Saturday, April 27, 2013

Carlos Santana and Merl Saunders - February 22, 1971, Matrix, San Francisco

Wasserman, John L. 1971. The Big Sound At Lake Tahoe ["Something Else" subhead], San Francisco Chronicle, February 22, 1971, p. 40.

The Chicken's Matrix list  doesn't show a few of these Matrix gigs, so I'll throw them out there.

Monday; February 22, 1971; Carlos Santana and Merl Saunders
Tuesday; February 23, 1971; Larry Coryell
Wednesday; February 24, 1971; Larry Coryell

I think you guys will also be interested in the Tuesday night Fillmore West rehearsals. Since there were no posters (and presumably not terribly many attendees), these have probably been a little more elusive. All of this will be entered into shared data at some point.

Don't even get me started about Hubbard and Hancock. I don't know if Herbie was into Mwandishi by this time or not. I have a sense of what Freddie was playing around this time, interpolating through a few 1970 and 1971 dates that are out and about. Red Clay and all that ... would be absolutely smokin', I am sure. I wonder what was the capacity of the Both/And?

My main thing was to point out Carlos Santana and Merl Saunders gigging at the Matrix. By this time, Jerry and Merl were a regular thing. So here's a nice little instance of where Jerry's out of town with his day job, Merl is working gigs of his own. Naturally enough. Gotta eat.

But that this was Carlos and Merl at the Matrix makes it all the more interesting. I assume there are Santana freaks out there who know about this. I should assume that it's in McNally and Jackson and probably that Corry has already blogged about this, at length. :) But I, for one, don't recall hearing about this.

2/22/71, Monday night. Carlos and Merl (and who else??) jamming at the Matrix. Yeah, I'd soak up some beer for the privilege. Must have been a good payday all around. I wonder how the music was? I wonder if it was taped? This is just a marker, have at it.

Hope you are all well. While I still need to be on hiatus from this material, one has to be opportunistic when the research opportunities present themselves. I'll probably do more of this as summer rolls around.