure of its provenance.
"St. Louis Blues"-Hunter sang this blues song. I think it was a traditional blues tune that was lyrically modified by Hunter, but I'm not sure.
"How Blue Can You Get?"-Kathi McDonald, one of the lead singers for Big Brother and The Holding Company in the early 1970s (after Janis), came out and belted out this standard to close the show. McDonald was very high energy, and with both lead guitarists wailing away, it was an appropriately high octane ending to the set. For this song and the encores, the band was joined by Steve "Teenage" Douglas on tenor sax, a legendary session man who had played on many Phil Spector hits.

encores
"San Francisco"-Melton sang lead on this high energy boogie celebrating San Francisco music.
"D.I.N.O.S.A.U.R.S."-Hunter sang the Dinosaurs sort of theme song, which he had written. It was a slow, ironic ballad that ended the set on a suitably nostalgic note, given that it was a band of a bunch of old guys opening for the last of the breed.

Although there was a conscious element of nostalgia applying to the Dinosaurs opening for the Grateful Dead, the music was energetic and enjoyable. There was no effort expended to make the music "modern" or "relevant," To some extent it reminded me of seeing traditional music in its native habitat, like seeing The Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. Even though the Dinosaurs were an amalgamation of members of bands who had once been booked themselves for New Year's Eve in San Francisco, they were proud representatives of a past musical style, rather than apologetic or bitter.

Robert Hunter was making his first New Year's Eve live appearance ever, as far as I knew. Other members of the Dinosaurs, however, had appeared many times on December 31. Just limiting myself to the sixties, John Cipollina had played New Year's Eve all four years from 1966 to '69 with Quicksilver (first at Fillmore, then three at Winterland). Barry Melton and Joe McDonald had headlined New Year's Eve shows at the Avalon in 1966 and '67. Peter Albin, as a member of Big Brother, had played New Year's Eve in 1966 at Kezar Pavilion and '67 at Winterland. Spencer Dryden, as a member of the Jefferson Airplane, had headlined New Year's Eve shows in 1966 (at the Fillmore), '67 and '69 (at Winterland). The Dinosaurs's appearance on New Year's Eve with the Grateful Dead was a true encore, when a quorum of Veterans of the Ballroom Wars gathered together to stand with the regular forces of the Grateful Dead.

Aftermath
Robert Hunter continued to perform with the Dinosaurs for another year-and-a-half. He wrote and performed a number of interesting songs with the band, while continuing his solo career. However, Hunter found himself at friendly odds with Melton and the others, as the sole songwriter in a band full of jammers. Hunter stepped aside, and Merl Saunders took his place from late 1984 onwards. The Dinosaurs continued in various forms until the mid-90s, including membership and numerous guest appearances by many of the band's peers and friends from the good old days. Hunter participated in the Dinosaurs's studio album, released in 1988. However, Hunter never opened for the Grateful Dead again, making New Year's Eve 1982 a singular event.

Grateful Dead New Year's Eve Opening Acts 1970-79

2011-12-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

The 2003 video of the 1978 New Year's Eve concert, Closing Of Winterland

When the Grateful Dead had played New Year's Eve concerts in San Francisco in the 1960s, they had been part of legendary bills that supposedly played from 9pm to 9am. These all-night affairs were somewhat scaled down as the 70s started, and by the end of the decade, the Dead were usually the sole major attraction. This post is an overview of the configuration of each Grateful Dead New Year's Eve concert from 1970 to 1979, with respect to the schedule and the opening acts. The live performances of the Dead on these dates are well-known and well-documented, so I won't comment on them here. Rather, this post is about considering the organization of the events themselves.

December 31, 1970: Winterland
Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage and assorted friends/Stoneground
From 1966 through 1969, Bill Graham had had legendary New Year's Eve events at the Fillmore, Fillmore West and Winterland, that were scheduled to go from 9pm to 9am. No one remembers anything about them. The Grateful Dead had played The Fillmore in 1966, sharing the bill with the Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The Dead played New Year's again in 1968 at Winterland, sharing the bill with Quicksilver, and supported by Its A Beautiful Day and Santana. In 1969, the Grateful Dead had played Boston, while the Jefferson Airplane had headlined New Year's Eve at home.

For New Year's Eve 1970, the Dead returned home to headline Winterland. The Jefferson Airplane were off the road, due to a very pregnant Grace Slick, but with two hit albums under their belt the Dead were now big enough to headline Winterland on their own. This New Year's show seems to have been a much smaller production than previous years, and indeed, quite different than any New Year's which followed.

Stoneground was a San Francisco-based group that was backed by KSAN chief Tom Donahue. Stoneground was put together from various defunct Bay Area outfits, and played a lively kind of soul-influenced rock. They featured no less than five lead singers, including lead guitarist Tim Barnes (ex-Immediate Family). Stoneground had been the "house band" for Donahue's Medicine Ball Caravan traveling rock festival and movie, which the Dead had dropped out at the last minute. The tour had ended up in England, where pianist Pete Sears (who also had a Donahue connection) joined the group. Stoneground had recorded a planned debut album at Trident Studios in London, with Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor producing, as Alembic had been contracted for the Medicine Ball tour. However, the album was re-recorded in San Francisco with different engineers. Sears returned to the Bay Area with the band, however, and I believe he was still in Stoneground when they played New Year's Eve.

The New Riders of The Purple Sage were familiar to most Deadheads by this time. The December, 1970 iteration of the band still had Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar, but Spencer Dryden (ex-Jefferson Airplane) had taken over on drums. John Dawson, David Nelson and Dave Torbert anchored the band.

The poster lists the show starting at 8pm. I assume Stoneground began at 8:00pm, followed by the New Riders. I think the Grateful Dead came on at midnight and played a single extended set (of about 100 minutes and change). After the Dead set, Hot Tuna came out, joined by Bob Weir, and played about five songs. Hot Tuna at that time was Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Papa John Creach (electric violin), Joey Covington (drums) and Will Scarlett (harmonica).

There are many oddities about Hot Tuna's appearance, not the least being that they appeared after the Dead. The timing of the entire show is uncertain, but while it probably extended past official San Francisco "closing time" at 2:00am, it was was not an all-morning extravaganza, just an extended night at the Fillmore. Also, for hard core fans, the Dead had apparently played a benefit at Winterland just eight days before (Dec 23), and the bill included the Riders and Hot Tuna, so it wouldn't have been that different a night (not to say that I wouldn't have enjoyed both of them).

December 31, 1971: Winterland
Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Yogi Phlegm
The 1971 New Year's Eve show started to establish the basic format for the balance of Grateful Dead New Year's Eve shows, although it evolved somewhat over the years. In 1971, there were two opening acts to get the party started, and the Grateful Dead came onstage at midnight. The Dead's set was broadcast in its entirety on KSAN, as was the New Riders'.

Yogi Phlegm was the new name of The Sons of Champlin. The band believed they no longer had the rights to the name The Sons Of Champlin, and they had changed their sound to emphasize jazzy improvisation. The name was a joke about gurus, which no one got, and most people called them 'The Sons' anyway (Bill Graham hated the name and insisted on calling them The Sons). Although Yogi Phlegm's music sounds incredibly contemporary now, they were generally disliked compared to their previous, more danceable incarnation as The Sons. The members of Yogi Phlegm were Terry Haggerty (lead guitar), Bill Champlin (organ, guitar, vocals), Geoff Palmer (piano and various), Dave Schallock (bass and guitar) and Bill Vitt (drums). Vitt was the main drummer for Garcia-Saunders at the time.

The Winterland New Year's performance would have been the first time that locals would have seen Buddy Cage on pedal steel with the New Riders. Cage had replaced Garcia out on the road. His first show had been in Atlanta on November 11, 1971. Given that the NRPS album had just been released, many fans were probably surprised and dismayed that Garcia was no longer in the group. The same would probably have been true of the Bay Area listening audience. They would have tuned in expecting to hear Garcia with his "new" group, having heard the NRPS album on KSAN, only to discover that he had left the band.

As a side note, the Dead and the New Riders record companies would have paid for KSAN to broadcast the band. Warner Brothers (for the Dead) and Columbia (for the Riders) would have compensated KSAN for the amount of ads that they would have lost by broadcasting an uninterrupted live show. Yogi Phlegm did not have a record company at the time, so there was no entity to underwrite a broadcast of them. In that respect, the fact that the New Riders were broadcast and the Sons were not had nothing to do with KSAN's "feelings" about The Sons (Yogi Phlegm) vs the Riders, as it would have been strictly a business decision.

The configuration at Winterland was different that year, with the stage on the right side of the arena instead of the rear. It would return to its "conventional" set-up by the next Fall.

December 31, 1972: Winterland
Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Sons Of Champlin
New Year's '72 was structured just like the 1971 show. The same two bands opened, although The Sons were back to calling themselves The Sons Of Champlin. Their lineup was the same as the previous year, although old friend Tim Cain joined in on saxophone for much of the show. The Sons played a long set, captured in a glorious Betty board, and the New Riders played a long set as well. Once again, the Dead started their first set at midnight and played two extended sets. The Dead were broadcast on KSAN, as were the New Riders, but not The Sons.

Both the Dead and the New Riders had new albums (Europe '72 and Gypsy Cowboy, respectively). Both the New Riders and The Sons were booked by Sam Cutler's agency, so this was definitely a family affair. New Year's Eve 1972 also inaugurated the tradition of playing "Sugar Magnolia" at midnight.

December 31, 1973: Cow Palace, Daly City
Allman Brothers Band/Marshall Tucker Band/Charlie Daniels Band
As early as 1976, at a lecture in Wheeler Hall in UC Berkeley, I heard Bill Graham tell his oft-repeated story that he called the Dead in the studio and offered them $75,000 to play the Cow Palace, and they refused. They counter-offered with the idea that they would play a party at Bill Graham's Marin County house. This is a great story, but I feel there has to be more to it. I wonder why the Dead turned Graham down? Perhaps they felt there sound system wasn't ready yet. In any case, the Dead played Winterland three nights in February and the Cow Palace in March, so I can't fathom what their specific objection might have been to a New Year's Eve Cow Palace show.

The Allman Brothers Band, perhaps the most popular touring attraction of 1973, headlined the Cow Palace instead for New Year's Eve in the Bay Area. Their performance was broadcast nationwide on a network of FM stations. Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann and Boz Scaggs showed up to jam sometime after midnight, giving everyone in the country the impression that this was what happened every night in San Francisco. The Allman Brothers and The Grateful Dead had headlined the biggest rock concert ever that Summer in Watkins Glen, so there was a lot of symbolism embedded in Garcia's guest appearance. The nationwide network went off the air at 1:00am (4:00 am Eastern), but KSAN listeners were happy to hear 'Big Daddy' Tom Donahue's voice-over telling everyone that KSAN would stay on the air until the end, which they did. The event still ended before 2:00am, as far as I know.

Oakland Tribune Keystone Berkeley ad for Dec 29 '74

December 31, 1974: Keystone Berkeley
Garcia-Saunders/Lucky Strike
With the Grateful Dead on hiatus, Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders played New Year's Eve '74 at Jerry's main haunt, the Keystone Berkeley. One peculiar fact about this show is that we seem to know nothing about it. There is no tape, no review, no eyewitness account, and the show was never advertised, to my knowledge. The listing in the Oakland Tribune, for example (above), simply lists the local band Lucky Strike as playing the Keystone Berkeley on New Year's Eve. At times, I have wondered whether Garcia and Saunders actually played Keystone Berkeley on New Year's Eve '74.

The source of the date was Dennis McNally's original Garcia list (through me to Deadbase IX). McNally was scrupulous about sources, so I am confident the date was scheduled. Paradoxically, the lack of a headliner on the Keystone ad makes me think Garcia was booked that night, albeit stealthily. I find it highly unlikely that the Keystone Berkeley would leave New Year's Eve to a local band with no cover, when they had acts like Kingfish (Sunday Dec 29) and Van Morrison (Mon Dec 30) on other weeknights. I think Lucky Strike, a popular East Bay club band, was just a placeholder. I do suspect that Lucky Strike actually opened for Garcia, however, because they would have been counting on a paying gig for New Year's Eve.

Why, then, was Keystone Berkeley so stealthy about publicizing Garcia's New Year's Eve performance? I think there were three reasons:

They were confident that the show would be packed via word-of-mouth. They probably just put Garcia's name on the marquee on the day of the show, and perhaps made sure there was an announcement on KSAN, and let the buzz take care of itself
The Keystone Berkeley would have been more concerned that too many people rather than too few would show up, particularly on a New Year's Eve when everyone had been drinking. New Year's Eve would be exactly the sort of night that some rumor would get started that the Grateful Dead were playing the Keystone, and unprofitable madness might ensue
I also suspect that the guest list was huge, because it would have been like a private party for many people in the Dead's extended family. With a huge guest list, the Keystone might not have been concerned about ticket sales, since they may not have wanted to oversell the place. This would also account for the fact that there seem to be no eyewitnesses and no tapes, as there were relatively few civilians who actually bought tickets

It still begs the question--does anyone know anything about the December 31, 1974 Keystone show?

December 31, 1974: Stanford Music Hall, Palo Alto
Kingfish/Osiris
I have written about this concert at length, so I won't recap it all here. Suffice to say, with the Grateful Dead on hiatus, Bob Weir and Kingfish used New Year's Eve to break in a new rock venue, formerly (and now again) known as The Stanford Theatre, an old movie house built in 1925. The downtown Palo Alto theater was pretty run-down at the time. A good time appears to have been had by all.

The opening act was Osiris, featuring as its lead singer Pigpen's younger brother Kevin McKernan. Kevin was a dead ringer for his brother (I saw him once, riding by on his bike--he looked like Pig on the cover of Live/Dead), and he sang just like him too. An eyewitness reported a dead-on cover of "Hard To Handle," just like Pigpen's version with the Dead.

Hayward Daily Review Keystone listing for Dec 26 '75

December 31, 1975: Keystone Berkeley
Jerry Garcia Band/Grayson Street/Lucky Strike
Once again, the Jerry Garcia Band played the Keystone Berkeley for New Year's Eve. We do have an excellent tape. It appears that the JGB played a first set around 10:00pm, and then started the second set at midnight. However, once again we have no advertising, no review and no eyewitnesses. I have to think that the same conditions applied as they did the year before. Since the Dead had actually played a few shows in 1975, a rumor that they were playing could get started easily, and hundreds of people on University Avenue, trying to get into a sold out club on the basis of a false rumor, would not have done the Keystone any good.

Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Matt Kelly joined Garcia onstage at the Keystone. I have to think that Kingfish could have easily found a New Year's Eve gig, somewhere, but Weir seems to have chosen joining Jerry at Keystone Berkeley instead. This is one of the clues that leads me to think that the '74 and '75 Keystone Berkeley NYE shows were sort of like private parties.

Grayson Street and Lucky Strike were listed as openers. Grayson Street was also a popular East Bay club band, a blues rock band with a whiff of soul. Their one constant was saxophonist Terry Hanck, who worked with many Bay Area bands. Once again, I feel confident they actually played, probably starting at 8:00pm, because working bands need to work. The Keystone Berkeley, by the same token, would have wanted to encourage people to come early and drink beer.

December 31, 1976: Cow Palace, Daly City
Grateful Dead/Santana/Sons Of Champlin
For New Year's Eve 1976, The Grateful Dead co-headlined the Cow Palace with Santana, and The Sons of Champlin opened the show. Santana had opened for the Grateful Dead on New Year's Eve before, in 1968, when Santana was still a popular but unsigned local band. By 1976, Santana was actually a bigger concert attraction than the Dead. However, Santana, although they had just come off a hugely successful European tour, seems to have accepted the premise that "traditional" New Year's Eve in San Francisco consisted of the Grateful Dead playing at midnight, so Santana appeared prior to the Dead. 1976 was the last New Year's Eve show where the Grateful Dead had a true co-headliner.

By 1976, The Sons of Champlin had backed away from their more jazzy experiments and veered back toward a funkier, more danceable sound. The Sons' current album was A Circle Filled With Love (on Ariola). The Sons's lineup for New Year's Eve '76 included old hands Bill Champlin, Geoff Palmer and Terry Haggerty, along with Rob Moitoza (bass), Jim Preston (drums), Steve Frediani (sax) and some other horn players (probably Mark Isham and Mike Andreas). Santana had just released their 10th album, Festival (on Columbia). Santana's Fall '76 lineup, besides Carlos, was Tom Coster (keyboards), Pablo Tellez (bass), Graham Lear (drums), Raul Rekow (congas), Chepito Areas (timbales) and Luther Rabb (vocals).

The concert started at 7:00pm, with the Sons, and Santana came onstage around 8:00 pm and played a full 75-minute set. The Grateful Dead locked in the structure of New Year's for the next 15 years or so, as they played their first set at 10:00pm, returning to the stage at midnight for "Sugar Magnolia." Both the Santana and Grateful Dead sets were broadcast on KSAN in their entirety (the Dead's set became a Vault release). The show ended before 2:00am.

December 31, 1977: Winterland
Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage
The Grateful Dead returned to Winterland with the New Riders for New Year's Eve 1977. The innovation of 1977 was that the Dead played a run of shows that culminated on New Year's Eve. This too became a regular tradition. For what it's worth, I bought tickets for New Year's Eve 1977 and two other nights the day they went on sale. I arrived about an hour after the BASS window opened (at Pacific Stereo in South Palo Alto), stood in a line of three people and bought as many tickets as I wanted. The Dead were popular at this time, but still basically a cult act.

The structure of the show was fairly conventional. The New Riders played at 8:00pm, and the Dead played their first set at about 10:00pm. The New Year's Eve celebration, and the beginning of the second set, were delayed until 12:30 so Bill Graham could come over from the Cow Palace, where Santana, Journey and Eddie Money were playing. Graham had been the "star" of that celebration, and he wanted to "star" in the Dead's as well (I think he rode down to the stage in a giant papier-mache joint, or something).

Little flyers were apparently passed out to some people warning about the delay until 12:30, but no one on my side of the crowd got any, and the crowd was pretty confused and unruly about the apparent delay. Fortunately, the second set was great, so it didn't matter. The show ended before 2:00am, as there was no third set.

The New Riders of The Purple Sage were kind of on an uptick that year. Their new album Marin County Line was their best in some time. New bassist Stephen Love added some new life to the band, and Dawson, Nelson and Cage were still lively. Drummer Patrick Shanahan had replaced Spencer Dryden, who had become the band's manager. However, in the spirit of the night, Dryden sat in anyway, giving the Riders two drummers. The New Riders set was released by the NRPS archives.

December 31, 1978: Winterland
Grateful Dead/Blues Brothers/New Riders of The Purple Sage
The New Year's Eve '78 show was the last show at Winterland, and as such a very nostalgic event. Winterland was the last direct link to the 60s. The Fillmore itself was still intact, but was hardly ever used for rock shows, so it had not been part of the rock scene for almost 10 years. The Fillmore West had become a car dealership (still is), so it too played no role in late 70s rock music. Winterland was a dump, but it was a rockin' dump, and it was sad to see it be squeezed out of the market for not being either big enough or nice enough. A big to-do was made about the closing of Winterland, and of course the Grateful Dead had to be the final act.

New Year's Eve 1978 was not only broadcast on KSAN and KQED-TV (the local PBS station), it was immortalized in an official video release. Although I am tremendously grateful to the people who got me a ticket (thank you Geoff W and Steve M), I am one of a minority who thought the whole show was a letdown, poorly organized and without much great music. Yes, the "Dark Star" that began the third set was truly magical, and the recording does not do it justice, but Weir ruined it by veering off too soon into "The Other One." Still, everybody but me (and Geoff W) remembers it fondly, so it must have been a great show, right?

I am a big New Riders fan, so I was looking forward to seeing them. We arrived at 7:45, about 15 minutes before showtime, to discover that the New Riders had been onstage since 7:30. It turned out that the last night at Winterland was the only show held there to actually start early. The New Riders were actually in a kind of down period at that time. Buddy Cage had left the band earlier in the year, replaced by Bobby Black from The Lost Planet Airmen, but he was also a fine player. Stephen Love had gone, too, replaced by Allan Kemp, who had been in the Stone Canyon Band with Pat Shanahan. The Riders weren't great, but they weren't bad, and I had wanted to see the whole set.

The New Riders had been moved up to accommodate televising the Blues Brothers' set at 9:00pm. The Blues Brothers are iconic now, but at the time they were a very hip and high profile addition to the New Years Eve bill. John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd were the newly popular stars of Saturday Night Live, and Animal House had just been released, so they were both huge stars. They had done their Blues Brothers schtick a few times on SNL, and then did a few Universal Amphitheatre shows in Los Angeles as The Blues Brothers, opening for Steve Martin, in order to record the album. Their album Briefcase Of Blues had just been released to huge acclaim, and the Winterland New Year's performance was The Blues Brothers' first show after the release of the album. At this juncture, Belushi and Ackroyd were much bigger stars than Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead.

To be fair, the Blues Brothers were absolutely great. All of the things which we have now seen a million times in the movies, or on SNL or YouTube, were done live and in person, and it was all totally new and surprising. The album had been released, but it wasn't ground into our skulls yet. The band was truly All-Star, including Steve Cropper (guitar) and Duck Dunn (bass) from The MGs, Matt Murphy (lead guitar) from James Cotton's band and Paul Shaffer (keyboards) and Steve Jordan (drums) from the SNL band. The horn section was led by the mighty Tom Scott, whom Deadheads will recall took the sax solo on the studio version of "Estimated Prophet." The band absolutely rocked the house, and although Ackroyd is a weak harp player and Belushi can't really sing, it didn't matter--Belushi in person was a star with a gravitational pull that can't be described, and he absolutely owned the place. The Blues Brothers played about an hour, and it was broadcast on radio and TV. I had to admit that I had reservations when they were booked, but they were absolutely great.

However, as a result of the Blues Brothers, the schedule for the New Years Eve show had been changed, which apparently was why the New Riders went onstage early. The Blues Brothers had come on at 9:00pm, so they would be on at the most advantageous time for TV. However, that left a two-hour gap from 10:00pm until midnight. It was filled by KQED reporters going around to very goofy, wasted people in the crowd and "interviewing" them for the TV audience at home. If you were in Winterland itself, however, after a very exciting set by the Blues Brothers, we stood around for two hours doing nothing. There was nowhere to sit at Winterland (unless you came realllly early and snagged a seat) so standing around was tiring. By the time the Dead came on, the crowd was both rowdy and tired, and honestly I felt the band was the same. Apparently the backstage party, with Belushi and Ackroyd among others, was pretty insane, and I don't think it improved the Dead's playing.

The Grateful Dead came on at midnight to play "Sugar Magnolia," like in days of yore. For all the talk of exciting guests, only old pal John Cipollina showed up, and great as he was, we had just seen him jam with the Dead two months before. Fortunately for the last night at the old ice rink, however, the Dead begat another New Year's Eve tradition and played a third set. For this night, the third set began at 5:00am. The Dead opened with "Dark Star" and I erased all my complaints, at least until Weir wrecked it. A touching "And We Bid You Goodnight" closed the old ice rink at about 5:45am. Then there was the much-heralded breakfast, the organization of which left much to be desired, but that is too trivial a subject for this blog.

An era had ended with the closing of Winterland, but supposedly there had been 500,000 ticket requests. From being a sort of cultish party the year before, New Year's Eve with the Grateful Dead became a must-see event.

December 31, 1979: Oakland Auditorium Arena
Grateful Dead/Flying Karamazov Brothers
All had seemed lost when Winterland closed, but of course BGP had known they had the Oakland Auditorium in their pocket. The old Auditorium was of the same vintage as Winterland, nicer, but still enough of a dump to have that old time psychedelic feeling. The venue was a bit larger than Winterland (7,000 vs 5,400), but it had a comparable atmosphere. The five-night run in December of '79 cemented the Oakland Auditorium as the new Home Court for the Grateful Dead, and as such it was the site of New Year's Eve 1979. This show cemented the format that would follow with few variations for the next dozen years of Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve shows. The structure was

A run of shows culminating in New Year's Eve
An New Year's Eve opening act chosen to be enjoyable, but with no concern for selling extra tickets (since NYE would sell out instantly anyway)
The Dead would play their first set around 10:00pm and start their second set at midnight, usually with "Sugar Magnolia"
The Dead would play a third set, often the platform for special guests or uniquely rehearsed songs
Although the show would go past 2:00am "closing time," the concert would be over by 3:00am

Every subsequent Grateful Dead New Year's Eve show generally conformed to this pattern. Here and there a few alterations occurred (For example, the Dead played an acoustic set for 1980 shows with no opening act; Joan Baez was the guest in 1981, but she came on before the first set rather than the third set, and so on), but in general the 1979 show took the realities and innovations that had been worked out by the preceding decade's worth of shows and built them into a format.

The Grateful Dead New Year's Eve performance was now an established Bay Area "Event." The run of shows made it well worth the while of Deadheads who lived elsewhere to come out and see all the shows, and Bay Area weather made it all the more attractive. The December runs was where I first started to realize just how many people from the East Coast were just as fanatical Deadheads, if not more so, than those of us out West. The Dead no longer needed a co-headliner on New Year's Eve. The main purpose of the opening act was to entertain excited people who had often attended most or all of the other shows, and were looking forward to a giant blowout to end the week.

The Flying Karamazov Brothers were a troupe of juggling performance artists who had started out in 1973 in Santa Cruz. There were four of them, all long haired and goofy, and they would do amazing feats of juggling while carrying on amusing patter with the crowd (I should add that they were neither brothers nor Russian). It sounds really dumb, but in fact it was really impressive and funny, and they quickly won over the revved-up New Year's Eve crowd in Oakland. Part of their act was to juggle all these crazy objects--champagne bottles, bowling pins, meat cleavers, burning torches--while carrying on with funny dialogue. By the end of the show, there would be four guys spread out on stage about 30 feet apart, juggling a combination of a dozen or more completely insane objects. As their New Year's Eve show peaked, with objects flying all over the stage, and half of them constantly in the air, Jerry Garcia appeared from stage left with his guitar and casually walked across the stage, passing right through the semi-circle of juggling Karamazovs. The Brothers never missed a beat, as no objects hit either the ground or Jerry, and he casually sauntered off on stage right. The crowd, needless to say, lost their minds.

In December, 1979, the Flying Karamazov Brothers were in the process of moving from being 'Street Performers' to 'Legitimate.' I had already seen them, perhaps in Sproul Plaza in Berkeley, but never in a full performance. By 1981, the Karamazov's were playing in London's West End, and they even made an encore appearance with the Grateful Dead. On March 28, 1981, in Essen, Germany, the Flying Karamazovs made an appearance during the Rhythm Devils section of a Grateful Dead show, so obviously the Dead were amused and impressed. In the intervening decades, the Flying Karamazovs have appeared on Broadway many times, and they are starring in London once again as of this writing.

The Grateful Dead, New Year's Eve, 1980-1991
There were many fine moments yet to come in Grateful Dead New Year's Eve performances over the next dozen years. After the 70s, however, the general parameters were set. Indeed, many people's fondest memories of New Year's shows were when the Dead actually diverted from their script, such as the time in 1981 when Bill Graham requested "Aiko Aiko" at midnight, instead of "Sugar Magnolia." When Graham died, it is not surprising that the Dead simply gave up the New Year's tradition, as it had become somewhat ossified. Still, it was fun while it lasted, and as time keeps slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, seeing the Grateful Dead on New Year's Eve--any New Year's Eve--seems all the more remarkable.

New Riders of The Purple Sage, Bassist: 1969-70 (Yet Again)

2011-12-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

I have spent an unnaturally long time on the subject of the bass player for the New Riders of The Purple Sage during their first nine months of existence, from July 1969 to March 1970. This is not even the first post entitled "New Riders of The Purple Sage, Bassist: 1969-70." I have also looked at length at the subject of canceled New Riders shows in March of 1970, with the conclusion that they were canceled due to the lack of a bass player, thus necessitating the hiring of Dave Torbert.

There is some conventional wisdom about the early history of the New Riders bass player, much of it demonstrably wrong. The amusing part about this conventional wisdom has been that the conventional wisdom has been promulgated by various band members, mainly Jerry Garcia, John Dawson and David Nelson, so everyone has assumed that it was correct when in fact it was, at best, considerably more fluid. Another key point that I continually emphasize is that there is very little reliable evidence of any sort about the 1969 New Riders.

I know of no photos or newspaper reviews of the 1969 New Riders, and there are only three tapes, one a studio demo. What few, vague recollections there are of the 1969 Riders usually stem from the times they opened for the Grateful Dead. The only person I have been in contact with who actually saw the New Riders in a nightclub was then a waitress at the club, and while she knew who Jerry Garcia was she had no clue about the band or the music. Our actual knowledge about the New Riders in 1969 is based on a sort of "Creation Myth" promulgated by the band's trio of founders, and the actual reality seems somewhat different.

After some research into other areas, I feel that I have a plausible hypothesis for the roles of Bob Matthews and Phil Lesh in the early New Riders of The Purple Sage. In making my case for this hypothesis, I can illustrate some of the interesting cross-currents and demands of a busy band in a period of expansion, and how many competing interests came into play. I remain stumped on the question of Robert Hunter's exact role, but I feel that will be illuminated in due time. Here then is my current thinking on the membership of the New Riders up until April 1970. I have appended a list of New Riders show from the appropriate period at the bottom of the post.

The Conventional Story
Many times, the story has been told that John Dawson was visiting a Grateful Dead rehearsal in Novato and heard that Jerry Garcia had bought himself a new pedal steel guitar in Boulder, CO. Garcia invited Dawson over to his house to hear it, and Dawson brought his guitar along and played his own songs so that Garcia would have something to play along with. Garcia liked the songs, and invited himself to back Dawson at his Wednesday night gig in Menlo Park at a hofbrau called The Underground. David Nelson joined them, and the trio decided to make a band of it.

Over and over the story was repeated that the boys figured out that if they used Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead could tour with their own opening act and only have to bring two extra people (Nelson and Dawson) on the road. This would equal an extra $500 or $1000 per night, in theory, and would be well worth it, and thus the New Riders were born. At some point in early 1970, or so the story goes, Phil Lesh lost interest and was replaced by Dave Torbert. Hart left the band at the end of 1970, and Garcia departed in late 1971, and the New Riders spread their wings. The story has a nice, clean narrative with a simple arc, which is why it got repeated so often. However, it's only true in a very narrow sense.

The Actual Story
Once Garcia, Dawson and Nelson decided to make a band out of their little enterprise, there were a few shows in June 1969 with indeterminate lineups, probably including Jerry's old friend Peter Grant on banjo. McNally called this a "tryout" of the New Riders concept. Per Blair Jackson, the first actual show was opening for the Grateful Dead at a Hell's Angels party at Longshoreman's Hall on July 16, 1969. This was followed by an August 1 show at the Bear's Lair Coffee House in UC Berkeley. The Hell's Angels show featured no billing whatsoever, and the UC Berkeley date was advertised as "Jerry Garcia and Marmaduke,"and one listing added "and friends." The first appearance of the New Riders of The Purple Sage name was a four night stand at the Matrix on August 6-9, 1969.

The New Riders of The Purple Sage played a fair number of shows in 1969, almost all in the Bay Area, and mostly on weeknights. However, the Riders only opened for the Grateful Dead on three occasions: their debut at Longshoreman's (July 16), one weekend in the Pacific Northwest (August 20-23) and a weekend at the Family Dog (August 28-30). The idea that the Dead went out with the New Riders as their opening act in 1969 is a fiction, save for one weekend in Washington and Oregon. That weekend itself is so confusing, it's possible that the New Riders only played one show. There was a goof off night in a bar (August 20) when the initial show was rained out, and any history of the Oregon rock festival on a Saturday is lost, and I can only say with confidence that the New Riders played the middle night in Seattle (August 21).

Leave aside for a moment that the theme that Phil Lesh allowed the New Riders to be an opening act has little basis in reality. In the last several years, persistent scholarship has brought to light that the original New Riders bass player seems to have been legendary Grateful Dead engineer Bob Matthews. Dawson had alluded in the past to rehearsing with both Robert Hunter and Bob Matthews, but it had never been clear that Matthews played any gigs. Matthews, apparently, said that he had, and this was ultimately confirmed by David Nelson and others. Nelson has at least generally confirmed the idea that Lesh and Matthews shared bass duties at some point, depending on the gig.

Bob Matthews
Bob Matthews was a childhood friend of Bob Weir's, and as a result he was hanging out with the Grateful Dead from their earliest days. Matthews is best known as one half of "Bob and Betty," the engineering team that recorded Aoxomoxoa, Live/Dead, Workingman's Dead and numerous other live and studio efforts well into the early 1980s. He was an original member of the equipment crew, he helped build the sound system at The Carousel and he was an original member of the Alembic engineering team as well.

A close look at McNally, however, reveals that Bob Matthews was fired from the Grateful Dead's equipment crew in December, 1967 due to conflict with Mickey Hart (p.233). Now, fired or not, Matthews continued to work with the Grateful Dead for the next 15 years, so the conflict must not have been irreparable. However, from 1968 onwards Bob Matthews seems to have been an engineer and not a crew member. Thus if the Grateful Dead were going to take the New Riders on the road, taking Bob Matthews along meant taking an extra person. From that perspective, if Phil Lesh had little interest in playing with the Riders, then another body had to be added in any case. For many years I had assumed Matthews was part of the crew, but in fact he was not. When Matthews was along on the road, it would have been because the band was recording, and Matthews would have been too busy to play bass.

Matthews' presence as the Riders initial bass player makes sense in another way as well. We have discovered that there were more New Riders shows in the second half of 1969 than we had originally thought. However, Phil Lesh has never had a history of regularly playing Bay Area rock nightclubs on weeknights. I now think he never played those shows. If the New Riders played The Inn Of The Beginning, or the Poppycock, or some such place, Matthews more likely played the date. If the New Riders were opening for the Grateful Dead, Lesh played it. As to events in between, such as the weeknight "Hoedown" shows at the Family Dog, the truth is we have no evidence either way who played bass, but my guess is that Matthews and Lesh more or less split those duties.

Bob Matthews was employed by Alembic Studios in 1969, and would have been doing periodic contract work for the Grateful Dead. However, that would have left him free to play clubs on a weeknight. Since by and large Matthews had stopped going on the road, going out to the Poppycock or some such place would have been fun. Lesh, by contrast, has always been up for heavy touring, but he was rarely a guy who dropped in to play at nightclubs when he was off the road.

1969 New Riders Tapes
There are three 1969 New Riders tapes

August 7, 1969: The Matrix, San Francisco
September 18, 1969: The Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati
November 1969, Pacific High Recorders studio, San Francisco (4-song demo)

Almost all shows at the Matrix were taped, but not all were preserved. The owners, who were also the tapers, tended to keep what they thought were the best or most commercial recordings, and would tape over the other nights. Thus it is not surprising that there was only one extant tape from the Matrix, as that was par for the course at that venue.

However, The recording at The Inn Of The Beginning is considerably more mysterious. I have no idea why a New Riders tape from the Inn Of The Beginning was recorded or preserved, while no other live '69 New Riders has endured, save the Matrix. Who was taping the New Riders, even once? My own personal suspicion was that Owsley made the tape. I can't imagine that the 1969 Riders had a formal crew arrangement--although once again, no one knows--so if Owsley was present, he probably just invited himself to mix the sound, and taped it as a matter of course. One of my fond hopes has always been that Owsley taped a few New Riders shows from the earliest days, and kept them hidden in a box.

In the past, I have been told by people with better ears than mine that they were sure Phil Lesh played bass on the two existing New Riders live tapes. I have no reason to doubt them. I am interested in making a rather opposite point, however, which is that the tapes survived because of their superiority, and with Phil Lesh playing bass the New Riders were a better band. For example, Phil Lesh may not have played all four nights when the New Riders played the Matrix, indeed he may have only played one. However, since the Matrix owners typically only kept the best tape, it doesn't surprise me that they would have kept the one with Phil Lesh on bass. By the same token, whatever the peculiar circumstances that led to the Inn Of The Beginning tape being recorded and then preserved, if it is indeed Phil on bass, then either that was planned from the beginning (for example, if Owsley knew Phil was playing) or the reason the specific tape was preserved.

In 1986, Relix Records released a retrospective New Riders of The Purple Sage album called Before Time Began. Among other things, it included a four-song New Riders demo recorded by Bob Matthews at Pacific High Recorders in November 1969. With Matthews working the board, it was no surprise that Phil Lesh played bass. I believe that this demo shows the true interests and talents of the band's various bass players--Phil Lesh was the better bass player, and Bob Matthews had the golden ears of an engineer. For a demo that was supposed to be played on the radio (and it was) and shopped to record companies, the New Riders needed their best-hitting lineup. Phil Lesh probably did not play many New Riders gigs, far fewer than we may have thought, but paradoxically it does seem that his performances are more likely to have been preserved.

Winter 1970
After November 1969, there are only four New Riders showed booked between then and the end of March 1970. At least three and possibly all four of them were never played. What happened? The first and most important factor is the recording of Workingman's Dead. Although the band themselves did not spend an excessive amount of time in the studio, producers Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor would have had substantial duties listening, mixing and editing, so Matthews would be considerably less free to drive around the Bay Area playing fun gigs with the New Riders. More importantly, since Matthews was not a paid member of the band's crew, but rather a contractor, he would have been directly or indirectly giving up paid work for the Dead in return for beer money with the New Riders.

Matthews's obligations in Winter 1970 would have left New Riders bass duties to Phil Lesh. It is here where the oft-repeated story that Phil was "just not interested" starts to fit in. There has been no time in his career when Phil eagerly sought out nightclub gigs around the Bay Area, much less in the midst of a busy schedule of touring and recording with the Grateful Dead. To the extent Phil Lesh ever played nightclubs in this period, it seems to have exclusively been at the Matrix. When Matthews was playing the club gigs in late '69, Phil seems to have been willing to play bass for a few New Riders shows, particularly if they were opening for the Dead. Don't forget, an opening set would have likely been considerably shorter than a couple of sets in a nightclub. But Lesh wasn't the guy who wanted to drive over to Cotati to play country rock all night on a tiny stage.

Phil Lesh had such a unique path to becoming a bass player that I have no doubt he musically benefited from playing simple songs with the New Riders. I'm sure his playing on Grateful Dead songs like "Black Peter" or "Friend Of The Devil" were much more surefooted for having played that sort of music with the New Riders. But Phil was still Phil--after a rehearsal or two and several concerts, Phil would have incorporated all the musical education he could have gotten from the New Riders music, and it would have just been an exercise from then on. I think Phil Lesh turned down any New Riders gigs in early 1970, and Garcia, Dawson and Nelson realized they needed a permanent bass player. At some points in the 1969 and early 1970 period, Robert Hunter had been rehearsing with the New Riders as the bassist, but all parties concede that he never actually played a gig with the band. The time frame of Hunter's participation with the New Riders remains interesting to me, if confusing, but it is more of a subject of intra-band collaboration rather than the New Riders touring history.

In April 1970 the New Riders signed up Dave Torbert, catching him "coincidentally" when he was returning from a surfing trip to Hawaii. Torbert had been in the New Delhi River Band with Nelson, and was friends with Dawson as well, so I doubt it was a "coincidence" that he got the call. Indeed, it would seem logical to think that after Matthews became occupied with recording, Nelson and Dawson planned all along to have Torbert take over bass duties, and were only waiting for him to return from Hawaii. The New Riders played a flurry of local shows in April 1970 in anticipation of the introduction of "An Evening With The Grateful Dead, featuring the New Riders of The Purple Sage, " which debuted on May 1, 1970 in Alfred, NY.

Matthews, never really that great a bass player anyway, was too important as a recording engineer, so he would never have been a candidate as a permanent member of the New Riders. Lesh had passed on the job, and in any case no one probably ever thought Lesh would take the job permanently. Although it took the arrival of Torbert to bring the New Riders on the road, extra money for just three bodies (instead of two) was still a sound business practice. Eventually, of course, Mickey Hart and then Jerry Garcia would leave the New Riders, but the first step had been finding a real bass player to stand in for two part-timers.

Appendix: New Riders Performances, 1969
May 7, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park John Dawson
May 14, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park John Dawson
May 21, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park John Dawson
June 4, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park John Dawson
June ?, 1969 Peninsula School, Menlo Park [billing unknown]
June 11, 1969 California Hall, San Francisco Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck
June 24, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park John Dawson
July 16, 1969 Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco Grateful Dead/Cleveland Wrecking Company/Ice [Dawson, Garcia, etc unbilled]
August 1, 1969 Bear's Lair, UC Berkeley Jerry Garcia, Marmaduke and Friends
August 6-9, 1969 The Matrix, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage
August ?, 1969 Lions Share, San Anselmo, New Riders Of The Purple Sage
August 13, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco New Lost City Ramblers/New Riders of The Purple Sage "Hoe Down"
August 19, 1969 Family Dog At The Great Highway New Riders Of The Purple Sage
August 20, 1969 El Roach Tavern, Ballard, WA Grateful Dead/others (possibly NRPS)
August 21, 1969 Aqua Theatre, Seattle, WA Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Sanpaku
August 23, 1969 Bullfrog 2 Festival, Pelletier Farm, St Helens, OR Grateful Dead/others (possibly NRPS)
August 28, 1969 Family Dog At The Great Highway Grateful Dead/Mickey And The Hartbeats/NRPS
August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog At The Great Highway Grateful Dead/Commander Cody/New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Rubber Duck Company
September 18, 1969 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Fall 1969, Peninsula School New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Steve Marcus attended this show, and recalls Phil Lesh on bass. This was different than the June event.
October 9, 1969 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA New Riders Of The Purple Sage
October 14-16, 1969 Mandrake's, Berkeley New Riders of The Purple Sage
October 17, 1969 Loma Prieta Room, Student Union, San Jose State College, San Jose New Riders Of The Purple Sage/The Fourth Way
October 22, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Lazarus
November ?, 1969 Pacific High Recorders demo New Riders Of The Purple Sage
(4 tracks released on the 1986 Relix lp Before Time Began; engineered by Bob Matthews)
November 3-4, 1969 The Matrix, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage
November 6, 1969 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati New Riders Of The Purple Sage
November 13, 1969 The Poppycock, Palo Alto New Riders Of The Purple Sage
November 18, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage/David LaFlamme "Square Dance"
November 19, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Big Brother and The Holding Company/Barry McGuire & The Doctor Naut Family
November 20, 1969 The Poppycock, Palo Alto New Riders Of The Purple Sage
November 22-23, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Anonymous Artists Of America/Devil's Kitchen
November 27, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Lamb/Cleveland Wrecking Company/Deacon and The Suprelles/Rafael Garrett Circus
November 28, 1969 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati New Riders Of The Purple Sage
January 19, 1970 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band Benefit For Center For Educational Change
March 12, 1970 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati New Riders of The Purple Sage (canceled)
March 13-14, 1970 New Orleans House, Berkeley New Riders of The Purple Sage (canceled, replaced by Big Brother)

Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia Tour Itinerary May 1969

2011-12-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

A poster for the 1969 Oregon shows on May 30 (Springer's) and May 31 (McArthur Court)

I have been constructing tour itineraries for the Grateful Dead for brief periods of their history. There is so much information circulating on websites and blogs (including my own) that go beyond published lists on Deadlists and Dead.net that these posts make useful forums for discussing what is known and missing during each period. So far I have reviewed

Rather than go in strictly chronological order, I am focusing on periods where recent research has been done by myself or others. Over time I hope to have the entire 1965-70 period. My principal focus here is on identifying which dates have Grateful Dead shows, which dates might have Grateful Dead shows, and which dates are in dispute or may be of interest. Where relevant, I am focusing on live appearances by other members--mostly Jerry Garcia, as a practical matter--in order to get an accurate timeline.

What follows is a list of known Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia performance dates for May, 1969. I am focused on which performances occurred when, rather than the performances themselves. For known performances, I have assumed that they are easy to assess on Deadlists, The Archive and elsewhere, and have made little comment. As a point of comparison, I am comparing my list to Deadlists, but I realize that different databases may include or exclude different dates (I am not considering recording dates, interviews or Television and radio broadcast dates in this context).

My working assumption is that the Grateful Dead, while already a legendary rock band by 1968, were living hand to mouth and scrambling to find paying gigs. Most paying performances were on Friday and Saturday nights, so I am particularly interested in Friday and Saturday nights where no Grateful Dead performances were scheduled or known.

May, 1969
By May, 1969 the Grateful Dead had completed the exhausting process of recording Aoxomoxoa. Of course, recording the Aoxomoxoa album was exhausting because the band had made it so: they had recorded an entire album by the end of 1968, tentatively entitled Earthquake Country, but chose to re-record the album on a newly-available 16-track Ampex recorder. The endless experimenting, overdubs and goofiness took another few months, and the Dead ended up in debt to Warner Brothers to the tune of $150,000, serious money for the time. In any case, by May they were done, and the Aoxomoxoa album would be released in June.

The Grateful Dead were always perpetually broke, and they must have known that their huge debt to Warner Brothers insured that any future record royalties would be few and far between. As a result they embarked on a fairly intense schedule of regional and national touring. By 1969, although the Dead were not really successful recording artists, they were legendary, as San Francisco and the Fillmore had mythic status, so the band had some cachet out in the hinterlands. The band capitalized on that by performing far and wide, very far from the safety zones of hip psychedelic clubs in big cities.

In the context of the Dead's forthcoming album and renewed commitment to heavy touring, it is a telling Garcia paradox that he would choose this time to start his first extra-curricular band. As I have discussed at length elsewhere, Garcia had brought a pedal steel guitar in Colorado (probably Boulder) in April. Old Palo Alto friend John "Marmaduke" Dawson had dropped by to hear him play it, playing his own songs, which Garcia was probably familiar with, so that Garcia would have a platform for accompanying him. Seemingly on the spot, when Garcia found out that Dawson was playing his songs at a Hofbrau in Menlo Park, Garcia offered to be his "sideman" and back him up on the pedal steel guitar.

John Dawson, David Nelson and Jerry Garcia have repeated the story about the birth of the New Riders numerous times. Dawson was playing his songs on Wednesday nights at a hip hofbrau on El Camino Real called The Underground, not far from where the Warlocks had debuted at Magoo's Pizza. All the stories imply a lengthy process where Garcia started to drop in, people started to find out, and Nelson was invited to join in, all leading to the genesis of the New Riders of The Purple Sage. However, like many events that are recalled with intensity years later, time seems to have elongated for the participants. There can hardly have been more than six occasions when Garcia played Wednesday nights with Marmaduke at the Underground, and it may have been even fewer. That's not to say that the stories are untrue, by any means, but the entire process was much shorter than may have been thought.

Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia Tour Itinerary May 1969
May 2-3, 1969: Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Mongo Santamaria
The Grateful Dead had not played Winterland or the Fillmore West with the Jefferson Airplane in some time. Of course, the Dead had set themselves up as competitors to Bill Graham in early 1968, so it wasn't a coincidence. Nonetheless, with Graham having taken over the Carousel and the Dead always in search of a paying date, bygones had become bygones and the two acts shared a Friday and Saturday booking at Winterland.

Mongo Santamaria was a highly regarded Latin Jazz bandleader and conguero. According to some comments on the Archive, on at least one of the nights, Mongo sat in for some serious jamming with members of the Dead and the Airplane into the wee hours.

May 3, 1969: [Football Stadium], Sierra College, Rocklin, CA: Grateful Dead (afternoon)
Rocklin, CA, is a small town a half hour North of Sacramento, and 108 miles Northeast of San Francisco. Originally the site of a granite quarry in the 19th century, since it was on the original transcontinental rail line, a town grew up around it. With the quarry long since closed, Rocklin did not come to life again until Interstate 80 was completed in the 1960s, making the town a commutable suburb of Sacramento. While there is plenty of suburban sprawl today, and Rocklin seems part of greater Sacramento, in 1969 the town would have been small and distant. Rocklin's population at the tmie was probably around 20,000 (it's only 56,000 today).

Sierra College was a two year Community College, originally founded in 1936. I have to assume that the event was student sponsored, since there couldn't have been that much of a crowd, and student funds would have helped subsidize the Dead's fee. I am assuming also that the Dead played on the school's football field, but since the current stadium (built 2007) only holds 1,500, it must have been a casual event indeed. I have never seen a newspaper article, handbill or anything else about this show, so I have to guess what the circumstances may have been. Rocklin was near enough to San Francisco that the band could have played an afternoon show there and easily returned to Winterland for the Saturday evening show.

The Grateful Dead were booked on the West Coast in this period by Bill Graham's Millard Agency. The Millard Agency excelled at finding new gigs for San Francisco bands outside of the obvious Bay Area and Los Angeles venues. For the students at Sierra College in 1969, a Sunday afternoon visit by the Grateful Dead must have been the biggest thing ever to happen in Rocklin. Sometime in the 1980s, the San Francisco 49ers took to holding their training camp there--they may still--but until Joe Montana and Jerry Rice arrived, I have to think the Grateful Dead were the highest profile event since the railroad came to town.

May 7, 1969: Polo Grounds, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead (free afternoon concert)
While free concerts in Golden Gate Park had become standard fare in San Francisco, the city was uncomfortable with major headliners playing the park. This show was on a Wednesday, and I suspect that there was no pre-event publicity. The Polo Grounds had been the site of the Human Be-In, and while it could accommodate a large crowd, the City did not actually want a large crowd. According to extant tapes, both the Dead and the Airplane played single sets. I have no idea how large the crowd actually was.

May 7, 1969: The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: Marmaduke (tentative)
The earliest Wednesday that Jerry Garcia could have joined John Dawson at the Underground would have been this night. I am inclined to believe that since the Grateful Dead would have played an afternoon show with the Airplane at Golden Gate Park, and indeed came on first, the compulsive Garcia could have headed South to Menlo Park to check out Marmaduke's scene at the Hofbrau. The Dead would have only have returned from tour on about Monday, April 28, and there had to be both a Grateful Dead rehearsal (for Dawson to come hang out) and a visit Garcia's home (for them to play), so the earliest date I can see Garcia sitting in would be the first week of May.

Since no one has ever seen a newspaper listing or anything else for The Underground, it's hard to be certain about any of this--the Wednesday night gig, how (or whether) Dawson was billed, even the address of The Underground. A long-time Bay Area resident recalls the restaurant, and we know it's approximate location, but we can't be certain. For now, I think The Underground was at 1029 El Camino Real, and is currently the site of The Oak City Bar And Grill. My assumption for May 7 was that Garcia drove down, checked it out, and plugged in his pedal steel for a second or later set, noodling quietly in the background.

May 9, 1969: Hall Of Flowers, San Mateo County Fairgrounds, San Mateo, CA: Grateful Dead
The Millard Agency specialized in finding bookings in the Bay Area suburbs, particularly places that hadn't hosted major bands before. Rock music was popular in the suburbs now, and there were a lot of fans who wouldn't (or wouldn't be allowed to) go to San Francisco but wanted to see hip bands.

I know nothing about this concert save it's listing in Deadbase: I don't know who promoted it, who else was on the bill or anything else. The San Mateo County Fairgrounds were right off El Camino, very much in the Warlocks old stomping grounds of a few years earler. The band did play a benefit at the Fairgrounds a dozen years later (December 12, 1981 with Joan Baez) but I believe that was in a different building (Fiesta Hall). I think the Hall of Flowers was much smaller, but I can't prove that yet.

An alternate handbill for the May 9-10, 1969 shows at the Rose Palace

May 10, 1969: Rose Palace, Pasadena, CA: Farewell Cream movie/Grateful Dead/Kaleidoscope/Southwind
I have written about this show elsewhere. Pasadena was another suburban market, and the Dead had played there two months earlier. Rather uniquely, the "headliner" was a movie, a concert film of Cream's farewell performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London on October 26, 1968.

May 11, 1969: Aztec Bowl, San Diego State College, San Diego, CA: Canned Heat/Grateful Dead/Lee Michaels/Santana/Tarantula
Continuing the Millard plan of creating new markets, the Grateful Dead returned to San Diego for the second time (the first had been a two-night stand at the downtown Hippodrome on May 2-3, 1968). The Aztec Bowl was a modest sized football stadium. Canned Heat was the headliner, both because they had genuine hits (like "On The Road Again") and because they were much better known in Southern California. Lee Michaels had a certain following as well, and may have been booked through Millard, too. Michaels was a very talented musician, and had a fairly singular sound. Michaels sang and played Hammond organ at ear-splitting volume through a stack of Leslie amps, accompanied by only his drummer, Bartholomew "Frosty" Smith. It sounds weird, but actually it was really great.

Santana was also booked through the Millard Agency, who were slowly building an audience for the band throughout California. Santana had been signed to Columbia and had begun working on their first album, but at this time they would have merely been an underground legend in Southern California. They had played SoCal a few times, but this was their first time in San Diego. Tarantula were apparently a local group.

Interestingly, the Grateful Dead's set seems to have been broadcast on KPRI-fm (106.5) in San Diego, a very early instance of this practice. As a result of the circulating tape, we know that members of Santana joined the Dead for "Turn On Your Lovelight." The percussion section (presumably Mike Carabello, Chepito Areas and possibly Mike Shrieve) adds some oomph to the drum solos, and it sounds like Gregg Rolie adding a few vocals during the song as well.

May 14, 1969: The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: Marmaduke
This would have been either the first or second appearance by Garcia with Marmaduke.

May 16, 1969: Campolindo High School, Moraga, CA: Grateful Dead/Frumious Bandersnatch/Velvet Hammer
There are a variety of amazing stories about the Grateful Dead's performance at suburban Campolindo High School in Moraga, on the other side of the hills from Berkeley. Some of them may even be true. The key takeaway for the Grateful Dead's schedule seems to be that the Dead had an unbooked weekend, and seemed happy to get a payday, even if they weren't making as much as they might some nights. Perhaps a planned date fell through, and the Dead picked up the Campolindo date as the best available remaining booking.

Campolindo had held two major concerts in the 1968/69 school year, featuring Santana in the Fall (November 22, 1968) and the Grateful Dead in the Spring. Both headliners were Millard Agency acts, another indicator of the agency's shrewd plan to export the Fillmore sound to the suburbs.

May 21, 1969: The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: Marmaduke
Whether you think that this was the second or third show where Garcia played with Dawson, I have to think that David Nelson was already playing with them. Once again, however, we have no real evidence to go on. My assumption is that Dawson was singing his songs on acoustic guitar, with Garcia playing pedal steel and Nelson playing a Fender.

May 23-24, 1969: Big Rock Pow Wow, Seminole Indian Reservation, Hollywood, FL
May 23; Grateful Dead/Johnny Winter/Muddy Waters/Joe South/Nervous System/Jane & The Electric Jive Wire
May 24: Grateful Dead/Sweetwater/Youngbloods/Joe South/Aum/Sun Country
Psychedelic rock had broken through on the Coasts, and then along the I80 and I70 corridors where all the touring bands went through (Chicago, Salt Lake City, Denver, etc). It took a longer time for hippie music to reach the rest of the country. Florida was one of the first places where there were places for the Fillmore bands to play in the South, and the Dead played a big part. The band had played two weekends at Thee Image in 1968, Miami's premier psychedelic ballroom (though not it's first), and the Dead had also played the first free concert in Graynolds Park in Miami, on April 14, 1968.The Dead had played a rock festival in North Miami in December, 1968 as well.

By 1969, however, police pressure and fear of Jim Morrison had helped to shut down Thee Image. Florida's solution was to move the fun to an Indian Reservation north of Miami, where the local police had no jurisdiction. The 'Big Rock Pow-Wow' was a three-day festival, and the Dead were the headline act on Friday and Saturday. The excellent though now obscure band Rhinoceros were the Sunday headliner (May 25). Both Dead shows were released in their entirety on the Road Trips series, and Blair Jackson's liner notes tell the whole hilarious story.

A handbill for the People's Park Bail Benefit show at Winterland on May 28, 1969

May 28, 1969: Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Creedence Clearwater Revival/Grateful Dead/Santana/Elvin Bishop Group/Aum/Bangor Flying Circus
People's Park Bail Ball
The People's Park protests in Berkeley were a seminal event in the Bay Area, too complex to go into here. Although initially a civic issue--an empty grass field was going to be turned into a parking lot by the University--it became a flashpoint for the needs of the community versus the needs of a State-run institution (UC Berkeley). Ultimately there were huge riots, the National Guard was called in and the entire conflict escalated significantly. From this point of view, the Grateful Dead playing a benefit for people who had been arrested at one of the many riot was more of a social statement than an explicitly political one. Obviously, the band's participation was not without political content, but the event would not have been seen as support of a specific political group but more as an act of solidarity.

This was a Wednesday night event, so bands weren't losing out on a paying gig. Generally, bands weren't paid at these sorts of benefits, although they might receive a little money for expenses--what constituted "a little" remains unknown. I presume that the organizers hired Bill Graham Presents to organize the show, but it was not a BGP show per se. The event ran from 6:00pm until 2am, and probably every band played a single set.

Solidarity and politics aside, bands and management liked playing events like this, even if practically for free, since it often introduced a group to new audiences as well as making them seem cool and in touch, an important market in the 60s. Creedence Clearwater Revival, for example, were hugely popular at this time, having had a giant hit with "Proud Mary" (released in January) and followed by "Bad Moon Rising" (released in April), whose B-side, "Lodi," received nearly as much airplay. Creedence was an East Bay band, however, and it was important for them to show that even though they were big stars now, they were still going to come out for a People's Park benefit (which the individual band members surely supported).

Many of the support acts were Millard acts, as were the Dead. Millard was sharp about making sure that fans who would come out to see the Airplane, The Dead and Creedence were going to hear Millard acts like Elvin Bishop, Aum and Santana as well.

I assume that the Dead played third from last, but I don't know that for sure. It's a meaningful point insofar as determining whether or not Garcia sat in with Dawson this Wednesday night. I have assumed that Garcia did not, but truthfully, it's not totally impossible. As always, confirmation of actual dates that Garcia played with Dawson at The Underground--or for that matter, any confirmation about when Dawson played The Underground, even by himself--are all but impossible to come by.

The Mike Aydelott poster for the May 29, 1969 UCSB show in Robertson Gym

May 29, 1969: Robertson Gym, UC Santa Barbara, Isla Vista, CA: Grateful Dead/Youngbloods/Lee Michaels
Santa Barbara's proximity to Los Angeles meant that there were a lot of rock concerts there in the 60s, but most of them were held at the County Fairgrounds in Santa Barbara proper. The University of California at Santa Barbara was actually in Isla Vista, about 10 miles West of the city itself. The campus had been a somewhat sleepy backwater in the UC system (it was established in 1944), but the post WW2 baby boom expanded the campus dramatically, starting in the late 1950s. By the late 1960s, Isla Vista and the UCSB community was a hotbed of anti-war activity. Still, there were relatively few major rock concerts on or near campus.

Once again the Dead led the way in taking time on a Thursday night to conquer new territory. Keep in mind that they had played San Francisco on a Wednesday, Isla Vista on a Thursday and then back North for a weekend in Oregon the next day. The Youngbloods and Lee Michaels were probably associated with the Millard Agency in some ways, as both groups played a lot with the Dead. Note that in 1969 the Grateful Dead needed two substantial supporting acts to play Robertson Gym. By the time I saw them there in 1977 (March 27), the Dead packed the place by themselves.

May 30, 1969: Springer's Inn, Gresham, OR: Grateful Dead/Palace Meat Market
Springer's Inn was an old ballroom that was built as part of a hotel that was the terminus of a long-ago electric rail line. It was actually in the town of Gresham, OR, 15 miles East of Portland. The are was fairly undeveloped at the time, and the poster doesn't even give an address--it just says "take Powell, right on 190th." That tells you there was nothing else out there. The actual address was 18300 SE Richey Rd, Gresham, OR 97080, but it wasn't necessary. Now, of course, there is a condo development, no sign of Springer's Inn and SE 190th Avenue doesn't exist off Powell Street (or as Robert Hunter has said, "That train don't run here anymore").

I have written about Springer's Inn at some length elsewhere, so I won't recap it all here. Suffice to say, the Grateful Dead were already hugely popular in Oregon, despite the relative lack of population in Oregon at the time. Rock was also moving to the suburbs, and distant Gresham could attract more suburbanites than downtown Portland, which didn't have a good venue at this time anyway, since the Crystal Ballroom had been closed.

The Palace Meat Market was a local Oregon band. Opening for the Dead this weekend was the highlight of their career.

May 31, 1969: McArthur Court, Eugene, OR: Grateful Dead/Palace Meat Market
McArthur Court, built in 1926 with a capacity of nearly 10,000, remained the home of the Oregon Ducks until it was replaced in 2011 by the Matthew Knight Arena.

The Grateful Dead were always immensely popular in Oregon, whether due to mystical connections through Ken Kesey and their road crew (three of whom were from the tiny town of Hermiston, OR) or just because Oregon liked the Dead. In any case, when the Dead headlined McArthur Court on May 31, 1969, it was one of the biggest rooms that they had headlined up until that time. The show appears to have been scheduled for the track stadium (Hayward Field) and moved indoors, but in any case it was a sign of the Dead's status in Oregon.

Ken Kesey and his Prankster pals were having some sort of Prankster reunion this weekend, and Kesey, Ken Babbs and others were in attendance at these shows, and may have appeared on stage in some capacity or other. Apparently it was a wild time, just another in a long list of memorable Oregon shows for the Grateful Dead.

December 15, 1970: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Friends with David Crosby

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The cover to David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name lp

Among the many fascinating Jerry Garcia recordings that circulate are a rehearsal and a performance from the Matrix in San Francisco, dated December 15, 1970. While there are some reasons to think the rehearsal and performances are actually from the next night, the memorable aspect of the tape is that it features a collaboration between Jerry Garcia and David Crosby, along with Phil Lesh and one of the Dead's drummers. All of them were recording regularly at Wally Heider's Studio in San Francisco, working on David Crosby's solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name, among various other projects. The players seem to have decided to have a little fun at the Matrix on the side, a more or less unprecedented event amongst the crowd who recorded at Wally Heider's.

My focus for this post is not on the specific details of the rehearsals and the performances at The Matrix, but on how Jerry Garcia's performances with David Crosby are not only singular in Garcia's solo career, they represent a distinct fork in the road that Garcia ultimately chose not to pursue. Garcia's career apart from the Grateful Dead followed certain steady paths that Deadheads take for granted, and I want to point out not only how singular that path was, but how Garcia had the opportunity to follow a more typical solo career for 70s rock musicians, and how his brief foray with Crosby represents Garcia's brief stab at performing in a solo context more similar to the individual member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, an approach Garcia seems to have categorically rejected.

Put simply, Garcia would always have been welcome if not actively encouraged to collaborate on stage performing original music with the members of CSNY or the Airplane, among many other friends, but Garcia chose to emphasize his guitar playing by performing 'bar music' in a setting similar to a jazz musician. The December 1970 shows with Crosby had neither a precedent nor an antecedent in Garcia's solo career, and I am going to consider them from that point of view.

The Matrix, December 15-17, 1970--What Do We Know?
The Matrix advertised 'Jerry Garcia and Friends' for three nights, December 15, 16 and 17, 1970. According to a vault tape identified in Deadlists, the third night features a brief set by the Grateful Dead themselves. The existing rehearsal tape, about 45 minutes, and the performance tape, about 67 minutes, are on a tape dated December 15, 1970. However, a remark by Crosby on the rehearsal tape about overblowing the limiters "last night" suggests that the rehearsal tape is actually from December 16. The whole subject of dating Matrix tapes is problematic, but the essence of it is that the owners of the Matrix taped everything, but due to the expense of recording tape they did not keep everything, instead simply taping over previous tapes while only preserving the 'best' stuff. The evidence (for many groups) seems to suggest that the tape boxes were only generically accurate--that is, the tape might say "Jerry Garcia December 1970" or list the first night (December 15) even though the actual tapes preserved were from a different night. I would assume that the 'rehearsal' tape and the performance tape are from December 16 or 17, and that the other nights no longer exist, nor is there reason to assume that the rehearsal and performance are from the same night. (Update: a Commenter points out that there is good reason to think that the dates may be Monday thru Wednesday, December 14-16, rather than Dec 15-17, so the December 15 may even be correct).

The 45-minute Grateful Dead set from the third night (December 17) is interesting in its own right. Did Garcia and Crosby play a set along with the Grateful Dead at the Matrix on that night? Did the Grateful Dead play sets before or after the Garcia/Crosby sets on the first two nights. It's entirely possible. We have to remember that our only evidence is two possibly mis-dated tapes, and no eyewitnesses or newspaper reviews. Why would the Grateful Dead have played a set at the Matrix? I'm glad they did, of course, but it's very out of character for them. I would have to assume that they had a reason, like trying out new equipment. Update: thanks to a commenter, we can definitively say that the December 17, 1970 listing for the Matrix is spurious, as the extant tape is just a mix of other tapes, albeit possibly mixed by the Dead themselves in a prelude to Skullfuck.

For that matter, do we have any certainty that Mickey Hart was actually the drummer for the Crosby sets? Garcia, Lesh and Hart tended to be the members of the Dead regularly advertised at the Matrix, but has anyone heard Hart's voice on the tape? It appears that Bill Kreutzmann played drums when the Garcia/Crosby ensemble played Pepperland a few days later (there's even a photo), so I'd be inclined to think that Billy played at Matrix. I recognize that "anything is possible," but it seems unlikely to rehearse one drummer only to play with another.

The Matrix shows had been on a Tuesday through Thursday run at the Matrix. On Monday night, December 21, the 'Acoustic Dead' were booked at Pepperland in Marin. An eyewitness did attend this show, and reported that Garcia, Crosby, Lesh and Kretuzmann played a set similar to the extant Matrix one. Although are correspondent had to leave early, the other members of the Dead were present, and it seems likely that the full band played a set. Since the Grateful Dead were booked for New Year's Eve at Winterland, contracts would have prevented them from advertising a show so near to New Year's (not to mention the December 23 benefit show at Winterland as well). Presumably, since Winterland may have already been sold out, Bill Graham Presents was able to overlook the advertising of an 'Acoustic Dead' show, particularly since it's not even certain the band played acoustically at all. I think that the Matrix shows with Crosby were a dry run for the more formal performance at Pepperland.

Jerry Garcia's Solo Career
By the time most Deadheads became really big fans, myself included, Jerry Garcia's solo career had already established its own arc. Garcia's initial solo album was seen as a separate expression of Grateful Dead music, albeit performed by Garcia himself (and Kreutzmann on drums). The main songs on Garcia were staples of the Grateful Dead concert repertoire. Garcia had also released the Hooteroll album with Howard Wales, however, and that seemed to more indicative of his live interests outside of the Grateful Dead. When Garcia played live, whether with the New Riders, Howard Wales or Merl Saunders, he never played any material that the Grateful Dead played, and the Grateful Dead never played anything from Garcia's side bands.

While Garcia's solo career took on more substance in the mid-70s, he maintained a very definite split between his solo performances and the Grateful Dead. Although there were commercial realities that made it prudent for the Jerry Garcia Band to perform few numbers associated with the Dead ("Friend Of The Devil", 'Deal" etc), by and large the repertoires were kept separate. Here and there a few cover versions crossed over (like "Let It Rock"), but for the most part the JGB and Grateful Dead were distinct musical entities. If Garcia had been willing to play "Casey Jones" and "Scarlet Begonias" with his own band, they would have been even more popular, but he chose a different road. When Bob Weir started to play out with Kingfish and later his own band, he followed Garcia's model. Weir played a few songs associated with his Dead performances ("One More Saturday Night," "Minglewood" etc) but by and large Weir's solo career also featured music distinct from the Grateful Dead.

By the mid-70s, it was fully established to Deadheads that Garcia and Weir's projects outside of the Grateful Dead would feature little or nothing from the Grateful Dead's huge catalog of songs. By the same token, a song or cover that was appealing from Garcia or Weir's bands only occasionally popped up in a Grateful Dead set. This assumption of separate repertoires was so embedded that most Deadheads took it absolutely for granted. However, Garcia's insistence on keeping his Dead and solo careers was very much in contrast to music industry orthodoxy during that period, an industry orthodoxy practiced by close musical friends of Garcia's, like David Crosby.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Solo Careers
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were an important group for reasons that extended beyond their fine music and extraordinary success. The debut album Crosby, Stills and Nash instantly went to number one in 1969. It was a surprise when Neil Young joined the group, and a surprise when the band changed their name--how often does a band with a number one album change their name? Neil Young had released his brilliant second album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in May 1969, and he had his own backing band, Crazy Horse. It seemed strange that he would toss that aside to share singing and writing duties with three other guys. Befitting the name of the band, it was put about in Rolling Stone and the like that Young's solo recording and performing career would continue alongside of CSNY.

Young's dual role was unprecedented, but in fact it set the template for the record industry in the next decade. Since Neil Young could be in a band and be a solo artist, that made it plausible for Paul Kantner or Jerry Garcia to do the same. Albums like Blows Against The Empire or Garcia were not seen as "breaking up the band" but as an extension of the groups themselves. Neil Young and CSNY weren't the first band to have a guy with a solo album, but they were the first to indicate that a solo and a group career could thrive simultaneously. Not surprisingly, the other members of CSNY set out to recording their own albums. David Crosby and Graham Nash started recording in San Francisco at Wally Heider's, along with their friends in the Dead and the Airplane, and this lead to the so-called PERRO sessions (Stills, meanwhile, recorded in Florida and London).

In the context of Jerry Garcia, the point to consider with respect to the solo careers of the members of CSNY was how their 'solo' material was integrated into the band. When CSNY set out on their all-conquering tour in the middle of 1970, they put on lengthy shows that featured all of their leaders. The album Four Way Street (1971) is a good representation of the breadth of their material. While the highlights of any CSNY concert were always the group's own classic songs, members of the band did their own solo material at CSNY concerts: Neil Young performed "Southern Man" and David Crosby sang 'Triad," and so on. When CSNY went on 'hiatus' for a few years, and the individual members started to perform on their own, all of them played CSNY songs in concert: Neil would play "Helpless," Crosby and Nash would sing "Marrakesh Express," Stephen Stills' Manassas would play "49 Bye Byes" and so forth. It was assumed by fans and critics alike that all of the material from CSNY members was eligible for either solo or group performances. Needless to say, the willingness to play their most popular songs was good business--Jerry Garcia's insistence that he would never play the songs he was best known for in his own concerts was yet another way in which he stood apart from his peers.

David And The Dorks (Jerry And The Jets)
Looked at in the context of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Garcia and Crosby's brief collaboration was very orthodox for the time. The extant sets at the Matrix includes a few new Crosby songs ("Cowboy Movie," "Wall Song," "Laughing"), a couple of Crosby classics ("Triad" and the rehearsal "Eight Miles High"), a Garcia original ("Bertha"), and some blues numbers, including a Grateful Dead standard ("Deep Elem Blues"). If the 'band' (laughingly called "David And The Dorks" by Garcia, onstage, and "Jerry And The Jets" by Crosby) had gone on tour, that indicates a cross section of what kind of music they would have played.

Based on the material played and Crosby's comments on the 'rehearsal' tape, the Matrix excursion seems like a Crosby project. It appears that Crosby wanted to play some of his new material live, and encouraged Garcia, Lesh and a drummer to back him. From that point of view, Garcia's participation is reminiscent of the New Riders--someone else's material, with Jerry as a sideman. However, unlike Garcia's tenure in the New Riders, he leads the band on a few songs clearly of his own choosing. I have no doubts that Crosby would have been amenable to whatever Garcia wanted to perform, and would have been more than willing to split vocals evenly with him if that had been what Garcia wanted. Whether or not Garcia saw the Matrix enterprise as a 'Crosby venture' or a 'joint venture,' Garcia would have been free to step up to the microphone to whatever extent he felt like it. Thanks to CSNY, music business orthodoxy was less fixated on the supposedly unbreakable partnership of a rock group and heading towards looser, temporary solo or duo arrangements.

Garcia and the Dead were always in a cash squeeze--what if Garcia, Crosby and Nash had decided to tour for a few dates? Crosby and Nash, as members of CSNY, were huge, and Garcia was at least a genuine rock star himself. If they had played some new material along with "Long Time Gone" and "Casey Jones," not to mention "Teach Your Children," it would have been very popular indeed. Do you think Crosby and Nash could have handled the harmonies on "Uncle John's Band?" Yeah, I think so. Garcia could have made a ton of money playing a half-dozen dates with Crosby and Nash, and he would have made really good music besides. And it's not like Garcia wasn't already playing with Merl Saunders on the side, so it wouldn't have even been more work. Certainly the record company would have loved it (Warner Brothers and Crosby and Nash's label, Atlantic, were linked corporately). Yet Garcia took the opposite tack of every other rock star in the 1970s, and kept his solo career separate.

I love the December 1970 Matrix tapes with Crosby, not least because I really like Crosby's solo album, and mainly just for the tremendous version of "Cowboy Movie," perhaps my favorite Crosby song. No one has ever asked Crosby what the specific impulse was to play with Garcia at Matrix and Pepperland, but I'm glad they did. From this vantage point, however, it's interesting to see Garcia on the edge of conventional rock stardom. Crosby, Paul Kantner, Garcia and others are recording daily at Wally Heider's working on each other's material. Indeed, some Garcia material was even recorded with All-Star lineups at the PERRO sessions. Yet he chose to record his solo album by himself, and their were no more live experiments with anyone else's original material.

I think the most revealing part of the Matrix rehearsal is when the band stops in the middle of "Cowboy Movie." There is something that David Crosby doesn't like, and they keep repeating the same phrases over and over, as Crosby strives for some unseen goal. In the time it takes to get Crosby's take just exactly perfect, Garcia would have been deep into his solo, and for Crosby's sake they kept stopping. I grant, it's a rehearsal, but by all accounts Garcia's interests in his side bands were about playing, not rehearsing, and I don't see Garcia leaning towards an ensemble that needs to rehearse difficult songs, however good they may have been, when Garcia could just be improvising.

Aftermath
Jerry Garcia's career outside of the Grateful Dead was longer and more productive than many musicians who didn't have a full-time band, so most Deadheads have not reflected on Garcia's choice to keep his own music distinct from the Dead, despite the implied financial penalties of doing so. In the 60s, rock bands were supposed to be like the Beatles, one for all and all for one, and a "solo album" meant that someone had left the group. Of course, record companies preferred solo albums for a variety of economic reasons, and in the 1970s, CSNY opened the door for artists to have a solo and a group career in parallel. Very few successful rock groups have included solo artists who kept their solo music separate over a long period of time--REM is the only major one that immediately comes to mind.

Yet it's plain in retrospect that Garcia made a very conscious choice to keep his own music separate from the Dead. There he was, regularly dropping by Wally Heider's to record both his own music and the music of Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, David Crosby, Graham Nash and others. The allure of playing live with some of those guys wasn't just some sort of fantasy, because we know that for a few dates in December, Garcia and Crosby actually had a little band, even if they only played three or four dates. And that band sounded great, and could have made a lot of money out on the road, even on a brief tour.

But Garcia passed on the CSNY model of solo artist, and never returned to it. Sure, here and there he sat in with some famous friend and took a guitar solo, or something like that, but I can't think of an onstage collaboration with a peer where Garcia played original music along with songs in the Dead repertory. Garcia was a nice guy, a great guitar player and a rock star, so he would have always been welcome to work with any of his famous peers in any format, but he chose not to make a plan of it. Garcia's twenty-five year commitment to his glorified bar band carved a path out of the wilderness, all the more impressive for the fact that the path began right next to the main highway of rock stardom, which Garcia willfully avoided for his own muse.

August 19, 25, 26, 1967: Grateful Dead "Lake Tahoe Tour"

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The poster advertising the opening of Kings Beach Bowl in North Lake Tahoe, July 1967

In August of 1967, the Grateful Dead played three shows in the Lake Tahoe area in California. Lake Tahoe is a huge freshwater lake straddling the California/Nevada border, about 200 miles from San Francisco and 60 miles South of Reno. On Saturday, August 19, the band played Lake Tahoe's main venue, The American Legion Hall in the town of South Lake Tahoe. The next weekend, on Friday and Saturday, August 25 and 26, the Dead played Kings Beach Bowl in North Lake Tahoe. If you just peruse Deadlists or a similar database, these just seem like casual California shows that were part of the Dead's never-ending touring, and in some ways they were. Nonetheless, the Lake Tahoe rock scene in the 60s was unique, and a closer look at it will lend some interesting perspective to these performances.

Lake Tahoe had always been San Francisco and Northern California's playground, and there is a long American history of entertainment in resort areas. The Catskills in New York or the 'Silver Circuit' in Nevada (Las Vegas, Reno, North Tahoe) have lengthy post-WW2 traditions. One peculiar feature of Lake Tahoe, however, was that there was gambling on the Nevada side of the lake (usually referred to as 'North Lake Tahoe'), so the casinos focused on the high-end trade there. The California side (usually referred to as 'South Lake Tahoe,' although the geography doesn't quite fit that) was more of the family side. After Lake Tahoe boomed following the 1960 Winter Olympics, the California side of the lake was left for "the kids," because the adults wanted to go to Nevada and gamble. As a result, for a resort area, the California side of Lake Tahoe in the 1960s had a peculiar focus on rock and roll that is largely undocumented. I am in the process of sorting it all out, and the Grateful Dead's week in Lake Tahoe in 1967 makes an interesting snapshot of a unique American rock scene, and it will shed some light on why the Grateful Dead returned to Kings Beach Bowl more than once.

Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe, straddling California and Nevada, is one of the West’s largest, deepest, clearest and most beautiful lakes. The lake sits six thousand feet above sea level, and the Truckee River feeds the lake, flowing into and then out of the lake. Truckee, California, about 12 miles North of Lake Tahoe and 30 miles West of Reno, was an original train stop on the Transcontinental Railroad. In 1899 the Duane L. Bliss Family built the Lake Tahoe Railway and Transportation Company. The Southern Pacific Railway actively encouraged tourist attractions along its rail lines, and Lake Tahoe became a popular resort for the San Francisco Bay Area.

Many families in both the Bay Area and the Sacramento/Central Valley area would buy or rent second homes in Lake Tahoe, and they would spend much of the Summer and many Winter weekends at Tahoe. Part of Lake Tahoe's specialness was that it was a great resort for both Summer and Winter. After 1960, when the Winter Olympics were held at nearby Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe boomed again, particularly for Winter sports. Since the Lake was on the California/Nevada border, parents could go over to the Nevada side and gamble, leaving their teenage kids to fend for themselves.

Lake Tahoe Music in The 1960s
The first person to catch on to the vast quantity of teenagers in Lake Tahoe was a guitarist named Jim Burgett. He started putting on dances at the South Lake Tahoe American Legion Hall (at 2748 Lake Tahoe Blvd [US 50], South Lake Tahoe, CA) in 1958. The story is complicated, but by the mid-60s Burgett was holding dances at the Legion Hall seven days a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day. For any teenagers spending a week, a month or a Summer in Lake Tahoe, every night was Friday night, and with the parents often away in Nevada anyway, the Legion Hall dances were the only show in town. Burgett's own band played most nights, but on occasion he hired out of town acts as well. When the Fillmore bands became popular, he would often hire them to give his own band a night off (Burgett also played six days a week at Harrah's Tahoe, believe it or not). The Jim Burgett saga is amazing, and well worthy of a book, which fortunately he is planning to write.

North Lake Tahoe, about 20 miles away, was less crowded and hence had less activity. However, the North Lake Tahoe set considered themselves cooler than the South, and a venue opened in North Lake Tahoe as well. Kings Beach Bowl, a converted bowling alley on North Lake Avenue, was opened in the Summer of 1967, but it was mostly only open on weekends. The sons of the owners had a band, and their dads created a place for them to play. Although the teenagers were not the bookers, they advised the booking agents on what was cool in Sacramento (where they were from) and San Francisco, so some very cool Fillmore bands played Kings Beach Bowl in 1967 and 1968, including Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead and Buffalo Springfield.

The Grateful Dead, August 1967
In August, 1967 the Grateful Dead had just finished a run through Canada with the Jefferson Airplane, and they were working towards their second album. Their temporary base of operations that Summer was generally thought to be Rio Nido, but the band seems to have taken the Lake Tahoe gigs as a sort of vacation. Apparently, Jerry, Mountain Girl and her daughter Sunshine spent the entire week in Lake Tahoe, and I suspect many other band members did as well. Anyone with urgent business could have driven the four hours back to San Francisco, but Lake Tahoe is so nice that there would have to be a pretty good reason to do so.

One odd story about the Lake Tahoe shows that I have read (although I am unable to track the quote) was that Jerry and Mountain Girl hated the motel where they were put up, so they simply went camping for the week between shows. Lake Tahoe was still empty enough in those days that it wouldn't have been too hard to find a place to camp, albeit somewhat unofficially, and it still would not have been hard to come into civilization for rehearsals, cigarettes or other essentials. Jerry had apparently been camping a lot as a child and was comfortable in a tent. This had to be the last time Garcia could consider doing such a thing.

Since Lake Tahoe was a resort area, it was probably part of band's contracts that housing was provided. However, there were a lot of tacky little hotels, the kind of places that made Motel 6 look good (I think my family stayed in a few). The general idea of Lake Tahoe was that it was so nice that you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time indoors, so the motel was just a place to sleep. For a mom with an infant and a guy who wanted to practice guitar all day, however, the woods were probably more fun than sitting in a little motel. Given the number of Bay Area teenagers in Lake Tahoe during that (or any) Summer, I can't help but think that at least one of them passed by Jerry and MG in the hills and thought "hey, the dude looks like Jerry Garcia."

We know that Robert Hunter re-connected with the Grateful Dead in Rio Nido the next week (ca. September 3), and we know that Mickey Hart had met Bill Kreutzmann, but not yet met the Dead, so the band was still in its original state. I assume much or all of the "Family" was up in Lake Tahoe, but since there is very little information about these shows, I can't quite say. Nonetheless, I do have some interesting context in which the shows can be considered.

The American Legion Hall in South Lake Tahoe, at 2748 Lake Tahoe Blvd, circa 1965. For a great story on the history of Jim Burgett and The Legion Hall, see the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

American Legion Hall, 2848 Lake Tahoe Blvd, South Lake Tahoe, CA
By 1967, Jim Burgett had been putting on shows at the Legion Hall for almost a decade, and his shows were an institution with teenagers who regularly visited Tahoe. By this time, Burgett controlled the lease for the American Legion Hall, and his band played seven nights a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Since every night was Friday night for a teenager in Tahoe, the dances were generally packed. Burgett's band were also regulars in Harrah's Tahoe, where they played six days a week. Think about that for a second: six days and seven nights a week, for three straight months.

Burgett's band played a mixture of rock and soul, and they are remembered fondly by Tahoe teenagers in the 60s. Like many Nevada musicians, they were established professionals who could play a wide variety of styles. They probably played some poppier material in the Harrah's lounge, but at the American Legion Hall they played a lot of Motown, Stax and songs like Eric Burdon's "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place," although of course that was merely ironic in lovely Lake Tahoe, since no one actually wanted to leave.

However, when outside bands were available, Burgett would book them, both to give his own band a break and to provide some variation for the regulars at his dances. Sometimes Burgett's band would be the opening act, or they would back a singer, but I think in the case of the Grateful Dead Burgett may have simply taken the night off. A long-gone Comment thread on a Lake Tahoe tourist site recalls the Dead rocking the Legion Hall until about 3 in the morning. While I'm sure the audience wasn't exactly straight, part of the appeal of the Lake Tahoe scene was the fact that it was not a bar scene. Parents were very comfortable letting their teenagers go to shows in Lake Tahoe, because there were no bars (although I'm sure plenty of beer was consumed in the parking lot) and relatively speaking, no older people. Some of the people going to the rock shows were probably in their early 20s, but in general the adults went to the Nevada side to drink and gamble, so the California side was judged safe for teenagers.

From people who were around at the time, the teenagers traveled in packs. If a family owned or rented a house in Tahoe, the kids in the family would invite all their cousins or school friends up for a week or two. When the parents went off at night to gamble, the teenagers went out on their own, and Jim Burgett's dances at the Legion Hall were the prime, if not the only, destination. Older siblings usually had the obligation to drive and look after the younger ones, so once again the dances were a good way for big sisters to keep an eye on their proverbial little brothers without having to spend too much time with them. Many comment threads on Facebook and elsewhere recall the Dead's 1967 show at the Legion Hall, but details are naturally foggy.

Kings Beach Bowl, North Lake Avenue, North Lake Tahoe, CA
Kings Beach Bowl was a gutted bowling alley on the California side of North Lake Tahoe. North Lake Tahoe, was a smaller and more latterly developed area than the Southern end. Originally South Lake Tahoe, CA had been for families and North Lake Tahoe, NV for gambling, but the California side of North Tahoe had grown up as well. According to one resident, the North Tahoe people saw themselves as "real," if part-time, residents than the more touristy South, and generally thought they were cooler. The Kings Beach Bowl was even smaller than the American Legion Hall, and was only open on weekends, but the North Tahoe teenagers thought that they were cooler. In any case, Kings Beach Bowl had the hip bands from the Fillmore, all of whom were familiar to the Bay Area teenagers who populated Lake Tahoe in the Summers. I have been working on a fairly complete chronology of the Kings Beach Bowl adventure, but I will save that for another blog, and just present a thumbnail sketch of the venue.

The operators of Kings Beach Bowl were Alan Jay and Allan Goodall. Allan Jay's sons were in a Sacramento band called The Creators, and they were friends with Allen Goodall's son. The senior Jay and Goodall put together Kings Beach Bowl so that The Creators would have a place to play. The members of The Creators were Warren and Gary Jay, and Skip Maggiora, Dickie Pomeine and Pat Payton. For a light show, they hired some Sacramento college students who called themselves The Simultaneous Avalanche. The Simultaneous Avalanche had begun the Summer working for Jim Burgett at the American Legion Hall, but moved to Kings Beach Bowl "in search of fun and adventure" (according to the Avalanche's Rick Schultze, via another friend). The Creators and The Simultaneous Avalanche, all friends, were regular attractions at Kings Beach Bowl, with visiting headliners bought in from outside on most weekends.

Unlike the larger and more established Legion Hall in South Tahoe, Kings Beach Bowl was only open on weekends. However, while Jay and Goodall used a professional booking agent, they took the advice of their sons and their friends as to what bands to book. As a result, not only did some very hip Fillmore bands come through Kings Beach Bowl in the Summer of 1967, but some interesting touring bands like Buffalo Springfield and even Jimi Hendrix also found time for an extra gig at Kings Beach.

Kings Beach Bowl was just a converted bowling alley, and hardly a special building. Nonetheless, eyewitnesses recall it fondly. I only know of one photo of the inside, from when the Buffalo Springfield played on August 18-19, 1967 (I even know where you can find it). Most of the attendees were based in North Tahoe, but largely came from the Bay Area and Northern California, so they had heard of all the Fillmore groups. For many, it was the first chance to see these groups. The commercial area of North Lake Tahoe was so quiet and safe that parents had no problem allowing teenagers and their friends to go to shows on their own.

Kings Beach Bowl only presented shows on weekends, unlike the American Legion Hall, which was open 7 days a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day. In 1967, when it opened, Kings Beach only began on June 15. The Grateful Dead would have been the last or next to last event presented, as I still have not been able to determine if Kings Beach was open Labor Day. I believe that bands were housed in a nearby vacation home for the weekend. Lake Tahoe houses at the time were not opulent, but they were usually spacious and secluded, just the thing for a band who liked to travel with all their crew, girlfriends and families and engage in various extracurricular activities. Since Allen Goodall worked for the Sheriff's department, there were not problems with the cops.

August 25-26, 1967, Kings Beach Bowl, North Lake Tahoe, CA: Grateful Dead/The Creators
What happened on the weekend of August 25 and 26, 1967? No one remembers. However, the Grateful Dead came back for two more weekends, so it must have been a good time.

As soon as the band returned to the Bay Area, they seem to have gone to Rio Nido and begun work on "Dark Star." I estimate that Phil Lesh picked up Robert Hunter in Palo Alto that week too. putting Hunter up at the Russian River so he could hear the band rehearse and put lyrics to "Dark Star," so it was a pretty momentous week. Somebody must have remembered something, however, because the Dead made plans to return in the Winter and the next Summer.

The poster for the Feb 22-24 '68 shows at Kings Beach Bowl in North Lake Tahoe

February 22-24, 1968, Kings Beach Bowl, North Lake Tahoe, CA: Grateful Dead/Morning Glory
After the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics, Lake Tahoe became a major Winter Sports destination. However, families were less likely to spend entire weeks there during the school year, and in the Winter mobility was limited, so there were fewer entertainment options. However, Winter holidays were still big family events in the Lake Tahoe area, so it was no surprise that Kings Beach Bowl put on an event over the Washington's Birthday weekend. In ancient times, both Lincoln's (Feb 12) and Washington's birthdays (Feb 22) were National holidays, and they were celebrated on whatever day of the week they happened to fall (sometime later they were replaced by the always-on-Monday 'Presidents Day'). In 1968, Washington's Birthday was on a Thursday, so that suggested a great ski weekend for February 22 through 25.

The Grateful Dead and The Morning Glory (a Marin band) headlined three nights at Kings Beach Bowl, with the accompanying "Trip Or Ski" poster. The assumption was that many people would come to Lake Tahoe to ski, and they would need something to do at night. Since the Dead were working on Anthem Of The Sun at the time, Dan Healy recorded the three nights. Among other things, the Kings Beach weekend was one of the first times Betty Cantor worked on the live recording of a Grateful Dead show. Note that the poster (above) has no directions beyond saying "North Shore." The geography was so simple, and there was only one main road (North Lake Avenue), so an actual address was unnecessary.

Two of the nights were released in 2001 as part of Dick's Picks Volume Twenty-Two (the February 22 tape had problems). The Dead's tapes are the only known live recordings from Kings Beach Bowl. I have no idea how well attended the Trip Or Ski event was, but I know that Kings Beach Bowl repeated the experiment in Winter 1969, albeit without the Dead, so it must have had some success.

July 12-13, 1968, Kings Beach Bowl, North Lake Tahoe, CA: Grateful Dead/Working Class
Kings Beach Bowl had another season of shows in 1968. However, although a good time was had by all, the relatively tiny venue was getting priced out by the growing popularity of Fillmore bands. At the same time, some groups who had appeared the year before. like Quicksilver Messenger Service, were now touring nationally, so they were less available. The Grateful Dead played that weekend, however, so clearly the band enjoyed the Kings Beach vibe. By 1968, not only was the American Legion Hall still going strong, but there was another, larger venue in South Lake Tahoe, called The Sanctuary. This, too, is another story, but suffice to say the Dead had three choices of venues to play in Lake Tahoe, and they chose the smallest one, so clearly the circumstances at Kings Beach Bowl were to their liking.

The house band at Kings Beach Bowl in 1968 was a Sacramento band called The Working Class. Over that July weekend, The Working Class revised their membership and evolved into a group called Sanpaku. Sanpaku was a very interesting group in its own right, as I can say with authority since I am Sanpaku's self-appointed historian. The band has some very interesting memories of the July weekend with the Dead, but we will need to wait until the book comes out.

Aftermath and Prequel
After 1968, Kings Beach Bowl largely closed down, except for the occasional show. In 1969, even the loyal Grateful Dead would have been too big to play there in any case. In the Winter of '69, snow caved in the roof of The American Legion Hall, and Jim Burgett moved his operation over to the much larger Sanctuary, which he took over and re-named The Fun House. Thus Lake Tahoe moved from three venues in Summer 1968 to one in Summer 1969. The Fun House had a successful run into the early 70s, but the Grateful Dead had long since moved to larger venues.

Although the week of August 19-26, 1967 seems lost to the mists of history, I think the scenario goes something like this: the Grateful Dead and their family (literally and figuratively) were looking for a holiday week in Lake Tahoe, although why exactly they needed a "break" from Rio Nido isn't plain. The band had a successful gig in South Shore, and were put up in a cheap hotel for a few days. The hotel was so unappealing that Garcia and Mountain Girl actually went camping, a remarkable detail on its own terms. If the camping week was capped off by a relaxing weekend in a North Lake Tahoe vacation home, as I think it was, it must have led to some very fond feelings towards Kings Beach Bowl and its operators. Thus for the brief time as a San Francisco/Fillmore enclave in the 60s, the Dead chose Kings Beach Bowl as their preferred destination.

Poking around the web on various message boards and comment threads, one finds that numerous people have fond memories of the Lake Tahoe scene, particularly Jim Burgett's dances at the American Legion Hall. However, one very commentator piqued my interest, and although like all internet comments they have to be considered with some reservations, it's a fascinating tidbit. Specifically, one old Tahoe hippie recalls seeing the Grateful Dead at the American Legion Hall in the Fall of 1966, well after Labor Day. There were less than 50 people present, and it was so laid back that Pigpen actually wore guns on stage, in an old West styled holster.

This crazy story is not as far fetched as it sounds. Jim Burgett was kind enough to respond to a few questions, and he told me that while he held the master lease to the American Legion Hall, outside of the Memorial Day to Labor Day window he often leased it to outside promoters. In many cases, Burgett and his band were on tour, so Burgett only had a general idea of what was being presented at at the Legion Hall (he knew a concert promoter would be using it, for example, but he might not know who the bands were). Thus some San Francisco entity could have leased the Legion Hall to put on a Dead show, and found out that the audience wasn't there in the Fall. I even have some clues as to who the promoters might have been, but that is too long a tangent to go into here. Hopefully I will have sorted out more of that story when I tell the entire Lake Tahoe 60s rock story on my other blog.

Most Deadheads know about the Trip Or Ski shows in February of 1968, because of the poster and Dicks Picks. However, the Grateful Dead seemed to have packed a surprising number of shows into a few years at Lake Tahoe, and as old memories are slowly recovered--you know who you are!--we look forward to finding out more.

Jerry Garcia Band Drummers Top 10 List

2011-11-10T06:00:00.000-08:00


The cover of Marvin Gaye's 1971 What's Going On album. Paul Humphrey played drums on the title track.

The Grateful Dead had a rare career arc, in that they used their initial success as a rock band to expand their opportunities to collaborate with other musicians. Many rock groups benefit from their members' work with other musicians, but usually those occurred prior to the band's formation. The Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia set the standard for working with an ever wider circle of musicians, enriching their music in the process. Powerful music embeds the musical experiences of its members, even if it is not explicitly stated, so that Bob Dylan, Branford Marsalis and Hamza Al-Din all became part of the Grateful Dead's music.

Of all the Dead's members, Jerry Garcia performed the most outside of the band, so the experiences of the musicians he played with in turn became embedded in his music, and that too became part of the Grateful Dead. From 1970 to 1995, Garcia had a working band of some sort where he could play electric guitar on a regular basis, going under various names; Garcia-Saunders, Legion Of Mary, Reconstruction and The Jerry Garcia Band. All these bands played rock music with a sort of R&B feel and a jazzy approach. The core of the band's repertoire was American popular music, whether rock, rhythm and blues or blues. The various Garcia bands were not exactly Top 40 bands, but for the most part they improvised cover versions of songs that people recognized, like bar bands everywhere. Garcia's uniqueness was that he made a major project out of a bar band after he was already famous.

Garcia's various bands were always anchored by bassist John Kahn, and Garcia generally worked with individual keyboard players for extended periods of time if the circumstances were right. The drum chair in Garcia bands was less stable, however, not only because of Garcia's need for flexibility but the difficulty of keeping a good drummer on permanent standby. While Garcia ultimately worked with a wide variety of players, in general his drum chair was filled by exceptionally good musicians who were experienced professionals in their own right. In the interests of contemplating my hypothesis that the music made by Garcia's bandmates was implicitly part of the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, I looked into some of the more popular recordings that Garcia's drummers had worked on prior to or during their tenure with Jerry. It's an impressive list.

Jerry Garcia's Drummers: Top 10 List
Since the various Garcia band drummers were mostly exceptional professionals, it's not surprising that many of them played on a variety of hits. Good drummers usually gravitate to the studio, because they are such rare finds. Given that the Garcia bands played a lot of popular cover versions, it seemed appropriate to try and find the best of popular music that his drummers had recorded. Appropriately enough, my list turns out to be a survey of many of the popular music styles of the mid-60s and mid-70s. Although Garcia drummers thrived with the improvisational freedom they were offered in the band, many of them had played on some of the biggest and most memorable hits of the decade. If Garcia's bands were made up of the musicians' recording past, the bands already had a rich history.

Jerry Garcia is by any account an important figure in American music. Firstly, and most importantly, for the great music he made, particularly in concert, but also for what he stood for and for what he was supposed to (or reputed to) have stood for. It is traditional to frame Garcia as a maverick, or at least a leader amongst mavericks, separate from the mainstream of American popular music. The Grateful Dead certainly carved their own path, and Jerry Garcia's own solo career was equally singular. And yet a review of the recorded work of Garcia's drummers reveals that Garcia was intimately connected to the best of American popular music from the late 1960s onwards, making his contribution to American music surprisingly more integrated than it may initially have appeared.

What follows is a list of huge, memorable hits from 1968 to 1976 where the drummer later played with Jerry Garcia in one of his "bar bands" (Garcia/Saunders, Legion of Mary, Reconstruction, JGB). All the songs are good for what they are, instantly memorable to those of a certain age, and huge hits. This list is an expression of the musical depth of Garcia's bands, rather than a "Best Of" or "Best Selling" or "Greatest Hits" list, although such lists might be interesting in their own right. The song list is meant to be considered as a whole, and the songs are listed in chronological order (note: release dates are approximate, and chart listings are the highest reached on Billboard pop charts).

"Dance To The Music"-Sly and The Family Stone (Epic, Jan '68, #8)-Drums: Greg Errico
Joel Selvin, channeling saxophonist Jules Broussard, described it best: "There was black music before Sly Stone, and there was black music after Sly Stone. Simple as that." With "Dance To The Music," Sly and the Family Stone burst onto world consciousness, with everything great about James Brown and Stax/Volt supercharged by psychedelic guitars and open minds. Music all over the world was never the same after this, and it was all for the better. A black and white band playing black and white music better than anyone black or white: dance to the music, indeed.

Greg Errico (sometimes spelled Gregg on the backs of albums) was from San Francisco, and he was an original member of Sly And The Family Stone from their formation in December 1966. He had been friends with Mickey Hart prior to that, as he shopped at Hart's drum store in San Carlos, and Errico reactivated that friendship when he quit Sly in late 1971. He played on various Grateful Dead related projects with Hart, Garcia and others, and was a substitute drummer for Garcia a few times in the 1970s, Errico was a full-time member of the Jerry Garcia Band for the Summer 1980 tour and a period during Fall 1982 as well.

The 45 for Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright," with Paul Humphrey on drums

"Feelin' Alright"-Joe Cocker (A&M, Apr '69, #33-1972) Drums: Paul Humphrey
Joe Cocker was in the first wave of English acts who became popular from FM radio rather than AM radio. One of the most popular tracks on Cocker's debut album was his soulful remake of Dave Mason's "Feelin' Alright." What had been a folk-tinged lament on the second Traffic album became a furstrated exhortation in Cocker's hands, while still retaining some of Mason's original ambiguity. Cocker's album With A Little Help From My Friends had been mostly recorded in England with the likes of Jimmy Page and Steve Winwood, but "Feelin' Alright" was recorded in Los Angeles with a crack team of session men. A good choice too--the song got huge airplay on FM radio, and still does, and I hear it on TV commercials and movie soundtracks to this day. Oddly enough, the single was re-released in 1972 and reached #33, but it was always an "FM hit."

I have written in detail about the fantastic musical career of drummer Paul Humphrey, who drummed for Garcia in late 1974, so I won't recap it all here. Suffice to say he had recorded literally thousands of sessions throughout the 1960s and '70s. The great bassist Carol Kaye described how she and Humphrey created the amazing introduction to Cocker's recording of "Feelin' Alright:"

Paul immediately struck up a semi-samba funk drum part and I went a contrasting way with a rhythm for a bassline. The chorus features the bass playing mostly down beats while Paul was accenting up beats, then we switched places for the verse. It was that simple.

"Okie From Muskogee"-Merle Haggard (Capitol, Sep '69, #41, #1-Country) Drums: Ron Tutt
This bit of country fluff became one of Merle Haggard's greatest hits. Ironically, Haggard intended the song as a sort of joke character study, but the song was taken as a non-ironic expression of "True American" principles. The wily Haggard, pride of Bakersfield, remains a complex guy, but he can write a simple song better than anyone. Besides its huge popularity, the song took on an afterlife with hippies, and there have been all sorts of funny variants, like the Youngbloods' "Hippie From Olema" and Kinky Friedman's "Asshole From El Paso." "Okie From Muskogee" was even performed by the Grateful Dead and The Beach Boys at the Fillmore East (on Apr 27 '71), as it was apparently a regular part of the Beach Boys repertoire.

Ron Tutt, from Texas, was already a successful session drummer in California, Memphis and Dallas when he joined Elvis Presley's stage band. By the time of Tutt's first show with Elvis, on July 31, 1969 (at the International Hotel in Las Vegas), Tutt had almost certainly recorded "Okie From Muskogee" with Haggard. The light, tasteful drumming for "Okie" was in complete contrast to driving Elvis' huge stage orchestra through lengthy versions of "Suspicious Minds," which in turn was diagonally opposite to jamming with the Jerry Garcia Band. Tutt could drum for anybody, playing any music, and do it seemingly better than anyone else. He was Jerry Garcia's drummer from December 1974 through June 1977 (with a brief 1981 encore).

The 45 for Sly And The Family Stone's 1969 "Thank You" single, with Greg Errico on drums

"Thank You (Falettinme Be Micelf Again)"-Sly And The Family Stone (Epic, Dec '69, #1) Drums: Greg Errico
Sly And The Family Stone had pschedelicized James Brown's music, but there was more to come. Much of black music from the 70s onward drew from a heavy funk vibe, and the Family Stone started that off too. "Thank You" still sounds modern, thanks to Larry Graham's thumb-popping bass, offset by Greg Errico's snapping drums. Not only was this song absolutely huge on both rock and soul radio stations, it was hugely influential, too, as it was the foundation for funk music, one of the major tributaries of R&B up through this very day.

"One Toke Over The Line"-Brewer and Shipley (Kama Sutra, Dec '70, #10) Drums: Bill Vitt
Brewer and Shipley were a folk-rock duo from Kansas City, by way of Los Angeles, who ended up recording their albums in San Francisco with Nick Gravenites. Gravenites used ace San Francisco musicians, including Jerry Garcia on one occasion (the song "Oh Mommy"). However, Gravenites' "house" rhythm section was John Kahn on bass and either Bill Vitt or Bob Jones on drums. This ode to crossing the line was a huge hit in 1971, and is not just a memorable song but a memorable phrase from the decade. The song was released on the excellent Tarkio album in February 1971, much of which received considerable airplay on FM as well as AM radio.

Bill Vitt was originally from Washington state, but after he playing in regional rock bands he moved to Los Angeles, where he was a session man from about 1967-69. He relocated to the Bay Area in late 1969. He became the substitute drummer for Mike Bloomfield, when regular drummer Bob Jones (who was also his landlord) had a conflict. As a result, Vitt had played with John Kahn, then the bassist for the Bloomfield band. Vitt in turn bought Kahn over to the Matrix to jam with Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia. Besides being the regular drummer for Garcia/Saunders from 1970-73, Vitt was also the drummer for The Sons Of Champlin during the same period (when they were called Yogi Phlegm). Vitt has remained an active musician to this day, and recently released an album.

"Stoney End"-Barbara Streisand (Columbia Dec '70 #6) Drums: Ron Tutt
Barbara Streisand is immensely popular, and has a reputation as American popular music's best singer. Mostly she performs in a highly orchestrated style, in a traditional approach that owes much to show tunes and Las Vegas as well as pop. In 1970, however, producer Richard Perry made a Streisand album in which she sang in a more uptempo, contemporary style. The biggest hit was the title track, her version of Laura Nyro's "Stoney End," which had a kind of R&B feel. If there was any doubts about Streisand's status as a singer, she showed conclusively that she could sing with power and soul any time she wanted, even if she generally tended towards a more restrained approach.

Deadheads who might say "I don't know 'Stoney End'" are probably wrong. If you check it out, you'll realize you have heard it many times on movie soundtracks, TV commercials and on the muzak at the Whole Foods. I'm no Streisand fan, or Laura Nyro either, actually, but even I think it's a great song. Since Barbara was top-of-the-line, her producer could have hired anyone, and he hired Ron Tutt. Tutt plays in a completely different style than he did with Merle, Elvis or Jerry, and of course he's completely great. He really could play with anybody.

"What's Going On"-Marvin Gaye (Motown, Jan '71, #2, #1-Soul) Drums: Paul Humphrey
Amidst all the fine songs on this list, Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" may be the finest. Gaye was a bright light in Motown's hit factory in the sixties, and then it turned out that he was an even better writer and producer than singer, and that's saying a lot. Everyone has heard "What's Going On,"and if you don't like it, you should probably seek help. Paul Humphrey's drumming is great, as is everyone else on the track.

Although I can't imagine Jerry actually singing 'What's Going On," I have always thought that it would have made a great Garcia/Saunders jam, but it was not to be. The Grateful Dead did actually perform the song once, on September 24, 1988 at a Rainforest Benefit at Madison Square Garden, with Daryl Hall and John Oates handling the lead vocals.

"Burning Love"-Elvis Presley (RCA, Aug '72, #2) Drums: Ron Tutt
Ron Tutt was Elvis Presley's drummer for almost all of his live performances between July 31, 1969 and June 1977 (he missed a tour in 1970 plus a few other dates here and there). Tutt did not play on every Elvis studio track during that time, by any means, but he did play on "Burning Love." "Burning Love," while easy to parody, was Elvis's last really big hit, and The King's last true rock hit. Tutt, whose career as a drummer would be important and interesting if he had never played with either Elvis or Jerry, anchored the stage shows of two of American music's most iconic figures.

The 45 for The Pointer Sisters "How Long (Betcha Got A Chick On The Side)", with Gaylord Birch on drums

"How Long (Betcha Got A Chick On The Side)"-The Pointer Sisters (Blue Thumb, Jun '75, #20, #1-Soul) Drums: Gaylord Birch
Oakland had been a great California city, primarily because it was the terminus of the first Transcontinental Railroad, and many other rail lines besides. After World War 2, however, when people could afford private automobiles to drive themselves across the Bay Bridge (opened in 1936), Oakland slowly shrank in importance. Still, along with its thriving container port, Oakland had two major exports in the early 1970s: great sports teams and innovative funk music. Along with the Oakland A's, Oakland Raiders and Golden State Warriors, champions all, Oakland had some popular and influential funk bands. Tower of Power were originally from Fremont, but had relocated to Oakland by the time they burst onto the world in 1970. Herbie Hancock's groundbreaking Headhunters album and band had an Oakland rhythm section, with bassist Paul Jackson and drummer Mike Clark. On the popular side were The Pointer Sisters, four Oakland sisters who had learned to sing in church and played catchy soul music, while still keeping it real with some lowdown Oaktown funk.

The Pointer Sisters were first discovered by Elvin Bishop, who started using them as part-time backup singers when some of them were still in High School. In fact, Elvin alludes to them on the Oct 10 '68 Mickey And The Hartbeats tape, when he says he has some backup singers who "sing like Angels." Through working with Bishop for the next few years, the four sisters (Anita, Bonnie, June and Ruth) started to get known. Not only did they sing like angels, but they were tall, attractive, elegant and great dancers. How could they miss?

They didn't miss. The Pointer Sisters were signed to Blue Thumb Records and released their first album in 1973. They had a great hit with a funky, swinging version of Allen Toussaint's "Yes We Can-Can" ("Now is the time for all good men/to get together with one another"). The Pointer Sisters' secret weapon was bandleader and drummer Gaylord Birch. Birch had played in many Oakland ensembles, but he was well-known, by Mike Clark most of all, as the funkiest of Oakland drummers, and that's saying a lot. Birch led the Pointer Sisters band from about 1973 to 1976. He also had stints with Cold Blood and Santana. He played on a Merl Saunders session with Garcia in 1974, but he did not play live with Garcia until he joined Reconstruction in 1979. Birch had an encore appearance in the Garcia Band in 1985, as well (Oct 7 '85 through Feb 2 '86). I am working on a more complete Gaylord Birch musical biography, but check out any Reconstruction tape --the man could lay it down.

"How Long (Betcha Got A Chick On The Side)" was the Pointer Sisters' biggest and most memorable hit. Anita and Bonnie Pointer, along with producer David Rubinson, wrote the song. It is catchy and hummable, but at the same time Birch drives it along with an irresistible dance beat, pushing and pulling so you can't help feeling the funk. Once again, this is a song that many Deadheads will assert that they don't recognize, until they actually hear it. In some cases, younger listeners may actually recognize the song from a sample (by Salt N Pepa) or a cover (by Queen Latifah), as the song prefigures modern rap and R&B music in all of the best ways. Although the Pointer Sisters have had a variety of ups and downs, they are still together, representing for Oakland and looking and sounding great. Gaylord Birch passed away in 1996, unfortunately, but he had a great musical legacy.

"Fooled Around And Fell In Love"-Elvin Bishop Group (Capricorn, Feb '76, #3) Drums: Don Baldwin
Guitarist Elvin Bishop had first come to San Francisco as a member of the groundbreaking Butterfield Blues Band in early 1966, but when he left the Butterfield band in mid-1968, he moved to the Bay Area for good. The versatile Bishop always had a "soul" side to go with his blues, and his albums owed as much to R&B as Chicago, even if that was only known to his loyal fans, most of whom resided in the Bay Area. In 1976, however, Bishop busted out wide with "Fooled Around And Fell In Love," sung by Mickey Thomas. Bishop had usually had a co-vocalist in his band--prior to Thomas it had been singer Jo Baker, later in Stoneground--but when he switched to Capricorn, that premise was temporarily dropped for an Allman Brothers style approach. Bishop reverted to his roots with this song, however, and had the biggest hit of his career.

"Fooled Around And Fell In Love" is fun, catchy pop, but if you are of a certain age the song title is an ubiquitous phrase. At this point, the phrase is a conventional English idiom, often heard in commercials or sports writing (as in "the defensive co-ordinator fooled around and fell in love with the nickel defense"). Although I don't think the song is deep, and it wouldn't even make my Top 10 of favorite Elvin Bishop songs, it is instantly memorable and a pop classic by any formulation.

Elvin Bishop had been signed to Bill Graham's Fillmore Records label, distributed through Epic, for his first three albums (The Elvin Bishop Group, Feel It! and Rock My Soul), from 1969 through 1972. Bishop reformulated his soul stew into a more Southern rock feel, appropriately enough since he had grown up in Tulsa, OK, and signed with Capricorn in 1974. His lineup from that period onwards was anchored by second guitarist Johnny Vernazza, bassist Fly Brooks and drummer Don Baldwin. Baldwin was still the drummer in 1976 for the Struttin' My Stuff album which featured "Fooled Around And Fell In Love". Baldwin remained Bishop's drummer through at least 1979, by which time Melvin Seals had joined. Seals went on to the Jerry Garcia Band, and Baldwin joined Thomas in Jefferson Starship. Eventually, Baldwin joined the Jerry Garcia Band, presumably brought in by Seals, from 1993-1995.

"Fooled Around And Fell In Love" isn't as great a song as "What's Going On" or "Dance To The Music," but it's just as iconic, and one of Jerry Garcia's drummer played on it as well. Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead are usually invoked as American musical outlaws, working outside every kind of mainstream in order to find success on their own terms. Garcia's paradoxical desire to start and continue a "bar band" playing cover versions after he became famous is usually invoked as one of the many ways in which the Dead were in opposition to American popular music. And it's very true that the Grateful Dead's economic history charts a willful course to refuse to take many paths that had already been trod on. From a business perspective, the Grateful Dead had more in common with a Pirate ship, and Jerry was their Blackbeard.

Yet from a purely musical perspective, Jerry Garcia's 25-year excursion as the leader of an enormously successful bar band that mostly played covers put him right in the mainstream of American music. Rather than limit his musical partnership to his fellow pirates, brilliant as they were, Garcia tapped into the best that American music had to offer from the 60s to the 90s. Not only did he play great songs, albeit in his own inimitable style, but his drummers had played on some of the best an most memorable pop music of the rock era. I assure you, I just picked 10 songs that I liked that I thought everyone would recognize, but you can make your own list of songs and it too will be great. Ron Tutt, Greg Errico, Bill Vitt, Gaylord Birch, Paul Humphrey and Don Baldwin weren't just great drummers, they were essential participants in great American music, and as such they were a hidden pipeline from AM radio to Jerry Garcia's music.

The Ron Tutt Hall Of Shame
Great drummers often gravitated to the studio, where their skills insured that they worked regularly. Ron Tutt was a first-call session man in both Memphis and Los Angeles, so he played on too many records to count. I have identified some legendary classics above, but like all widely-recorded drummers, however well he played, he couldn't help it if some of the songs he played were legendary turkeys. One reason I did not focus my list on "Greatest Hits" was the discovery that Tutt had played on some of the hits that I most disliked from the early '70s. If you were not listening to the radio in this era, you may not recognize these songs, but they were all extremely popular, I can't stand any of them and Ron Tutt was the drummer for all of them.

"Easy Come, Easy Go"-Bobby Sherman (Metromedia 1970, #9)
Bobby Sherman was popular with teenage girls, and he kind of created the market for the likes of David Cassidy, which was not a good thing.
"Gypsies, Tramps And Thieves"-Cher (Kapp 1971 #1)
Not as dumb as "Halfbreed," but close.
"Peace Train"-Cat Stevens (A&M 1971 #7)
Never could stand Cat Stevens.
"Rock The Boat"-The Hues Corporation (RCA 1974 #1)
This song was the first disco song to cross over to mainstream pop radio. I absolutely hated this song in High School, although I have to admit then when I occasionally hear it now, it seems harmless compared to these other four songs.
"Piano Man"-Billy Joel (Columbia 1974 #25)
Many people like Billy Joel, but I am not one of them.

Ron Tutt played on all these songs. Are any of these the dumbest hit single a drummer for the Jerry Garcia Band ever played on? In my opinion, no. That dubious award would go to the Starship's execrable "We Built This City" (RCA 1985 #1), with drums by Don Baldwin. All of this shameful pop candy, however (don't think I've forgotten "Sara"), serves to prove my point. Trivial, repetitive, cloying songs that appeal to the lowest common denominator are an essential part of American popular music as well, and Jerry Garcia's drummers were tapped directly into that just as they were for the good stuff. For all of his reputation as a musical pirate, Garcia had a much more intimate relation with popular American music than most of us recognize. His drummers had played on the best and worst of American music, so even when they were jamming out to "Mystery Train" or "The Harder They Come" or anything else, Jerry's pulse was connected to the likes of Elvis Presley, Sly and The Family Stone, Marvin Gaye and the best and worst that American popular music had to offer.

Jerry Garcia Album Economics, 1973-74 (John Kahn XIII)

2011-11-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

The front cover of the 1974 Live At Keystone album on Fantasy Records

Jerry Garcia's musical history outside of the Grateful Dead is remarkable for its breadth and longevity. Notwithstanding the Grateful Dead's extensive touring schedule throughout its 30-year history, Garcia played a remarkable number of shows with his own aggregations for 25 of those years. Garcia's principal right hand man for his own endeavors from 1970-1995 was bassist John Kahn, who besides playing exceptional electric and acoustic bass also took care of the musical business of the Jerry Garcia Band. Kahn hired and fired musicians, organized rehearsals and often helped choose material. Although Jerry approved every move, of course, without Kahn's oversight Garcia could not have participated in the Jerry Garcia Band. In many respects, the Jerry Garcia Band (under various names) was to some extent the Jerry Garcia and John Kahn Band; if Garcia had not met Kahn he would have had to be invented.

Most Deadheads are at least generally aware of Kahn's importance to Garcia's non-Dead music. However, Kahn is usually viewed through the filter of Jerry Garcia and his music. For this series of posts, I am looking at Jerry Garcia through the filter of John Kahn. In general, I have been looking at John Kahn's performance history without Garcia (for the complete John Kahn history sequence, see here). However, for this post I am going to take a different approach and look at some of the economics that buttressed Kahn and Garcia's professional relationship. In particular, I am going to show how the 1973 Live At Keystone album and the 1974 [Compliments Of] Garcia album were the cornerstones of Garcia's commitment to his musical enterprises outside of the Grateful Dead.

Grateful Dead Records and The Butterfield Blues Band
As I discussed in a previous entry [yes, I know I skipped part VII--I'll get to it], throughout the middle of 1972 the Grateful Dead were negotiating with Warner Brothers and Columbia in anticipation of their expiring Warners contract. The Dead surprised everybody by choosing to start their own label and become completely independent. While the band remained under contract to Warners through about March of 1973 and the delivery of Bear's Choice, they seem to have chosen independence in the late Summer of 1972.

The Grateful Dead's choice to run their own record company is usually analyzed in terms of the band's need for independence, and that was surely the dominant factor. Nonetheless, it's meaningful to note that by early 1972, Garcia had had a pretty good thing going with Merl Saunders and John Kahn, playing Bay Area clubs. Unfortunately, Kahn then up and moved to Woodstock, NY and helped Paul Butterfield put together his new band. Sometime in the Summer of '72, Kahn invited Merl Saunders to join him, so Garcia found himself in the Summer having lost his band to Paul Butterfield.

Butterfield had the backing of a powerful manager (Albert Grossman), access to a studio and a record deal. Garcia would not have been in a position to make a counter-offer to Kahn and Saunders, since any plans Garcia may have had would have had to be mediated through both Warner Brothers (or Columbia, if they signed with them) and the Grateful Dead themselves, since Garcia's activities would have affected the band's relationship to their record company.

I am asserting that one very powerful imperative for Jerry Garcia to approve of the Dead's bid for independence was his recognition that he could not keep a good working band together without offering the members some kind of financial rewards beyond the occasional nightclub payout. In Summer '72 it looked like he had lost his band and would have to start over, and I don't think he wanted to be stuck behind the eight ball in the future. As it happened, Garcia was given a reprieve because Kahn and Saunders distrusted Butterfield's manager's financial proposals and returned to San Francisco. Happy as Garcia must have been, both John and Merl must have been frustrated, since they may have thought they had just passed on a chance to make some real money.

The back cover to the 1974 Live At Keystone album on Fantasy Records

Live At Keystone-Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, John Kahn, Bill Vitt (Fantasy Records, early 1974)
The credits on the Live At Keystone album are very revealing. First of all, contrary to popular belief, the cover and the record label credit the album to "Jerry Garcia-Merl Saunders-John Kahn-Bill Vitt," not just Garcia and Saunders. The inside album cover says "produced by Garcia, Saunders, Kahn and Vitt." As a practical matter, I suspect Kahn and Saunders did most of the actual production, which would have mainly consisted of listening to mixes (with some help from Bob and Betty, perhaps), but that is not my point here. Listing all four of the band members as the artists and producers indicates that the revenue was shared equally between them. The album was effectively a live Jerry Garcia solo album, of sorts, but Garcia had not only split the artist's money, but split the producer's money as well.

Under Garcia's name in the credits it says "Guitar, Vocals" and adds "courtesy of Grateful Dead Records." Grateful Dead Records could not have existed prior to March of 1973 (in the corporate sense), so the fact that permission was granted by them means that Garcia must have made this album deal very soon after the expiration of the Warners contract. Fantasy Records was Merl's label, and Garcia had already helped record two albums for Saunders (Heavy Turbulence and Fire Up). However, Garcia's participation in the records would have been capped by Warner Brothers, who would have objected if Garcia had too great a presence on those albums, particularly vocally.

The likely timeline scenario for Live At Keystone looks like this me:

Summer 72: Kahn and Saunders join the Butterfield Blues Band
Fall 72: The Grateful Dead choose to go independent, while Kahn and Saunders return
March 1973: Garcia is free of Warner Brothers
April or May 1973: Garcia agrees to do a double album for Fantasy
July 10-11, 1973: Bob and Betty record Garcia/Saunders/Kahn/Vitt at Keystone Berkeley
Fall 1973: Kahn and Saunders mix the album at Fantasy, with periodic help from Garcia, David Grisman (who overdubs a mandolin part) and perhaps Bob and Betty.
Early 1974: The Live At Keystone album is released

The key date in this timeline is April 1973. While I am assuming a little bit about the date, I am not assuming much. If the contract was signed around April 1973, Saunders, Kahn and Vitt would all have received advances from Fantasy Records for the album, instead of just Saunders and Garcia. I have no idea what kind of money would have been involved, but it seems reasonable that all four members would have gotten a check in the range of $5,000-$10,000. That was real money in 1973. I think Garcia had promised his band they would make an album on Fantasy and they would all get paid, and in so doing made a commitment to Kahn and Saunders in particular, so they would not go looking for other bands.

Knowing what we now know about Garcia/Saunders shows, the Live At Keystone tracks were chosen to emphasize Garcia. There were 10 tracks, 8 of them with Garcia vocals and two instrumentals. Actual Garcia/Saunders shows at the time had a different ratio, but clearly the album was consciously made to sell as many copies as possible. The inclusion of exactly 10 tracks, no more, no less, was also a financially sound decision for reasons to complex to go into here. It was not a mistake that the one "original" track was called "Space" and was "composed" by all four band members.

As a side note, given the planning associated with the album, and the enforced delay caused by the expiration of the Warners contract, the experimentation with Sarah Fulcher and George Tickner as band members were not casual exercises at all. Nonetheless, by the time the contracts were signed, they seem to have decided on a quartet. The one additional beneficiary from the arrangement would seem to have been Merl Saunders, who was already under contract to Fantasy. By contributing a double album with a major rock star, Saunders would have had considerable leverage with his record company. How Saunders used that leverage--renegotiating his deal, getting a new advance, etc--would have depended on his representation, but there's no question Merl benefited greatly from having the Garcia/Saunders live album on his own label. Garcia had a different plan for Kahn, however, and it worked in concert with the plan for the Live At Keystone album.

The cover of Garcia, the first release on Round Records (June 1974)

Garcia-Jerry Garcia (Round Records RX 101-June 1974)
The first release on Jerry Garcia's Round Records label was his own solo album, Garcia, in June 1974. No one has adequately explained why he gave it the same name as his first solo album, but in any case promotional copies at the time were stamped "Compliments Of Garcia" and that became the de facto name of the album, so I will call it Compliments for narrative clarity. The album was produced by John Kahn, who selected the songs and recorded the tracks in Devonshire Studios in Los Angeles. Garcia only came in at the end of the process, recording his vocals and guitar solos over previously recorded tracks.

John Kahn directed the studio sessions for Compliments in February of 1974 at Devonshire Studios. I believe that Garcia was not present for the recording of the backing tracks, where Kahn used a core band that mostly included Merl Saunders on organ. Garcia showed up to perform the vocals and guitar parts, as directed by Kahn. Kahn finished the album without Garcia, adding strings and horns, choosing songs and editing, and the record became the first release on Round Records, the label started by Garcia and Ron Rakow.

Given that Garcia had chosen to allow Kahn to produce the album by choosing the songs and the musicians, Kahn could work on the album without Garcia. This was convenient, since Garcia would often be on tour with the Dead. However, the process of choosing songs would have taken a relatively long time, and Blair Jackson alludes to a lengthy process in his discussion of the solo album with Kahn (p.247), although no exact timeline is described. However, I think that given Garcia's commitment to the Grateful Dead, the process must have been pretty long because it was intermittent.

The decision to form Round Records seems to have been made in Summer 1973, and the decision to assign John Kahn to produce it must have been made after that. Kahn would have spent the back half of 1973 choosing songs and presenting them to Garcia, and then working on arrangements for those songs that appealed to Garcia. Thus the entire time that Kahn and Saunders were working on producing the Live At Keystone album, Kahn was also planning the Compliments album. Garcia, through Round Records, would have paid Kahn an advance to produce the Compliments album, and Kahn had the potential to earn royalties as a producer if the album was a hit.

Jerry Garcia's Commitment
Garcia nearly lost John Kahn and Merl Saunders to a more substantial record deal in 1972. Given a reprieve, Garcia voted in favor of the Grateful Dead's independence and then created his own record company on top of it. His first two enterprises were financial commitments to the musicians he had been working with in the previous three years. Saunders, Kahn and Vitt all would have gotten an advance and possible royalties from the Live At Keystone album, and Saunders would have additionally benefited from the album being on Fantasy. Kahn, in turn, got to produce Garcia's album, with the accompanying advance, while Merl got session fees for performing on the record.

More than the financial rewards associated with Live At Keystone and Compliments, Garcia's actions would have indicated a commitment to John Kahn that working with Garcia would allow Kahn to make a living without having to join another band full-time. Of course, Garcia would not have not objected and probably encouraged Kahn to play or record with other artists, but Garcia had nearly lost his partner in 1972, and his first two projects after he became a free agent were expressly designed to cement his partnership with Kahn. In return for his commitment, Garcia was rewarded with a musical partner for the next two decades.

May 10, 1969, Rose Palace, Pasadena, CA: Farewell Cream movie/Grateful Dead/Kaleidoscope

2011-10-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

This 1969 Rose Palace poster has mistaken dates (May 10-11 instead of May 9-10)

The Grateful Dead played at the Rose Palace in Pasadena on Saturday, May 10, almost two months after their debut performance there. There are a number of interesting facts about the second Rose Palace show. The most interesting fact is that for perhaps the only time, the Grateful Dead were second billed to a feature film. According to the poster, the "headline" act was a showing of the Farewell Cream movie, from Cream's final performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 26, 1968. Uniquely, the Farewell Cream movie was not shown in theaters but rather in rock venues, mostly as the feature attraction. As important as Cream was, it's still crucial to remember that outside of San Francisco the Grateful Dead were still second on the bill to a movie. The Dead were famous, or infamous, but they still weren't that big a draw.

Cream
Eric Clapton is a huge star today, and every Clapton fan knows and probably likes Cream. Nonetheless, the enormity of Cream's impact on the rock music market tends to be taken for granted, given Clapton's numerous other triumphs. Cream was the first band who showed that thanks to FM radio, if a band had a good album and exciting live performances, they could sell a seemingly infinite number of albums without benefit of a hit single. This was truly revolutionary, something that had never happened in the music business prior to Cream. There had been hugely successful albums before, but their sales were built on an edifice of hit singles. The idea that albums could sell endlessly with little airplay on AM radio completely transformed the record industry.

Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce had formed Cream in England in the Summer of 1966, and their debut album Fresh Cream was released in December. The band had achieved some popularity, but save for a few Spring 67 shows in New York they had not toured America. Cream began their American tour on August 22, 1967 at the Fillmore. Since Cream was used to playing 45 minutes, at most, in the UK, it was a shock to have to play two hour-long sets in San Francisco. Their solution was simply to jam out every song, and the results were sensational. In between recording dates in 1967, Cream played relatively small rock clubs in the States to rapturous acclaim.

Cream's second album Disraeli Gears came out in November 1967. Although there were some modest AM hits ("Sunshine Of Your Love" and "Strange Brew"), almost every track on the album instantly became a staple of the newly emerging FM rock radio. Every concert that Cream played in the United States was a major rock event, with fans coming not to hear the hits but to hear instrumental virtuosity from the three members. This was an important transition for rock: the members of Cream were treated like jazz musicians, did not really have hits, and were hugely successful.

Cream's third album, Wheels Of Fire (released May 68), was a double album and was even more successful. Cream played larger and larger venues when they toured, almost always selling out. Record companies started to look for bands who could really play, and figured that those sort of albums would get played on FM, not AM, opening the door for bands like the Grateful Dead, who no longer had to look for a hit (not that they were trying). Ironically enough, Cream's three members were all mad at each other, and the band decided to break up. This too was unprecedented--how could the most successful act in rock decide to break up at the height of their powers? Cream agreed to make a final album and go on a "Farewell Tour" of America in Fall 1968--yet another first. For their last tour, Cream played the largest venue in every city (e.g the Oakland Coliseum) and sold them out, once again breaking new ground for the rock industry.

The final Cream concert was at Royal Albert Hall in London on October 26, 1968. The event was professionally filmed, and turned into what may be the industry's first "rockumentary." The movie was 80 minutes long, mostly performance footage interspersed with rather artificial interviews with the three band members. With no precedent, the decision was made (by who, I'm not sure) not to market the movie through theaters, but through rock venues. I think only a small number of prints of the movie were made, and this too would have cut down on the expenses. Also, 60s movie theaters would have had a hard time broadcasting the Cream concert sound properly, so rock venues made sense for a lot of reasons.

By 1969, Cream was more popular than ever. As a result, there were people all over the country who had never seen them live, and apparently never would. Cream had a new album (Goodbye), and they were rock's biggest attraction. How big were they? When they played suburban Pasadena, the Grateful Dead opened for their concert movie.

The Rose Palace Friday and Saturday, May 9-10, 1969
The concert poster for the May Rose Palace shows garbles the dates: it says "Friday and Saturday May 10&11," when in fact the shows were Friday and Saturday, May 9 and 10. The interesting bookings also tell us something about the strategy of the Millard Agency, the Dead's bookers at the time. The Farewell Cream movie was the headline act, at least according to the poster, and Santana was booked on Friday, May 9, with the Grateful Dead on Saturday May 10. The great Southern California band Kaleidoscope was on the bill both nights, about which I have more to say below.

The Millard Agency was the booking company associated with the Bill Graham empire. Millard's specific emphasis was on finding new venues in California for the Fillmore bands to play. Groups like the Grateful Dead were well known in California, but really only by name, since so many people had seen the iconic Fillmore posters. Millard was willing to work with promoters who were booking new venues outside of the big cities, often in suburbs like Pasadena. Santana, at this time, had been signed to Columbia and had probably begun recording their first album, but it was not released until August 1969. Some hip LA fans might recognize Santana's name from some Fillmore West posters (they had headlined in February of '69), but the band had played Southern California the first time a month earlier, opening for Procol Harum at the Rose Palace on the weekend of April 11-12. Santana, too, was making a return visit, showing a careful strategy by Millard to build an audience over time for both bands.

Both Santana and the Dead had gigs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (May 9-10-11). The Dead played San Mateo County Fairgrounds on May 9, yet another case of Millard helping to get a show booked in the suburbs. On Saturday, with the Dead in Pasadena, Santana played a rock festival at a football stadium in Stockton, with a roster of other Millard bands from the Fillmore scene. On Sunday, May 11, The Dead and Santana played outdoors at a stadium show in San Diego, only the Dead's second appearance in San Diego and Santana's first. Both Santana and the Grateful Dead were popular live attractions all over California in the 1970s, but it wasn't an accident.

The cover of Side Trips, Kaleidoscope's first album on Epic (1967)

Kaleidoscope
Kaleidoscope were a remarkable and unique band from the Claremont area. Four of the five members (all but the drummer) were remarkable multi-instrumentalists, and Kaleidoscope took a layer of old-time American music and built a framework of world music on top of it, driven by an electric rock beat. They all but singlehandedly invented World Music, about twenty years too early. Musicians in every town were awestruck by them, but audiences simply weren't ready. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin has called them his favorite band ever--when Page was playing the Fillmore with the Yardbirds in May 1968, he would walk 12 blocks over to the Avalon to hear Kaleidoscope's sets.

Kaleidoscope released four albums, all glorious, none of which smelled remotely like a hit. The story is too long to tell here, but David Biasotti's wonderful Pulsating Dream site has the complete tale. There were various personnel changes and management struggles, and guitarist David Lindley tried to keep the band going against great odds, but he finally gave up in 1970. Of course, Lindley's subsequent career with Jackson Browne and as a solo artist has been marvelous, but Kaleidoscope were as good as anybody who ever played in the 1960s, Grateful Dead included.

The May 10, 1969 Rose Palace show may have been the first time that the Grateful Dead shared a bill with Kaleidoscope. This detail is significant since Kaleidoscope's manager at the time was one Chesley Millikin, an Englishman who played an important if amorphous role for the Dead over the next several years. I know that Millikin was instrumental in helping to book and arrange the Europe '72 tour, but I don't quite know whether he was employed by the band, Warner Brothers, an agency or some sort of free-lancer. Nonetheless, seems to have been a key adviser to the Dead, and he seems to have come into the band's orbit through Kaleidoscope.

I don't even precisely know what role Millikin served in for Kaleidoscope during 1969. The Kaleidoscope story has the typical overlay of bad deals with the record company and indifference to the band's virtues that so typified the era. David Lindley, by far the best known member of the group, has nothing nice to say about Kaleidoscope's management or record company, but he doesn't name names. I have no idea whether Millikin was a "good guy" or a "bad guy," if such terms have any meaning, but in any case the Dead seemed to have benefited from Millikin's experience.

The Show
According to the Archive, the Dead seemed to have played for about 100 minutes. I have to assume that the Dead actually came on after the movie. I think the order of battle would have been Kaleidoscope, Farewell Cream and finally the Dead. Since Pasadena was fairly suburban, I don't think the show would have run exceptionally late. I have some reason to believe that a Southern California band called Southwind may have played, but possibly only on Friday with Santana. I suspect there were a lot of teenagers there to see the Cream movie who may not have planned to stay for the entire show, but I'll bet at least some of them were glad they did.

An alternate handbill for the May 10, 1969 Rose Palace show, with Southwind opening

Update: The Yellow Shark weighs in with a neat alternative handbill, not only getting the dates right, but confirming that Southwind was on the bill. Southwind featured guitarist Moon Martin, who wrote such hits as "Cadillac Walk" (for Mink DeVille) and "Bad Case Of Lovin' You" (for Robert Palmer).

John Kahn Live Performance History 1972 (John Kahn VI)

2011-10-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Merl Saunders's 1973 Fire Up album included a live track from February 6, 1972

John Kahn I: Performance History 1967-68: A review of John Kahn's migration to San Francisco, his transformation from an acoustic jazz bassist to an electric R&B bass player and some history of his early live work.
John Kahn II: Performance History 1967-68-T&A R&B Band and Memory Pain: A closer look at the history of Kahn's two original bands during this period
John Kahn III: Performance History 1969: An analysis of John Kahn's participation in the somewhat casual Mike Bloomfield Band, with Nick Gravenites and others, who played regularly at Keystone Korner.
John Kahn IV: Performance History 1970: while continuing with Mike Bloomfield, John Kahn starts to jam with Howard Wales at the Matrix, and then with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
John Kahn V: Performance History 1971: as Kahn's work with Bloomfield faded away, the Garcia/Saunders group started to become a regular band. At the same time, Kahn's session work expanded
John Kahn IX: Bottom Line, NYC July 1974: For various reasons, I skipped ahead and wrote about an East Coast by Garcia-Saunders at the Bottom Line in July 1974, in conjunction with some Maria Muldaur dates. Kahn was in both groups

This post will focus on John Kahn's live performance history for the year 1972.

John Kahn, early 1972
John Kahn played a steady run of shows with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders in the first three months of the year. The band lineup wasn't absolutely stable, as Bill Kreutzmann seems to have substituted for Bill Vitt on some occasions, and the great conguero Armando Peraza apparently played on some March dates. The Winter dates were all at local nightclubs, save for a KSAN radio broadcast. However, Kahn and Garcia did not play another Bay Area show until June 30.

Everybody knows that Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead undertook their massive European tour in the Spring of 1972, so they wouldn't expect to see any Garcia/Saunders gigs during that time. What is considerably less well-known, however, was that John Kahn relocated to Woodstock, NY during this period and joined the Butterfield Blues Band. Kahn had done a session in Woodstock for Geoff and Maria Muldaur around December 1971, and re-connected with Paul Butterfield, for whom he had auditioned once before. Kahn helped Butterfield put together a band and did at least two tours with him. It seems that the brief run of Garcia/Saunders shows from Jun 30-July 11 was to accommodate Kahn's schedule, since he didn't live in the Bay Area anymore.

More surprisingly, Kahn actually got Merl Saunders to join the re-cast Butterfield Blues Band. Kahn only quit the group because of uncertainty about the finances of the band, a subject I will get to momentarily. It's important to realize, however, that as of mid-Summer 1972, John Kahn lived in Woodstock and was putting together a new Butterfield Blues Band, and that Merl Saunders was a member of the group as well. While the Garcia/Saunders band might have played the occasional show, they very nearly ceased to exist in the middle of 1972.

Geoff and Maria Muldaur's 1972 Reprise album Sweet Potatoes, with John Kahn on bass

Geoff And Maria Muldaur
Although I am not 100% certain of the date, I believe that in December 1971 John Kahn went to Woodstock, NY to record an album at Bearsville Studios for Geoff and Maria Muldaur. Kahn was in the East at that time to play Carnegie Hall and possibly a few other dates with Brewer and Shipley. They had had a big hit with "One Toke Over The Line," and took a band on the road for a few dates (Kahn may have played "The Tonight Show" with Brewer and Shipley as well, but I don't know when). The only date I know for sure is December 3, 1971 at Carnegie Hall, but I do know that Kahn played the next weekend (December 10-11) in Boston with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. It seems a fair assumption that Kahn spent some time in Woodstock recording at Bearsville around that window.

Woodstock, NY is about 100 miles due North of New York City and had been an artists retreat for Manhattan long before Bob Dylan moved there. By the 1960s, however, the place was famous as the Summer home of the likes of Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison and numerous other musicians, painters and poets. The famous 1969 festival had been originally scheduled to be held near the town, but ended up being held 45 miles to the West, in another county. Woodstock's leading citizen was one Albert Grossman, the legendary manager of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Janis Joplin, Mike Bloomfield and many others. By 1971, Grossman had built a state-of-the-art recording studio in Woodstock, and was developing his own label, Bearsville Records, distributed by Reprise. The idea was that instead of just managing a band, Grossman would "verticalize" the product, recording and releasing it as well as providing management.

Geoff and Maria Muldaur had both been members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, who had been a popular group in the mid-1960s. Indeed, Garcia and others had seen the Kweskin band at The Cabale in Berkeley on March 11, 1964, and it had been a key influence in the formation of Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band. Maria was still in high school at the time (then Maria D'Amato), and would not have sang at the Cabale, but she was playing old-timey music on the East Coast (with David Grisman among others), and that is how she connected with Geoff Muldaur and the Kweskin band. When that group faded away for reasons too strange to explain here, the shrewd Grossman signed Geoff and Maria as a duo. Geoff was a fine singer, writer, pianist and arranger, and Maria of course was not just a wonderful, versatile singer but photogenic and charismatic as well.

Geoff and Maria recorded their album Sweet Potatoes at Bearsville Studios most likely in late 1971, since it seems to have been released on Reprise Records about March 1972. The core band included Kahn on bass, Billy Mundi on drums, Geoff Muldaur on keyboards, Bill Keith on pedal steel and Amos Garrett on guitar. Numerous guests play on various tracks, leading me to think that the core band recorded the basic tracks, and then overdubbing followed later, typical of the recording practices of the time. While Maria Muldaur would have been a regular presence in the studio, given that Maria and Geoff had a six year old daughter at the time and Geoff was the producer of the album, she may not have been in the studio as much while Kahn was there. Nonetheless, it was an important album for Kahn.

The 1973 debut album by Paul Butterfield's Better Days

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Kahn had flunked an audition for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1968. At the time, the Butterfield Blues Band were a major Fillmore headliner, but by 1972 fashion had somewhat passed them by. The quality of Butterfield's bands and performances had remained high from the very beginning, as one of the first successful American white blues performers. However, by the early 70s Butterfield seemed to be treading water, and he had not put out a new album since 1970. His harmonica playing was still the gold standard, however, so it was no surprise that he was invited to play on Sweet Potatoes at Bearsville. Kahn and Butter reconnected, and Kahn ended up helping Butterfield form a band, moving to Woodstock in the process.

Details about the Butterfield Blues Band's activities in 1972 are extremely hard to find. According to Kahn, he did "a couple of tours," which I take to be in the Spring and Summer of 1972. I have only found one date for Butterfield in 1972, and I think Kahn was out of the band by then (it was at Hofstra on November 11, with The Byrds--anyone with any live Butterfield dates for 1972 is eagerly encouraged to put them in the Comments or email me). According to Kahn, he also played some local gigs in the Woodstock area with producer/pianist John Simon, an interesting guy in his own right (he produced Cheap Thrills and The Last Waltz, among other things). Somewhere along there, however, Kahn helped put together Butterfield's next band, called Paul Butterfield's Better Days.

According to Kahn, he did more than one tour with Butterfield, but he quit after the first Better Days tour. I take this to mean that Kahn did a Butterfield Blues Band tour in the Spring, flew back to San Francisco for two weeks of shows with Garcia/Saunders, and then did a Better Days tour with Butterfield. Since the Better Days album was released around February 1973 and does not feature Kahn or Merl Saunders, I assume they must have left the group before the Fall, and the Garcia/Saunders touring schedule seems to suggest they had both relocated back to the Bay Area.

The band members for a Spring Butterfield tour are unknown to me, but I can piece together the first iteration of Paul Butterfield's Better Days, from mid-1972. The lineup most likely would have been

Paul Butterfield-vocals, harmonica
Geoff Muldaur-vocals, piano
Amos Garrett-guitar
Merl Saunders-organ
John Kahn-bass
Chris Parker-drums

When the Better Days album came out on Bearsville in early 1973, the organ was handled by Ronnie Barron and bass by Oakland's Billy Rich (ex-Whispers, ex-Buddy Miles Express), so they must have joined the group early enough to record the album. Other than this deduction, I am unable to pin down any dates for Kahn and Saunders's tenure with Paul Butterfield.

Jerry Garcia, mid-1972
After the New Riders of The Purple Sage and the Garcia/Saunders group, it seems plain that Jerry Garcia was interested in developing ongoing ensembles to work on his music, rather than just having casual jam sessions at local clubs. After quite a few shows with Saunders and Kahn, he nearly lost them in mid-1972 with the formation of Paul Buttterfield's Better Days. Paul Butterfield was still a major deal in 1972, and he was backed by Albert Grossman, the most highly powered of high-powered managers of the era. Garcia had found two willing compatriots to play nightclubs with him, and he was about to lose them to a better paying alternative. Membership in a Butterfield ensemble with a big name manager offered the lucrative potential of a hit album with serious money. Futhermore, Kahn had ambitions as a producer and arranger, and Grossman could provide those opportunities as well through Bearsville Records.

In the Summer of 1972, the Grateful Dead's contract with Warner Brothers was expiring, and the band was being wooed by both Warner and Columbia. The Dead shocked the industry by choosing to go independent at a time when it was unthinkable for major bands. The key date, per McNally, seems to be a position paper by Ron Rakow dated July 4, 1972. I am not sure at what point they rejected Warner and Columbia, but the decision seems to have been made in the Summer. While most analysis of the Dead's record company negotiation focuses on the band's desire for independence--and rightly so--I am now seeing Jerry Garcia's position in a parallel light. From Garcia's point of view in mid-1972, he had just lost his band to a better offer that he was in no position to match.

If Garcia had wanted to find a way to engage in a paying project for Saunders and Kahn, he would have had to negotiate through Warner Brothers, who may not at all have had his interests in mind. Even if Garcia now had to form a new band--and at that point looked like he would have to--if he was an independent, he could exercise his franchise any way he wanted. There were plenty of reasons for the Dead to go independent in 1972, but Garcia turns out to have had a big reason of his own, namely that he had just lost his band to Paul Butterfield.

Denoument
The Garcia/Kahn partnership was rescued by Kahn's discomfort with the financial terms proposed by Butterfield manager Albert Grossman. Grossman was a wheeler-dealer of legendary proportions, and all his clients, from Bob Dylan on downwards, were frustrated about where the money had gone. Mike Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites had both been Grossman clients as a result of Electric Flag, and Gravenites in particular was unhappy with his contractual situation (often using Quicksilver manager Ron Polte as a front to get around it). Presumably Gravenites tipped Kahn off, and considering that Kahn's parents were both successful Hollywood talent agents, he was no babe in the woods. Kahn bailed out of Better Days after the first tour but before they recorded, and returned to San Francisco by the Fall of 1972, and Saunders stayed out West as well.

Garcia, Kahn and Saunders returned to a steady stream of gigs at the end of 1972. I am convinced, however, that Garcia took the risk of losing his band very seriously, and had no intention of letting it happen again. The Grateful Dead were under contract to Warner Brothers through about March of 1973, and the release of Bear's Choice. However, if you look at the Live At Keystone Album, recorded in July 1973, Garcia's participation is courtesy of Grateful Dead Records. The album was released on Fantasy Records, Merl's label, and the artists and production are jointly credited to Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, John Kahn and Bill Vitt. Garcia's name was what sold the album, but the credits guaranteed that all the members of the band got an actual payday, presumably including 5-figure advances plus royalties. Since the album was recorded in July, the deal would have been done in March when the Warner contract expired, so this means that one of the first thing Garcia did with his independence was insure that his band got paid.

Paul Butterfield's Better Days was quite a good band, and in fact I would love to hear them with Merl and John, if such a tape existed. Nonetheless, I'm happy that Garcia and Kahn's partnership remained intact. Given Kahn's move to Woodstock in 1972, however, I think this year was the one when Garcia committed himself to his own endeavors and particularly to Kahn when he returned. From 1973 onwards, Garcia seems to have made a conscious effort to insure that Kahn had no financial reason to jump ship to another artist. From the end of 1972 onwards, Garcia and Kahn were partners.

Annotated 1972 John Kahn Performance List
January 7, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
There is some ambiguity about this show, but I am not using this thread to speculate about the provenance of specific gigs.

January 14-15, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
There is no certainty that Tom Fogerty was playing with the Garcia/Saunders at the time, as there was almost no coverage of the group in the press, and no tapes.

January 19-20, 1972: Lions Share, San Anselmo, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
From January 21 through January 29, Jerry Garcia went on his first non-Dead East Coast tour with Howard Wales. Although Kahn had played on the Hooteroll album, Wales had his own band by this time, with his old friend Roger "Jelly Roll" Troy on bass and vocals, so Kahn had no place. It's hard not to draw the conclusion that Garcia was implicitly taking Kahn for granted by touring the East without him, and it must have made Kahn's move to Woodstock seem more financially prudent to him.

February 3-5, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
There is some suggestion that the first two nights may actually have been at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. However, I think that the third night (Feb 5) was most likely at Keystone Korner, because the crew could then have just toted the equipment over to 60 Brady for the next afternoon's studio broadcast.

February 6, 1972: Pacific High Recorders, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
This KSAN live broadcast at the studio where Workingman's Dead was recorded was the first that most people in the Bay Area had actually heard of the Garcia/Saunders aggregation. Tom Fogerty was not present, and Bill Kreutzmann played drums. This leads me to suspect that Kreutzmann subbed for Vitt more often than may have been realized. Vitt was also the drummer in The Sons Of Champlin at the time (then calling themselves, regrettably, Yogi Phlegm), so he may have had a lot of conflicts.

February 11-12, 1972: Bojangles, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
A Phil Elwood review in the San Francisco Examiner reports that Kreutzmann played drums and that the great Armando Peraza played congas. Peraza was a North Beach legend, who would become a permanent member of Santana in the 1970s. Peraza's connection to Garcia may have come through trumpeter Luis Gasca, who is a story in himself. Bojangles was a club at 709 Larkin Street.

February 25-26, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Armando Peraza is billed on all Garcia/Saunders shows through March. It's a shame that there's no taped evidence, as he was formidable indeed. Many years later he played with Garcia, Weir and Tower of Power at the Kaiser in Oakland (Jan 23 '88) and he absolutely dominated "Turn On Your Lovelight."

March 3-4, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

March 8-9, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

March 10-11, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

March 15-18, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
It's important to remember that other than the Feb 6 KSAN show and the brief Elwood review of Feb 11 (Bojangles), we have no evidence of what Garcia played during this period, who was in the band, or anything else.

Spring 1972-Paul Butterfield Blues Band tour
I have pieced together some fragmentary information here, and I think that Kahn was on two Butterfield tours. One must have been in the Spring, while the Dead were in Europe. I have no idea of who might have been in the band, or what material they might have played. I don't think Butterfield even had a working band at the end of 1971, so it's very hard to speculate, even for me.

June 30, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
This brief 12-day stretch of Garcia shows seems to have more to do with Kahn visiting from Woodstock rather than Garcia's heavy touring schedule with the Dead. I assume that this Keystone gig was a warmup for the higher profile show the next night in San Jose.

The San Jose Civic Auditorium, at 135 W. San Carlos St, as it appeared in July 2011. I saw Ted Nugent here!

July 1, 1972: Civic Auditorium, San Jose, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Although Garcia/Saunders had regularly played San Francisco, Berkeley and Marin, they had rarely played anywhere else. Interestingly, their only previous South Bay show had been a sort of jazz festival at Stanford University the previous year, and once again they were playing an all-ages concert at San Jose's venerable Civic Auditorium, built about 1940. This show also inaugurated an informal tradition of having Garcia test out a venue that the Dead would play a few months later. The Grateful Dead played the San Jose Civic on August 20, 1972.

An eyewitness reports a two-set show with Tom Fogerty on guitar, and probably Vitt on drums. That suggests that Fogerty was a member of the ensemble for the brief July run.

July 7-8, 1972: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
The Keystone Korner had been sold by Freddie Herrera to Todd Barkan, a pianist (formerly in Kwane and The Kwanditos) who would turn the venue into San Francisco's pre-eminent jazz club. However, there was a pre-existing booking for Garcia and Saunders, which Barkan honored. They didn't even advertise, just put the band's name up on the marquee and the shows were packed, a clear sign of Garcia's burgeoning popularity even then.

July 11, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Per the comments, this date may be spurious.

Summer 1972; Paul Butterfield's Better Days tour
I have to assume that after the July 11 Keysone Berkeley show, Kahn returned to Woodstock and toured with the first lineup of Paul Butterfield And Better Days, bringing Saunders with him. However, my assessment of the dates are just triangulation, and I await further evidence.

August 18, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
This one-off show is more speculative since I don't know what Kahn's prospective touring schedule might have been with Butterfield.

September 22, 1972: Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders/La Familia with Luis Gasca/Dakila Farmworkers Benefit
Garcia appeared at this Farmworkers Benefit at Berkeley. He had to fly back from the East Coast to do it, but I now think that Garcia had a pattern of flying back to the West Coast to work on albums while playing shows at the same time. Garcia would have been working on Europe '72 at this juncture.

Once again it appears that Luis Gasca was probably the connection the booking. Whatever Kahn's touring schedule might have been with Butterfield, it does appear that he and Saunders had returned at this time.

October 6-7, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

October 12, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

November 4, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

November 8, 1972: Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty/Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks/Fletcher Bros/Natural Act
Garcia headlined this benefit at Longshoreman's. Tom Fogerty was on the bill, so I take that to mean he probably played some or all of the gigs in the Fall, even where he was not billed. This show was a benefit, for what I am not exactly certain, but it indicated another new pattern in Garcia's performances. Whereas in the 1960s, the Grateful Dead were on every benefit, Garcia's new band allowed him to play such events without involving other members of the Dead.

December 5, 1972: Boarding House, San Francisco, CA; Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty
The Boarding House was very small, capacity 330. Musicians loved it, but no one got paid very much.

December 20-21, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty

December 27-28, 1972: Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty
One show from this set of performances was recorded and broadcast on KTIM-fm in San Rafael.

December 29, 1972: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogert
Note that Tom Fogerty is once again billed regularly as a member of the group.

Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia Tour Itinerary March 1969

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The Datebook listing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, March 10, 1969

Given the Grateful Dead's always precarious financial position in the 1960s, I always start by assuming that a weekend where I don't know about a show simply means that I haven't looked hard enough for it. However, while the weekend of March 7-8 features no Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia appearances to my knowledge, I think it's relatively unlikely the band played that weekend. The group had to stick around the Bay Area because they were working on Aoxomoxoa, so that means that any weekend adventures couldn't be too far away.

However, the Dead were booked in San Francisco (at the Black And White Ball) the following weekend, Southern California the weekend after that, and then the Central Valley and Las Vegas at the end of the month. Contract riders would have likely prevented them from playing an advertised show anywhere around those places on March 7-8, particularly in San Francisco. I suppose Sacramento is possible, but I have a pretty good idea of Sacramento rock history and I'm not aware of a Grateful Dead show there in March 1969. It's remotely possible they played The Sound Factory that weekend, or attempted to, as I don't know who played there on March 7-8, but I can comfortably eliminate UC Davis for various reasons I won't belabor here. I think March 7-8 was just one of those weekends where the Dead were unable to book a show.

Of course, with no Dead show since Sunday March 2, how long do you think Garcia could go without playing somewhere? With that in mind, I note that there was a jam session at the Matrix on March 10, a typical enough event at the club on Mondays. Of course, I am just grasping at straws here, but I don't think my suggestion is far-fetched, if admittedly unprovable.

An excerpt from Ralph Gleason's March 12, 1969 SF Chronicle "On The Town" column

March 12, 1969: Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: It's A Beautiful Day/A.B. Skhy Blues Band/Cleveland Wrecking Company Benefit For The San Francisco State Legal Defense Committee
Both Dennis McNally and Deadbase have the Grateful Dead listed as performing at the SF State Legal Defense Committee benefit at Fillmore West. McNally was always carefully sourced, so I am confident that he would not have listed them without some indication that the band in fact played the event.

However, I still consider this show unconfirmed, because it has been my experience that every free concert, benefit or "Event" in San Francisco in the 1960s was always suggesting if not assuring that the Grateful Dead were invited or expected. An article that says they were "expected" didn't always translate into an actual appearance by the Dead, so I'm not taking it as a proven event yet.

With my hesitation aside, I would note that the Dead's contract with the Black And White Ball would probably have prevented them from advertising a show in San Francisco. The three bands on the bill could hardly have filled Fillmore West on a Wednesday night, so a "stealth" headliner makes a lot of sense. The San Francisco State College student body was on strike, and it was a highly charged political event in San Francisco. Rock Scully, among many others in the Haight-Ashbury, had been a graduate student (in English) at SF State, so there were plenty of social connections between the Dead and SF State, which was the primary precondition for the band to perform at a benefit.

Also, if the Dead did actually headline the benefit, I would note that A.B. Skhy was second on the bill. This may be the first time that A.B. Skhy was booked with the Dead, and if so it might have been the first time Garcia had gotten to hear Howard Wales.

March 15, 1969: Hilton Hotel Ballroom, San Francisco, CA: The Black And White Ball
The Black And White Ball had been the San Francisco Symphony's principal fundraiser for many years, but it had not been held in some time. The event was re-instituted for 1969, and the head of the entertainment committee was Bob Weir's mother. A careful reading of the Society Pages during the late 1960s showed me that the common entertainment for Debutante Parties and the like was a pair of alternating acts: a big band for the grown-ups to dance to, and a rock band for the younger folks. These were relatively well-paying gigs, so danceable Fillmore bands like The Sons of Champlin or The Loading Zone regularly played debutante parties and other such events, paired with a big band and playing alternating sets.

Thus Mrs. Weir's decision to hire her son's band was not mere nepotism. For a major event that had a ticket price of $17.50, a Fillmore West headliner was appropriate, not a Fillmore West opener. Young people, even well-to-do ones, were not going to pay 5 times the going concert price without some main attraction. Of course, the Grateful Dead completely botched the entire event. McNally (p.304) has a detailed discussion of the entire debacle. Owsley's endless fiddling caused the band to come onstage late, and it was all downhill from there. The Dead were not warmly written up in the society pages to follow, although Chronicle columnist Herb Caen gallantly said that Mountain Girl was the prettiest girl there.

The revival of the Black And White Ball did not go well, and the event was once again mothballed for nearly 20 years. If I remember correctly, when the event returned in 1988, Bob Weir made a guest appearance. The event finally hit its mark, and was a major City event for many years to follow.

Barb Mar 14 '69

March 17, 1969: Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Benefit Jam For Olompali with Garden Of Delights/Red Mountain/others

Rancho Olompali, and the mansion on the grounds, had a long and complicated history dating back to 1843. In the Spring of 1966, the Grateful Dead had even lived in the crumbling old house, hosting a series of unforgettable parties (Girl From Mill Valley, anyone?) before they moved on. By 1969, the mansion was owned by Don McCoy, a wealthy hippie friend of the Dead's who had formerly lived at 715 Ashbury, and it housed a commune known as the Chosen Few. Early in March, there was a massive drug bust and then a mysterious electrical fire that burned down the mansion.

According to both the Chronicle and the Berkeley Barb, members of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Sons Of Champlin were expected to jam at this hastily assembled benefit for the busted Commune members. Without an eyewitness or tape, it's impossible to say for sure what happened. Considering that Glenn McKay's Headlights was on the bill, that definitely points to Airplane involvement along with the Dead. Given Garcia's penchant for jamming, the Winterland show sounds like an opportunity for some kind of Mickey And The Hartbeats or Hot Tuna action. A Garcia/Bill Champlin/Jack Casady/Hart jam sounds mighty tasty to me, but there I am, just grasping at straws...

I have written about the event here and here. The Sacramento band Sanpaku believe they played at this event, but their recollections are rather vague.

A newspaper ad for the March 21-22, 1969 show at the Rose Palace in Pasadena

March 21-22, 1969: Rose Palace, Pasadena, CA: Paul Butterfield Blues Band/Grateful Dead/Jethro Tull
The Rose Palace, at 835 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena, was built in 1964 to accommodate the construction of floats for the Rose Parade held every New Year's Day. The rest of the year, it was occasionally used for other functions. In 1969 and 1970 it was used for rock concerts. The first event seems to have been the weekend before (Iron Butterfly/Steve Miller Band/Blues Image). Recollections on The Archive for the Saturday, March 22 show suggest that it was a large, cavernous building, probably Winterland sized. A commenter on the Archive for March 22 recalls Owsley using the show for some interesting sonic experiments with stereo.

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band had been the best American rock band in 1966, and their early performances at the Fillmore had been hugely influential for the Dead, Carlos Santana, Country Joe and The Fish and many others. By 1969, however, Butterfield's original front line (guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop and organist Mark Naftalin) had moved to the Bay Area, and his band was an entirely different set of Chicago musicians, probably featuring guitarist Buzzy Feiten. They were still an excellent group, and Butterfield was a bigger name than the Dead (outside of San Francisco, anyway), so he closed the shows. Opening was Jethro Tull, on their first American tour. They were a tremendous live band and must have given the crowd a nice jolt.

March 27, 1969: Merced County Fairgrounds, Merced, CA: Grateful Dead
This date appeared on Grateful Dead lists for many years because of a tape labeled "3/27/69 Merced." Further research revealed that the tape was the same performance as the next night in Modesto, and was just a mislabeling of a different master tape. As a result, the Merced show has been considered a spurious date. However, I have some new information, and I am going to make a case that the Grateful Dead played the Merced County Fairgrounds on Thursday, March 27,1969.

It was generally well known that Bob Weir was adopted, and in 2004 Joel Selvin revealed the remarkable story of the family of John Parber, Weir's birth father, whom Weir finally met in 1996. Weir's half-brother Jim Parber was a fine musician, but he had died in 1991 after an extended battle with cancer. Jim Parber had been an aspiring guitarist and poster artist as a Merced teenager, so I wrote a post speculating on the likelihood of Jim Parber having seen the Dead in the Central Valley in the 1960s.

It was pure speculation on my part, as usual, but this time it turns out I came pretty close to the mark. One commenter was a Parber family friend, and he recalled Jim Parber attending Dead shows in the 1960s, itself a pretty remarkable thing to think about. The Commenter specifically recalled seeing the Dead with Jim Parber when they played Merced County Fairgrounds. Merced County Fairgrounds was the principal venue in the county, and it's not likely a Merced teenager would confuse the event with some other event. I take this as pretty solid evidence that the Dead really did play Merced on March 27.

Here's my thinking: the Grateful Dead had booked a Saturday night show in Las Vegas (March 29, below), and looked for Central Valley shows that would fit in with the schedule. They booked a Merced show on Thursday March 27. It may not have been a great payday, but if the band was on its way to Las Vegas anyway, it made business sense. Thus, while the "other" March 28 Modesto tape was mislabeled, it was mislabeled because the band really had played Merced on that date.

March 28, 1969: Student Center, Modesto Junior College, Modesto, CA: Grateful Dead
There is a tape of this event--two in fact--so we have good reason to think the event occurred. Nonetheless, I am not aware of any documentation of this event--a poster, an article, a review, even an eyewitness account. Modesto isn't large city, and Modesto Junior College was probably not a big school at the time. My current theory is that this was a student event, some sort of Spring Dance.

If the Student Association was having an event, it would have been partially funded by the school as well as tickets, so they could have afforded a little better band than a small gym might otherwise be able to accommodate. If it was a "Spring Dance" or something, it probably wasn't advertised much beyond the school itself, and it's even possible that the Grateful Dead's name wasn't attached to the event at all. If the Dead had booked a Merced show on a Thursday (27) and Las Vegas on a Saturday (29) they would have wanted to play anywhere on Friday night. They may have taken a Junior College dance for less than the going rate, possibly not advertised, just to cover road expenses. I have no idea whether the "Student Center" was the gym or some kind of student union building, but it sounds more like the latter.

A poster for the Grateful Dead/Santana show at the Ice Palace in Las Vegas, March 29, 1969

March 29, 1969: Ice Palace, Las Vegas, NV: Grateful Dead/Santana/The Free Circus
The Grateful Dead and Santana played an ice skating rink in Las Vegas on Saturday night. I believe this event drove the bookings in Merced and Modesto the previous nights. At this time, Santana was a popular San Francisco band, and they had played around California a bit, but their first album had not even been recorded (it would not come out until August). Both Santana and the Dead were booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency, so the bands shared a lot of bills. The Millard Agency specialized in finding new concert opportunities around California and the West Coast for its San Francisco-based clients. This show seems to be a good example.

The Ice Palace was in downtown Las Vegas somewhere, but I'm not sure where. It appears to have been long since torn down. One interesting thing about the event is the notice on the poster that the show will be from 8:00-11:30 pm. It does seem surprising that 24/7 Las Vegas was putting a curfew on a downtown rock show. The time limit may have been because the show (or the permit anyway) was directed at teenagers, or it may have been Vegas distrust of hippies who didn't gamble or buy drinks, but it does mean that the show would not have run late. I do not know who The Free Circus were, or if they were a band or some sort of "act" (it being Las Vegas and all).

December 5, 1977: Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA Robert Hunter and Comfort (Alligator Moon)

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KFAT, 94.5 FM in Giroy, CA--note the U. Utah Phillips reference

On December 5, 1977, Robert Hunter and Comfort played the Keystone Palo Alto, at 260 S. California Avenue in Palo Alto. The show is remarkable for the fact that the first set was broadcast on the legendary KFAT-fm, out of Gilroy, CA (94-oink-5 on your FM dial), and more remarkable in that the broadcast seems to have included the bulk of the new album that Hunter and Comfort were working on at the time, Alligator Moon. Since the Alligator Moon album was never released, the live version broadcast from Keystone Palo Alto seems to be the best evidence of what it was supposed to sound like. I think the "Alligator Moon" suite was Hunter's best songwriting for his own performance, and I have continually found it mystifying that the work has never been released. This post will talk about what little is actually known about the recording of the album and the December broadcast from Keystone Palo Alto, in the hopes of encouraging the powers-that-be to consider officially releasing the "Alligator Moon" suite in either its studio or live incarnation.

Robert Hunter and Comfort
I have written about the live performance history of Robert Hunter and Comfort at some length elsewhere, so I will only recap it briefly here. Robert Hunter had returned to performing in late 1975 with the band Roadhog, mostly made up of old friends from his folkie days in the early '60s. They were an enjoyable aggregation, but Hunter seemed to be mainly getting his feet back on the ground as a performer, and Hunter stopped playing with Roadhog about Halloween 1976. In mid-1977, Hunter joined Comfort, who appear to have already existed, and brought along his old friend Rodney Albin from Roadhog. The 1977 lineup of Roadhog was

Robert Hunter-vocals, guitar
Kevin Morgenstern-lead guitar
Rodney Albin-violin, mandolin
Richard "Sunshine" McNeese-keyboards
Larry Klein-six string bass
Pat Lorenzano-drums
Marlene Molle-vocals
Sharon McNeese-vocals

Although there is a tape for a Robert Hunter and Comfort show purportedly from May 77, the group does not start appearing regularly in Bay Area clubs until a July 29-30 booking at The Shady Grove in San Francisco. The band seems to have kept a fairly low profile throughout 1977, mostly playing some comfortable gigs in the Bay Area in clubs where Hunter had played before. I believe that the low-key activity was because the band began working on recording an album during the second half of 1977 and the beginning of 1978, and they planned to tour behind it starting in Spring 1978.

The Alligator Moon Album Project
As far as is known, the Alligator Moon album would have consisted of five regular tracks and then an entire "Alligator Moon" suite of six songs. I assume that the regular tracks would have been on side one of the LP (remember those?) and the title suite would have been on side two, following the music industry practices of the time. The indispensable Deaddisc site lists the proposed tracks for Alligator Moon, albeit with the six songs in the Alligator Moon suite listed first:

Mesa Linda (Hunter)
Domino, Cigarette and Melina (Hunter / Morgenstern)
Domino (Hunter / Morgenstern)
Blue Note (Hunter / McNeese)
New East St. Louis Blue (Hunter / McNeese)
Cigarette (Hunter / McNeese)
She Gives Me Love (Hunter)
Drunkard's Carole (Hunter)
Hooker's Ball (Hunter)
Jesse James (Hunter / Melton)
Promontory Rider (Hunter)

In the end, only three recordings, "Promontory Rider," "Drunkard's Carol" and "Hooker's Ball" were released, on the 1984 Relix Records retrospective album Promontory Rider. "Jessie James" is known from the 1975 Barry Melton album The Fish (on United Artists) as well as many fine live versions, while "She Gives Me Love" remains unknown to me.

The key to the album was the linked suite of six songs that made up the "Alligator Moon" suite itself. To my ears, the live version from December 5, 1977 represents Hunter at his best, evocative without being too specific, contemporary yet timeless and steeped in Americana of all sorts. Comfort are more like solid musicians than virtuosos, but that is appropriate to Hunter's voice and music, as he generally left the peculiar chords and 5/4 rhythms to Garcia. "Alligator Moon" was written for Hunter to perform in his own unique style, and by 1977 Hunter had enough experience under his belt that he could really pull it off. Music for five of the six songs in the suite were written by members of Comfort, so it was a true group effort.

According to the never-reliable Relix liner notes for Promontory Rider, the Alligator Moon album material was produced by Bob Matthews and engineered by Betty Cantor at Front Street studios, and this has been generally confirmed by Betty Cantor in an interview. The interesting part about this is that Alligator Moon would have been the second album recorded at Front Street, right on the heels of Cats Under The Stars. Indeed, Le Club Front was originally the Jerry Garcia Band rehearsal space, and it got turned into a recording studio to facilitate Cats. Eventually the Grateful Dead took over the studio space, but in late '77/early '78 it was still Garcia Band property, so that means that Garcia was at least indirectly sponsoring the recording of the album. What happened to the record?

The back cover to Robert Hunter's 1984 album Promontory Rider, which included three songs from Alligator Moon

Unanswered Questions
According to Hunter, he was never satisfied with the studio recording of the "Alligator Moon" suite. He did allude to the fact that some live versions of the suite did a better job of capturing what he was intending. I can't help but think that one of those versions must have been the December 5, 1977 show, as Betty Cantor herself was mixing from the remote truck, along with Bob Matthews. We know this for a fact, because Hunter name-checks them from the stage during the broadcast ("we've got Bob and Betty doing our sound tonight") and nobody does a better live mix than Betty.

One question that has never seemed to have been asked, however, much less answered, was what label was Alligator Moon supposed to have been released on? I would have to think that Arista Records would have been the most likely candidate, but that is not necessarily a sure thing. Of course, Arista were releasing albums by Garcia (Cats) and Bob Weir (Heaven Help The Fool) during this period, so a Hunter album isn't farfetched, but I don't think there was a contract. It seems like Garcia was willing to finance the album on spec, a lot cheaper proposition if it was recorded at Club Front by Betty than at a regular studio, and they probably intended to sell it to a record company afterwards, a common enough industry practice. Since Comfort stayed home, for the most part, they could record when the Garcia Band wasn't using the facility, because the Dead were on tour, so the project made financial sense.

If Hunter was unhappy with the studio recording, and Garcia had financed the project, Hunter would have been more free to shelve the project. I don't know exactly when the album was recorded, but I suspect it was late 1977 and early 1978. They may have booked their March-to-May 1978 tour in anticipation of supporting the album, or at least creating some buzz about its impending release, but once the album was on the shelf, it was just another rock tour. Ozzie Allers replaced Richard McNeese on keyboards in the Spring (and Kathleen Klein replaced Sharon McNeese on vocals), and given that McNeese wrote some of the music, I wonder what that had to do with it. Perhaps McNeese was expecting to be working in a band with an album forthcoming, and once Hunter shelved the record McNeese may have had less reason to stay.

The KFAT Fat Fry
The Keystone Palo Alto broadcast a live show every Monday night back in the late 70s and early 80s, as part of an institution known as The Fat Fry. There was a legendary psychedelic country station called KFAT in then-tiny Gilroy, CA (pre-Cisco Systems), whose story is too bizarre to believe (read it and weep--radio was like this once, but only once). Every Monday night a local live attraction would play the Keystone Palo Alto and their first set would be broadcast on KFAT, audible all over the South Bay, and even in Berkeley if you were lucky. To some extent, this was to advertise the bands themselves, and to some extent this was to promote the Keystone Palo Alto.

On the piece of the live tape that I have, Hunter cheerily name checks all his friends and family listening in the radio audience and jokes about the junior high in Palo Alto that he attended in the 1950s (Wilbur). At the end of the set, he encourages all the listeners to come down to the Keystone Palo Alto for the second set. This was a serious plea--the Fat Fry broadcast generally ended about 11:00, but there was always plenty of music left, and if you lived in the South Bay dropping by was very plausible.

I recognize that if Hunter was unhappy with the studio recording of "Alligator Moon", and that since there was no deep-pocketed record company to finance a re-recording, the album needed to be shelved. A lot of time has passed, however--why not release the album now? Since no record company ever owned it, shouldn't Hunter control the rights? Of course, Comfort's partnership agreement may have not made it so easy to release the album once the band had broken up, but usually any frustrations or wounds heal after a few decades. My solution is even better--why not release the first set of the show from Keystone Palo Alto on December 5, 1977, with Bob and Betty doing the sound and the complete "Alligator Moon" suite? Of course, we don't know that anything resembling the original tape still exists, since Hunter tapes weren't guarded with the care that Garcia or Grateful Dead tapes were, but it sure would be nice to hear "Alligator Moon" the way Hunter, Comfort, Bob and Betty intended it, even if just for one Monday night in Palo Alto.

Fall 1968, Pacific Recorders, San Mateo: Marmaduke Demos (New Riders Roots)

2011-10-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

John Dawson, circa early 70s

The conventional story about the birth of the New Riders of The Purple Sage has been told many times, usually by members of the band itself: Jerry Garcia bought a pedal steel guitar in Colorado in April 1969, and shortly afterward old Palo Alto friend John Dawson came over to his house to hear Garcia play it. Dawson brought his own guitar and played his own songs, and Garcia liked the sound, so Garcia started to play along with Dawson at his Wednesday night hofbrau gig in Menlo Park. Old friend David Nelson joined in, and by the end of May the trio had hatched a plan to form a new country rock band.

This story is true, at least as far as I know. It continually surprises me, however, how often that various events in Grateful Dead history that seem to be settled fact turn out to have an entirely different context that causes me to think of events in a different light. The "Birth Of The New Riders" saga has always been presented as a serendipitous, chance occurrence, as only Garcia's random purchase of a pedal steel guitar and Dawson's casual presence at a Dead rehearsal caused the New Riders to arise fully formed.

Recently, however, I was fortunate enough to hear an extensive interview with Grateful Dead engineer Betty Cantor, thanks to the good offices of David Gans. Cantor talked extensively to Gans about the recording of Aoxomoxoa, Live/Dead and Workingman's Dead, among other projects. While we can anticipate that Mr. Gans will share the best parts of this interview in the future, on the Deadhead Hour or on KPFA, a passing remark from Ms. Cantor caused me to re-think the entire genesis of the New Riders.

In the context of talking about how she learned to work in the studio, Cantor talked about the different things she did, such as setting up microphones. Then she added, most unexpectedly,

Plus we did a lot of demos down there, with Marmaduke, John Dawson, before the New Riders. I got to be the drummer! To keep John in time. He was great, great songwriter, great player, couldn’t keep time real well. So I just had to play snare, high hat, kick, keep in time. I got to be the drummer on the demo, it was real fun.

I am pretty knowledgeable about the New Riders, but I knew nothing about any demos with just John Dawson and a rudimentary drummer. Of course, I realized that the tape had probably been erased, as professional recording tape was expensive, but it forced me to consider the context: why were the Grateful Dead recording John Dawson demos in late 1968 or early 1969?

The cover of the 1969 Grateful Dead album Aoxomoxoa

Now, the Grateful Dead's contract with Warner Brothers gave them unlimited studio time, even though the cost of that studio time would be owed back by the band through royalties. The band went over the top during the recording of Aoxomoxoa. From September through December 1968, they recorded at a new studio in San Mateo called Pacific Recorders, helping to put together the studio itself while recording a complete album on 8 and 12-track machines. The planned album was supposed to be called Earthquake Country. After three months, however, the band discovered that they could get one of the first state-of-the-art 16-track Ampex tape machines, and decided to simply re-record the entire album. Over the next few months they recorded what we now know as Aoxomoxoa, along with several shows at the Avalon and the Fillmore West, which later became Live/Dead and the retrospective Live At Fillmore West box. By the end of the process, the band was $180,000 in debt to Warner Brothers, serious money in 1969, particularly for a band who had never had anything resembling a hit.

How did the Grateful Dead use all this studio time? According to Cantor, there was a lot of experimentation, some of it quite serious, some of it just goofing off. According to her, almost none of the experimenting was preserved, for good or for ill. Although she doesn't specifically say so, I know that one of the reasons for that was the expense of recording tape. I know that the recordings of the Avalon on January 24-26, 1969 that were not used for Live/Dead were simply erased and recorded over for Fillmore West a few weeks later. It may seem odd that a band willing to go over $100,000 in debt would be cheap about tape, but I have a feeling that the studio would bill through Warner Brothers but the band had to pay actual cash money for the recording tape, and the Dead always had a cash squeeze.

Nonetheless, it seems that the Dead were using their own studio time to record demos for one of their friends. There's no other way to interpret the Marmaduke recordings in San Mateo than to think that the Dead had plans to make music with Dawson, probably by getting him a record contract. It may have been that the Dead had studio time booked when the band had shows scheduled, so recording Dawson's demos may have been a way to make use of the time when the band wasn't there. Like many good engineers, Betty Cantor could play a little music (she apparently was a good piano player), but Bob Matthews would have only used her on drums if no one else was available. I have to think that manager Lenny Hart had a plan to sign John Dawson to a record contract, but it's clear that if Dawson was recording demos, the band was on board with the plan. However, knowing that Dawson recorded demos in late 1968 puts the New Riders genesis in a totally different light. Garcia's new pedal steel guitar may have put Dawson's songs in a new context, but Garcia and Dawson had apparently already been trying to make Dawson into a singer/songwriter already.

The cover to the 1986 Relix lp Before Time Began

I was thinking about the presumably lost Marmaduke demos, and I realized that there was a piece of the puzzle that I had completely overlooked. In 1986, Relix Records released an archival New Riders lp called Before Time Began (Relix 2024), which included two inexplicable John Dawson demos with clearly inaccurate recording history. I realized that these two mystery tracks must have been the end result of Dawson's demos for the Aoxomoxoa sessions.

Relix Records
Relix Records was the recording wing of Relix Magazine, a Brooklyn based music publication. The magazine and label focused on the Grateful Dead family, Hot Tuna and related San Francisco bands in the 1980s, when there was very little interest in those groups elsewhere. The record label released a lot of interesting music, but it was run on a shoestring basis, like many independents. I suspect that the label generally operated on a cash basis, paying out money as they got it, which was probably much appreciated by its artists. Certainly artists like Robert Hunter and Jorma Kaukonen released several albums each with the label, so they must have been happy with how they were treated.

Back in the day, I was intensely bothered by the fact that the liner notes and recording information for Relix releases were scant, and often startlingly inaccurate. For example, a Kingfish album released in the 1980s clearly included material that must have been recorded in the 1970s, but there were overdubs from current band members, with no explanation of the process in the notes. There was even a track left off the liner notes. At the time, I thought that Relix staff was inattentive, but I now think the mistakes were so persistent that they did them on purpose. At the very least, Relix had a vested interest in not correcting their mistakes, although I am left to speculate why that might have been.

Before Time Began featured four songs ("Henry", "All I Ever Wanted", "Last Lonely Eagle", "Cecilia") by the New Riders Of The Purple Sage and two ("Garden Of Eden", "Superman") by John Dawson. The four NRPS songs were apparently recorded in November 1969 at Pacific High Recorders in San Francisco, with a lineup of Dawson, Nelson, Garcia, Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh. The two Dawson songs are identified as having been recorded at Pacific Recording in San Mateo in July 1968. The tracks are said to have been recorded "with the help of Garcia and some members of Doug Sahm's group." Based on the information I now have, I am much better able to make a plausible hypothesis about the Dawson demos released on the album.

First of all, I think we can safely dismiss the July 1968 date for the Dawson demos. The Dead were not in Pacific Recording at the time, and I put no credence in dates from Relix liner notes. Since Betty Cantor recalls recording demos with Dawson, I think late 1968 makes much more sense. It also make sense that after Marmaduke and Betty--sounds like a cartoon duo, doesn't it?--recorded some demos together, a few of the tracks were re-recorded and built up into legitimate demos. I have to think that Lenny Hart, at least, played the demos for some record company guys--maybe Clive Davis heard about Dawson from these demos, long before the New Riders. In any case, they must have had no takers, but that in itself seems odd, since record companies were signing every band in San Francisco.

The way Betty Cantor described the recording process at Pacific Recording, there was a tendency to get a good take and then experiment with mixes and overdubs, without really saving anything but the final copy. The vagueness about the backing musicians, as "Garcia and some members of Doug Sahm's group" may stem from the fact that there was a variety of overdubs and "punch-ins" (recording over a musical or vocal part, often for just a few phrases or a verse), and no one recalls who actually played what. Of course, there may be other reasons that no one remembers who played what.

While I'm sure Garcia helped with the Marmaduke demos, I have to take the Relix liner notes with a grain of salt. The label had a vested interest in claiming Garcia's involvement, so the fact that he isn't particularly audible suggests to me that Garcia was involved in the arranging or the mixing, but didn't have a big role in the actual performances on the demos. I have been told that some pedal steel guitar parts are played by Lowell "Banana" Levenger, of the Youngbloods. Banana was an old pal of Rick Turner, who became a key player when Alembic was formed shortly after Aoxomoxoa (by Turner, Owsley Stanley and former Ampex engineer Ron Wickersham), so that may have been why Banana was present, if indeed he was. It's also true that Garcia owned a Fender pedal steel guitar around 1967 which he sold to Banana, so perhaps Banana was playing Garcia's old instrument, a strange coincidence that would fit right in.

Doug Sahm and some of his band members had moved to San Francisco from Texas after a 1966 pot bust, a very scary proposition in Texas. Sahm had numerous band members, some of them sort of rotating in and out, so it's hard to say who might have played on the demos. Also, most of the Sir Douglas Quintet, including Sahm, were talented on numerous instruments, so it's even harder to say which members might have actually been on the recordings. The interesting Grateful Dead/Doug Sahm connection in 1968 was that Sahm was on Mercury, and he recorded extensively in that label's San Francisco studios on Mission Street. And who was the house engineer at Mercury West? Why, Dan Healy, of course, so there were plenty of connections between Sahm and the Grateful Dead. Hence, finding the Sir Douglas Quintet over in the South Bay helping out in the studio isn't surprising.

In 1968, Mercury Records made a big splash by announcing that they had signed 12 bands in San Francisco on the same day. The most famous of these was Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet, but they signed plenty of obscure artists. Mercury also recorded some demos for a Pigpen solo album in 1969, believe it or not, so they must have been sniffing around the Grateful Dead when the band's contract was ready to expire in 1969. Mercury, like many labels, was signing everyone in San Francisco, including some really forgettable artists. With this in mind, considering the Dan Healy/Doug Sahm connection, I find it strange that no record company was interested in John Dawson's demos. Even the Grateful Dead would not pay to record their friend's demos without having some plan, however harebrained, to find a way to allow Dawson to record a real record.

Conclusions
Until we get more information, I'll end with a series of propositions. I'm hoping for some proof or contradictions from anyone with more information or some clever ideas.

The "Marmaduke Demos" on Before Time Again were recorded in late 1968 at Pacific Recording
The initial demos featured just John Dawson and Betty Cantor on drums, but these were probably superseded and may not have survived
The two surviving demos were probably built up with a variety of overdubs and punch ins, so it might not be clear who played on what track, even if anyone was in a state to remember
The Grateful Dead family was interested in turning John Dawson into a recording artist as early as 1968, and willing to spend their own studio time to do it, even though nothing ever came of it, so the New Riders project can be seen as a solution rather than a random idea
When Garcia played pedal steel to Dawson's songs for the first time in April 1969, he not only probably knew the songs, he had been actively working on trying to record Dawson
Garcia's pedal steel guitar was a new sound for Dawson's music, but it was the sound that was new, not the songs. I maintain my working hypothesis that for Garcia, the New Riders was really about the sound of the band rather than the notes and melodies themselves

September 1965, Dining Hall, Menlo College, Menlo Park, CA

2011-09-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

The Warlocks played Menlo College in Atherton, CA around September 1965

I was recently fortunate enough to have a lengthy conversation with someone who was one of the very first fans of The Warlocks. I quizzed her about some hitherto mysterious legends about the performing history of The Warlocks and received some surprisingly specific answers. The Warlocks history is usually treated like a "Creation Myth" rather than as the actions of actual people, and I have been anxious to pin down some very vague rumors. Rock Scully, who did not even meet the band until several months later, had alluded to a performance at Menlo College in his autobiography, but since he described the band as "debuting" at Menlo College it seemed impossible. My source knew perfectly well that the Warlocks had debuted at Magoo's Pizza, since she was there. However, she could confirm the Menlo College performance as well, since she was there also. Thus, we now have an eyewitness account of The Warlocks performance at Menlo College, and I will pass on what I have pieced together.

Early Warlocks
My source was one of the first two Warlocks fans. The internet being what it is, I won't identify her by name, although she may choose to reveal herself in the Comments (some scholars will figure it out anyway). In any case, she was a Palo Alto High School student (class of '66) who saw the Warlocks at Magoo's, Frenchy's and numerous other places where she was able to get in the door. She distinctly recalls seeing The Warlocks at Menlo College. She remembers that it was in some sort of dining hall or "rec room," and that numerous tables had to be pushed against a wall to allow everybody to dance. Her memory was that the purpose of the show was probably to encourage Menlo College students to recommend The Warlocks for paying gigs at school dances.

The performing history of The Warlocks remains murky. They played every Wednesday in May, 1965 at Magoo's Pizza, at 635 Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park, but at the end of that run Phil Lesh replaced Dana Morgan Jr as the band's bass player. Apparently, however, the Warlocks raucous fans violated a local ban on dancing, and the shows at Magoo's had to end. Lesh debuted when The Warlocks played at Frenchy's in Hayward, on June 18, 1965, but they were fired after the first night of a three night engagement. Up until recently, the band's activities for the balance of the Summer had remained a mystery, but my source recalls that the Warlocks regularly played The Top Of The Tangent on a regular, if informal basis.

My source doesn't recall when the band played Menlo College. However, given the California school year, it seems pretty likely that the Menlo performance must have been at the beginning of the next school year, around September of 1965. The school would not have had student events in the Summer, and an informal event in a dining hall seems like a beginning-of-term event. By the end of the Fall session, the Warlocks would have more likely been looking farther North than school dances in Menlo Park. As a result, I am marking the Menlo show as September, 1965, although I am open to any recovered memories anyone may have.

Menlo College
Menlo College was a very peculiar institution for the West Coast, as it was an East Coast style Prep School located in the West, far from its native habitat. The Menlo School for Boys, at 50 Valparaiso Street in Atherton, had been formed in 1924, taking over a Military Academy on the same site. In 1927, the Menlo School for Boys also formed Menlo College, which was a sort of junior college that prepared students to go straight into the upper division. Menlo College was and still is located at 1000 El Camino Real in Atherton. Thus, the Warlocks appearance at Menlo fits in with the band's slow march up El Camino Real towards San Francisco.

Atherton, a very wealthy Peninsula town, was literally across the street from the town of Menlo Park, so the name was appropriate. Menlo students were given a program where they would be prepared for college, and then spend the first two years of college in their Prep School itself, transferring straight into their junior year at their chosen University. Menlo School always had close ties to Stanford University, and the programs were generally designed to get students directly into Stanford as juniors.

The public schools in the South Bay generally had a very good reputation, so private schools had to fill certain niches. By the 1960s, and certainly into the 1970s, Menlo School filled a very specific niche. There was a certain kind of South Bay teenager--one lived across the street from me--who were pretty bright but not very academically motivated, and who did not necessarily do well in the public schools full of the children of college professors and the like. Menlo was a place where--for a price--they could get more attention and do the first two years of college, thus setting the table for their transfer to Stanford or a similar school, which is what their parents desired. Many of the Menlo students, besides being smart but not academic, were also very good at sports, a fact not lost on colleges looking for transfer students.

Thus the boys who went to Menlo School or College--remember, you could go to Menlo from 9th Grade until your Sophomore year of College--were often well off, good at sports and slackers, a clear recipe for fun. Yet where would these handsome lads find girlfriends? The nearby private girls school of Castilleja, in Palo Alto, was one possibility, and the former Grace Wing (later Slick) had gone there, so that wasn't nothing, but really the best bet was the public school girls at the public high school of Menlo-Atherton, located just a mile away (at 555 Middlefield). Menlo was in the Menlo-Atherton district limits, so the Menlo boys had to know who the prettiest girls at M-A were, and the M-A girls had to know there were some real catches at Menlo. Bob Weir, along with Bob Matthews, Matt Kelly (and later Steve Marcus, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) all went to M-A, but the real money would have been at Menlo.

Warlocks Plans, 1965
Magoo's Pizza, where the Warlocks had played there first shows, was in the Menlo Atherton district, but there's no way the buzz hadn't gotten over to Menlo College. Indeed, Menlo School was full of boarders, some from quite far away, and Magoo's was just a block away from the school (Menlo was up on El Camino). There's no way some of the Menlo boys didn't walk over to Magoo's on those Wednesday nights. Warlocks fans from M-A looking to drum up business for the band would have definitely found a way to get them in at Menlo School. The story about pushing aside tables in a dining hall leads me to suspect that the band played an informal sort of sock-hop early in the school year, hoping to get hired on for Proms or Formals later in the season. Of course, by the time the big events at Menlo College rolled around, the Warlocks were playing the Acid Tests, the Trips Festival and the Fillmore, so they weren't so concerned about the missed opportunities.

Still, we can now confirm that some Menlo boys with ambitious parents found themselves at a sock hop event in their school cafeteria in about September, 1965. They were probably hoping for some pretty girls from Menlo Atherton High School, and they probably found some. They also found a strange, noisy band of barbarians playing something they had only heard on car radios in the middle of the night on the wrong side of town, but as long as the girls wanted to dance, it probably didn't matter to them who the strange guys were that were playing that weird, dangerous music.

A picture sleeve for the Rolling Stones "Little Red Rooster"/"Off The Hook" single

Off The Hook
My source had one other, peculiar, unique memory about the Warlocks playing Menlo College. She and a friend had the duty of writing down the lyrics to songs that the band wanted to learn, many of them Rolling Stones songs. One thing she recalled about the Menlo gig was that the band had learned the Rolling Stones song "Off The Hook" (released in the US in February 1965 on the album The Rolling Stones Now). My source had carefully explained to Jerry Garcia that when Mick Jagger sang the lyrics "it's off the hook, " Jagger had mimed holding a telephone to his ear. Whether she knew that from having seen the Stones, or from some television appearance isn't quite clear.

Nonetheless, my source recalled Jerry not only singing "It's Off The Hook," but miming the telephone bit. He even smiled at her when he did it, to show he'd learned his part. How often the Warlocks played "Off The Hook" after that remains unknown, and I doubt Jerry mimed the phone much. But he did it once, at least, even if the Menlo boys had their eyes somewhere else.

John Kahn Live Performance History 1971 (John Kahn V)

2011-09-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

John Kahn played bass for Brewer & Shipley's appearance at Carnegie Hall

John Kahn I: Performance History 1967-68: A review of John Kahn's migration to San Francisco, his transformation from an acoustic jazz bassist to an electric R&B bass player and some history of his early live work.
John Kahn II: Performance History 1967-68-T&A R&B Band and Memory Pain: A closer look at the history of Kahn's two original bands during this period
John Kahn III: Performance History 1969: An analysis of John Kahn's participation in the somewhat casual Mike Bloomfield Band, with Nick Gravenites and others, who played regularly at Keystone Korner.
John Kahn IV: Performance History 1970: while continuing with Mike Bloomfield, John Kahn starts to jam with Howard Wales at the Matrix, and then with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
John Kahn IX: Bottom Line, NYC July 1974: For various reasons, I skipped ahead and wrote about an East Coast by Garcia-Saunders at the Bottom Line in July 1974, in conjunction with some Maria Muldaur dates. Kahn was in both groups

This post will focus on John Kahn's live performance history for the year 1971.

John Kahn, Early 1971
In early 1971, John Kahn had the unique status of being the bass player for the part-time nightclub bands of not one, but two legendary guitarists, Mike Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia. One of many special features of the Bay Area rock scene at the time was how the City's resident rock stars regularly played around Bay Area nightclubs in different configurations. Bloomfield, Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen were among the best known guitarists in San Francisco, and yet they could be found on weeknights in local clubs, jamming away with their own little ensembles. No other city had such a scene at the time.

However, by early 1971, Mike Bloomfield had lost some of his taste for playing nightclubs. The always mercurial Bloomfield never wanted to be predictable, and once he became an expected commodity at the Keystone Korner, he started to play fewer gigs. Also, the extremely casual Bloomfield band also used a lot of substitutes, like a jazz group, and on occasion Doug Kilmer played bass instead of Kahn. The San Francisco studio scene was still booming in early 1971, so Kahn worked on a fair number of sessions, and he played in Los Angeles studios as well. Kahn was still close to his family, who lived in Los Angeles.

Kahn's friends recall that he would go to Los Angeles for weeks at a time, playing a few sessions but mostly just hanging out at home. While Kahn lived like a hand-to-mouth hippie like all his other musician friends in Forest Knolls, it was clear that his mother (an extremely successful Hollywood talent agent, like Kahn's late father) must have helped him out with money from time to time. This allowed Kahn to focus on making the music he wanted to, whether in the studio or on stage, rather than having to take some lucrative but dull Top-40 gig.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Up through 1969, Garcia had been a regular attendee at jam sessions around San Francisco. Starting with the New Riders of The Purple Sage, however, Garcia seems to have become more interested in developing his music with regular ensembles. His appearances at Howard Wales's Monday night jam sessions in March 1970 had led to his introduction to Kahn and Bill Vitt, and when Wales was replaced by Merl Saunders, Garcia had himself a little band, even if they initially only played the Matrix.

In early 1971, the unnamed Garcia/Saunders aggregation had a little crisis, in that The Matrix closed. As a result, they began to play regularly at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. I have to think that Kahn's regular appearances with the Bloomfield band at the club made him suggest it to Garcia. It was a fruitful partnership, since Garcia and Kahn would go on to play for Keystone owner Freddie Herrera an incredible 400 times over the next 16 years.

The Garcia/Saunders group still didn't play that many shows, as much of Garcia's excess time was taken up with his pedal steel guitar duties for the New Riders. However, knowing what we now know, there is good evidence that Garcia was thinking about making the Garcia/Saunders band his primary side project. We know that when Garcia met Buddy Cage in Canada in the Summer of 1970, he proposed Cage as his replacement. Garcia had recorded the NRPS debut album, which was released in October 1971. Garcia continued to play with the New Riders for most of the Grateful Dead's fall tour. The Riders (and the Dead) were broadcast live in every city that the band played, and Garcia's presence helped publicize the group.

However, we know that Buddy Cage had been rehearsing with the New Riders since September 1971, and although it may have been a surprise to the audience when Cage took over the chair (on October 31, 1971), it had been planned all along. Looking at the arc of Garcia's career, however, it seems that as he stepped aside from the New Riders he already had his next project up and running, even if the band did not begin to step out until 1972.

Tom Fogerty
Although it can be difficult to track exactly when Tom Fogerty played with the Garcia/Saunders group, his first appearance as rhythm guitarist seems to have been August 11, 1971. While I am not certain that Fogerty played every subsequent Garcia/Saunders show, he does seem to have become a regular member of the group. Fogerty, of course, had been a member of the hugely successful Creedence Clearwater Revival. However, various conflicts between his older brother John and the other band members caused him to leave the group, which broke up by the end of 1970 anyway. Tom Fogerty was a solo artist on Fantasy Records, and as a result he was friendly with his label-mate Merl Saunders. Fogerty played Stax-style rhythm guitar and sang the occasional lead vocal, and as a result the group was less focused on Garcia.

Brewer and Shipley
Brewer and Shipley were a folk rock duo out of Kansas City, via Los Angeles. They were on Kama Sutra Records, and Nick Gravenites had produced two successful albums for them at Wally Heider's Studio in San Francisco. Gravenites used his stock studio players, who included Kahn on bass and Bill Vitt and Bob Jones on drums. "One Toke Over The Line," one of the tracks from the duo's Tarkio Road album, had become a substantial Top 40 hit. The song spent 10 weeks on the Billboard charts Peaking at #10 on March 13, 1971. A top 10 single in those days represented substantial sales, and the terrific Tarkio Road probably got significant FM airplay in many cities. Kahn had played bass on every track of the album, so he must have heard his own work on the radio many times.

While Brewer and Shipley usually toured as an acoustic duo, for at least a few dates on their December 1971 East Coast tour, they had a band with them. In his Golden Road interview, Kahn alluded to having played Carnegie Hall with Brewer and Shipley in 1971, and I have been able to track the date to December 3, 1971. I assume there were a few other dates, but I don't know what they were.

I would presume that Brewer and Shipley still would have done some of their songs as a duo, as they usually did, and then brought out a band for some numbers. I assume that Bill Vitt was the drummer, because I know Bob Jones didn't go on the tour, but it may also have been Billy Mundi, a Los Angeles drummer with old connections to Mike Brewer (see below). I have to assume that there was a pianist and a guitarist as well, most likely Mark Naftalin and Fred Burton, although I don't actually know. It is interesting to contemplate the idea that while The Grateful Dead were playing Boston (Dec 1&2) and New York (Dec 4&5), Jerry Garcia's rhythm section was touring around the East Coast as well. Indeed, Garcia was free the night that Kahn played Carnegie Hall, and on his way to New York--too bad he didn't show up and sit in, but Carnegie Hall wasn't the Keystone Korner.

[Update: correspondent Randal G found this remarkable information on the Brewer and Shipley website, about Kahn's appearance with the duo on The Tonight Show, April 21, 1971]

Joey Bishop guest hosted the night we appeared. John Kahn flew out to New York from the West coast and joined on bass but the show didn't want to pay to show John. Also, they neglected to turn on his microphone, so he was there and he played, but couldn’t be seen or heard. To add insult to injury Tom's wallet was stolen out of his hotel room that was furnished by The Tonight Show. Ah, showbiz!

Other guests: Shelly Berman, Abe Drazed, Ashley Montagu, Romina Power

Richard "Zippy" Loren
Richard Loren, a former talent agent, was David Grisman's production partner. On September 20, 1970, they visited the Fillmore East to talk to Garcia about what city they should use to break their act, the Rowan Brothers (Chris and Lorin, not Peter). Garcia encouraged them to move to San Francisco, and by 1971 Grisman, Loren and the two younger Rowans had moved to San Francisco. By Fall 1971, Richard Loren had also become Jerry Garcia's manager for his non-Grateful Dead projects.

Up until this time, if Garcia had had a plan for his other musical endeavors, he hadn't told anyone and would barely have had time to execute it. With his own manager, however, Garcia had someone to book shows, negotiate contracts and make plans for him. Garcia's non-Dead career rested on the triangular pillars of Jerry, John Kahn and Richard Loren, who was known (on album liner notes at least) as "Zippy."

Garcia had a lot of obligations at the end of 1971, but he also seemed to be in a position where he was getting to do some things that he wanted to do. He recorded a solo album in July of 1971, he finished the New Riders album and toured with them, even though his hand picked substitute (Buddy Cage) was waiting on deck, all amidst the usual furious schedule of Grateful Dead concerts. Garcia's decision to have his own manager was a commitment to engage in real projects on his own, rather than just tagging along in jams or as a sideman. Although the relationship between John Kahn and Richard Loren is rarely discussed directly, without both of them all the various Jerry Garcia enterprises that followed after 1971 w0uld likely have never happened to the extent that they did.

Annotated John Kahn 1971 Performance List

February 2-3, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Garcia had a busy Winter, recording with Paul Kantner and probably the New Riders as well. Between the recording projects and occasional Dead gigs, there weren't a lot of free nights for Garcia/Saunders gigs. At this juncture, Kahn probably mainly saw playing with Garcia as a fun part-time thing, rather than a career.

February 12-13, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

February 19, 1971: Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Friends
The activities of Bloomfield were always murky, and a number of gigs may have featured Doug Kilmer on bass rather than Kahn. During this period, however, Bloomfield did play a few larger gigs. This show featured Kahn on bass along with future Reconstruction member Ron Stallings on tenor sax. A tape circulates, and it's quite a good show.

A listing from the Oakland Tribune Teen Age section from February 27, 1971

March 2-3, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Originally Garcia and Saunders were booked for March 2 and 3, but the Grateful Dead played the Airwaves Benefit at Fillmore West on March 3. This doesn't rule out the possibility that Saunders, Kahn and Vitt played the Matrix anyway on the second night, possibly with another guitarist, such as Nick Gravenites or Tom Fogerty.

April 1, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
This show would have marked the first performance by Garcia and Kahn at the Keystone Korner. Keystone Korner, at 750 Vallejo, was owned by Freddie Herrera. Herrera (with various partners) would go on to own the Keystone Berkeley, Keystone Palo Alto and The Stone, and Garcia would play for him over 400 times.

April 8, 1971: Civic Center, Long Beach, CA: John Mayall/Mike Bloomfield & Friends-Chicago Slim
With the Grateful Dead on tour, John Kahn was free to tour with Bloomfield. Chicago Slim was a friend of Bloomfield's named Noel Schiff. John Mayall's band at the time featured Harvey Mandel 9guitar), Sugarcane Harris (electric violin), Larry Taylor (bass) and Paul Lagos (drums).

April 16, 18, 19: The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, CA: Mike Bloomfield
The Bloomfield history site knows about the booking, but there is no certainty as to who played. Of course, with Garcia on tour with the Dead and his family in Los Angeles, a few stray SoCal gigs for Kahn make plenty of sense.

April 21, 1971: NBC Studios, New York, NY: The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson: Brewer And Shipley
Brewer And Shipley were booked for The Tonight Show, and John Kahn was flown out to accompany them. As described above, Kahn was neither shown nor miked.

April 29-May 2, 1971: Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Mike Bloomfield-Chicago Slim/Bola Sete/Mike Finnegan
Bloomfield was still a big enough name to headline at Fillmore West, but he was uncomfortable with his stature. From this point onwards, Kahn plays fewer and fewer gigs with Bloomfield, with Doug Kilmer taking over the primary bass duties. The strange nature of working with Bloomfield, however, meant that Kahn probably still subbed occasionally for Kilmer, just as Kilmer originally subbed for him. The Bloomfield history site has done an exceptional job of documenting his career, but it's impossible to say which band members played a Bloomfield gig during this period without a photograph, tape or review, since substitutions were common.

May 11, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
I'm not certain of this date. The Matrix was on its last legs and the club may have closed before the show was played. A brief tape does circulate with this date (a 19 minute version of "Save Mother Earth"), but I have no reason to believe either that the date or the venue are correct.

May 14-16, 1971; Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Mark Naftalin
The Bloomfield history site lists Kahn as the bass player for these shows.

May 20-22, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
From this point onwards, the Keystone Korner becomes the principal venue for the Garcia/Saunders group, as the Matrix has closed.

May 26, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

June 4-5, 1971: New Monk, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
These shows were Jerry Garcia's first at 2119 University Avenue (at Shattuck), the site of the future Keystone Berkeley. During this period, it appeared that Freddie Herrera was helping with booking the New Monk, and he would buy the club later in the year and change its name. Thus, while Jerry Garcia played 2119 University over 200 times (206 by my count), John Kahn had played there even more than that.

June 15-16, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

June 26-27, 1971: New Monk, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

July 10-11, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Jerry Garcia recorded his solo album at Wally Heider's in July of 1971, playing all the instruments himself, except for drums. Afterwards, I don't believe he used anyone other than John Kahn as a bassist in the studio for his solo work, save for some 90s recordings with David Grisman.

July 18, 1971: Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Friends

July 23-25, 1971; Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Mark Naftalin

August 11-12, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Tom Fogerty was advertised at these shows, so I am marking his presence as having started here. There's no reason not to think he had already jammed with them on stage somewhere, as there would have been no comment or documentation of it in the press. I'm not certain Fogerty played every show in 1971, but I think he was a regular presence from this point until December 1972.

August 17-18, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

August 29-30, 1971: New Monk, Berkeley, CA: Van Morrison/Mike Bloomfield & Friends/John Lee Hooker
Van Morrison was working with John Lee Hooker during this period, so if Kahn really played these nights it would have been a pretty memorable evening of the blues.

August 31-September 1, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

September 10, 1971: Harding Theater, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
The Dead seemed to be experimenting with the Harding Theater, on 616 Divisadero. There was an apparent September Dead date--maybe--and a poorly attended New Riders show (September 23) as well as this performance, about which nothing is known save a newspaper listing. If the show really happened, it would have been the first "concert" performance of the Garcia/Saunders band, outside of the few hip clubs they had played up until this time. If the show happened, it was well below the radar.

September 16, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

September 17-19, 1971; Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Mark Naftalin
If Kahn in fact played all the shows at The Golden Bear, it fits in with his friends' assertion that he liked going to Los Angeles to visit his family and play the odd session.

September 24-25, 1971: Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders/Jerry Corbitt, Billy Cox and Charlie Daniels
The Lion's Share was a well-known musicians watering hole in Marin County. It was a tiny place, too, and it appears that there were early and late shows both nights, in order to turn over the house. For these shows, Bill Kreutzmann replaced Bill Vitt on drums. The truth is that we have very little idea how regularly Vitt and Kahn played with Garcia. Perhaps there were substitutes all the time, or perhaps this was the first time. We actually have almost nothing to go on besides newspaper ads that would have been prepared some time in advance. Ironically, tapes survive of both the early and late shows, so the earliest tape of the Garcia/Saunders ensemble features a substitute drummer (I'm not counting the uncertainly-dated May 11 tape).

The billing gives me good reason to think that the Garcia/Saunders booking was added at the last minute. Since Garcia could easily pack the Lion's Share, there would have been no need for an opening act, beyond perhaps a folk singer to keep people amused between sets. However, there was another act booked, featuring artists with actual albums in the stores. That band would not have booked if Garcia had already been signed on. I think the other act was scheduled, and when Garcia asked to be put on, the owner agreed and simply left the original act on the bill.

The other band was actually the original version of what became the Charlie Daniels Band. At the time, Daniels was a Nashville session man and producer who had released a solo album on Capitol in 1971. Daniels also produced Jerry Corbitt, who had been the guitarist in the Youngbloods, whom Daniels had also produced (Daniels played violin on "Darkness, Darkness" by the way). Corbitt and Daniels decided to team up, and added Billy Cox on bass (from Jimi Hendrix and Band of Gypsies), Jeff Myers on drums and Taz De Gregorio on drums. The story is very complicated, but in the end Daniels and De Gregorio went on to form the Charlie Daniels Band and they are still playing together today.

>September 24-25, 1971: Pepperland, San Rafael, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Friends/Stoneground/Clover
The Bloomfield history site lists John Kahn as Bloomfield's bassist for these Pepperland shows, along with Buddy Miles on drums, but in this instance we happen to know that Kahn was playing with Garcia and Saunders at the Lion's Share. Or do we? Do we know for a fact that Kahn played bass at the Lion's Share? Was he announced from the stage?

The opposite scenario is also possible: Kahn may have been booked to play with Bloomfield for some weekend shows with Bloomfield and Buddy Miles at Pepperland, and Bloomfield backed out of the booking (a common enough event). Garcia and Kahn might have put together a gig quickly, which was how they ended up at the Lion's Share on a weekend when another band was booked.

October 3, 1971: Frost Amphitheater, Stanford U., Palo Alto, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders/Bobby Hutcherson-Harold Land Quintet/Big Black
This show was in some ways the public debut of the Garcia/Saunders band, as hitherto they had only played nightclubs in San Francisco and Berkeley. Stanford had banned rock concerts from Frost Amphitheater at this point, but the show was billed as a jazz concert, and Garcia/Saunders seems to have qualified. JGMF wrote an interesting post about this show.

October 8-9, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

October 15-16, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Nick Gravenites, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty, John Kahn, Dave Getz
JGMF first noticed this show, and pointed out that Garcia was otherwise unnocupied this weekend, so may have shown up anyway. Regardless, I think the most revealing thing about this booking is how it reveals the working lives of the musicians. Nick Gravenites, Merl Saunders and Tom Fogerty all had solo careers of some kind, but no real working band. So they teamed up for the weekend with some players they knew: Kahn had worked with Gravenites in the Bloomfield band, and drummer Dave Getz had played with Gravenites in Big Brother in the previous year as well. In this context, to Merl and Kahn the weekend's gig would have been no different a booking than playing with Jerry Garcia, making a few bucks playing good music with your friends when you had nothing else going on.

December 3, 1971: Carnegie Hall, New York, NY: Brewer & Shipley/Steve Goodman
As discussed above, Brewer and Shipley were playing more substantial dates on the East Coast due to the success of "One Toke Over Line," and Kahn recalls playing with them at Carnegie Hall. It's possible that Bill Vitt was in the band, but it may have been Billy Mundi on drums, and probably a pianist and guitarist as well. I have to assume there were a few more East Coast dates for Kahn, but I haven't been able to track any down.

Opening act Steve Goodman would go on to write many great songs ("City Of New Orleans," "You Never Even Called Me By My Name") before his untimely death in 1984 (the ad at the top of the post is from the Village Voice, November 18, 1974, h/t All The Streets You Crossed).

December 10-11, 1971: Fenway Theater, Boston, MA: Mike Bloomfield-Paul Butterfield
Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield had a weekend reunion show of sorts in Boston. The Bloomfield history site lists Kahn as the bassist, along with Mark Naftalin on piano and Billy Mundi on drums. This is why I think Naftalin was also playing with Brewer and Shipley, and it's not impossible that Mundi (an old B&S friend from Los Angeles, formerly in the group Lamp Of Childhood as well as the Mothers of Invention) played with them too, rather than Vitt . However, knowing that Kahn was in New York City the weekend before makes it plausible that Bloomfield would use him in Boston the next weekend. Bloomfield stopped playing Bay Area clubs for some time after this, and save for a concert at Winterland in 1973, I don't believe Kahn and Bloomfield played together again on stage.

Geoff Muldaur also sang a song with the band on December 11, a minor point but one that would have significant implications for John Kahn's future career (but not in the way you think). Update: I now think John Kahn recorded with Geoff and Maria Muldaur in Woodstock in December, 1971 during the time surrounding the brief Brewer and Shipley tour and the Butterfield weekend in Boston. Bloomfield was well-connected to the Muldaurs, and must have recommended Kahn as the bass player, probably part of a package to get Kahn to come East for a little while. The full importance of this session will be explained in the 1972 entry, and it has almost nothing to do with Maria.

December 23, 1971: Little Theater, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
The Little Theater was a small auditorium associated with Berkeley High School, a sort of adjunct to the Berkeley Community Theater.