Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders Band Members, 1971-75

Live At Keystone, Fantasy Records, 1974, credited to Merl Saunders/Jerry Garcia/John Kahn/Bill Vitt

What is a rock band? This may seem like a simple question, and perhaps it is, but if you have a serious interest in rock music the problem is subtler than it appears. Prior to The Beatles, rock groups were just entertainers, essentially "High Concept" marketing vehicles, although such a term would not have been used at the time. Did anyone really know who was in The Coasters? Even if they did, would it have mattered if different people sang the parts? In that respect, early rock groups were like The Ice Capades: what was presented was more important than the actual participants. The Beatles changed all that.

The Beatles were fully self-contained: they wrote, they played, they sang, one for all, and all for one. The Beatles effect was just as powerful on musicians as it was on fans. Folk musicians like Roger McGuinn or Jerry Garcia saw A Hard Day's Night and decided more or less in the movie theater that being in a rock group was where it's at. The Byrds, the Grateful Dead and a thousand other groups would follow. Yet who were "The Beatles?"

There had been pre-Beatles groups like The Quarrymen, and the very first version of the Beatles featured bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best. Sutcliffe died, and Best was fired, and once Ringo Starr joined they were the "real" Beatles. Did that mean the six shows that The Beatles played in early 1964 with substitute drummer Jimmy Nicol when Ringo was very ill were not "real" Beatles shows? Clearly not. So what is a rock group?

Rock's first and best prosopographer, Pete Frame, inventor and author of The Rock Family Trees series, has gone the farthest in codifying our views of rock groups. In general, most rock fans--and me-- feel that a "group" is equal to more than the sum of its individual parts. Something magical happens when a certain set of musicians play together in the studio or on stage. As a concession to reality, most fans implicitly feel that there are core members of groups, and perhaps some peripheral members can change without affecting the group. However, when a key member leaves or joins, the group evolves. Frame addresses the problem by dividing bands into periods: The Byrds #1, The Byrds #2, and so on. Rock fans implicitly accepted this. Some went further, and started blogs.

Almost all Grateful Dead fans, for example, consider the version of the Grateful Dead that recorded Blues For Allah in 1975 and toured "different" than the lineup that preceded it, even though the only change was the return of Mickey Hart on drums. By the same token, the few shows in early 1979 when Donna Godcahaux was not present did not constitute enough of a break with the group zeitgeist to make those performances "non-Grateful Dead."

How, then, to consider the recording and performing history of the Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders collaboration? I have gone to great lengths to detail the personnel of the Jerry Garcia Band, the New Riders of The Purple Sage, Old And In The Way, Bobby and The Midnites and several other groups. While it's necessary to account for the occasional substitute drummer of fiddler, by and large the Pete Frame superstructure works very well. Rock groups have "periods," and they change when personnel changes, as all the current members see the new members as a chance to re-think and re-work their approach to their own music. However, after much struggling, no such configurative history works for Garcia and Saunders. There is no meaningful Garcia and Saunders #1, nor #2, and in fact the whole Frame concept that my historical analysis is generally based on does a disservice to Garcia and Saunders.

Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees is profoundly appropriate to rock groups, but not to all music. The Garcia-Saunders group was best understood as a jazz group, and only makes sense in that context. As it happens, the Garcia-Saunders group was a jazz band that played rock music, but they still had a jazz approach and configuration, particularly from a financial and professional perspective. This post will look at the history of band members in the various Garcia-Saunders collaborations from 1971 through 1975, and in so doing will explain how the very conception of the group was opposite to rock groups such as The Jerry Garcia Band which would soon follow it.

An ad for Miles Davis' appearance at San Francisco's Both/And Club for the week of April 11-17, 1967 (from the April 13, 1967 San Francisco Chronicle)

What Is  A Jazz Group?
In the 1950s and 60s, the concept of a jazz group or "combo" was very different than that of a sixties rock group. Over time, the jazz and rock conceptions have merged for a variety of commercial reasons, but when Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders started playing together in the early 1970s, they would still have been working off a 60s conception of jazz groups. Merl would have been a member of such groups, and Jerry would have been a fan and consumer, but their concept would have been the same.

Jazz musicians are generally profoundly talented. You could inadvertently spill ink on music paper, and the Miles Davis Quintet could make it sound great. Since jazz musicians are so talented, they can rarely find a platform for all of them to use all their ideas at once. What evolved from the 1950s onward was the idea that each jazz live or studio session had a leader and sidemen, and the music evolved from that. The leader picked the band, defined the concept and picked the tunes, and the members played accordingly. Of course, much of the music was improvised, but the improvisation was subsumed under the leader's plans. For example, many Blue Note Records albums from the 1960s have the same players, but the records sound different based on the leader. If Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock played on a Tony Williams album, they followed Williams' ideas; if Williams and Hancock were on a session for Shorter, they followed his ideas. And yet, all of them were in Miles Davis's great quintet at the time, where they followed Miles' directions.

By the same token, if you saw Miles Davis at a jazz club in the late 60s, you expected to see a group led by Miles, playing his music. If you were lucky, and probably in New York, you might get to see the "Great Quintet" with Shorter, Williams, Hancock and bassist Ron Carter. If you were in San Francisco, you might see a sextet lineup with both Shorter and Joe Henderson on saxophones, but with Albert Stinson on bass, as Ron Carter rarely toured. A "jazz group" meant that the leader or leaders defined the music, and the best available players played it. It was still Miles Davis, and it was still jazz. Garcia and Saunders were built on the Miles Davis model, not that of The Beatles.

Garcia/Saunders History
I have dealt with the genesis of the Garcia/Saunders partnership at length, and will only briefly recap it here. Drummer Bill Vitt and organist Howard Wales were responsible for hosting Monday night jams at The Matrix in early 1970. Over time, Jerry Garcia and John Kahn became regulars with them. Wales had some hesitation about the popularity associated with playing with Jerry Garcia, and after some brief flirtations with Vince Guaraldi, Kahn brought Merl Saunders into the jams at The Matrix. Initially, Garcia, Saunders, Kahn and Vitt only played at The Matrix, but starting in 1971 they started to play out a little more. Since Garcia was a rock musician, they were considered a "rock group", but really they weren't. In fact, Garcia and Saunders' partnership was built on a jazz concept, whatever music they happened to be playing.

By early 1971, the Garcia-Saunders group had started to play somewhat regularly. Mostly they played The Matrix, until it closed, and then they mostly played The Keystone Korner. In the tradition of jazz groups, they had a core membership, but there seems to be evidence that it was fluid. In general, ias long as Garcia and Saunders were present, it was "The Garcia-Saunders Group." John Kahn was usually the bassist, and Bill Vitt was usually the drummer. In jazz terminology, Kahn and Vitt were the "first call" rhythm section, meaning they got the first phone call, as they were the preferred choices. However, if one of them was booked, someone else got the call, and it was still the Garcia-Saunders band. From what limited evidence we have, Bill Kreutzmann played drums on a number of occasions. There were probably substitutions on bass as well, when John Kahn was booked. This would have been standard operating procedure for a jazz group: Garcia and Saunders were the leaders who defined the music, Kahn and Vitt got the first call, and others filled in when required.

A Keystone Korner flyer for October 1971--should we read anything into the fact that John Kahn is not named on the flyer?

Garcia-Saunders 1971-1973
When thinking about "Garcia and Saunders" as a rock band, it's important to note that the group did not even have a name. "The Grateful Dead" may have been known informally as "The Dead" or occasionally by some 'substitute' name like "Jerry Garcia And Friends," but The Grateful Dead was a very real entity. They toured and recorded as The Grateful Dead, and a concert or album booked or sold as The Grateful Dead explicitly implied a certain repertoire and personnel. To some extent, the identity associated with their own name is what distinguishes a rock group from other musical aggregations.

When Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders played a nightclub or concert in the early 1970s, they could be booked any old way: "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders," 'Garcia and Saunders," "The Garcia-Saunders Band" and so on. The implication was clear in any case: Garcia and Saunders would lead the band playing their unique jazz/rock hybrid, and other players would join them as available. Indeed, some interviews from this period refer to the Garcia-Saunders band as "The Group." Bill Vitt and John Kahn were generally seen as the 'other' members, but great care was taken to never define them as a rock band. As far as I know, whatever money was made was split between the individuals who played. A few bucks may have been passed on to Ramrod or other crew, but in general the musicians split the take evenly.

By the end of 1971, rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty was playing at least some gigs with Garcia and Saunders, but he was more of a 'participant' than a 'member,' just as the others were. By the end of 1972, Garcia and Saunders seemed to have been experimenting with adding additional players to the group. Sarah Fulcher sang with the group from late 1972 until late 1973, but she didn't play every show. Guitarist George Tickner played several shows in Spring 1973. Will Scarlett occasionally played harmonica, and Martin Fierro played tenor sax one day in 1973 (July 19). At other times, different players would join the group for a song or two, often on an apparently casual basis, possibly simply because a band member had invited them on stage. All this was typical for a jazz group, but not a rock group.

From a jazz perspective, the Garcia-Saunders aggregation looked like this from 1971-1973:

Jerry Garcia-lead guitar, vocals
Merl Saunders-organ, keyboards
John Kahn-bass
sub: Marty David or others-bass
Bill Vitt-drums
sub: Bill Kreutzmann-drums
plus: Tom Fogerty-guitar (1971-72)
       Armando Peraza-congas (Spring 1972)
       George Tickner-guitar (Spring 1973)
       Sarah Fulcher-vocals (Dec 1972-Oct 73)
      Will Scarlett-harmonica (1973)
      Martin Fierro-tenor sax (July 19 1973)
and occasional guests on trumpet or other instruments for a number or two

Of course, given the limited number of tapes and reviews in our possession, there may be a wider number of subs than we may know about now. I would note that of the relatively few surviving Garcia/Saunders tape from this era, Bill Kreutzmann drums on a lot of them. No one really has any idea if Vitt played most of the shows, or only half of them, or what. At the time, besides being a session musician, Vitt was also a member of The Sons Of Champlin, so he may have had a lot of conflicts. Kreutzmann, of course, would not have been working if Garcia had a gig, so he would have been readily available.

John Kahn also had a parallel career in the early 1970s. Besides working as a session man in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Kahn performed regularly, if intermittently, with Brewer And Shipley, in the studio, on TV and on tour. So the occasional Garcia/Saunders show without Kahn (such as January 19, 1973, with Marty David on bass) were most likely conflicts with Brewer And Shipley. I think Kahn played more consistently with Garcia/Saunders than Vitt did, but truthfully we don't know for certain how many of those shows he actually missed.

The important point to consider here, however, is to dispense with the idea that the Garcia/Saunders aggregation had "members" in the sense of The Byrds or even the Jerry Garcia Band. If Armando Peraza was present, he was in the band; if he wasn't, he wasn't. In neither case was he exactly a "member." in the sense that Chris Hillman had been a member of the Byrds. Certainly, John Kahn and Bill Vitt were the first call players, and they were members in the sense that Ron Carter and Tony Williams had been members of the Miles Davis Quintet from 1964 to 1968. Albert Stinson and a few others played bass for the Quintet many times, but Ron Carter was no less a "member" for not making every show. Garcia and Saunders' music only required Garcia, Saunders and a rhythm section. Kahn and Vitt were the first and best rhythm section, but the music was played in any case.

As I have discussed at length, Jerry Garcia's first independent contract after he and the Grateful Dead left Warner Brothers was an agreement to make an album on Fantasy Records, the early 1974 album Live At Keystone. Tellingly, the artists on the record were not "Garcia and Saunders" but "Garcia, Saunders, Kahn and Vitt." This was a very jazz conception for a rock album, and I think a telling one. JGMF has marshaled some solid evidence that the quartet was experimenting with other players in early 1973, such as Sarah Fulcher and George Tickner, in consideration of future recording, but they seem to have gone with the core quartet. Garcia and Saunders were playing rock, if improvised rock, but their musical and financial conception of their band was that of a jazz group, not a rock band.

An obscure flyer for the Garcia/Saunders show at USF Gym on Halloween 1974. They are billed as Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders and Friends. Opening act is Osiris, featuring Kevin McKernan.

Garcia And Saunders 1974-75
Bill Vitt stopped playing with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders by the end of 1973. As usual, no reason or explanation was ever given. According to my theory, it's likely rather than that he "quit the band" or "was fired," he just stopped getting calls. The Garcia-Saunders aggregation had started to become more successful, thanks to the Dead's growing popularity and the attention that came with the Live At Keystone album. As a result, they were less able to always act like a casual jazz group who played the same few Bay Area nightclubs over and over.

'Membership' in the Garcia-Saunders aggregation for 1974-75 appears from the outside to be a very confusing story. I have made sense of it by dividing the known performances into three separate configurations, all of which overlapped with each other. You'll have to temporarily bear with some of my naming conventions until I explain them fully. The three concurrent configurations were

• "Garcia-Saunders"
• "Merl Saunders and Friends" and
• Legion Of Mary

After Bill Vitt 'left' the Garcia-Saunders group, or at least stopped getting phone calls, the band played their shows with Bill Kreutzmann on drums. Meanwhile, during the Winter of 1974, John Kahn, Merl Saunders and finally Jerry Garcia were recording Garcia's second solo album in Southern California, which is how drummer Ron Tutt came into their orbit. After what appeared to be a live dry run with Ron Tutt at the tiny Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati, Tutt did not play with Garcia and Saunders until December 1974.

In the meantime, Bill Kreutzmann played Garcia/Saunders shows at smaller auditoriums and weekends at the Keystone Berkeley. Late in the Summer, the great Paul Humphrey played drums for some gigs--it's hard to pin down the exact date--and by the time the Grateful Dead had gone on touring hiatus, Humphrey was the regular drummer for Garcia/Saunders. Humphreys played the notable Bay Area shows and the out-of-town shows throughout most of 1974. At some point, tenor saxophonist Martin Fierro became a regular part of the band as well.

By the end of 1974, Ron Tutt had joined Garcia/Saunders. Although there seems to have been a bit of confusion on the part of promoters, the name Legion Of Mary appears at the end of 1974. From December 1974 through July 1975, the lineup of Garcia/Saunders/Fierro/Kahn/Tutt was known as Legion Of Mary. What is confusing, however, was that if a show was booked with a different drummer, then it was billed as "Garcia-Saunders." A good example was June 8, 1975, at El Camino Park in Palo Alto. Someone other than Ron Tutt, an African-American (possibly Paul Humphrey), played drums, and the show was booked as Garcia-Saunders

It is not a relevant point here if a show was billed as "Garcia/Saunders Band," "Jerry Garcia And Merl Saunders" or some other slight variation. Both Legion Of Mary and Garcia/Saunders played more or less the same material. Legion Of Mary was conceived like a real rock group, like The Byrds, with a fixed membership; Garcia/Saunders had some fluidity, like a jazz group.

However, the real confusion with Garcia and Saunders performing lineups in 1974 and '75 has to do with what I am artificially naming here as "Merl Saunders And Friends." From mid-1974 until Summer '75, although the Grateful Dead made two studio albums and Garcia started working on the Grateful Dead movie, relatively speaking Garcia had more time on his hands than he had at any other time in the decade. After 1974, the Dead simply stopped performing; and even before that, Garcia only had one working band. Jerry was Jerry--if he had a free night and a guitar, he was going to play.

Garcia's access points to pickup shows was Merl Saunders. Garcia had long since passed the time when he could simply "drop in" and jam with someone without a hullabaloo, and in any case it was clear that Garcia didn't consider playing a ragged version of "Hideaway" with some strangers to be a fulfilling evening. Independent of Garcia/Saunders shows, however, Merl Saunders was a working musician with his own career. On his own, Merl was much jazzier, in the tradition of organ groups, and played with a rotating cast of players. Saunders played a lot of shows with just Martin Fierro on sax and a rotating cast of drummers, and his son Tony Saunders on bass when he was available. If Garcia was free--remember, the Dead weren't touring for much of this period--Garcia dropped in to play as well.

The reason we have any history at all of Garcia from places like The Sand Dunes, a tiny joint near Ocean Beach (at 3599 Taraval in San Francisco), or The Generosity, or The Inn Of The Beginning, another distant watering hole, was plainly that Saunders had booked the gig for his own band, and Garcia managed to make the show. Of course, Merl, the club owner and even Jerry were all hoping that any and every Merl gig featured a guest appearance by Garcia, but Merl was playing the show regardless. It seems clear to me that in some cases Garcia could give enough advance warning that the club owner--much to his delight--could actually advertise Garcia's presence. In other cases, Garcia seems to have just dropped by.

The important thing about club bookings is that they have to be scheduled 30 to 60 days in advance. A large club or an Auditorium wasn't going to book Saunders without Garcia, but a smaller place had to be open most nights anyway. Saunders had a regular Monday night gig in 1974 at The Sand Dunes, for example. My guess is that there were usually about 50 people there, although maybe various people came and went and the total head count was larger. At least once Garcia seems to have dropped in. The night's music was mostly instrumental jams, much looser and freewheeling than the rock-focused sound of the Garcia/Saunders band.

Tony Saunders usually played bass for his dad's gigs, although not always--Merl could play the bass with his foot pedals if needed. Various drummers sat in: E.W. Wainwright, Bob Steeler, Gaylord Birch and probably others, too. A variety of other musicians seemed to have dropped in, in the jazz tradition. Everybody wanted Jerry to show up, but even if he didn't, Merl was going to play anyway. The "Merl Saunders And Friends" shows, however they were variously billed, was a final year where Garcia could find a free night and sit in with a willing but talented band of friendly players and just lay it down, opportunities that all but disappeared after the Summer of 1975.

The June 1975 Keystone Berkeley calendar has billings for both Garcia/Saunders and The Legion of Mary (among many other interesting bookings)

Garcia & Saunders Band Lineups 1974-75

Garcia/Saunders, February-November 1974
Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Merl Saunders-organ, keyboards, vocals
John Kahn-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums
then> Paul Humphrey-drums Aug-Nov '7
various subs>Paul Humphrey (Jun 8 '75) Gregg Errico (Jun 22 '75)
late 1974> Martin Fierro-tenor sax, flute

It's my current contention that Martin Fierro was a regular in Merl's band throughout 1974, but not necessarily in Garcia/Saunders. However, once it was clear that the Grateful Dead would be going on hiatus, I think Fierro became a "permanent" member of Garcia/Saunders and then Legion Of Mary. 

It remains uncertain exactly when Paul Humphrey first performed with Garcia and Saunders, but it appears to be August 11 or 12, 1974. It's also uncertain exactly when he became the regular drummer, and indeed when he was replaced by Ron Tutt. I can assure you that checking The Jerry Site won't help, since many of their sources were derived from me (via Deadbase IX) and I can vouch for my own mistakes there. The whole problem stemmed from a mistaken notion on my part that the drummers were "leaving" and "joining" the Garcia/Saunders "Band" as if they were members of The Byrds.

Merl Saunders & Friends with Jerry Garcia mid-74-Sunmer '75
Jerry Garcia-guitar
Martin Fierro-tenor sax
Merl Saunders-organ
Tony Saunders-bass (sometimes absent)
EW Wainwright, Bob Steeler, Gaylord Birch, others?-drums
various guest musicians on various instruments

By definition, Merl Saunders played numerous shows in this period with similar lineups, but without Garcia. For my purposes, it's not important how these shows were billed. The "Merl Saunders And Friends" period seems to have gone from late Summer 1974 through June 1975. I myself have not made the attempt to determine which shows might qualify as "And Friends" date. At this point, I am simply trying to assert and defend the proposition that Merl Saunders and Friends with Jerry Garcia was a different animal than Garcia and Saunders, even if they were sometimes billed the same way. There may have been more such appearances by Garcia than we initially realized.

Legion Of Mary December 1974-June 1975
Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Martin Fierro-tenor sax, flute
Merl Saunders-organ, keyboards, vocals
John Kahn-bass
Ron Tutt-drums

Legion Of Mary began when Ron Tutt joined the group in December 1974. Any Garcia show that had the following lineup counted as a Legion Of Mary show. If Tutt wasn't present, the show was billed as Garcia/Saunders, not Legion Of Mary. For my purposes, it's moot if a few promoters called Legion Of Mary shows "Garcia-Saunders" shows. Tutt's arrival foretold the idea that Garcia's side band would be a regular, working rock band, with a name and a fixed membership.

Once again, I have not been been able to pin down Ron Tutt's first appearance with Garcia and Saunders in late 1974, and hence the beginning of Legion Of Mary. Ironically, Tutt's first appearance may still have been followed by dates with Paul Humphrey on drums, so that too clouds the trail. In a strange twist, the next-to-last show billed as Legion Of Mary, on June 22, 1975, featured Gregg Errico on drums, so by my system it would count as a Garcia/Saunders show, but you are free to make your own decision.

Aftermath
Garcia And Saunders, to the extent it was a "band," was institutionally a jazz band, even though they played rock. Certain players like John Kahn and Bill Vitt got the first phone call, but their absence on any given date was part of the professional life of the band. Both Garcia and Saunders put out solo albums from 1971 through 1974 featuring various players, and a live album was released with the core four of Garcia, Saunders, Kahn and Vitt. If you look at the careers of working jazz musicians during this period--Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, anyone you like--that was what their recorded output was like. Different leaders made records using their various collaborators, and they shared credits on a live album.

When Garcia and Saunders stabilized in mid-1974 to become more like a rock band, first with Paul Humphrey and Martin Fierro, and finally with Ron Tutt, it foreshadowed the future Jerry Garcia Band. The Jerry Garcia Band had a fixed lineup at any given moment, and many of the members of the group stayed in the band for years. The practical realities of touring meant that there was the occasional substitute on bass or drums, but those were kept to a mere handful.

What was lost, ne'er to be seen again, was anything resembling Garcia's guest appearances with Merl Saunders' group. For almost a year, Garcia had enough time to drop in on Merl's little gigs, and just funk out on whatever jazz the band was playing. In some ways, this was a reflection of what Garcia apparently had enjoyed in the 1969-70 period at the Matrix, but that scene had disappeared with the Matrix itself. In some ways, the 1979 band Reconstruction may have been designed to provide an encore. John Kahn had alluded to the idea that Reconstruction would continue without Jerry, and indeed they played a few obscure gigs, but it ground to a halt. If Reconstruction had stood on their own, however, it might have provided a forum for Jerry to just drop in, without having to lead the band. It was not to be.

The last sign of a Garcia appearance with what I am calling "Merl Saunders And Friends" was at The Shady Grove in San Francisco, on October 2 and 3, 1978. The Shady Grove was a popular little musician's hangout, at 1538 Haight Street, between Ashbury and Clayton, that was under threat of closing. Merl played there regularly, and Garcia came out to play for one and possibly two nights, sitting in with Merl's band. A tape endures of October 3, and Garcia gets to jam away in some tiny joint, an opportunity that was already largely denied to him even by that date. The substantial legacy of Garcia and Saunders and Legion of Mary has left Garcia's final run at being one of the boys in the band largely obscured by clouds.

The Horn Tour (September 1973 Tour Itinerary)

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.

Update:
September 1-2, 1973: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
A recent find by JGMF shows Garcia and Saunders booked at the Keystone Berkeley, putting paid to any fantasies about bluegrass festivals. Since these shows were hitherto unknown, doesn't it seem likely that September 1 was the debut of Doug Irwin's Wolf guitar?

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. 

February 28, 1969 Fillmore West: Grateful Dead/Pentangle/Sir Douglas Quintet/Shades Of Joy (Martin Fierro)

The Grateful Dead's four night stand at The Fillmore West from Thursday February 27 through Sunday March 2, 1969 stands as one of the premier events in Grateful Dead history. For once, The Dead played at their creative best when state-of-the-art recording equipment was hooked up and rolling, and we have been savoring the results ever since. The weekend stand was the heart of the seminal 1969 Live/Dead album, and the entire run was released this century as Fillmore West 1969. The Dead capitalized on the home court advantage and played some shows for the ages.

Fantastic as the Dead's performance was, however, the weekend had even more resonances. One of the opening acts, the English group Pentangle, had a profound effect on Jerry Garcia, which he commented on at various times. In a past blog post, I discussed how in the midst of playing some of the finest music of his career, Garcia found the time to listen to Pentangle's unique configuration and adopt it for his own approach to live acoustic music. Pentangle, their musical talents notwithstanding, had discovered the value of two amplified acoustic instruments supported by a tasteful rhythm section, and Garcia consciously adopted it as the approach to the acoustic Grateful Dead, as well as other ensembles, like the Garcia/Grisman band.

As if stunning live electric music and a transformational acoustic opening band weren't enough, a close look at Ralph Gleason's Chronicle review the Monday afterward reveals yet another amazing fact about the weekend. On one night, The Shades Of Joy, an additional opening act, featured future Legion Of Mary member Martin Fierro on saxophone and vocals, years before he would play with Garcia and Merl Saunders. Garcia very likely didn't even see the set, but it's yet another sign of what a portentous weekend it was that the local act opening the show included a player who would be a big part of Garcia's sound a few years later.

The Shades Of Joy
The Shades Of Joy were a familiar name on bills at rock clubs in the Bay Area from 1969-71, but I don't know much about them otherwise. They did release a self-titled album on Fontana Records in 1969. The band members on the album were

• Millie Foster-vocals
• Martin Fierro-saxophones, flute, vocals
• Jackie King-guitar
• Jymm Young-keyboards
• Edward Adams-bass
• Jose Rodriguez-drums

Fiero was from El Paso, TX, and in early 1969 he would have been relatively newly arrived in San Francisco. Around this time he had been working with the Texas musicians in the group Mother Earth, but I do not know if he was a regular member of that band. Fierro (1942-2008) apparently met Garcia while jamming with conga players in Golden Gate Park (per Blair Jackson's liner notes to the Legion Of Mary cd), but no date was given.

The only other name familiar to me in The Shades Of Joy was Jymm Young, who played keyboards with various Bay Area groups in the early 70s, including Boz Scaggs and Santana. Young was also known as Joachim Young, and his most heard contribution is the B3 organ work on the Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like An Eagle." I don't know where Young came from or how he ended up in San Francisco in 1969 in the Shades Of Joy.

Fillmore West 1969 Configuration
Although the Fillmore West typically advertised three acts in 1969, they often had four acts on Friday and Saturday nights. While the three acts "on the poster" would do three rotating sets (with the headliner playing, essentially, 3rd and 6th), on weekend nights an additional act would play a single opening set. This served to extend the show, encouraging people to come early and buy more popcorn and soda.  Many of the openers were discovered at the Tuesday night Fillmore West "auditions." The mostly forgotten practice of adding a fourth act accounts for the numerous bands who describe opening shows at the Fillmore West whose names never appeared on a poster.

Given that Gleason's review was published on a Monday (March 3), I think he was reviewing the Friday, February 28 show, because there was an additional act. An eyewitness to the March 1 show reported that Frumious Bandersnatch had replaced the Sir Douglas Quintet, so I think the review was more likely of the Friday show than the Thursday one (Feb 27). update: A Commenter makes a good case for Gleason having seen the first set of Thursday, February 27 rather than Friday.

Ralph Gleason, Chronicle March 3, 1969

Gleason's review of every act for the evening is quite enthusiastic. About the Shades Of Joy, he says

Shades Of Joy is a local group (a spin-off of several other local units) which features wild free form modern jazz saxophone playing by Martin Fierro, a roaring R&B rhythm section and two voices, Martin and Millie Foster, who is much better in this role than as a pure jazz singer. It's an exciting and interesting group. 

Sir Douglas is really delightful. He got everybody dancing for for once (just as Pentangle had all the musicians listening) doing his standards "Mendocino" and "She's About A Mover" and merging his regular group with some members of Shades Of Joy.

It is rather a wild experience to see a group featuring a saxophone soloist who looks like the leader of a Third World Student picket line accompanied by a drummer who looks like he just got in from the cattle drive. Is there still hope?

It's interesting to see that Gleason noticed that all the musicians were paying attention to Pentangle. Elsewhere in the review, Gleason says "when [the acoustic guitars] are heard over the loudspeakers, there is no distortion, just a huge guitar sound," articulating what I believe to be the sound that captured Garcia's attention. For the Shades Of Joy, who probably came on at 7:00pm or so, it is Fierro that captured Gleason's attention. Fierro and others appear to have joined Doug Sahm on stage, prefiguring how he would join Sahm's band within a few years, and indeed share the stage with the Grateful Dead on some September 1973 shows when Sahm opened for the Dead.

Those who saw the Friday night show were probably so overwhelmed by the Dead (not to mention Pentangle) that they probably forgot Shades Of Joy earlier in the evening. Some of those people must have seen a Garcia/Saunders show a few years later, when Fierro was a member of the band--I wonder if they remembered then, or if there memories were permanently deleted?

Some Doug Sahm Apocrypha
Doug Sahm was a brilliant musician and a character-and-a-half, but he could be exasperating. Our eyewitness to the Saturday March 1 show reported that Doug Sahm was announced as being "sick" and his place on the bill was taken by Lafayette's finest, the Frumious Bandersnatch. Perhaps. Elsewhere, however, Doug Sahm has claimed that he was once fired by Bill Graham for bringing a 13-piece band onstage without asking. Sahm was a great teller of tales, so there's no telling how much of that story was true, and since Sahm (who died in 1999) is no longer with us, it's hard to know for sure what he may have been referring to.

Nonetheless, I can't help but connect the dots here. It appears that Sahm opened at least one night, and probably two, but was not present on the Saturday night. We also know from Gleason's review that several members of the Shades Of Joy were onstage with him. Perhaps inviting the extra musicians on stage disrupted some protocol, and Graham pushed Sahm off the bill? Its entirely possible. Given the number of amazing things that happened at the Fillmore West this weekend, perhaps this obscure bit of Sahm storytelling was part of the saga as well.

Appendix: Gleason On The Dead
By request, here are Ralph Gleason's comments on the Dead's performance: