Since these photos are shared intentionally downloadable from Facebook, and acting on the We Are All The Vault principle of crowdsource redundant storage, I'll repost here. Thanks to Merl Saunders, Jr. for sharing the pics and to slip_not for gathering 'em up and adding them to The List. I may have renamed them according to my own organizational schema. This post will just summarize some of this great stuff and elaborate as I can.
1.
JGMS:
January 23-24-25 (Tuesday-Thursday), Boarding House, 960
Bush Street, San Francisco, CA, 94109
What a find!
 |
| Handbill for the Boarding House, January 16-28, 1973. Scan courtesy of Merl Saunders Facebook page. |
“Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders & Tom Fogerty” are billed at the Boarding House on a “special engagement: 3 nights: tue-wed-thu”, following the Herbie Hancock Septet (maybe working on some of the extremely heavy Sextant material?) and preceding Harry Chapin, every night’s menu featuring some kind of meat. Mmmm, yeah.
There are a few other bits and pieces in the evidentiary record around these gigs.
First, at least 1/23 and 1/24 were listed in the
Berkeley Barb’s “Scenedrome” calendar
(January 19-25, 1973, p. 28). Also, and I think somewhat unusually, there was a line ad in the San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner Datebook
(January 21, 1973, p. 25).
I don’t think it was that common for such ads to appear, but maybe I am wrong
about that. I suspect that this “special engagement” was expected to generate
some big nights (at least for midweek) for the Boarding House. I’ll ask again: does anyone know anyone who was involved
with running the Boarding House during this time period? Or even know who it
was?
 |
| Ad for Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Boarding House, 960 Bush Street, San Francisco, CA, 94109, Tues-Thurs January 23-25, 1973. Source: San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner Datebook, January 21, 1973, p. 25. |
There are also Betty Cantor-Jackson tapes known to exist and/or in circulation from this January 23-25 run at the Boarding House. All three dates were transferred by Rob Eaton from the “third batch” of Betty tapes which came to light in late 1995. At least one track from 1/23/73 has been officially released (“It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry,” track 1 of Jerry Garcia—Garcia Plays Dylan [Rhino R2 73263, 2005]). Material from the 24th (shnid 4492, “early show” | shnid 9783, “late show” | shnid 100216, early and late) and 25th (shnid 7670, “early” and “late” shows) circulated very early among collectors. They appear to have traveled several paths to the lossless era. Some of them are from DAT copies given by Eaton to Ryan Shriver, many of which were converted to CD and thence to .shn by D. Metz (e.g., shnid 4492). Others alleged to have PCM gens or cassette gens or whatever. A little hard to piece together all of it. The tapes are special because they are among the few that capture the mysterious Sarah Fulcher, singing her heart out.
The Jerry Site notes that Tom Fogerty was not present for the shows on the 24th and 25th, and he is not credited on the one released track from 1/23/73. I need to revisit the tapes, but I am pretty sure they’ll show that there’s no rhythm guitarist. SteveSw has written nice reviews of the 1/24/73 and 1/25/73 tapes at Workingman's Tracker.
Anyway, this wonderful new-to-me handbill leads me to make a few points about the associated and related Listings.
First, unless it was understood that there were two shows nightly at the Boarding House, I don’t see any evidence in advertisements and such for early and late show designations. My assumption is that this makes it less likely that there were actually two (separately-ticketed) shows, but I am prepared to be set straight. Betty’s tapes said early and late, but maybe those temporal terms modified “set” rather than “show”? I don’t know. Anyway, I have been contemplating whether the early-late show listings should be merged on my lists … thoughts?
Second, there have long been tapes in circulation as “Boarding House, 1/26/73”), but all copies I have seen turn out to be the same as 1/24/73, which of course has more credible provenance. Anyway, again, I am preparing to consider 1/26/73 a spurious listing, but I’d like some feedback. (I am also thinking that 1/16/73 is spurious, probably a mislabel of the 1/26/73 mislabel, but I am not sure I have looked in the various listings yet.)
Upshot: I am contemplating merging the 1/24 and 1/25 early/late listings as I list them, and also dinging the 1/26/73 listing. Thoughts?
2.
JGMS: May
4-5, 1973
(Friday-Saturday), Homer’s Warehouse, 79 Homer Lane, Palo Alto, CA
 |
| Handbill for Homer's Warehouse, early May 1973. Photo courtesy of Merl Saunders Facebook page. |
We knew about these shows from inter alia amazing tapes, but this handbill is a great artifact. Nice little sketch of Jerry and Merl, representing a “moment” that only one who had watched them having one could capture.
Just a few small notes. First, probably doesn’t matter, but I am always interested when I see Merl’s name first-billed. A nice project would be to go back and measure the frequency with which one or the other was listed first. I’d bet it was at least 80-20 Jerry, for the obvious reasons. Second, the address given on the handbill, 79 Homer Avenue, is incorrect: according to Corry, it’s 79 Homer Lane. Note to Corry: Google Earth returns a search on “79 Homer Lane, Palo Alto, CA” with “79 Homer Lane, Menlo Park, CA, 94025”). Is that the same place on earth as where Homer’s Warehouse stood?
Note that these shows has been discussed a fair amount at Workingman's Tracker (that was 5/4; see also 5/5/73, and that it appears George Tickner is the second guitarist present.
3.
JGMS: October
20, 1973,
Fieldhouse, University of Iowa, Iowa
City, IA (UPDATE: DID NOT HAPPEN)
 |
| Poster for Merl Saunders, Bill Kreutzmann, Jerry Garcia gig at University of Iowa Fieldhouse, Iowa City, IA, October 20, 1973. Photo courtesy of Merl Saunders Facebook page. |
Wow.
OK. Here’s a poster that bills “Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann”, plus Mike Bloomfield and Band and Stoneground, at the University of Iowa Fieldhouse on October 20, 1973. The Grateful Dead had played Oklahoma City on 10/19 and would be in Omaha on 10/21, so Iowa City is only 250 miles out of the way. But, wow.
I notice the sketches of Jerry and especially Merl are nearly identical to the Homer’s Warehouse handbill sketches. Anyone know who drew these? Otherwise, is there any chance this is a forgery?
If not, we have here a real revelation. This would be only the third JGMS show outside of the state of California, after the September 5-6, 1973 gigs out east. And it’s pretty darn random, I have to say, though of course stranger things could certainly have happened. An off-night in a just-starting GD tour, you head out to Iowa City, Iowa for a gig in the college fieldhouse? Looks a little like the structure of the 11/18/73 San Diego show, I guess … could there possibly be others like this? Again: thoughts?
Update 20111119: thanks to intrepid research by Corry, we now know the story behind the poster: Liza Minelli left U of I out to dry three weeks before homecoming, Roberta Flack and Van Morrison couldn't be arranged to sub, and it sounds like the effort to get JGMS was extremely last minute. Most interesting is the argument in the relevant article from the student paper (Hawkins, Chuck, and George Shirk. 1973. Problems
plague major concert bids. Daily Iowan,
October 30, 1973, p. 3) that it was the Grateful Dead who nixed this particular Garcia side trip.
4.
JGMS: October
13, 1974, Santa Barbara County Bowl, Santa Barbara, CA
|
Ain't life grand? We were just discussing Paul Humphrey at Hooterollin' Around, and up pops the only known-to-me live image of the Garcia-Saunders-Humphrey-Kahn-Fierro quintet. This is a known show Sunday, October 13, 1974 at the beautiful Santa Barbara County Bowl in Santa Barbara, CA. I can't tell if it's overcast, but I am imagining a sunny fall day. And if you ever spent a sunny fall day in Santa Barbara in roughly that that spot in roughly the frame of mind that might have been generated by this particular concert, you know what I mean to say: A glimpse of life's deepest beauties for five bucks.
This gig has been known back to the time of the McNally-Arnold JG List, the oldest continuous piece of The JG List in the manuscript tradition (Yeah, lots of grandiosity there, I know. But I have to say it and I'll get to it.) That list's entry was dated 10/13/74 and had the personnel correctly listed, but the venue was given as Santa Barbara County Fairgrounds. I see that this misstatement continued through to Deadbase IX (not surprising, since it was based on Corry's copy of the McNally-Arnold JG List). This continued into The Jerry Site's entry, which was corrected in 2008 by the great Ryan Shriver.
I am presuming this long entry derived from the following backstage pass, which is generously hosted at psilo.net:
 |
| Backstage pass for “Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders and friends” with the Sons of Champlin and Etta James, Sunday, October 13, 1974, Santa Barbara Count Bowl, Santa Barbara, CA. Image courtesy of psilo.net. |
There has never been a tape of the show, billed as “Their First Southern California Solo Appearance, Direct From San Francisco and the Grateful Dead”. I don’t actually think that’s true. They (JGMS) had played the Ash Grove in LA on May 29-30, 1973 and San Diego State University on November 18, 1973 (mentioned in a post on 2/16/74). But, I queeble. They weren’t getting out on the road much in those days, and it orta’h’ve been a fun old time. And, what a great picture!
Summary
Thanks to the proprietors of the Merl Saunders Facebook page, and to slip_not of The Jerry Site, for bringing these wonderful historical materials forward. Here’s hoping there’s lots more where that came from!
REFERENCE:
(1) Scott, John
W., Mike Dolgushkin, and Stu Nixon. 1995. Deadbase IX: The Complete Guide to
Grateful Dead Songlists.
