August 21, 1969 Aqua Theatre, Seattle, WA (Revisited)

Earlier I wrote about the Grateful Dead's appearance at the Greenlake Aquatheatre in Seattle in August 1969. This event, originally scheduled for Wednesday, August 20, was rained out and rescheduled for Thursday, August 21. The Grateful Dead and the other acts on the bill took the night of August 20 to make a suprise appearance at a local bar, which intrepid research revealed to be a place called El Roach at 5419 Ballard Avenue.

The Aquatheatre show was interesting for any number of reasons, including the guest appearance of Sanpaku flautist Gary Larkey, the fact that it was the last performance at the Aquatheatre, and the peculiar physical setup of the Aquatheatre itself. Thanks to the intrepid photojournalism of blog reader Ron, we have been provided with some remarkable contemporary photos of the site. The site of the old Aquatheatre (5900 W. Green Lake Way N, Seattle, WA 98103) is now a public park, and Ron took some fantastic photos which he shared with me.

The Grateful Dead advertisement above is from the Seattle underground paper The Helix. It is a framed display at the site, which also includes information about a legendary Led Zeppelin show earlier that year. This poster is interesting not least because it may be the first formal publicity for the New Riders Of The Purple Sage. Their name had definitely not appeared on a poster or ad outside of San Francisco at this time, and may not have appeared in the Bay Area either (we are still working on that detail).

 

This photo by Ron shows a piece of the grandstand. The performers played on an extended sort of "pier,' separated by a small body of water, facing the grandstand.

Here is another view. I think the performers played on the pier peeling off to the left of the photo. The grandstands were considerably larger, as the venue had 5582 seats, but even now these photos give an interesting perspective on the long gone Aquatheatre. Many Deadheads have seen the band in numerous venues, but inevitably they tend to be a laundry list of municipal auditoriums, "sheds" (like Shoreline Amphitheatre) and converted movie theatres. I cannot say if the Grateful Dead ever played another venue where they backed onto a lake and had water between themselves and the audience, but if they did I don't know about it. Every Grateful Dead show was different in its own right, but this one had to have been a lot more different than most of them.

Update

For those who have been following the saga of these two days in Seattle, Ron has also provided great current photos of the site of El Roach at 5419 Ballard Avenue, where the Dead played a surprise Wednesday night gig as a result of the Aquatheatre rainout. For those photos, see the bottom of the post here.

Thanks once again to Ron for his amazing photos.

August 20, 1969 El Roach, Ballard, WA (updated)

Earlier I had written two posts about the Grateful Dead's performance at the Aqua Theatre in Seattle, WA on August 21 , 1969. The Aqua Theatre was scheduled for August 20 and rained out, and the three acts on the bill, The Grateful Dead, The New Riders of The Purple Sage and San Paku, all performed the next night. During the August 21 show, the Dead were joined by a flute player, which most sources have generally listed as Charles Lloyd. Much as I love Charles Lloyd, I have always found his presence in Seattle in 1969 unlikely. I posited that the guest flute player might have been a member of the opening group San Paku.

Fortunately, the former road manager of San Paku saw the post and helped resolve the mystery. Apparently, San Paku reed man Gary Larkey was indeed the guest flautist with the Grateful Dead. More importantly, Larkey recalls the name of the Seattle club where the Dead made a guest appearance: Larkey recalled it as The Roach, but following Ross's insightful research in the Comments, I am assuming it was an apparently notorious establishment called El Roach, in Ballard, a suburb just Northwest of Seattle. The exact address was 5419 Ballard Avenue NW, between 24th NW and 25th NW Avenue (not precisely McNally's "15th Street," but not far off). The tavern was a regular music venue just 2.8 miles from the site of the Aqua Theatre, so it seems like a perfect fit.

Anyone from Seattle who can weigh in with more information about El Roach are eagerly welcomed in the Comments.

I am looking forward to more memories from the Grateful Dead's surprise guest appearance in Seattle, but this seemed interesting enough to post immediately.

update: intrepid fellow scholar Jesse (@Bourgwick) found a contemporary ad for El Roach in The Helix, Seatlle's underground paper.

A contemporary ad for El Roach, from The Helix, Seattle's underground paper (thanks Jesse). I wonder if the New Loiter Blues Band recalls getting bumped?

5419 Ballard Avenue, Seattle, WA Today
Intrepid reader and photojournalist Ron was gracious enough to go the outdoor clothing outlet called Kavu that now occupies the former site of El Roach and photograph the site. He also pointed out that the town of Ballard was merged into Seattle proper in1907, so Seattle is more like a District than an actual municipality.  Here are Ron's great photos--granted, there has been some upgrading of the facility from a dive bar to a clothing store, but note the size of the place. Imagine the 1969 Grateful Dead (and the New Riders and Sanpaku) jammed onto a tiny stage in the back, blowing the house down...

 

This is a front view.

Here is a rear view. Ron observed that the rear of a building always undergoes fewer changes than the front, and this is probably pretty close to how 5419 Ballard Avenue looked in 1969.

This photo is from the inside of Kavu, and appears to be from the front of the site looking backwards. The stage was presumably against the huge windows, which I suspect were not there at the time. Any old Ballardites who recall anything (anything at all) are encouraged to weigh in on the Comments.

Update: Here is an additional photo, from the front on the opposite side

Thanks to Ron for taking these photos (on January 29, 2010). In the strangest of places if you look at it right...

Guest Flute Players with The Grateful Dead: June 13, August 3 and August 21, 1969

I recently wrote about the Grateful Dead's performance at the Aqua Theater in Seattle, WA on August 21, 1969. During this show, they were joined by a flute player for a few numbers, the third time it happened in 1969. This peculiarity has never been directly discussed, to my knowledge, so I will address it here.


Charles Lloyd

I was recently looking at an excellent blog post that summarized all the known guest appearances with the Grateful Dead from 1967-75. Clicking on all the links, mostly to the archive site, I was reminded that every time a flute or saxophone player sat in in with the Grateful Dead, people have always asserted that it was Charles Lloyd. This gets repeated so often that it became gospel, and the archive site lists Charles Lloyd as the guest on Aug 21 (with a question mark), with similar (albeit skeptical) comments on June 13, 1969 in Fresno and August 3 at The Family Dog.

In fact, I think there is a lot less evidence that Charles Lloyd played with the Grateful Dead after 1967, much as he may have wanted to, and that the flute player on the August 21 Seattle show and the June 13 Fresno show was actually one of the horn players for the group San Paku, although I have not been able to determine that individual's name. August 3 is a different matter, which I will deal with at the end.

Charles Lloyd and The Grateful Dead
Charles Lloyd was an exceptional modern jazz musician who excelled on both the tenor saxophone and flute. He rose to prominence with drummer Chico Hamilton's great Los Angeles groups in the early 1960s, featuring Gabor Szabo on guitar and Albert Stinson on bass. In the mid-1960s Lloyd formed his own quartet, with Keith Jarrett on piano, Ron McClure on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Lloyd was one of the first jazz musicians to see the commercial and musical possibilities of crossing over to the Fillmore market, and he played the Fillmore and Avalon a number of times (His Atlantic album Love-In was recorded at the Fillmore on January 27, 1967, when he was opening for Paul Butterfield).

Exactly where Charles Lloyd met the Grateful Dead isn't clear, but he was part of the San Francisco music scene in early 1967. In early January 1967 group was playing a club near the Haight called The Both/And (at 350 Divisadero--the ad above is from the January 24, 1967 Chronicle) and somehow Lloyd ended up onstage with the Grateful Dead at the Human Be-In, adding flute to "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl." A few months later, Lloyd played several nights with the Grateful Dead at a place on Mission Street called The Rock Garden, and probably jammed with them there as well. Lloyd and Garcia apparently hit it off, but efforts to record or tour together never came to fruition. Lloyd largely dropped out of playing live jazz for most of the 1970s, although he returned fully charged in the 1980s and remains an exceptional performer today.

Although Lloyd actually played more tenor sax than flute, Lloyd was one of the few flautists playing aggressive Coltrane-style jazz on the instrument (Eric Dolphy and arguably Herbie Mann and Jeremy Steig were among the others). Some of Lloyd's recordings, such as his great 1965 Columbia album Of Course, Of Course (with Szabo, Ron Carter and Tony Williams) were seminal recordings for jazz flute. As a result, Lloyd is so influential as a flautist that even though the August 21 flute playing (on "Minglewood" and "China Cat Sunflower") sound like Lloyd, most modern jazz flute players owe a lot to Lloyd, and most rock ones too (Ian Anderson certainly included). So the fact that the flute-playing on the August 21tape sounds like Charles Lloyd means less than you think, since most forward looking players at the time owed a lot to Lloyd.

Charles Lloyd is a great musician, and I love the idea that his 1967 jamming with the Dead was so memorable that he turned up in Fresno, San Francisco and Seattle two years later to sit in with them. I just don't think there's much evidence beyond wishful thinking to support it. A hard-nosed look at the history of Grateful Dead guests always points towards members of bands on the bill or players who live or have a gig in the town the Dead were in. I find the idea that Lloyd played tenor sax on "Dark Star" at the Family Dog quite plausible, since the Southern California based Lloyd might have had reason to be in San Francisco, but from that point of view John Handy is more plausible, and Lloyd in  Fresno and Seattle are an awful reach, much as I'd like it to be so. Lloyd wasn't working much in 1969, for personal reasons (he was interested in Transcendental Meditation) but I actually think that makes him less likely to go to strange places to jam with his peers.

San Paku
San Paku was a now little known band managed by the Bill Graham organization, and booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency. During the 1968-69 period, the Millard Agency also booked the Grateful Dead. Other groups working with the Millard Agency included Santana, Elvin Bishop, Cold Blood, Aum and Its A Beautiful Day. A look at Northern California and West Coast rock poster from late 1968 through 1970 shows that all these bands played together many times, so the musicians all must have hung out regularly. It is not surprising to find out that members of those bands were periodic guests, studio collaborators or jamming partners with the Dead or Garcia: Bishop, Wayne Ceballos (of Aum), David LaFlamme (IABD) and Santana band members (including Carlos) were among the most prominent.

Its my understanding that San Paku was an eight-piece jazz rock group, perhaps with a Latin tinge, and they played with the Dead a number of times. I just find it more plausible that a guy from the opening act was a jamming partner in a place like Fresno or Seattle, far from home, than a jazz musician with no specific ties to either area. There are no circulating recordings of San Paku, so I have to guess as to their true sound. I know their lead singer was Rico Reyes, who worked with Santana and Quicksilver and later helped lead the fine group Azteca, and the guitarist was Sacramento musician Mark Pearson, later of Nielsen/Pearson Band. Supposedly they were a hopping group, but they broke up in Fall 1969, and I have been unable to follow up on my theory--hopefully a San Paku band member is out there and can confirm or reject my theory that the flute on the June 13 and August 21 shows was actually one of the players in San Paku.

August 3, 1969 The Family Dog At The Great Highway

The Grateful Dead played The Family Dog At The Great Highway on Sunday, August 3, and for the first three numbers ("Hard To Handle", "Beat It On Down The Line" and "High Heeled Sneakers") they are joined by flute and electric violin and later "Dark Star" they are joined by a tenor sax and electric violin. The archive notes list David LaFlamme on violin and Charles Lloyd on tenor, both of which seem like conventional choices. However, since there is flute on the first number and great tenor sax on "Dark Star", Lloyd seems like a pretty likely possibility. Lloyd probably lived in Los Angeles at the time, but its not so unlikely to think he would be in San Francisco (as opposed to Fresno).

There were so few electric violin players in San Francisco, or anywhere, that LaFlamme is a reasonable choice too. However, I wouldn't rule out Michael White as a possibility. White had pioneered electric violin playing in jazz with John Handy's mid-1960s group, based in San Francisco. By 1969, White was in the jazz rock group The Fourth Way, who were regulars at The New Orleans House rock club in Berkeley. In fact, The Fourth Way were scheduled at the New Orleans House on August 3, but that gig may have been earlier in the evening (bassist Ron McClure, formerly of Lloyd's quartet, was in The Fourth Way, so there were plenty of connections).

To my ears, the playing on "Dark Star" sounds more like White than LaFlamme to me, but we'll have to wait for some firmer evidence, as LaFlamme is still a plausible choice. The presence of the electric violin and tenor sax on this night make the "Dark Star" very different than most 1969 versions, and that is why I am inclined to think top-of-the-line players like Charles Lloyd and Michael White are participating. The version of "High Heeled Sneakers" is unique as well, with the electric violin triggering the song and a strange swinging tempo.

August 20, 1969 unnnamed bar, West 15th Street, Seattle, WA Grateful Dead

Many years ago Dennis McNally let me have a copy of his notes on Jerry Garcia's non-Dead appearances (which I still have somewhere). One interesting fact that I transcribed was his marking that the Grateful Dead and the New Riders of The Purple Sage were scheduled to play the Green Lake Aqua Theatre in Seattle, WA, on Wednesday August 20, but they were rained out, and so played the next day (August 21) instead. There are a number of interesting points from McNally's notes

• The confusion of on the dating of the August 21 tape is made clear; the show was scheduled for August 20, but actually played the on August 21, accounting for the confusing dating on Bear's tape of the show (which he correctly identified as August 21).
• The Aqua Theatre show seems to have been the first joint performance of the Dead and the New Riders, certainly the first "proof of concept" out of town performance
• On the night of the 20th, the Dead, and possibly the Riders, played a bar on West 15th Street in Seattle. Update: the bar was apparently El Roach, at 5419 Ballard Avenue NW, in the suburb of Ballard (just Southwest of Seattle proper).
  

The last item is the most tantalizing. I love items like these. Somewhere this Christmas Eve, some old biker was saying "yeah, one Summer we were hanging out at the bar one rainy day, and the Grateful Dead rolled up and jammed all night, " and his grandkids rolled their eyes and said "Mom, Grandpa's had too much eggnog." This time, at least, Grandpa's memory may have been right.

There is not actually a West 15th Street in Seattle (the streets are on different axes), so I have to assume the unnamed bar was either around 15th Ave NW a few miles West of Green Lake or else on 15th Avenue, near Downtown and Seattle University, about 7 miles South. The bar must have had a stage and some facility for power, and thus certainly must have regularly presented music, so it couldn't be completely unknown. Any suggestions as to the mystery club are certainly welcome (update: El Roach was just 2.8 miles from the Aqua Theatre, not far from 15th Ave NW). 

Green Lake Aqua Theatre, Seattle, WA
The Aqua Theatre on Seattle's Green Lake was built in 1950 to accommodate a Water Ballet at the Seattle Summer Sea Fest. The stage of the Theatre was actually on the shores of Green Lake, with a huge reflecting pool in front of the stage. The arena initially seated about 5,200, later expanded to 5,582. Various visiting shows and musical performers appeared at the Aqua Theatre over the years. Some high profile events were scheduled there for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, but there were problems due to the unpredictable Summer Weather, and the venue fell out of favor with promoters. By the late 1960s it was somewhat of a white elephant for the city of Seattle, but it was still used sometimes by rock music promoters.

The most famous rock show at the Aqua Theatre was on May 11, 1969, when Led Zeppelin performed there (with Three Dog Night as the opening act). Led Zeppelin sites have some great photos of the venue and recollections of the concert. This photo in particular gives an interesting perspective on bands performing at this unique venue (note how relatively little equipment Led Zeppelin had in 1969).

The Grateful Dead performance on August 21, 1969 apparently caused some concern about the grandstands. They were inspected, and structural flaws were found that caused the venue to be closed, making the Grateful Dead performance the last concert at the venue (whatever Led Zeppelin had not destroyed, the Dead seemed to have finished off). The venue was torn down in 1970. Parts of the grandstand still remain, and a historic marker identifies the site at 5900 W. Green Lake Way N.