Corry's original post on LLD: "Hooteroll?--When Was It Recorded?", with lots of great comments.
My response: "Response to LLD's Hooteroll--When Was It Recorded?"
A number of commenters to these posts, including sraile and LIA, as well as more from Corry, have added valuable thoughts and information. Thank you all!
The purpose of this post is to give a bit more information, based on a post from Blair Jackson at Deadnetcentral, reflecting tapes in the Garcia vault. This information disconfirms my speculation that Hooteroll? was completed by the end of 1970. It seems to have been recorded ca. October 1970 - ca. June 1971.
Here's what Blair so generously reports:
10/29/70
There are a couple of 2" reels with this date, which need not have been a session but could have been mixing or copying or whatever. On these tapes: two "unnamed" songs, "Up from the Desert," "A Trip to What Next" and "South Side Strut." "Personnel is definitely Jerry and Howard, plus unnamed bass, drums and flute."
What interests me here is a 10/26/70 "Jerry Garcia & Friends" listing at the Matrix (Good Times, v.3 n. 42, 10/23/70, p. 14). In years past I would have thought that GD would have just gone east from St. Louis after 10/24/70 en route to Stony Brook on 10/30. But I no longer believe this. It seems to have been Jerry's habit to come home even in 2-3 day windows, even if it meant flying twice over lots of the same terrain. This seems to have been especially the case when there are sessions back home. So I have little doubt but that he was in the Bay Area on 10/26 and even 10/29.
Was this a gig with Wales? Dunno. If so, that would obviously fall after the date on which I have speculated things started up with Merl Saunders, i.e., September 7th. (Not that it matters, but it's amazing how hard it is for me to shed the assumption of linearity in my thinking about all this.) Anyway, all of this stuff leads me to see that there was considerable overlap between Merl and Howard -- almost 17 months, by my present reckoning. It's just that (with the exception of the Hooteroll? tour in early '72), Wales & Garcia took it from the stage to the studio. Why not? There are nubby Doris Dynamites and blow o'plenty there!
3/31/71
Next date that appears on tape boxes. Again, need not have been a session date, though so far as I can tell Jerry seems to have been in town. Blair: "There are some reels with no titles, and also full reels with multiple false starts and a few takes of "South Side Strut" and "Up From the Desert" that were probably referenced for the mixing of the album."
6/21/71
Blair: "By 6/21/71 the full album mastering has been completed, and the 2-track masters (or are they copies?) are in the vault with that date on them."
8/1/71?
Blair: "Then the next tape entry in the vault is four live multitrack reels from Boston, dated 8/1."
Whoa. Is it possible that Wales & Garcia played in Boston on Jerry's 29th birthday, August 1, 1971? Well, the GD did play Yale University (New Haven, CT) on 7/31 ... anyone ever wonder what was up with that? JG's first solo album, Garcia, was said to have been recorded in three weeks in July 1971, and then the GD go out east for a one-off. So JG almost certainly began 8/1 within easy reach of Boston ... is it possible that a Boston gig happened this late in the game, with no contemporary record or memory of it?
Anyway, this is a really interesting rabbit hole we find ourselves in, I think. I still have a million questions about all this. For now, I'll just aver that I was wrong in speculating that Hooteroll? was in the can by the end of 1970.
So I answer Corry's titular question as follows: so far as we can tell, between October 1970 and June 1971.
Man, this is truly "A Trip To What Next."
ReplyDeleteAny chance the 8/1/71 tape from Boston is a Grateful Dead show? Is the vault sorted by date only, or by date and "artist?"
As we both well know, a lot of shows are not on Deadlists et al simply because no one has looked for them.
Seems doubtful to me that a GD tape would be in the Garcia vault, but I can't really know.
ReplyDeleteYep, quite a can of worms you have opened up here, my friend!
Ok then, it's the Garcia Vault, I wasn't entirely clear on that.
ReplyDeleteIf Alan Douglas was working with Garcia and Wales (I have a whole theory about this too), maybe he arranged a Boston show right after Yale. The likely venue would be the Jazz Workshop, which I think was called Paul's Mall by then (I think on Boylston Street).
We need to find a listing for Boston shows on August 1, 1971, and look for either "Howard Wales" or some sort of stealth name (e.g. "The Hooterollers").
An unsuspected 8/1/71 Wales/Garcia Boston show in the vault? On top of the previously unknown 1/28/72 recording? Good grief!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if Hooteroll was still being worked on until June '71, then that would end our speculation about why its release was "delayed" for a year...though I still have to wonder why the recording took so many months! (The charms & wares of Doris Dynamite, perhaps....)
For the benefit of other readers, I'll take the liberty of fully quoting Jackson's comments:
"As far as I know, the album masters are in the Jerry vault. The deal with Douglas, though, was Wales'; it's essentially HIS album, even though it's co-billed (for obvious commercial exploitation of JG). One of the problems with the live shows in Boston and such is that Jerry was just a "guest" and didn't play on a lot of the show, much to the disappointment of many fans who came to see Jerry mostly. I think this probably influenced the ongoing partnership--Jerry did not like it being so much about himself. And Wales didn't seem to care much for the "fame trip" either."
"Here's what I know based on what's in the Garcia vaults. The handful of tapes of Hooteroll that are in there do not list the original recording dates, but a couple of reels were either recorded, catalogued, mixed, copied or worked on on 10/29/70, including some "unnamed" songs, plus "Up from the Desert," "A Trip to What Next" and "South Side Strut." Personnel is definitely Jerry and Howard, plus unnamed bass, drums and flute. Those are 2-inch tape reels.
The next flurry of either recording, mixing, cataloguing or whatever that results in dates actually being on boxes is 3/31/71. There are some reels with no titles, and also full reels with multiple false starts and a few takes of "South Side Strut" and "Up From the Desert" that were probably referenced for the mixing of the album.
By 6/21/71 the full album mastering has been completed, and the 2-track masters (or are they copies?) are in the vault with that date on them.
Then the next tape entry in the vault is four live multitrack reels from Boston, dated 8/1.
The live source tapes for the "Side Trips" release would appear to 5/18/70 and 7/6/70. [He mentioned in an earlier post that 7/6/70 is also in the Garcia vault.]
Where are all the other reels? Don't know. Maybe Douglas Records, whatever that entitiy currently is, still has them, as they were Howard Wales' sessions, not Jerry's. By the time "Hooteroll?" came out Jerry was already signed to Warners and working on his own first solo album.
Gonna have to dig in and find out more about that "8/1/71" Boston date.... because on both 7/31 and 8/2, work is happening at Heider's on Jerry's first album, though of course its conceivable it was being done by Bob Matthews without Garcia..." [Of course it was, since Jerry was definitely not at Heider's on 7/31/71!]
Well, I poked through Boston Phoenix, Boston After Dark, Boston Globe, and maybe a few other papers looking for anything that looked like this live Boston 8/1/71 possibility. Totally skunked. Nothing that looked remotely like it.
ReplyDeleteI am having a hard time piecing everything together, but I wonder if there might not have been studio work in Boston? I have a few snippets percolating in my brain, close in my cognitive/neural network to Paul Pena about some studio possibilities, maybe this early. Ring any bells?
I don't think there was much in the way of recording studios in Boston. It doesn't seem likely that CBS (or anyone) would fly musicians into a place to record where there weren't studios.
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ReplyDeleteI wish you were right, but I fear not.
ReplyDeleteThey are almost certainly referring to the January 26, 1972 (1/26/72) WBCN broadcast of the Wales/Garcia Hooteroll show at Symphony Hall.
I thought that was recorded by Fedco Audio Labs, would they have worked together with Intermedia? I don't know...
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything about that stuff.
ReplyDeleteI see one article with the Fedco information (Bob Glassenberg, "Studio Track," Billboard, February 12, 1972 p. 10; accessed via Google Books) and then the one you mention (Sam Sutherland, "Studio Track," Billboard, March 11, 1972, p. 10; accessed via Google Books). Both mention the Wales Garcia WBCN broadcast. It seems implausible that they would be referring to different broadcasts (or even that the August 1, 1971 mystery show might have been broadcast). I wish it were true!
re: http://books.google.com/books?id=uSgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=wbcn+garcia+wales+intitle:Billboard&hl=en&ei=MoPVTZSALoydgQfm1t25Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=wbcn%20garcia%20wales%20intitle%3ABillboard&f=false
ReplyDeleteinteresting to read in the next paragraph about the paul pena recording sessions...
I-) ihor
Yeah, I had seen that before. If anyone is in Boston, ask the musician's union to go into their archives to check for Paul Pena sessions. If things are in order in Boston, they'll have the contracts still archived. Bet Jerry is listed on a few.
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