June 15, 1973 Nippert Stadium, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH: Grateful Dead (canceled)

The Grateful Dead's scheduled show at Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium, planned for June 15, 1973, was canceled the day before. Nice to see Pigpen with the boys, even if he wasn't going to play with them.

One of the pleasures of being a Grateful Dead fan is considering the difference between listening to the tapes of great shows versus actually attending them. Some shows have more depth every time you listen to them again, whereas others had their most magical moment in the very instant of creation. Yet some shows stand even above those comparisons, epically memorable shows for whom the tapes revealed extraordinarily powerful music that stood out on its own. During the Spring and Summer of 1973, the Grateful Dead played five huge outdoor dates in Iowa, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Washington, DC, all of them memorable moments for everyone who attended. The tapes, too, circulated widely, and the Grateful Dead Archive released all five shows in their entirety in the Summer of 2023. Here Comes Sunshine, a 17-cd set box set, was released to great acclaim, and Grateful Dead fans can't get enough of the music or the memories. 

Season 7 of Deadcast, the Grateful Dead's official podcast, tells the whole story of the Spring and Summer of 1973. Jesse Jarnow and Rich Mahan wrote and produced the saga of the great concerts, the great music, and all the events surrounding the Spring tour. Jarnow ends the final episode, however, with a tantalizing remark. After the stadium tour ended at RFK in DC on June 10, 1973, there was another concert scheduled for Nippert Stadium at the University of Cincinnati, just five days later. The Dead's crew were there, the sound system was being constructed, but technical problems caused the show to be canceled the day before the planned event. 

So the Grateful Dead world almost had one more June '73 stadium show, two or three sets in the summer sun, epic jamming on new material on an 80-degree Ohio afternoon. At 3 pm on June 15, the Cincinnati airport reported 85 degrees and a 10 mph breeze. It would have been perfect weather, right about when the boys (and one girl) would have been cranking up a second set.

There have been lots of projected Grateful Dead shows that didn't happen. But once the band became headliners by 1970, there were very few where tickets were sold, the crew was in place and the show still didn't happen. Now, sure the Grateful Dead had canceled a huge outdoor show at Ontario Motor Speedway just the month before (originally scheduled for Sunday, May 27 with the Allman Brothers) but that was canceled on May 21, with a week to go. But nobody was camped out in the parking lot, and the crew hadn't rolled any semis. Cincinnati was different. It nearly happened. This post will try and unpack how the June 15, 1973 show at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati nearly made landfall, but didn't, and what it tells us about the history of Grateful Dead touring.

Cincinnati Enquirer, May 31, 1973

Risk And Reward
Enormous amounts of talk and writing about the Grateful Dead phenomenon have been proffered to the world, and I am as culpable as anyone for contributing to the huge volume of words. One aspect of the Dead's history that that receives less attention than it should, however, is the band's appetite for risk. Jerry Garcia himself had a higher risk tolerance than anyone in the band, but all members of the Grateful Dead organization had to sign on to a career of high-risk propositions. The Grateful Dead's constantly improvisational music was a moment-to-moment risk, and the commitment to it over the repetition of formally arranged songs was another inherent layer of risk. Even when the Grateful Dead had a popular song, if not a hit, they would not always play it, nor ever play it the same. Hardly a logical approach to success in popular music. 

The Grateful Dead's tolerance for risk extended to their business practices. The Grateful Dead were regularly the first out-of-town band to play many of the new psychedelic ballrooms than sprung up around the country in 19l67 and '68. These new ballrooms were modeled, however vaguely, on the Fillmore and Avalon. Almost all of the proprietors of these establishments were inexperienced hippies who had little or no business experience. In most cases, they also didn't know anyone directly associated with the Dead, but just sounded persuasive over the phone. The Dead flew to these cities with no real guarantee of a payday, or a way to afford to get home if they didn't get paid. Yet the band took chances on new promoters nearly every month in the late 60s.

Other decisions by the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia also depended on  extraordinary risk tolerance, particularly in the early 1970s. Touring Europe, starting their own record company, starting a second record company (Round Records) for less popular material, spending their touring profits on a better, sound system and starting a travel agency (all of which is explored by Jesse Jarnow in Deadcast 7:4), just to name a few things, were each by themselves not a risk most bands would take. The Grateful Dead took all of them, in the space of two years. The band took chances. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they didn't.

As Jarnow documents in Deadcast Season 7, the Grateful Dead's audience was expanding quickly, and in order to capture the crowds, the Dead moved their shows to places even larger than the indoor basketball arenas that had been rock music's top tier up until that time. Also, the Dead did not hesitate to work with inexperienced promoters if they felt that they "understood" the needs of the band. Most of the Spring '73 shows had a large degree of new promoters, new venues or both. 

• The Iowa State Fair Grandstand show (May 13, 1973: Des Moines, IA) was produced by some Iowa Record Store owners who had almost no concert promotion experience. Yes, they were ably assisted by Bill Graham and Barry Fey (from Denver), but the show was put on by rookies. The Iowa State Fair Grandstand, mainly a stock car track, had been used for country music concerts since 1970, but never for a rock concert on the scale of the Dead show.
• The Harder Stadium show at UC Santa Barbara (May 20, 1973) was put on by college students. They were supported by Sepp Donahower and the Pacific Presentations team, so there was professional involvement, but it was still a college show. Harder Stadium had been built in '67 for football, but UCSB had stopped playing football in 1971. There had been one rock show in the stadium (CSNY in '69) and it went poorly. So the Dead played an outdoor show run mostly by college students in an all-but-untried venue.  
• The show at San Francisco's Kezar Stadium (May 26, 1973) was put on by Bill Graham Presents, of course, so there was no lack of professionalism on hand. Kezar, however, had lost its major sports tenant when the San Francisco 49ers had moved to Candlestick Park in 1971. There had been one peace rally/rock show in April, 1967, but in reality Kezar Stadium was totally untried as a rock venue for a big crowd. After a Led Zeppelin show a week later (June 1), Bill Graham would move big rock shows to the more modern Oakland Coliseum. 
• The canceled show with the Allman Brothers at Ontario Motor Speedway in Southern California (May 27, 1973) was proposed by Bill Graham Presents. It would have been the first rock show at Ontario Motor Speedway. The next year, other promoters held the California Jam at OMS, on April 6, 1974, and it had the highest paid attendance of any rock concert up to that time (168,000-plus). So the idea was sound, but the Dead/Allmans show was just a little too soon. 
• The twin shows at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC (June 9-10, 1973) were put on by the Electric Factory, Philadelphia promoters who had booked the Grateful Dead since 1968. The Electric Factory had used RFK before, as well, for the Rolling Stones (July 4, 1972), so there was some precedent for the event. 

We don't have Jesse Jarnow and a Deadcast episode to query the Cincinnati event, more's the pity. But from what we know, the Nippert Stadium presentation was another attempt by the Dead to expand their concert footprint. A venue never before used for a rock show and inexperienced promoters sounds like a risky proposition, and indeed it was. But that was how the 1973 Grateful Dead rolled. If it sounded like a good time, and might make for good music and a good day, the band was down. Mostly it worked, so why not?

Some Geography
The Grateful Dead had constructed a bespoke sound system for outdoor stadiums on their 1973 tour. That gargantuan PA had to be trucked across the country, so it was not a coincidence that the touring schedule  had gaps of at least one week between every show. The haul from San Francisco (after May 26) to Washington, DC (by June 9) was substantial. It makes sense to have tried to book a show on the way back. Even if the Cincinnati show might have turned out to be as profitable as some of the other shows, it would still make sense to have a payday on the way home.  

Also, by 1973 the Grateful Dead were catching on to the fact that their big outdoor shows were drawing a regional audience. The Washington, DC concerts, for example, drew plenty of Deadheads from New York and Philadelphia. Cincinnati was 500 miles from DC and nearly 600 from Iowa. So a huge contingent of Midwestern Grateful Dead fans were going to see themselves as within traveling range. The Cincinnati location made sense just by looking at a map. The Grateful Dead had already played Cincinnati four times (six shows, in 1968, '69, 71 and '72). They had also played Cleveland three times. Cincinnati and Ohio seemed like a logical choice.

The Cincinnati Comets of the American Soccer League opened their 1973 season with an exhibition game on May 20 at their home field, Nippert Stadium. They played (then 2nd Division) Bristol City, who beat them pretty handily, apparently.

Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati, OH
Nippert Stadium was the home stadium for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats football team, and had been throughout the century. The Bearcats had first played on the grounds in 1915, when it was called Carson Field. The stadium seats were constructed in 1925, and expanded in 1928 and again in 1954. The football capacity was 28,000. Nippert Stadium had been home to the AFL Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 and '69, until they moved into the new Riverfront Stadium in 1970.

In 1973, rock concerts in stadiums was still a new concept. Stadiums that hosted major league baseball were unwilling to put their playing fields at risk, so that left football stadiums. In the early 1970s, however, the rage was publicly-owned "multi-use" stadiums, so many cities had a facility that hosted both NFL and MLB teams. Thus there were fewer stadiums willing to try on big rock concerts. In the case of the Grateful Dead's spring '73 tour, neither Harder Stadium in Santa Barbara nor Kezar had major sports tenants. RFK had lost its baseball team (the Washington Senators had become the Texas Rangers after the 1971 season). 

The Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival bill, held on June 13, 1970 at Crosley Field. Promoted by Mike Quattro and Russ Gibb from Detroit. The Reds had just moved to Riverfront Stadium.

Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati hosted the baseball Reds, so it would not have made itself available. There had been one stadium concert in Cincinnati, at the old Crosley Field in Summer 1970. Crosley Field had been the home of the Reds for many years, but the Reds had moved to Riverfront mid-season. The Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival on June 13, 1970, an all-day event with numerous acts headlined by Grand Funk Railroad was hard rock madness at its 1970 worst. Iggy and The Stooges stamped their legend when Ig surf-walked into the waiting arms of the packed crowd. No one wanted a repeat.

Still, the University had signed up for a slate of six concerts in the Summer of 1970, of which the Grateful Dead would be the first. In 1970, the University had replaced the natural grass with astroturf. Cincinnati was not a public school, so they probably felt the revenue would help their bottom line. There was some risk, sure, but on the scale of things it wasn't much different than the UC Santa Barbara scenario. There was even a precedent in Ohio--sort of.

Belkin Productions, Cleveland's principal rock promoters since 1966, had booked a series of concerts at the Akron Rubber Bowl for the summer of 1972. Akron is 40 miles South of Cleveland. Jules and Mike Belkin had rented the Rubber Bowl from the University Of Akron for the summer, for about $40,000. The stadium had been built as a civic facility in 1940, but the University of Akron had purchased it for $1 from the city in 1971. Belkin put on 9 concerts at the football stadium. Most of the shows drew about 20,000, but the sold-out Rolling Stones show drew as many as 50,000 (for a list of the shows, see below).

At the end of the Summer of '72, the University of Akron chose not to renew the contract with Belkin Productions. The shows had been profitable, but there had been tension between the city and the promoters, and rock concerts still made communities nervous. The Rubber Bowl would replace the natural grass with astroturf in 1973, too, but I don't know if that figured into the decision not to renew. In any case, the Grateful Dead had played for Belkin in Cleveland before, but there was no chance they could play for them at the Rubber Bowl in '73.

Cincinnati Post June 7, 1973

 

Cincinnati Post, June 7, 1973 (cont)

The June 7, 1973 Cincinnati Post reported on the upcoming show:

THE GRATEFUL DEAD, which comes to the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium at 7 pm, June 15, to kickoff a series of concerts, will initiate a new method of staging quite different than anything ever seen in this area.

Producers of the concert said that although Nippert Stadium seats approximately 30,000 persons, the stadium is being set-up for the Grateful Dead concert to handle a limited number of patrons.

Physically, the stage will be set-up between the 35 and 50-yard lines, playing into the horseshoe configuration of seats at Nippert Stadium. The astroturf immediately in front of the stage will be covered with a special new material to enable festival seating in front of the stage. Patrons in all locations will have an excellent view of the stage and a specially adapted sound system will provide stereo-type sound reproduction.

Although tickets to the concert are available on a general admission basis, producers of the concert said that since seating will be limited, patrons would be wise to purchase tickets in advance--once the supply of printed tickets is depleted, no more seats will be available.

I don't have any details about how Sam Cutler and the Grateful Dead made the connection to the University of Cincinnati. The show was promoted by the University itself  (the UC Office Of Programs and Cultural Affairs), a similar arrangement to Santa Barbara. Maybe there was an experienced concert promoter in the background. I don't know who had promoted the Dead's prior 1970s shows in Cincinnati, but Belkin Productions would  the Dead's next show in Cincinnati (on December 4, 1973) so I wouldn't be surprised if they had some involvement. In Santa Barbara, although the Dead were working with inexperienced young promoters, the (relatively) veteran promoter Sepp Donahower was assisting them. Probably there was a comparable arrangement in Cincinnati, with Belkin or someone. 

The Grateful Dead had a five-day break between RFK (ending June 10) and Cincinnati. The band members probably flew home, anticipating a return to Cincinnati a few days later. It was probably cheaper for the band to fly home than pay for hotel rooms. In any case, the Dead had their own travel agency, so they could find a bargain on tickets. In Jerry Garcia's case, he actually had a bluegrass gig in Warrenton, VA on the afternoon of June 11, so I assume he flew home a day later than the rest of the band. 

The crew, meanwhile, would have torn down the sound system at RFK, loaded it up and driven to Ohio. Figure it took a full day to deconstruct the sound system and load it up, and another full day to drive there. So the crew would have arrived in Ohio on Tuesday night, and would have begun setting up on Wednesday. That seems to be when trouble set in.

 

Cincinnati Enquirer, Thursday, June 14, 1973

 The June 14, 1973 Enquirer had the mournful headline "Grateful Dead Off At Nippert." 

The Grateful Dead concert, set for Friday at UC's Nippert Stadium, has been canceled. Reason for the cancellation, according to promoters, were "insurmuoutable problems connected with the staging of the event."
 
The technical problems were twofold. The size of the stage needed to accommodate the full Grateful Dead show posed a problem. So did the fact that the stadium is located directly behind the UC physical plant, which according to the Dead's road manager, Sam Cutler, makes entirely too much noise. He feared it would be a distraction.

It is believed the show will be rescheduled later in the summer when there some more time to prepare fully for it.

In general, when road managers in the 1970s explain why concerts had to be canceled, particularly road managers named Sam Cutler, they did not usually tell the truth, or much of it. In this case, however, I think Cutler's explanation was likely mostly true.

• The principal reason that concerts were canceled was because of poor ticket sales, and given the Grateful Dead's popularity in 1973, I don't think that was the case.
• The second most likely reason for bands to cancel concerts is that they don't think they will be paid. The University of Cincinnati was not some cigar-chewing mobster, however--any check from the school was going to clear the bank.
• The other reason that bands canceled concerts was that some members weren't able to play. Usually, however, the band would state it as such, and in any case we know so much about the Grateful Dead. All the band members were fine, so that wasn't the problem either. 

The Deadcast made clear how much effort went into the groundbreaking Grateful Dead sound system, fine tuned for every venue. If the stage was really in front of the "physical plant," which I take to mean the University power station, I can see how it might undermine the Dead's state-of-the-art sound. I did think that a member of the Dead's sound team (such as Bob Matthews) visited all the venues beforehand, but somehow this got missed. 

In any case, since the report was in the Thursday paper, the show was effectively canceled on Wednesday, June 13. Given the putative schedule I described above, the crew would have been begun building the stage on Wednesday, and soon identified the issues. The band was still in San Francisco, presumably scheduled to fly on Thursday (June 14), so they never left home. 

Aftermath
The Nippert Stadium show didn't happen. The Here Comes Sunshine box set was just 17 discs, not 20. he Grateful Dead returned to action the next week in Vancouver, on June 22, 1973. The Dead played Cincinnati, indoors, on December 4, 1973 at Cincinnati Gardens. On October 2, 1976, they would return to the city again to play the 16,000 seat Riverfront Coliseum, but they never played outdoors there did not play a stadium in Cincinnati, although they played the Rubber Bowl with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty on July 2, 1986.

Appendix 1: Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati, OH 1973
There were two concerts in Nippert Stadium in the summer of 1973, however. Presumably the bands weren't as finicky as the Grateful Dead about the technical issues or the size of the stage.

 

July 22, 1973 Nippert Stadium, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH: Edgar Winter Group/James Gang/Peter Frampton's Camel  (Sunday)
Attendance was apparently between 5000 and 7000. The Edgar Winter Group had scored a big hit in '72 with the instrumental "Frankenstein," and would soon score an even bigger one with bassist Dan Hartman's "Free Ride." Guitarist Ronnie Montrose had been replaced by Jerry Weems.

The James Gang featured singer Roy Kenner and guitarist Dominic Troiano, as Joe Walsh had left the band. Peter Frampton had left Humble Pie at the end of 1971, and was making his first American tour with his band, Frampton's Camel.

July 29, 1973 Nippert Stadium, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH: Grand Funk Railroad/Ball'n Jack (Sunday)
Grand Funk Railroad, about to have a mid-career boom with their newly-released "We're An American Band," drew about 8000.

August 3, 1975 Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati, OH: Aerosmith/Black Oak Arkansas/Blue Oyster Cult/Styx/REO Speedwagon/Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Foghat/Mahogany Rush/Outlaws (Sunday) Ross Todd Productions and U.S. Concert Board present the Ohio River Music Festival
Two years later, there was a big outdoor show at Nippert Stadium, headlined by Aerosmith. 

Appendix 2: Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron OH Summer 1972
Belkin Productions, out of Cleveland, booked nine concerts at the Akron Rubber Bowl in the Summer of 1972. For a complete look at the history of the shows, with pictures and all, see the Akron Beacon-Journal article here.  The shows were financially successful and fondly remembered by fans, but the University of Akron chose not to renew the contract.

June 16, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Three Dog Night/James Gang (Friday) estimated crowd- 12,000

July 3, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Faces/Badfinger/Cactus (Monday) est: 17000

July 11, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Rolling Stones/Stevie Wonder (Tuesday) est: 50000

July 17, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Black Sabbath/Humble Pie/Edgar Winter/Ramatam (Monday) est: 18000

July 21, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Osmonds/Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods (Friday) est: 20000

August 5, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Alice Cooper/J Geils Band/Dr. John (Saturday) est: 20000

August 11, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Yes/Mahavishnu Orchestra/The Eagles (Friday) est: 20000

August 20, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Chicago (Sunday) est: 19000

August 21, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Jefferson Airplane/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Monday) est: 21000

November 29-30, 1968: Hyde Park Teen Center, Cincinatti, OH Grateful Dead

A flyer for the November 30, 1968 show at the Teen Center in Cincinnati, OH

Grateful Dead scholarship has become a charming, labyrinthine structure where the worm sometimes eats its own tail. A fellow scholar recently had a fascinating post about a largely forgotten guest appearance by members of the Grateful Dead at a Jefferson Airplane concert at Detroit's legendary Grande Ballroom, on November 24, 1968. The date seemed to conflict with Deadlists' assertion of a Grateful Dead show in Cincinnati, OH at a place called The Hyde Park Teen Center. A lengthy discussion on the Comment thread not only unraveled the Cincinnati date, it brought forth a surprising burst of information and analysis about the hitherto forgotten appearance by the Dead in Cincinnati. I was just one among several participants in the conversation, but the accumulated knowledge seems too interesting to leave buried in a Comment thread. This post will accumulate all that we have learned from that thread, so in advance I am shouting out to my fellow scholars, some of them anonymous, who made this post possible (JGMF, Yellow Shark, Light Into Ashes most prominently).

On November 29 and 30, 1968, the Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, the Grateful Dead played two shows at the relatively tiny Hyde Park Teen Center in Cincinnati, OH. They were in between high profile shows in Detroit and Chicago, and since the holiday weekend probably upended some normal booking opportunities, two nights in comparatively conservative Cincinnati were the best option available. Details are, of course, murky, but a few reliable sources suggest that the Dead rocked the house and let the sleepy town know what they were missing out west.

Grateful Dead Touring Schedule, November 1968
The Grateful Dead had booked some college shows in Ohio on the weekend before Thanksgiving. They played Friday, November 22, 1968 at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Columbus, and a free concert on Saturday, November 23 at Ohio University, in Athens, OH. Commenter Light Into Ashes found some eyewitness comments on dead.net:

A comment for 11/22:
"Crummy weather driving to Columbus to see these guys, didn't know much about them at all. Promoter did poor job of advertising and ticketing--only about 250 ppl in a 3,000 seat auditorium! Should have put this show on somewhere closer to the college campus, maybe? But where? Columbus was not a rock n roll city at the time... Sufficiently weird show (mostly stuff from "Anthem") that I decided to follow them to Athens, Ohio the following night."

And for 11/23:
"Mem Aud.... 1929 theater style auditorium with balcony, max occupancy 2500, that night a room full of kinetic heads, the local freak scene, maybe a couple hundred folks max, lights up, people milling about, equipment set up on oriental rug on stage, folks walking up and down the steps to the stage where a number of people stood talking to each other, chatter, laughter, excitement, patchouli, and then amid it all an undersound of music emerging from the seeming randomness and the show was on! ... I know Pig was wailing out front and learned since that it was Tom's first night on keys, which freed Pig for vocal theatrics. Oh did the boys play...long into the evening!"
Another witness confirms the small crowd: "Sort of catch-as-catch-can atmosphere, big venue, but small audience (heck Thanksgiving was here!), as in Columbus the night before. Small turnout for two nights in a row made me wonder if this band had a future! Again, general weirdness and jamming prevailed."

The Hyde Park Teen Center show has been listed for many years on Deadlists and elsewhere as Sunday, November 24, but in fact no evidence supports that. It does seem logical, admittedly, but the handbill (above) directly contradicts that.

JGMF's determined research showed that on Sunday, November 24, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir showed up to jam with the Jefferson Airplane at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit. According to a former Grande employee

worked at the grande for 3 yrs......the dead the airplane and procol harum were the best of all.........i remember an airplane show on a sunday nite/2 show nite/ i hid all my friends in the attic so they would'nt have to pay for the second show......well, we got high w/grace, paul and jorma.........jerry and phil and bob sowed up about 12:30 and jammed with the airplane til about 4:00 in the morning.........no shit ........terry reid also played two sets.

In 1968, rock and roll orthodoxy had not yet been fully established. As a result, the Grateful Dead had a two night stand at the Kinetic Playground in Chicago on November 27-28, the Wednesday and Thursday of Thanksgiving. There are hardly major rock shows on those nights anymore, and experimental bookings such as these were probably how promoters discovered that people don't go to rock concerts on Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, Chicago was a big gig, so headlining over Procol Harum and Terry Reid for two nights would have made the Dead's Midwestern sojourn worth their time. The Dead also had a Sunday night (December 1) show in Detroit, another  headlining performance at a high profile 60s venue. That left open dates on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, and that seems to have led to some gigs at a small venue in Cincinnati. As I have emphasized often, if the Dead were going to spend nights away from home while they were on tour, any paying booking was worthwhile, because it would at least cover expenses.

Jim Tarbell And The Cincinnati Rock Scene
Ohio had a very exciting 60s rock scene, and there is some interesting history to be written, but the interesting parts didn't take place in Cincinnati. This is ironic, since Cincinnati is a large city that is apparently a pleasant place to live--hey, Peter Frampton lives there--but back in the 60s, the hip towns in Ohio were Cleveland and Kent. Cleveland has a great rock history, and Kent has a long history of being the cool college town in Ohio, but Cincinnati seems never to have had that underground vibe.

However, Cincinnati was still a city, and cities had teenagers. Jim Tarbell was a youth counselor working for the city, and he figured that one way to keep kids off the streets was to book a concert. He put on a show at an abandoned church near Hyde Park on Erie Avenue. Jim Tarbell became the first to start booking underground Fillmore-type bands in the city. In 1998, he recalled:

[Vanilla Fudge in 1967] was the first show at the Hyde Park Teen Center [his first promotion], and the opening of the center was quite a deal. It was on Erie Avenue, next door to the library on Hyde Park Square. Vanilla Fudge was really hot at the time. They had emerged as one of the major rock acts about the time of them coming to Cincinnati. 

Later in 1967, Tarbell went to San Francisco and went to the Fillmore, and saw the Grateful Dead. Thus he was primed to book the band when they came through the Midwest for the first time. Tarbell recalled:

You can still see people wandering up and down Erie Avenue with smiles on there faces wondering what happened. It was the Grateful Dead and all they embody, which was a little extreme for Cincinnati at the time. They were two hours late, and they played for three hours. They were running around chasing teenage girls. People were literally hanging from the rafters

So there's not any doubt about the Dead having played Cincinnati. A handbill survives, the promoter recalls it, and despite a little historiographical confusion, the date fits nicely with the Dead's touring schedule. This information was hiding in plain sight, but if JGMF had not posted his lengthy analysis of whether members of the Grateful Dead had jammed with the Jefferson Airplane on Detroit on November 24, 1968, none of this would have come to light. The usual crew of Commenters--of whom I am proud to be one--managed to piece together with certainty that the Dead played the Hyde Park Teen Center on Saturday, November 30.

Elsewhere, it has been noted that an Ohio group called The Lemon Pipers opened for the Dead in Cincinnati. They were a local band, who had a big national later with a song called "Green Tambourine."

The internet is a unique research tool, however, as an anonymous Commenter added this tantalizing detail:

I was at the dead show on 11 30 68 cincy hyde park teen center. I passed out posters for Jim Tarbell around town{ I even have a couple of these rare buggers left,if any body is interested} The poster says two shows one at 7:30 the other at 10.But I also remember that there was a show for hyde park community center members only on the day before or after, cant remember.

So not only did the Dead play Cincinnati on November 30, they may have played a sort of underground show the night before. Keep in mind, the Dead would have had to get from Chicago to Cincinnati with all their equipment, and with the weather always a threat on the East Coast, heading out on Friday (after the Chicago Thanksgiving show) rather than Saturday would have been prudent. Still, they would have been in Cincinnati with nothing to do on a Friday night--why not play? The 1968 Grateful Dead were always up for a public display of their talents. To the extent the Dead had a promotional 'approach,' that was it: let the people hear them and music would do the rest.

Let's review what we can take from the JGMF Comment Thread

• Members of the Grateful Dead (Garcia, Weir and Lesh, apparently) played with the Jefferson Airplane during the second show at Detroit's Grande Ballroom on Sunday, November 24, 1968
• The dating of a Grateful Dead show at Hyde Park Teen Center in Cincinnati on November 24, 1968 is spurious
• However, the Grateful Dead very definitely played the Hyde Park Teen Center in Cincinnati on Saturday, November 30, 1968. 
• Promoter Jim Tarbell recalls that the Dead arrived late, but played for three hours and left a huge impact on everyone who attended
• The handbill suggests an early and late show, and there's no recollection of that. Most bands in those days played 50 minute sets, and perhaps the Dead, with or without permission, simply asserted that they would play their usual extended show
• A Commenter recalls the show, and recalls some sort of 'members only' Grateful Dead show at "Hyde Park Community Center." If this show happened, it would have been the night before, namely Friday, October 29 (the band was playing Detroit on Sunday, December 1). 
• The hitherto unknown show the night before the advertised show is very plausible, if unconfirmed. The Dead would have been in town, and at the time they were well inclined towards playing stealth shows for their intended audience. If it happened, I assume it was at the same venue with no publicity. However, that scenario is mediated by Tarbell's memory that the Dead were "two hours late," which implies they were arriving from out of town

The takeaway: a newly discovered Dead/Airplane jam, a confirmed Dead show, and a plausible indication about yet another lost Dead show. Is blogging great or what?

[update] Two Nights And Three Shows At The Teen Center
The Comment thread for this post has been remarkably illuminating, confirming some of the foggier details only alluded to before. Daniel Stevenson, who ran the lightshow for the gigs, weighs in with an excellent summary of what actually went down:

Everything that Paul has recounted is right on the mark. I was one of the members of the lightshow for that event, and extraordinary it was. It was a two night series, one show on Friday night and two on Saturday. The Lemon Pipers did not open--ether was no opening act. Just the Dead. The Teen Center was a decommissioned church that Tarbell converted into the Hyde Park Teen Center.

The Dead did show up late on Friday night, with Owsley on sound, as Paul states. They did not set up in the basement, but on the raised altar stage. Tom Constaten was also there, and has some interesting recollections of the performance. On Friday night, they started with a rather sloppy version of Good Morning Little School Girl, but in short order got into the groove and blew the roof off the place, at least to my recollection.

This was our first gig as Flavorscope Lightshow. We were pretty green at the time. We literally set up in the rafters of the church and projected through a window carved into the domed ceiling. I remember, at one point, sticking my head out--figuratively and literally--and hearing music that changed my life. (That's It for the Other One and New Potato Caboose, etc.)

On Saturday, we gathered mid-morning at the Center to tweak equipment. The Dead showed up and proceeded to practice and jam until late afternoon. I remember Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman working out dual drum solos, as other members came and wen. Bob Weir, at one point, did a rendition of Silver Threads and Golden Needles. There are other details which I will not recount. Pigpen was a damned nice guy, as were all.

Jim Tarbell opened Ludlow Garage in late summer or early fall of 1969 (can't recall the dates, but they are on record). It began with a Friday festival at the Cincinnati Zoo: Paul Butterfield (with full horn section), Vanilla Fudge, and others. The Garage opened, if I recall correctly, the next night with Grand Funk. Flavorscope did the Zoo gig (rear projection, which with westerly winds, functioned more as a sail than a lightshow), and the next night moved to the Garage. We were the house lightshow at the Garage from fall 1969 through summer of 1970. Also did the Dead show at the University of Cincinnati field house in April 1970, the night before the Ludlow Garage performance of the Allman Brothers that is now available on disk.

If you are interested in checking out the list of groups that played the garage during this period, it is available on line (Ludlow Garage set list). Though it may not be to your liking--or merely the unhip Midwest--shows by groups from the Michigan scene, such as the MC5 and Stooges, were also powerful, and no less prescient when it comes to trends a decade or so later.

Saturday night was as musically explosive as Friday.  

This all makes perfect sense. The Grateful Dead rolled into Cincinnati on Friday night, because they had nowhere else to be. On Saturday, hanging out waiting for that night's show, they took the time to work with their equipment, jam and hang out. With full time to set up, they were able to do two shows on Saturday. That means there were three shows in Cincinnati on the weekend. The asymetrical booking also explains some conflicting memories --some people saw Friday night, and some saw Saturday, which explains why different people remembered single or double shows.

Cincinnati Aftermath
The Grateful Dead played Ohio plenty of times in the ensuing decades, and Cincinnati got its share of the action. Once again, the Dead's willingness to play whatever small, underground shows were available seems to have paid off. Bands that took the more traditional route and played third on the bill at the local civic auditorium rarely got a chance to show what they were capable of. The Dead filled in an empty night on their itinerary with an apparently wild, tiny show for some teenagers, and I'll bet everyone who went told dozens of friends on Monday morning.

Jim Tarbell went on to become a major rock promoter in the Cincinnati area in the 60s and 70s. The Teen Center went on until about 1969, and then Tarbell moved the action to Ludlow's Garage, at 346 Ludlow Avenue in the Clifton neighborhood in Cincinnati. Although the Grateful Dead never played Ludlow's, as they were already too large for the tiny old warehouse with a capacity of about 1200, many cool bands came through there. Grand Funk Railroad opened the Garage on September 19, 1969, Santana played October 21 and 22, and the Allman Brothers played their first show North of the Mason Dixon line on December 19 and 20 (opening for The Frost). The Allmans came back a few times in April and May 1970, and one of the April shows was recorded and released some decades later (an old employee says almost every Garage show was taped...hmm).

Ludlow's Garage held its last show on January 20, 1971 (Captain Beefheart, Ry Cooder and Pure Prairie League), sized out of the market like so many would-be regional Fillmores. 346 Ludlow now appears to be a Yoga studio. Tarbell went on to become a successful restaurant owner, and then a City Councilman and Vice Mayor of Cincinnati. Not a bad run for a former youth counselor.

Thanskgiving weekend, 1968, in a big, sleepy conservative city. Some legendary crazy band with records that never got played on the radio are playing the youth club at the old church on Saturday night. Check it out? Why not? Maybe it will give you something to talk about at school on Monday morning...

April 2, 1971 Kent State University, Kent, OH The Grateful Dead

A correspondent forwards the fascinating information that the Grateful Dead appear to have played a gig at Kent State University in Kent, OH on Friday, April 2, 1971. The listing (above) comes from the cache of Billboard magazines accessible on Google Books. It is from the Talent section of the April 10, 1971 edition (p.21), in the San Francisco portion of News From Music Capitals Around The World. Many of the notes from correspondent Mary Turner refer to San Francisco based bands, rather than just events in San Francisco itself. I know of no other reference to this date for a Grateful Dead performance, so this may be a lost date.

Did The Grateful Dead Play Kent State On April 2, 1971?
As all American periodicals are forward dated (because of Second Class Mail rates), the press deadline for this issue of Billboard seems to have been about April 1. Most of the concert reviews are from March, and the latest is March 30. There is one news item that refers to a club (Ungano's in New York City) being closed April 1. This leads me to think that Mary Turner was reporting on a scheduled show, but that she did not know for a fact if it occurred. That being said, most canceled shows are canceled some time in advance, so there's no inherent reason to assume that the show was canceled.

April 2, 1971 was a Friday. The Grateful Dead were on their way to New York to play three nights at Manhattan Center on April 4-5-6, to begin an extensive East Coast tour, mostly of colleges. Although the Dead were already world famous by 1971, they were still in a precarious financial situation, so they made a point of playing as many gigs as possible. Two things make the Kent State gig seem very plausible:

• The Spring 1971 tour included a number of college dates (including Franklin & Marshall on April 10, Bucknell on April 14, Allegheny College on April 15 and Princeton on April 17), so its plausible to assume that a booking agent with college connections also booked a Midwestern date.

• The Dead had been touring with their own sound system since 1966, so while the band members probably flew to the East Coast, the equipment was probably trucked to the East Coast. Kent, Ohio is just a few miles off Interstate 80, the main route from San Francisco to New York City. If the equipment was being driven cross-country anyway, it would make financial sense for a cash-strapped band to play a Friday night gig on the way to New York. The costs for the band would be negligible, as both equipment and band was heading East anyway

Kent, OH
Kent State University is a substantial University. While generally in the shadow of Ohio State, and remembered today for the terrible tragedy of May 4, 1970 (when National Guardsmen killed 4 students during an Anti-Vietnam War protest, memorialized in the Neil Young song "Ohio"), Kent State was a large college town with a lively music and arts scene. The most famous musician to come out of Kent was Joe Walsh--today most people are only familiar with Joe Walsh because of his 1970s solo work and his membership in the Eagles, but his 60s band The James Gang were badass indeed (Pete Townshend said that Joe Walsh was his favorite American guitarist).

There were signs of life in early 1970s Ohio as well. Art student Chrissie Hynde was in a band with a future member of Devo (Mark Mothersbaugh), and despite the tragedy of 1970 Kent State was an interesting place to be in the Midwest. Certainly a Grateful Dead concert would have been well attended there, just as much as a concert would be in smaller places on the tour (like Bucknell or SUNY Cortland).

The most likely venue would seem to have been the MAC Center (also known as Memorial Gym). Built originally in 1950, and renovated a number of times,  the venue currently seats about 6,200 in basketball configuration. I don't know how much (or if) that is different than the 1971 configuration.

Conclusions
Although the Billboard listing for a Grateful Dead concert at Kent State on April 2, 1971 probably refers to a scheduled gig that may or may not have happened, the event definitely falls into the realm of the plausible.

• The show fits the Dead's known touring schedule
• The location of the gig made economic sense for the Dead's travel plans
  
• Kent State would have enthusiastically received the Dead

Legislating against this remains the fact that no poster, ad, tape, ticket stub or memory of a 1971 Grateful Dead show at Kent State seems to have endured. It would be very interesting to hear from someone in the Greater Akron Metropolitan Area about any memories about whether this event occurred or not.