"Merl Saunders and the Rainforest Band, faturing Jerry Garcia. Performing music from their album Blues From the Rainforest, July 26 at the Great American Music Hall and July 27 at the Cotati Cabaret"
First, perhaps most likely (?), whoever called this in to the Petaluma Argus-Courier dropped Jerry's name in connection with Merl's 1990 Blues From the Rainforest release, and the person at the paper was somehow left with the impression that Jerry would play the listed gigs. It wouldn't be the first time that Garcia's name would pop up in unexpected ways in the promotion of a Saunders gig that Garcia really wasn't involved in. For example, almost a year after their last shared agglomeration had knocked off, a preview for an August 1980 Saunders gig in far northern California teased that Merle [sic] was "currently playing with Jerry Garcia under the name of 'Reconstruction'." (1)
Second, maybe Gar really was going to play these gigs, but, as with two other prospective July 1991 engagements (JGB on the Eel, 7/13/91 cum 8/10/91, at the Frost on 7/14/91, and at Telluride, 7/19/91), he ended up not doing them because he was in rehab (as I surmise about the other three dates), or just forgot.
update: heh heh, my own files would help me. I know he was scuba diving on 7/27/91 in Hawaii, which would certainly require flying out no later than 7/26. I don't know if that trip would have been planned by whenever the 7/19/91 item was called in, but I strongly suspect so. This makes Hypothesis 1, that the Saunders camp somehow, surely innocently, gave mistaken impression that Jerry would play, to the Petaluma paper, seem most likely.
Thoughts?
REFERENCE:
(1) "A weekend of jazz planned at the Back Door Aug. 8, 9," Ukiah Daily Journal, August 6, 1980, p. 10.
Wonder why these three shows were canceled/rescheduled?
ReplyDelete7/13/91 French's Camp on the Eel River, Piercy, CA
(rescheduled for 8/10)
7/14/91 Frost Amphitheatre, Palo Alto, CA poster
(cancelled)
7/19/91 Town Park, Telluride, CO
(cancelled)
No GD shows from 6/29 and returning to GD work on 8/12/91. He took the entire month of July and nine days of August off. How dare he!
"A weekend of jazz planned at the Back Door Aug. 8, 9," Ukiah Daily Journal, August 6, 1980, p. 10."
Do you know anything about the "Back Door" venue in Ukiah? It doesn't exist today. How does this citation relate to the above? It's from 1980.
Jerry was in rehab.
ReplyDeletePut me in the camp of "no way this happened." If Jerry Garcia stepped foot on the stage of the Great American Music Hall in front of any audience (much less Merl's audience!) it would have reverberated through the deadhead 'telephone game' at lightning speed. As you suspect the most likely explanation is that the promo materials for the "Blues from the Rainforest" album (r. 1990) feature Jerry Garcia prominently and since these Merl gigs were in support of that release, the newspaper copy person made what seemed like a reasonable leap in assumption. It's funny to see this in print because going to Merl gigs in this era there seemed to always be the "Jerry's showing up tonight" rumor going around if the show wasn't happening during a GD tour. Those at-the-gig rumors were deadheads wishcasting/having fun whereas this situation was likely an honest misread of what a Merl "Blues from the Rainforest" gig entailed.
ReplyDeleteI think we can dismiss this out of hand, but for actual confirmation one could check in with Boots Jaffee who I believe was Merl's right hand man/road manager during this period. Last I heard Boots was in Fort Collins, CO - perhaps the Boulder office could run this down for certain?
;-)
Excellent post, thanks. I actually think the Saunders camp probably encouraged such rumors, and it may be the the copy person at the paper heard them perfectly well. All of that kind of rumor or intimation would, of course, be great for ticket sales.
DeleteI can attest that those rumors certainly didn't hurt ticket sales for the Merl Saunders gig at GAMH on 12/29/91 - the off night of the final NYE run. Garcia's one night off that week - OF COURSE the Music Hall was crawling with folks reporting Garcia would be sitting in. At set break those rumors switched to "second set jam".
Delete:-D