August 13, 1975: Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA (FM IX)

The Great American Music Hall, at 859 O'Farrell Street in San Francisco

The Grateful Dead's performance on Wednesday, August 13, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco is well-known to most Deadheads. The show was recorded, and much of it was later broadcast live on various FM stations on September 1, 1975, to publicize the release of the new Grateful Dead album Blues For Allah. Thus the music from the show was widely circulated both as a vinyl bootleg and on cassette almost immediately. Many years later, when the Grateful Dead decided to begin releasing archival recordings, the entire Music Hall show was released as a double cd set in April, 1991, called One From The Vault.

As a result, the Grateful Dead's performance at the Great American Music Hall had a triple significance to most Deadheads. First, it was a live performance at a time when many Deadheads were still afraid that live Grateful Dead performances had gone the way of the dinosaur. Second, it was a live broadcast in a year when the Grateful Dead had not been seen or heard outside the Bay Area. Thirdly, the entire show inaugurated the Dead's release of music from their vaults. Yet although the music from the Dead's Music Hall show is as well-known as any Grateful Dead show, the context of the event itself has become obscured. This post will look at the actual Great American Music Hall show by the Grateful Dead on August 13, 1975 in its original frame.

The Grateful Dead, Summer 1975
The Grateful Dead had stopped performing after their 5-night stand at Winterland in October, 1974. A the time, it seemed like the end of yet another 60s institution from San Francisco. The Fillmores had closed in mid-1971, the Jefferson Airplane had evolved into the Jefferson Starship in 1974, and so on. The Dead had announced that they were going to continue to make music, but no one really believed them. Yet the Dead had surprised everybody by making an appearance at the SNACK Benefit at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park on March 22, 1975. While billed as Jerry Garcia And Friends, they surprised everyone by performing a 45-minute instrumental set of new material.

On June 17, the Grateful Dead had headlined a benefit at Winterland for the late artist Bob Fried. Although billed once again as Jerry Garcia And Friends, there was no doubt in the Bay Area that the Dead were playing, and the show sold out immediately. However, unless you went to the show or knew someone who did, it remained mysterious what exactly they had played. I believe that Joel Selvin mentioned the show in his Lively Arts column in the Sunday Chronicle, so it was confirmed that they had performed, but all but the most wired-in people had little idea what actually occurred. Nonetheless, even a casual Dead fan recognized that the Dead were definitely working on something.

Thus when word leaked out--probably from Selvin's column--that the Dead were working on a new album, most readers probably believed it. In the mid-70s, it was common to read in the Random Notes column of Rolling Stone that some iconic group or duo was working together again, and it was usually untrue. Numerous Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young projects were always "just about" to be released, Paul and John were always "talking about" some project or something, and so on. In hindsight, we now know the reality quotient of some of these rumors (various CSNY projects nearly happened, for example), but at the time they just seemed like nothing but hype. However, with two Bay Area performances under their belt, and some apparently new material broadcast from Kezar, rumors of a Grateful Dead album seemed far more plausible in the Summer of 1975 than another CSNY album.

An illustration from the rock critic column of the Hayward Daily Review on August 22, 1975. Under the Hart-less illustration of the band, it says "THE GRATEFUL DEAD HAVE A NEW LP OUT-'Blues For Allah' took months to finish"

Grateful Dead Records and Blues For Allah
The Grateful Dead had shocked the music industry in 1973 by going fully independent and starting their own record companies. Initially, the Grateful Dead Records experiment went very well. Their initial release, Wake Of The Flood, in October of 1973, sold fairly steadily. Although not a huge hit, the Dead were apparently making four times as much per record as they had with Warner Brothers. At the same time, concert receipts were increasing and the Dead were doing pretty well financially.

Yet by 1975, the Dead's financial superstructure was on a rickety foundation indeed. The massively expensive Wall Of Sound ate up much of their concert revenue, so the Dead paradoxically chose to stop touring. To commemorate the end of their touring life--the Winterland shows were billed as "The Last Five Nights" and there was a notion they would never play live again--Grateful Dead Records chief Ron Rakow agreed with Jerry Garcia that a six figure sum should be spent on filming the shows, even though the band could no longer really afford it.

By the middle of '75, the Grateful Dead organization was hemorrhaging money. With no touring income, the Dead were financing both the movie and the quirky Round Records, whose financial problems I have documented at length. In order to finance continued operations, Rakow signed a distribution deal with United Artists Records. This effectively undermined the Grateful Dead's independence. UA was not going to interfere with the music, exactly, but the Dead's freedom to do what they wanted, when they wanted to do it, had gone away. The band had a nut to meet, which included 4 Grateful Dead albums as well as Garcia and Weir solo albums.

For all their problems, however, the Grateful Dead had excellent original material, thoroughly worked over during endless jamming sessions at the studio above Bob Weir's garage in Mill Valley. The music was finally recorded at the end of Spring, and the album was put together throughout the Summer. By Summer's end, the band was ready to put out the album on Labor Day. Even quirky iconoclasts like the Grateful Dead knew they had to do something to promote the album. To have a successful record in the 70s, you needed radio play, and that meant getting djs and radio station program directors on your side. Billboard Magazine was an anchor for the music industry, and they were having a Radio Programmers Forum, essentially a convention, in San Francisco. So the Dead held a private party to perform their new music for some of the key players in the music industry. To host the party, they chose The Great American Music Hall.

Typical bookings for the Great American Music Hall, the week after the Dead played there (August 22-30, '75): Les Paul on Friday and Saturday, Vassar Clements on Tuesday, The Persuasions on Wednesday and Thursday, and Ralph Towner and Oregon on the next Friday and Saturday

The Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA
The Great American Music Hall, at 859 O'Farrell, was a club in a beautiful old building in a very sleazy part of San Francisco. The establishment was built in 1907. It was initially a nightclub, restaurant and house of ill-repute called Blanco's, until 1933 and the end of Prohibition. The infamous Sally Rand ran the place as a sort of burlesque dance hall called The Music Box from 1936 to '46. It went through various incarnations in the next few decades, reopening as a jazz club called Blanco's in '48, and then taken over by members of The Moose Lodge. The building was nearly condemned, but at the last second the building was refurbished around 1970 as a short-lived French restaurant called Charles, after its proprietor.

Finally, in 1972, Tom and Jeannie Bradshaw opened the Great American Music Hall. The club featured jazz, and its full capacity was supposedly about 600, although I actually think far fewer than that were present, even for sold out shows. For the most part there were tables on the floor and the balconies, although the room was occasionally cleared of the tables to create a dance floor. Unlike many Bay Area rock clubs, there was a full bar and a kitchen, so in that respect the Great American Music Hall was a true nightclub, rather than a beer soaked dance joint like the Keystone Berkeley.

Initially, the Great American Music Hall was focused on jazz bookings. This was timely, as the older jazz clubs in San Francisco had closed or were on their last legs. There was the Keystone Korner, of course, but it did not have a liquor license (I think they did sell beer, but I'm not sure). The location was appropriate, too, as it was not too far from main streets and downtown, halfway between the Fillmore West and the old Fillmore, at the edge of a very seedy old neighborhood called The Tenderloin. However, inside the refurbished bordello it was quite beautiful, and the sound was wonderful: elegant sounds in a seedy neighborhood is the essence of jazz in many ways.

Very quickly, however, the "Great American Music" name took on a broader significance. There were plenty of rock nightclubs in the Bay Area, but with folk music no longer viable, there were plenty of artists who didn't really have a place to play. Thus the Great American became a stopping point for great American musicians like Vassar Clements or John Fahey, working in a variety of musical traditions in a mostly acoustic style, but with an appropriate seriousness that put them on the level of the jazz musicians who also played there. Sitting down at a table with a drink was a far better way to hear Doc Watson or Howard Roberts than some noisy place that was better suited for rockin' out.

The Great American Music Hall was just two doors down from a truly notorious San Francisco institution, called The O'Farrell Theater. The O'Farrell Theater, at 895 O'Farrell (at Polk), formerly a Pontiac dealership, had actually briefly been a former Grateful Dead rehearsal hall in early 1967. Later in 1967 it became a rock venue called The Western Front, but there were various problems, and they were never able to book high profile bands, so the venue closed. Near the end of The Western Front, in late 1967, it was taken over by two brothers from Antioch named Jim and Artie Mitchell. The truly infamous Mitchell Brothers gave up putting on rock shows and instead used the venue to show the movies they had made, changing the name to The O'Farrell Theater.

There is quite a lot more to the Mitchell Brothers story, although I strongly advise you not to google it at work. By 1975, although the Mitchell Brothers had made some very lucrative movies--Mitchell Brothers lawsuits are responsible for those FBI warnings you see prior to watching a video--the O'Farrell Theater was primarily focused on live performance, although not of a kind that competed directly with the Great American Music Hall.

Jerry Garcia first played the Great American Music Hall with Merl Saunders on July 19, 1973. The show was significant for another reason, in that it was the first time that Martin Fierro sat in with Jerry and Merl. Garcia and Saunders did not return to the club until February 5, 1974, but Garcia/Saunders played 18 dates at the Great American Music Hall in 1974, and 7 more in 1975. Although Garcia's home base was the Keystone Berkeley, the Great American seems to have been his preferred club in San Francisco. Garcia/Saunders would often play on a weeknight, so it must have been a great booking for the club, since Garcia could pack the place on a night that did not interfere with other plans.

After the demise of Old And In The Way at the end of 1973, David Grisman and Richard Greene formed a group that would play all styles of American music on acoustic instruments. The band was called either the Great American String Band or the Great American Music Band, and not surprisingly its debut was at the band's namesake, the Great American Music Hall. The initial performances of the Great American String Band were at the GAMH on March 9 and 10, 1974. Jerry Garcia had some conflict that prevented him from performing on March 9, but he was present on March 10, so in fact Garcia played the Music Hall on 19 nights in 1974.

Soundcheck, August 12, 1975
Looking backwards at decades of Grateful Dead shows, we sometimes forget how unique the show at the Great American Music Hall really was. For one thing, the GAMH was surely the smallest place the Dead had played in San Francisco since their album release party at Fugazi Hall in March of 1967. For another thing, the Dead had not been touring, so they had no sound system. Their previous two performances had been at Bill Graham Presents shows (at Kezar and Winterland), so BGP would have taken care of providing a PA. However, this was the Dead's party, so they had to get their own system. According to McNally, they used the sound system of McCune Audio. Although McCune Audio were highly respected professionals, full rock sound systems were rare in the Great American Music Hall, so the Dead were not going to leave the sound to chance.

Regular reader Dave recalls

I was at the River City club [in Fairfax] on 8/12/75 seeing the Rowan Brothers and Phil was at the bar. This was the night before the Dead's Great American Music Hall show. I understand Phil had just come from their dress rehearsal at the gamh. We heard about the next night's Dead show while we were there.

The soundcheck is mostly mentioned with respect to Mickey Hart's idea that there should be a microphone on a box of crickets, and that they should be integrated into the performance of "Blues For Allah." This apparently did not work very well, and unlike some Grateful Dead innovations, insect choirs did not become a staple of rock concerts.

Here's the part that interests me, though: did they play "Blues For Allah" at the soundcheck? There were only three live performances of "Blues For Allah", two of them instrumental, at SNACK and Winterland. They only sang "Blues For Allah" once in public, at the Great American show. If they played anything at soundcheck, particularly with the cricket scheme, I would think it would be "Blues For Allah." So maybe, just maybe, there is an innocuous tapebox that says "August 12 '75," and it's got a lost performance of the suite? With crickets? We live in hope.  

The paper cover to the bootleg lp Make Believe Ballroom, on TAKRL (The Amazing Kornyphone Record Label), the gold standard for 70s bootleg record companies. The double lp was recorded from the fm broadcast on September 1, 1975, of the August 13 Great American Music Hall show.

The Grateful Dead, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, August 13, 1975
August 13, 1975 was a Wednesday. The Music Hall was such a nice place that it was regularly used for industry events on weeknights. On Friday, August 8, the great acoustic guitarist John Fahey had played. On Saturday, August 9, it was jazz legend Stan Kenton. Tuesday was the soundcheck, and on Wednesday the Dead were the featured attraction at the Radio Programmers party. There was no word to the public about the show, because the relatively tiny club would have been mobbed.

In the 1970s, the way to sell a lot of albums--well, assuming you had made a good record--was to get your music played on FM radio. In the mid-70s, while the ownership of FM rock stations was often corporate, the day-to-day choices for music were still controlled by the individual station. Although djs still had some freedom to play what they wanted, they were mostly under the direction of their Program Director, who was responsible for hiring and firing them. The Program Director was worried about ratings, even if the djs might not always have been.

An fm Program Director decided which albums were going to be in "high rotation" on his or her station. The dj might get to choose which tracks to play, and in what order, and might get to occasionally play some of his own favorites, but for the most part there was a big stack of albums next to the turntables, chosen by the PD, and the dj had to choose from that stack. So the key for a band was to get the PD to put their album into that stack. Probably there were about 5,00 to 10,000 rock albums released in 1975, so competition for PD attention was fierce. A private party at a nice club, with free drinks and an exclusive performance, was the kind of thing that made PDs feel important, so they would give a band's music a good listening.

The Grateful Dead's performance was recorded by Dan Healy, and all but the "Blues For Allah" suite was broadcast three weeks later. The Blues For Allah album was released on approximately September 1 (70s release dates were not precise), and the tape of the concert was broadcast that night on KSAN in San Francisco, KMET in Los Angeles and WNEW in New York, all of which were owned by the same corporation (Metromedia). I do not know if other stations carried the broadcast. I have a general idea that the same tape was broadcast later on the syndicated King Biscuit Flower Hour.

As a result of the broadcasts, many pristine copies of the tape circulated in an era when few tapes were available. The best of the bootleg companies, TAKRL (The Amazing Kornyfone Record Label), put out a nice sounding double lp. In the 70s, very few people had cassette decks, and bootleg lps were hugely influential in spreading music. I myself had a treasured copy of the TAKRL album, called Make Believe Ballroom, and wore it out.

Although he was only a guest, Bill Graham introduced the band. Of course, this was a major San Francisco event, and there was no way he wasn't going to be front and center at the party. On the One From The Vault release, Graham begins by saying "Good evening, we welcome you on behalf of the group...on the piano we have Mr. Keith Godchaux, on the drums on stage left, we have Mr. Mickey Hart," and continues on as each musician steps into their part of "Help On The Way." To the outside world, Bill Graham and the Grateful Dead were like pizza and beer, and seemed to belong together, and so it seems an appropriate and now historic introduction.

The actual introduction was longer, and was elided for the release, but it was part of the radio broadcast. I am quoting from memory, but the Make Believe Ballroom album is etched on my brain, so the essence of this is accurate. Graham said

Before the show, I was offered 25 dollars to announce the band by Mr. Ron Rakow. I flipped a coin for double or nothing and won. We flipped a coin again, and I won, so I am being paid 100 dollars to introduce the band.

Rakow had probably been out shaking hands with many of the Program Directors, so this was probably extremely funny after a few drinks. Nonetheless, it summed up Rakow's approach to money management, and I don't think the reminder was welcome when the album was released 26 years later. Thus the first part of Graham's introduction was not part of the One From The Vault release.

Since the audience were industry professionals, and not ones particularly interested in the Grateful Dead, I had never heard an eyewitness account until reader Dave checked in. He picks up the story here, one of the few civilians to have actually witnessed the show. As you will recall from above, Dave, having heard about the show by chance the night before, was not going to miss it:

We heard that earlier that night the Dead did a practice at the Great American Music Hall and the next night would be a private concert there. We went down in hopes of getting in. We heard the first set from outside. During the break many journalists who probably had to be there but didn't really want to, started leaving and would hand their invitations to us waiting fans. I think there were maybe 25 people trying to get it. I managed to get one but when I got to the door the guy asked who I got the invite from. I had to think quick because the wrong answer would mean not getting in and having the invitation taken away. I said Anton Round was the one who invited me and he let me in. I was able to see most of the second set but had to leave before the end as i was catching a plane home. As I left I asked at the door if I could have an invitation as a keep sake and he said ok as long as I didn't give it to someone else. I still have it to this day.

I wouldn't give it away, either.

The cover of the 1975 Grateful Dead album Blues For Allah, on Round/UA

Aftermath
However historic the Great American Music Hall show seems to us today, it was just another day at the office for the Dead. A few days after the Music Hall show, the Dead were already recording at Ace's again. My theory is that they were laying the groundwork for the next album they owed UA, and laid down existing songs like "It Must Have Been The Roses." It appears to me that this plan was changed when Garcia and Nicky Hopkins were unable to complete an album, and the tracks were used for Reflections. Now, maybe Garcia was planning them as part of his solo album, but in any case, the Dead were working at Ace's throughout August and September, just as Blues For Allah was hitting the stores.

Jerry Garcia had played 26 nights at the Great American Music Hall prior to the August 13, 1975, the most recent times having been July 4-5, 1975. However, Merl Saunders had been quietly pushed out of working with Jerry Garcia in August, right around the time of the GAMH shows. Merl himself was quite surprised, as Garcia let John Kahn do the unpleasant deed of telling his friend Merl that he was out of the band. Thus Garcia really had no side band when the Dead played the Great American Music Hall. Nevertheless, the next week's listings showed a booking of "The Jerry Garcia Band" on Wednesday and Thursday August 20 and 21, 1975.

In fact, Garcia played the Great American Music Hall on August 20 and 21 with the Keith And Donna Band. The music itself was great, from the surviving tape (on the 20th), and very different from the subsequent sound of the Jerry Garcia Band with Keith and Donna. It remains an open question as to why Garcia was billed this way--was Nicky Hopkins scheduled and not ready, or was this a canceled Garcia/Saunders booking taken over by Jerry? We do not actually have eyewitnesses from either show, so while I'm sure a fair number of tickets were sold, they were on weeknights in a highly dubious part of town, so they probably weren't packed out.

Once Nicky Hopkins joined the Jerry Garcia Band, the operation took on a more serious booking schedule. I think the Keystone Berkeley was far move lucrative for Garcia than the Great American, and the club dates that the Garcia Band tended to play were at the Keystone. The Dead and Garcia were hurting for cash, so it was no accident that Garcia's new venture was named after him and actually played a few Dead songs, unlike the willfully obscure ventures with Merl Saunders.

Jerry Garcia played The Great American Music Hall one more time, on Sunday, July 4, 1976, with the Keith And Donna edition of the Jerry Garcia Band. The Grateful Dead had already returned to touring, and Garcia and the Dead would only get bigger in ensuing decades. The opportunities to jam out in an elegant yet funky little club had slipped away, albeit because of success, but slipped away nonetheless.

The Great American Music Hall thrived throughout the1990s. Even though Tom and Jeannie Bradshaw had divorced, they continued to run the club for a long time. Many acts returned over and over to the club throughout the decades. The name of the club was prescient, too, since there has been a renewed interest in all sorts of forms of American music. The club remained a desirable destination for fans and musicians, even though the O'Farrell Theater remained open just down the street. The Great American Music Hall continues to thrive in the present day. It now shares ownership and booking with Slim's, another famous San Francisco nightclub, and continues to book great acts, even if none of them want to bring their own crickets.

"Reflections" Reflections (Round Records RX-107)

Jerry Garcias's solo album Reflections, released in February 1976 on Round Records

Jerry Garcia's third solo album Reflections was released on Round Records in February 1976. The album was well received when it was released, and on the rare occasions when I hear any of it, it still sounds pretty good. The album featured four songs recorded by the Grateful Dead and four recorded by what was the Jerry Garcia Band at the time, featuring Nicky Hopkins on piano, along with John Kahn and Ron Tutt. While a few connected people had some tapes in those days, most people didn't, and Jerry Garcia tapes were even rarer, so Reflections gave a contemporary picture of Jerry Garcia's music at the end of 1975 that wasn't available otherwise.

Of course, even at the time I knew that some of the songs had been floating around for a while. I  owned a bootleg Grateful Dead  lp with "Comes A Time" on it, and I knew "They Love Each Other" and "It Must Have Been The Roses" from live shows. Still, the recordings on Reflections were very well done, and they wouldn't have fit on Blues For Allah. There were two new songs as well, namely "Might As Well" and "Mission In The Rain," and they were pretty good. The three cover versions were excellent choices but suitably obscure ("Catfish John," "I'll Take A Melody" and "Tore Up Over You"), and the configuration of the record was typical of solo albums at the time. A few tracks with the parent group, some originals and some hip-but-obtuse covers--Reflections was an excellent specimen of a typical mid-70s solo album by the front man of a major group.

Reflections was released in February, 1976. Nicky Hopkins had already left the Jerry Garcia Band by that time, but the group had continued on with Keith and Donna Godchaux on board. Over the years, the genesis of the album has been described  by Bob Weir, John Kahn and others as a compromise. Kahn, quoted in Blair Jackson's book, said "the album was supposed to be a Jerry Garcia Band album, but it sort of fell apart in the middle, so it ended up being half that and half Grateful Dead" (Jackson, p. 270). Given Nicky Hopkins personal and health problems in the Fall of 1975, it makes a plausible story. And yet, an analysis of the recording information provided on the All Good Things box set leads us to some unexpected conclusions. I think the Grateful Dead were working on another album, and that work got sidetracked into a Jerry Garcia album out of financial necessity.

Reflections Sessions
According to the excellent Deaddisc site, the recording history of Reflections looks like this [my emphasis]

1. Might As Well (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter)
2. Mission In The Rain (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter)
3. They Love Each Other (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter)
4. I'll Take A Melody (Allen Toussaint)
5. It Must Have Been The Roses (Robert Hunter)
6. Tore Up Over You (Hank Ballard)
7. Catfish John (Bob McDill / Allen Reynolds)
8. Comes A Time (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter) 

(Tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8 recorded with the Grateful Dead, and the other tracks were recorded by the Jerry Garcia Band)

• Engineer (tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8) - Dan Healy
• Second engineer (tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8) - Rob Taylor
• Engineer and mix-down engineer (tracks 2, 4, 6 and 7) - Smiggy
• Second engineers (tracks 2, 4, 6 and 7) - Willi Deenihan, Joel Edelstein
• Production assistants - Steve Brown, Kidd, Ramrod, Steve Parrish
• Cover - Mike Steirnagle
• Art direction - Ria Lewerke
• Mastering - George Horn
• Special thanks to - Elliott Mazer, John Kahn, Zippy
• Tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8 recorded at Ace's Studio in August and September 1975
• Tracks 2, 4, 6 and 7 recorded at His Master's Wheels in October and November 1975
• Mixed at His Master's Wheels
• Mastered at Columbia Recorders

Kahn's description of the history of the album seems to be contradicted by the session history. The Grateful Dead recorded four songs in Bob Weir's studio (Ace's) in August and September 1975, before the Jerry Garcia Band was even formed. The studio sessions with Nicky Hopkins and Larry Knechtel (on electric piano, mostly) happened later. How did the Jerry Garcia Band sessions "fall apart," if the Jerry Garcia Band did not yet exist?

It's possible that the session listings are incorrect. However, a comment from Garcia seems to confirm the timeline, if somewhat implicitly (quote via Deaddisc):

A lot of the energy from that record [Reflections] is really a continuation of the Blues For Allah groove that we got into. We sort of continued the same energy because we were having a lot of fun doing it.

The work at Ace's on Blues For Allah had lasted from January through June. So it seems like the August sessions were following on the earlier Blues For Allah album. So what was the Garcia album that "fell apart?" Like many Grateful Dead stories, it has been repeated so often that even the principals seem to accept it. Yet the evidence doesn't appear to support it. What could really have been happening?

Some Considerations
Without additional information, I can only speculate on the actual dynamics underlying the recording of Reflections. Of course, speculation is my specialty, but even I am unable to rank any of these factors in order of importance. It is up to the reader to decide which factors may have been the most important. So, in no particular order:

A listing from the Fremont Argus of August 18, 1975, for the "Jerry Garcia Band" at the Great American Music Hall. In fact, Garcia played with the Keith And Donna Band (note Les Paul the next two nights)

Consider: Garcia Had No Band
In July, Garcia had stopped playing with Merl Saunders. This was quite a surprise to Merl, apparently, and John Kahn was deputized to deliver the bad news to his friend. Was there a planned Garcia album with Merl that got stifled? It's interesting to consider that in August 1975, Garcia was playing shows with the Keith and Donna Godchaux band while recording what would become Reflections with the Grateful Dead. It certainly causes me to re-think the timing of Garcia's dismissal of Merl Saunders, because if an album was imminent, I don't know what to make of it. If Garcia was planning a solo album, he must have had a greater urgency to dump Merl than he ever admitted. However, whatever Garcia's frustration with Saunders, I don't think he was thinking about a solo album in the Summer.

Consider: Round Records Had Dire Cash Flow Problems
McNally describes the difficult situation that Grateful Dead Records had fallen into in mid-1975. The band had spent a lot of money on the Wall Of Sound and the Grateful Dead movie, and they had stopped touring. The Dead had borrowed a lot of money from the Bank Of Boston, so Ron Rakow had gotten a cash infusion by signing a distribution deal with United Artists, along with an international distribution deal with Atlantic. However, the Grateful Dead had no income and they owed money all over the place. I have written at some length about how cash flow problems defined the history of Round Records.

Consider: Recording At Ace's Was Cheap
While recording in Bob Weir's garage was not completely free--there were expenses--there were no studio fees and the band did not need to be paid. Recording in a San Francisco studio with professional musicians would have meant laying out cash that the Dead didn't have. So if Round Records needed Jerry Garcia "product" to sell, recording with the Dead at Ace's was the quickest and cheapest way to go. Three of the four songs the band recorded already had established arrangements, so the recordings must have come easily.

The confusing part of my semi-hypothesis is the apparent conclusion: why did Jerry Garcia only record half a solo album with the Grateful Dead? Bob Weir had already recorded a solo album with the Dead as backing musicians, so it wasn't as if the band was ashamed of the concept. Sure, the restless Garcia was always anxious to do something different, but Round Records was a business. If Garcia had recorded half an album with the Dead, why couldn't he finish it up with them? Or do a few songs acoustic, and play with David Grisman or something? There were four original songs, which was plenty for a solo album that could be filled out with hip cover versions. If Round Records needed money, couldn't Garcia just knock out a musically superior collection of songs, and sell a few records? The next year he could focus on something special. Why would Garcia have recorded half an album at Ace's?

The Jerry Garcia Band At His Master's Wheels
The Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins debuted at Sophie's in Palo Alto on September 18, 1975. A few shows had been billed at Keystone Berkeley as "Jerry Garcia" or "Jerry Garcia Band" for August, but those shows were played by Garcia and the Keith And Donna band. Whether this was a scheduling problem with Hopkins or had some other motive is uncertain to me. It is still interesting to note that while Garcia was playing the Keystone with Keith and Donna in August and rehearsing Hopkins for the band in September, he was recording with the Dead at Ace's.

His Master's Wheels was in San Francisco at 60 Brady Street, just behind the Fillmore West. It had previously been Alembic Studios, and prior to that it had been Pacific High Recorders. In 1974, Alembic sold the studio to producer Elliot Mazer. It appears that the Jerry Garcia Band went into His Master's Wheels in October 1975 to begin recording Reflections. The exact dates for recording are uncertain, but its easy to bracket the time frame. The JGB had played four dates in September, and they played about six dates in October between October 8 and October 22, when the band began an extended tour of the Eastern seaboard. So the recordings must have been done in the first half of October, in between the various shows in the Bay Area.

The Eastern tour ended November 1 in Washington, DC. The JGB began a Midwestern tour in Chicago on November 21, so it seems clear that the second sessions were in the first three weeks of November, interrupted by a few Keystone Berkeley shows. Outtakes from circulating tapes and the All Good Things box set show the Jerry Garcia Band trying out many of the rock songs associated with him, even if some of them hadn't been played in a few years, like "You Win Again" and "Hey Bo Diddley." Yet on some of the outtake tracks, the grand piano isn't played by Nicky Hopkins but by Los Angeles studio legend Larry Knechtel (check out Knechtel's discography).

Knechtel plays some electric piano in support of Hopkins on Reflections, possibly overdubbed to give more texture to the tracks. However, although participants seem reluctant to disclose details, it appears that Hopkins was not available for some or all of the November sessions, and Knechtel had to fill in. There's even a whiff that Knechtel did some overdubbing of Hopkins' piano parts. Hopkins was a studio legend, and rightly so, and thus it would have seemed that the environment would have brought out the best in him, but apparently the opposite was the case. Hopkins was a very nice man, so no one liked speaking ill of him, but he had serious health problems separate from his preference for drugs and drinking, and he seems to have simply failed to answer the bell.

Knechtel was a fine player, but obviously the opportunity to take advantage of Hopkins' live experience with Garcia was lost. Apparently, when Blair Jackson asked Knechtel about playing with Garcia, Knechtel didn't recall it. Knechtel had played with everybody, so I wouldn't read too much into that, but it does suggest that Knechtel's role was after the fact, cleaning up what Hopkins had muffed, possibly with just John Kahn in the studio.

Presumably, if Hopkins' health prevented his appearance, or if he was unable to deliver the goods in the studio, Garcia must have needed to fall back to a Plan B. Whatever exactly Rakow had promised United Artists, they plainly had to release something. Thus Garcia must have taken the four tracks with the Dead and the best four tracks with Hopkins, and made a pretty good album out of them. It looks like a few overdubs were done near the end of the process, with harmony vocals from Weir and Donna Godchaux, and a little percussion from Hart, as well as possible overdubs by Knechtel. Reflections was released in February 1976, and the Kingfish album was released in March, so UA got their Garcia and Weir albums.

What Was Plan A?
In retrospect, Kahn's overview of Reflections makes sense: "the album was supposed to be a Jerry Garcia Band album, but it sort of fell apart in the middle, so it ended up being half that and half Grateful Dead." Garcia, Kahn and Tutt seem to have gotten Nicky Hopkins in order to form the Jerry Garcia Band, and they had plans to make a Jerry Garcia solo album at His Master's Wheels. Garcia knew Hopkins from his Quicksilver Messenger Service days, and he was a living legend--The Kinks had written a song about Hopkins called "Session Man" 9 years earlier--so it seemed like a good plan. Yet Hopkins let them down, due to some combination of circumstances. As a result, 4 tracks were salvaged from those sessions, and four tracks from Grateful Dead sessions were used as well.

Yet why had the Grateful Dead been recording at Ace's in August and September? Garcia had a plan in place for his own solo album, so why were the Dead recording Garcia/Hunter songs? I think the Grateful Dead were actually beginning work on their next album, and the tracks got borrowed by Garcia. Although Rakow's words always have to be taken with a grain of salt, he told McNally that UA had been promised 4 Grateful Dead albums along with solo albums by Garcia and Weir. The band had the '74 Winterland shows in the can, although it would later turn out that those tapes were in poor shape.  

Blues For Allah would have been the first UA album, and the Winterland tapes would have accounted for two more (according to the contractual orthodoxy of the time, double albums could count as two albums). Weir was already working with Kingfish, and they had some original material. Garcia and Kahn had plans for the Jerry Garcia Band. That would still leave one album unaccounted for.

I think the August and September 1975 sessions at Ace's were meant for a forthcoming Grateful Dead album. "Might As Well" was a new song, but the other three had never been released by the Dead. Obviously, we'll never know what else might have been recorded had they continued. The increasing stress of record company business had made the Dead's own situation more precarious. According to Rakow, he threatened UA with bankrupting the Grateful Dead in order to get out of the contract if they did not receive more money. Whether or not Rakow actually voiced that threat to UA--he certainly could have--it was a sign of desperation. By December of 1975, when Garcia had returned from touring with Hopkins, Garcia would have needed to take over the songs for his own album, and any possible plans for a subsequent album were pushed aside.

update
Scholar and regular Commenter Light Into Ashes has a relevant quote from Garcia at the time, and an intriguing counter-narrative

Garcia had a bit more to say about the Dead sessions that ended up on Reflections. "It was a continuation of what we were doing with Blues for Allah. We were having fun in the studio is what it boils down to, and that's pretty rare for us. The energy was there, and I thought, 'I've got a solo album coming up. Let's cut these tracks with the Grateful Dead. I've already taught them the tunes.'" (Jackson p.271)

So by Garcia's account, the Dead-recorded tunes were meant for his next solo album all along. What Garcia doesn't mention is that he didn't have his own band when they started recording in August/September. So using the Dead would have been a necessary step, if he wanted to start recording right away. 

But the Nicky Hopkins JGB formed in mid-September - it seems no coincidence that the Dead stopped recording then, and the JGB sessions picked up where they left off almost immediately, in October.

I am not certain why the JGB had to head to His Master's Wheels when the much cheaper Ace's was available - except, perhaps it wasn't. Weir & Kingfish rehearsed & recorded their album at Ace's, probably around the same time (this should be checked), so the JGB would have had to find another studio.

There's also the unspoken issue that the Dead had already spent half the year in the studio recording Blues for Allah. As "fun" as Garcia says the sessions were - this was a guy who habitually spent months in the studio working on albums - I suspect that some of the other Dead members were probably getting burned-out by September and were happy to relinquish the sessions to the new JGB.

I would take Garcia's word that he was planning another solo album in mid-'75, right after finishing Allah. Weir would probably have been able to scrape up enough songs for half a Dead album, but I doubt anyone expected the Dead to record two albums in a row. Rather, Rakow would likely have been nudging Garcia for another solo album for Round, since a Garcia album would do well.

So on one hand, perhaps Garcia intended a solo album all along, which makes the timing of his firing of Merl Saunders even more significant. Of course, Garcia could have been making up a plausible story as to why Reflections was recorded the way it was. One point I would make about late 1975 would be to remember that the Dead weren't touring that year--why wouldn't they record a second album in a year? What else were they going to do? In any case, LIA's comments give us yet another angle to consider.

Maybe I'm overreaching by constructing a narrative of a lost Grateful Dead album from some fragmentary, after-the-fact interviews. But if my hypothesis is incorrect, what's the alternative explanation? The timeline doesn't particularly make sense. Now, it's possible that initially Round Records' finances were so dire that Garcia thought he would have to make his whole solo album with the Dead, and discovered he had a budget halfway through. Even so, it makes for a strange series of events that has been glossed over with an easy-to-digest explanation. For now, until someone can peel off another layer of the onion, I'm going to say that there were plans afoot for another studio Grateful Dead album in the Fall of 1975, and they slipped away with Nicky Hopkins' health and a hefty debt owed to the Bank Of Boston. 

Album Economics: Round Records 1974-76

Robert Hunter's Tales Of The Great Rum Runners, the first album released on Round Records (RX-101) in June 1974

Round Records was the record company formed by Jerry Garcia and Ron Rakow to release solo albums and other material by Garcia, other members of the Dead and other musicians. The venture was an adjunct to Grateful Dead Records, which had been born once the Dead became free of their Warner Brothers contract in March, 1973. Per the legend, certain members of the Grateful Dead were uncomfortable with the risk associated with expanding the record company, so Garcia took on that risk himself. The label released ten fascinating albums in its two year existence, finally folding in early 1976.

Since Ron Rakow was a partner in Round Records, and Rakow ultimately absconded with a few hundred thousand dollars of the Grateful Dead's money in 1976, no one wanted to talk about Round afterwards. What has made the historical record confusing, however, was that no one had really wanted to talk about Round Records even while it existed. Back in '75, many rock artists had their own record labels, and although Round was a very different animal, it didn't seem that way at the time.

The public face of Round was of course Jerry Garcia, but in those days, journalists were still busily asking Garcia about LSD and Woodstock. There might have been a few generic questions about Round, but the ever-engaging Garcia simply answered the questions he was asked, and the conversation would spin far away from his own record company (Rakow did give an interview about Round to Record World, accessible on the indispensable Grateful Dead Sources blog, but it was more about the mechanics of distribution).

What happened with and to Round Records? More importantly, what was supposed to happen? To the extent we know what happened to the label, it was sunk with the financial morass that finally squeezed out Grateful Dead Records. In the end, Round released ten albums, but many of them were released quite some time after they were recorded. This post will attempt to unravel some of the financial underpinnings of Round Records. Once the cobwebs have been removed and the framework becomes visible, we will get some picture of what Garcia may have had in mind for Round. As in many other ventures, Garcia and the Grateful Dead had very imaginative ideas, but once again seem to have fired up the locomotive before the railroad tracks were finished.

Looking backwards, however, the timeline for Round Records releases makes no sense at all, and bears little relationship to Garcia's musical efforts at the time. One reason for that may be that Round was poorly run, by a partner who was neither organized nor reliable. Of more interest to me than Ron Rakow's business practices, however, is an analysis of what music Jerry Garcia was interested in making outside the Grateful Dead from 1973 to 1975, and how Garcia may have seen Round as fulfilling those ends. Without suggesting a narrative for Garcia' side projects, the history of Round Records would make no sense whatsoever.

A Round Approach
The evidence of Round Records' birth and passing is maddeningly non-specific. Given the lack of direct evidence, I have tried to analyze Round Records as an institution, rather than focusing too much on the particular actions of individuals, which may remain forever unknown. My institutional analysis points towards some interesting conclusions:

• Round Records was conceived as an independent record company that would release a wide variety of material, much of it not likely to be popular
• Round would be a platform for experimental  or unheard music
• Most of Round's projects were to be recorded in-house, at either Mickey Hart's ranch studio (The Barn), or Bob Weir's garage studio (Ace's).
• Inept business practices insured that the Round venture floundered, and almost everything released on the label was well out of date by the time it came out
• Almost everybody involved with Round was unhappy with the music and the finances, and thus only talks about Round in an indirect way

To explain my conclusions, I will present the following:

• A brief overview of the beginning of Round Records
• An institutional analysis of the likely explanation for Jerry Garcia Round album Garcia inexplicably having the same name as the previous Garcia solo album on Warners
• A timeline of the Grateful Dead finances in conjunction with Round releases

The Birth Of Round Records
The Grateful Dead informed Warner Brothers that they would not be renewing their contract, nor signing with anyone else, in the Fall of 1972. This was unprecedented for a rock band. Because of contractual obligations, they would not be free of Warners until March 1973 and the release of Bear's Choice. Perhaps Warners or another company thought they could talk the Dead out of independence--the record companies certainly tried--but the Dead stuck to their quixotic plan. The resulting entity was called Grateful Dead Records, financed by a large loan from the First National Bank Of Boston, organized by the always ambiguous Ron Rakow, who had been in and out of the Grateful Dead's finances since about 1966.

The first public corporate mark of Grateful Dead Records was in fact a notation on the liner notes for the Garcia/Saunders album Live At Keystone. That album was released in January 1974, some months after Wake Of The Flood, the initial GDR release. However, the Keystone album was recorded before Wake, in July, 1973, so when Garcia was listed as "Courtesy Of Grateful Dead Records," it was a corporate indicator of Garcia's primary affiliation. The album was released on Saunders' label, Fantasy Records. There is reason to assume that Fantasy may have hoped that even if the Dead were going it alone, Garcia might have been available to record as a solo artist. Fantasy was used to working with jazz artists on a project by project basis, so there might have been some synergy there, but this is only speculation. In any case, Garcia seems to have had bigger plans.

Wake Of The Flood was recorded in August, 1973 and released in October. Despite some difficulties getting paid by distributors and some counterfeit pressings that cut into sales, the album was pretty successful. McNally said that it sold about 400,000 copies, a healthy number for those days. Since the Dead weren't sharing profits with a parent record company, the money for Wake was still pretty good. The band's concert receipts had improved as well. By Grateful Dead standards, the group was fairly flush with money at the beginning of 1974.

McNally describes the formation of Round Records as fraught with conflicts of interest (p.452). The Dead's lawyer, Hal Kant, objected that Grateful Dead finances shouldn't have been co-mingled with a solo project, and Garcia blew up, so Kant was replaced as Round's lawyer by Rakow's personal attorney. McNally does not put a precise timeline on the formation of Round, but it seems to be sometime after the formation of Grateful Dead Records. By the beginning of 1974, despite or perhaps because of their success, the Grateful Dead's self-contained empire was full of strife. Booking agent Sam Cutler was let go, and McNally describes a period of conflict and confusion (p.468-469).

Yet the first Round Records project, Jerry Garcia's second solo album, got under way in February 1974, with John Kahn producing. Presumably, Kahn and Garcia had already been working on the concept for some time. The solo album, mysteriously titled Garcia, just like the first one, was released in June, 1974. Even so, it was not the first Round release. That honor went to the first solo album by the hitherto ghost-like Robert Hunter, Tales Of The Great Rum Runners. Both albums were released somewhat simultaneously in June, 1974. Yet, then as now, no one can give a plausible explanation for why Garcia's solo album used the same name as his 1972 release for Warners. Garcia II would have made some marketing sense--but just calling it Garcia, like the first one? The silence accompanying this choice shouts dysfunction, and that dysfunction appears to be at the center of the Round universe.

Seastones, by Ned Lagin, credited to Ned Lagin and Phil Lesh (Round RX-106), released March 1975

What Might Have Been The Plan?
Round Records was formed in late 1973, as a vehicle encouraged by Garcia for releasing projects outside of the Grateful Dead proper. Garcia and the other members of the Grateful Dead had a wide variety of projects underway: live R&B with Merl Saunders, electronic music, bluegrass, new songs from Robert Hunter and perhaps more. They also had access to their own studio, namely Mickey Hart's own facility in his barn at his Novato ranch. Thus the more esoteric projects could be recorded at a more realistic price than the high rates of professional studios like The Record Plant in Sausalito.

I think Garcia wanted to run an independent record label that released his own music and the music of his friends, whatever it happened to be. Some of it might be somewhat commercial, like the Jerry Garcia Band or Kingfish, but some of it might be outmoded country subgenres or unfathomable experiments. At the time, major record companies were good at making money on music, but they were hit machines that depended on artists who toured heavily behind popular music. Warners or Columbia had too much overhead for bluegrass or something equally obscure. A low-overhead independent label would have been a different matter.

In theory, while the Grateful Dead rode the big horse, Round Records could have made creative music cheaply at Mickey's Barn in Novato and sold a modest amount of records to Deadheads and people of discriminating taste. Without much overhead, the players would get a little money, and there would be enough left over to make the next album. All sorts of friends and allies could get a chance to make the music they wanted to, not the mandated 10-songs-per-lp-of-rockin'-hits that the industry demanded.

The idea of Round Records as a self-sustaining, independent label, run by artists for artists, would have been a great idea--if it were 1990. David Grisman's Acoustic Disc was built on that model, and it has generally been very successful. While some of Grisman's albums, particularly those with Garcia, have sold quite well, some of the releases are specialist projects recorded for a modest, discriminating audience. No matter: they were usually recorded in Grisman's (high-tech) garage, and they are sold in limited runs to those who want them, via mail-order and the internet. None of this was plausible in 1974.

Many rock artists in the early 70s had "private labels," called "imprints" by record companies: the Jefferson Airplane had Grunt (for RCA), Frank Zappa had Bizarre/Straight (Warners), ELP had Manticore (Island), and so on. Certainly, those artists got to release albums by their friends: Zappa released albums by his best friend in high school and his daughter's nanny, for example. However, the big record companies still exerted a lot of control on the imprints. Their real interest was in using the artists to find new hitmakers. All of Warners' investment in Zappa paid off when he signed and civilized some crazies from Phoenix, AZ called Alice Cooper. When Zappa left Warners, they dropped all the acts on Bizarre/Straight except Alice, and they made millions on the band. That was what they had really wanted. Warners could not have channeled Alice Cooper as they were in 1969, but Zappa could, and the payoff for Warners a few years later was huge.

I don't doubt Warners or Columbia would have (and probably did) offer Garcia his own imprint if the Dead would sign. However, Garcia was dismissive of Grunt, the Airplane's label, so I don't think he had any interest in having a corporate entity under his control. In typical fashion, Garcia seems to have chosen to go it alone, but he chose it at a time when an independent label had no way of getting distributed or paid, and any unique music they made would never be heard on the radio, rendering it permanently obscure.

A careful look backwards shows a plethora of album projects by members of the Grateful Dead, most of them recorded at Mickey Hart's Barn studio: albums by Hart himself, Old And In The Way, Roadhog, Barry Melton and Jim McPherson were all recorded there, none of which saw the light of day (some of the McPherson material was released in 2009). There were ongoing experiments with electronic music (that would become Seastones) and radio plays (the mysterious radio play "Insect Invasion"), and numerous live ensembles like Garcia/Saunders, the Great American String Band and The Good Old Boys. Yet none of this came to light during the brief tenure of Round Records, and only bits and pieces surfaced in succeeding years. It stands to reason that all the recording going on was intended, ultimately, for release, and I think that Round Records was intended to be that vehicle. 

Jerry Garcia's second solo album (RX-102), inexplicably entitled Garcia, just like his first album two years earlier

Why Call The Album "Garcia"?
Although Garcia's 1974 solo album bore the number RX-102, ceding RX-101 to Hunter's album, the Round Records enterprise would not have gotten underway without the promise of an album that would actually sell. Jerry Garcia's first solo album had been released by Warners in January, 1972. The album was titled Garcia. More so than many people, Jerry Garcia was someone often addressed by his last name, even by old friends, so it was almost like a nickname.

It was common in the 1960s and 70s for record companies to title the first solo album after the artist: Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Jackson Browne's first albums were named after themselves, for example. The naming of Garcia's first album was particularly appropriate, since he played most of the instruments (all save the drums), and sang and wrote all the songs, save of course for Hunter's lyrics. In that sense, Garcia was very much a solo album. The Grateful Dead were rising in popularity in 1972, and Garcia was quite successful (I think it went gold). Radio friendly songs like "Deal" and "Sugaree" certainly helped.

There was no fathomable motivation to name Garcia's second album the same name as his first. The naming was so unfathomable that Grateful Dead Records themselves dropped it. Promotional copies of Garcia were imprinted with a stamp that said "Compliments Of", and people started to informally call the album Compliments Of Garcia, partially just to distinguish it from the first album. Informally, the album has been called Compliments Of Garcia ever since. The Dead.net Store now lists it as Compliments. It's not a bad title--but why couldn't they have thought of it before? Some artists with long, complex recording histories sometimes end up with the same or similarly titled albums, but usually they are a result of two different Live In Concert albums a decade apart. In 1974, Garcia had had only released two solo albums, but they both had the same name.

What had to happen for Garcia's first album on Round to have the same name as his only other solo album? There have to have been three culprits--poor planning, a failure to communicate and arrogance. On a business basis, Round Records was run by Jerry Garcia and Ron Rakow. Garcia was busy making music, however, so that meant that Rakow effectively ran the label. McNally quotes Dead attorney Hal Kant on Rakow's supposed professional credentials: "Rakow is supposed to be a serious businessman? He doesn't have a clue." Events seemed to have borne out Kant's assessment.

I have to assume that as Kahn and Garcia worked on the album, the name on the tape box or studio sheets was 'Garcia Project' or just 'Garcia.' In effect, I assume this was the working title for the album. A very fine Byrds album, Untitled, was called that because it was the name on the tape box, and when it came time for the release, the Byrds liked Untitled better than their planned name Phoenix. However, Untitled was a clever, ironic title, attracting attention to an excellent album.  So it's not hard to see how the solo album had a working title of Garcia, but still hard to see how it really got released with that name.

Garcia himself was never someone who liked to name things. Indeed, for all his eloquence, Garcia didn't even write lyrics. One of Robert Hunter's lesser duties, apart from lyrics, was as the designated Namer Of Things. If Garcia had had a little foresight, he would have asked Hunter to come up with a name. Hunter would have listened to the tape, and thought of something appropriate--perhaps even Compliments Of Garcia. Once Garcia had accepted Hunter's title, that would have carried the day. But what with recording Mars Hotel, touring, playing with Merl Saunders and numerous other things, Garcia seems never to have asked Hunter, nor made any other plans to name the album.

What commentary there is about Ron Rakow mostly concerns his alleged dubious business practices. Those alleged practices aside, Rakow seems to have kept his own counsel (literally, with respect to the Round attorney) and not let anyone outside of Garcia know what was planned. It would be conventional even in a small record company to ask what the title of a forthcoming album might be, but I don't think Rakow had those conversations with people. I suspect he wasn't very direct with anyone about it, actually, but at the very least if the subject had come up, almost anyone in Grateful Dead circles would have mentioned that the first album was called Garcia.However,  I don't think anyone had those kinds of conversations with Rakow, even casually.

Finally, however, the most likely explanation for the Garcia title was Ron Rakow's arrogance. Rakow, for all his big talk, probably didn't know or didn't remember that the first album was also called Garcia. Rakow had probably taken steps that committed Round to an album title of Garcia, such as printing the cover. Rakow took great pride in saying how he had found a way to print extra copies of the Wake Of The Flood album cover cheaply (and then sold the records as cut-outs, another tangential subject), so it's not far-fetched to think that Rakow had a "deal' on the covers. Rakow does not seem to be a person who would admit a mistake or listen to reason, nor would he have had any interest in spending extra money to change the album title. If you've ever worked in a place where the boss doesn't listen, all sorts of stupid decisions are confirmed merely to insure that the boss never has to admit that he has wrong.

The strange history of the Garcia album title suggests that Rakow ran Round Records as a sloppy, private kingdom where he listened to no one save Garcia. Since Garcia wasn't interested in details, that left Rakow to manage Round Records unchecked. It looks like Garcia was working on numerous projects, with the idea that Round would be the vehicle for releasing them. Yet Round only intermittently released anything, often long after the musicians had moved on.

Old And In The Way, Round Records greatest legacy, recorded in October 1973 and released in February 1975 (RX-103)

Round Records Timeline 1973-1974
A detailed look at the chronology of Round Records shows how the label was dependent on money borrowed against the Grateful Dead. When Rakow found a source of cash, a few albums popped out out of the pipeline. However, each cash infusion obligated the Dead to more pressure from either their creditors or the record company, and the cycle repeated itself. What I believe to be Garcia's inspired vision for an independent record label turned into a tool for Ron Rakow to use Garcia as a fulcrum to leverage the Grateful Dead for cash. The Wall Of Sound and the Grateful Dead movie were also a huge cash drain on the band, leaving Round begging for scraps. The history of Round releases is intimately tied to cash infusions to the Dead, each time indebting the band further. No one seems to have gotten paid for a Round release, because the label was a financial house of cards in the first place.

• March 1973: Warner Brothers releases Bear's Choice: Grateful Dead become independent.
• April 1973: Grateful Dead Records launched, funded by a loan from the First National Bank Of Boston and an overseas distribution deal with Atlantic Records (for $300,000).
• April 1973: Old And In The Way (founded in March) records at Mickey Hart's Barn studio in Novato. The tapes have never surfaced
• May 1973: Ned Lagin moves to California, and begins working on what will become Seastones at The Barn with Garcia, Hart, Phil Lesh and others
• July 1973: Jerry Garcia records at Keystone Berkeley with Merl Saunders, for Fantasy Records
• August 1973: Grateful Dead record Wake Of The Flood at the Record Plant
• October 1973: Wake Of The Flood released on Grateful Dead Records
• Summer or Fall 1973: Round Records established
• January 1974: Live At Keystone, by Garcia/Saunder/Kahn, Vitt, released on Fantasy
• January 1974: The Dead start making plans for The Wall Of Sound, which will ultimately eat up all their increased concert revenue
• February 1974: John Kahn begins producing the Garcia album in Southern California
• April 1974: The Grateful Dead begin recording Mars Hotel at CBS Studios in San Francicso
• Spring 1974: Robert Hunter records Tales Of The Great Rum Runners at The Barn. It's possible that a Roadhog album of Hunter songs was recorded just before this
• June 1974: Round Records releases Rum Runners and Garcia
• June 1974: Grateful Dead Records releases Mars Hotel
• Late 1974: Garcia pays David Grisman $1000 to make an album out of Owsley's Old And In The Way live recordings. Neither Grisman nor any other band member receive another cent from the record, and Grisman and Garcia do not speak for the next 14 years.
• October 1974: Rakow and Garcia impulsively decide to make a movie out of the band's stand at Winterland (McNally p.478)
• Late 1974: Grateful Dead Records is effectively bankrupt, and Rakow arranges a distribution deal with United Artists Records

Whatever the grand plans of the Dead at the beginning of the year, they collapsed under the weight of the Wall Of Sound and poor financial management. Round Records had only released two albums in June 1974, and had been silent since that time. The Dead were rescued by the UA deal, but UA in turn demanded product from the Dead. However, early 1975 saw a flurry of releases from Round. UA probably didn't care, one way or the another, but accepted the releases as a condition of signing the Dead. The implication, however, seems to have been that any Round releases after the first two were throttled by a lack of cash.

The Old And In The Way album was released 16 months after it was recorded because there was no money to release it earlier. The fact that Grisman, nor any other band member, was not paid for the record is another implicit sign of poor fiscal management by Rakow.  Lagin has complained as well that the released Seastones was just a small piece of what they were trying to accomplish musically, and he has alluded to pressure from the record company. Whether that was directly from Round or indirectly from UA, it's another clue that despite attempting to provide musical freedom, Round's artists ended up unhappy.

Keith & Donna (RX-014), released February 1975 (RX-104)

Round Records Timeline 1975-1976

• January 1975: Jerry Garcia and Dan Healy record The Good Old Boys, with David Nelson, Frank Wakefield, Chubby Wise and Don Reno, at Mickey Hart's Barn. The Pistol Packin' Mama album will not be released for another 13 months.
• January 1975: Work is completed on a studio above Bob Weir's garage in Mill Valley. The studio is called Ace's. Per McNally, the band Heroes are the first to record there (McNally p.482). Garcia actually played on some sessions, which were released decades later on the Bill Cutler album Crossing The Line, but I have to think that a Round release was at least contemplated.
• February 1975: Round releases the Old And In The Way album (RX-103). With financing from the UA distribution contract, Round could release a flurry of albums
• February 1975: The  Grateful Dead, with Mickey Hart back on board, began playing at Ace's
• March 1975: Round releases the Keith And Donna album (RX-104)
• March 1975: Round releases Tiger Rose, the second Hunter album (RX-105)
• April 1975: Round releases Seastones, the Ned Lagin project (RX-106). A sticker on the album credited to Lagin and Phil Lesh, because UA wanted a member of the Grateful Dead's name on the record.
• June 1975: Under pressure from UA to deliver product, the Dead record Blues For Allah in two weeks at Ace's
• August-September 1975: Jerry Garcia begins recording Reflections at Ace's. There is a distinct whiff that Garcia needs to produce a salable album for UA, both to finance the Dead's operations and also the Grateful Dead movie.
• September 1975: Blues For Allah is released on Grateful Dead Records, but with a United Artists record number. 
• October-November 1975: Jerry Garcia records the other half of Reflections at His Masters Wheels in San Francisco, formerly Pacific High Recorders (and then Alembic Studios). He records with John Kahn, Ron Tutt and Nicky Hopkins, although Larry Knechtel is brought in to help on keyboards.

There were no Round releases between April 1975 and February 1976, when Reflections was released. The spurt of releases in early 1975 came via a cash infusion from UA. When that dried up, Round was dormant. What cash there was seems to have been absorbed by the movie, but once again Rakow's cash management can hardly be respected. Rakow made another deal with United Artists in early 1976, which provided another spurt of releases on Round. However, once Rakow wrote himself a check for  $225,000 in Spring 1976, the Dead found themselves broke and owing United Artists a Grateful Dead album. The regrettable Steal Your Face was the result.

Diga, by the Diga Rhythm Band, produced and led by Mickey Hart, the final release on Round (RX-110)

Round Records Timeline 1976
February 1976: Round/UA releases Reflections (RX-107)
March 1976: Round/UA releases Kingfish (RX-108). Weir was a member of Kingfish at the time, and the album was recorded at Ace's. Reflections and Kingfish were the sort of albums that UA would have hoped for when they financed the Grateful Dead.
March 1976: Round/UA releases Pistol Packin' Mama by The Good Old Boys (RX-109). UA cannot have been interested in this record, and it sank quickly. UA probably saw it as a rock star indulgence, like letting Frank Zappa release an album by a group that included his daughter's nanny.
May 1976: McNally details how Rakow had allowed the Dead's finances to become disastrous (pp.488-492). Rakow writes himself a huge check that bankrupts Grateful Dead Records, but Garcia refuses to insist on prosecution.
June 1976: Round/UA releases Diga, by the Diga Rhythm Band. This too was probably seen by UA as a rock star indulgence.
June 1976: Grateful Dead/UA release Steal Your Face. The whole record company experiment comes to an end. With few other options, and a movie to finance, the Grateful Dead have already returned to the road.

Looking Backwards
I will admit that I have drawn some very specific conclusions from scattered, fragmentary evidence. Nonetheless, any serious consideration of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead's musical goals have to account for Round Records. There are so many things that are hard to explain: the title of Garcia's solo album, the strange, intermittent pattern of releases and the numerous unheard projects demand an explanation that hangs together as a plausible narrative. If someone can come up with a better explanation for the strange history of Round Records, I would be more than willing to try it on for size. For now, I'll have to stick with my own explanation of events.

In the early 1970s, Jerry Garcia, other members of the Grateful Dead and their fellow Marin musicians found themselves working on a wide variety of music, only some of which had any commercial potential. With Mickey Hart's studio, and then Bob Weir's, it seemed like all this music could be recorded and produced. Jerry Garcia and Ron Rakow hatched a plan to start a self-funded, independent record company to put out those albums. Garcia himself was the star attraction, but the door was open to bluegrass, electronic music, songwriters, drummers and many other kinds of weirdness. A record company not run for some corporate suits, but one run by and for the musicians themselves. It was a great idea, and some very good music got recorded.

Overrreach and a cash squeeze got the better of Round Records. Some ill-advised management decisions, possibly connected to some very dubious business practices, required that Round was beholden to the vagaries of the Grateful Dead's own very-difficult finances. The Round recording artists found themselves unhappy with both the released material and the lack of money forthcoming, making Round very similar to a regular record company. When Grateful Dead Records evaporated under the weight of its obligations to United Artists and Ron Rakow's self-dealing, Round Records disappeared with it. Such grand plans were not undertaken again, and rarely spoken of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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