Summertime in January: The Merle [sic] Saunders Experience, January 15, 1973 at the Inn of the Beginning

Rex Jackson wrote the band name as " Merle [sic] Saunders Experience" on his tape boxes for this night, FWIW.

LN jg1973-01-15.jgms.early-late.sbd-jgmf.5428+9573.shn2flac

Among the Inn of the Beginning materials [JGMF | COAU] I unearthed last summer were ledgers indicating shows by Garcia-Saunders on January 14-15, 1973, only the latter of which had previously been known (from Betty Cantor-Jackson recordings). I have just finished revisiting 1/15/73 after a number of years away from it. It's always hard for me to know how highly correlated my various listenings are, how much of my reaction has to do with me (and my setting) as opposed to what's actually on the tapes.

In this case, I enjoyed this very much, bad sonic anomalies notwithstanding. But I don't really have all that much to say about it. Some of my favorite songs appear here --Hi-Heel Sneakers, Expressway, I Was Made To Love Her-- but, I dunno, just not much to say. There are lots of old chestnuts in here, including a pretty scorching Summertime and a ton of Motown and R&B. Anyway, in lieu of lots of analysis, just some notes.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Inn Of The Beginning
8201 Old Redwood Highway
Cotati, CA 94931
January 15, 1973 (Monday)
143 min Betty Cantor-Jackson sbd

--Set I (6 tracks, 68:58)--
s1t01. //Hi-Heel Sneakers [#8:42] [0:11]
s1t02. Expressway (To Your Heart) [9:23] [0:04] % [0:05]
s1t03. Lonely Avenue [12:07] [0:05] % [0:02]
s1t04. (1) [2:00] Find A Rainbow// [6:05#]
s1t05. (2) [0:25] Georgia On My Mind -14:58 -15:09 % 15:11
s1t06. [0:53] Honey Chile [13:54] (3) [0:14] %

--Set II (7 tracks, 73:50)--
s2t01. [0:11] I Second That Emotion [12:13] [0:08] % [0:02]
s2t02. (4,5) [1:41] Soul Roach [8:43] [0:11] % [0:02]
s2t03. I Was Made To// Love Her [12:#48] [0:13] % [0:02]
s2t04. /Go Climb A Mountain [#5:17], talk and tuning (6) [1:19]
s2t05. Summertime [10:58] [0:13] % [0:02]
s2t06. That’s Alright Mama [10:49] [0:07] % [0:02]
s2t07. talk and tuning (7) [1:29], Money Honey [7:17] (8) %

!ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: ! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Bill Vitt - drums;
! lineup: Sarah Fulcher - vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19730115-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/5428; http://etreedb.org/shn/9573 (fix of set I). I have renamed the files and retracked disc two so that Summertime is separated from Go Climb A Mountain.

! R: Eaton: "01/15/73 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati Ca - complete  4.8, 167min, Sbd, A0D1, Reel M->PCM 0->Dat 0, 44k  10inch Master Reels@7.5ips 1/2trk->PCM x 0->3700 x 1".

! R: Source: "MSR > P > D. Transfer: D > cdr > eac > shn by Katy Miller. Contact:ryktjos@msn.com." She was a good source of novel material very early in the CD-to-lossless era of Garcia collecting. I am not sure why there's a PCM generation listed here. That would normally indicate that this came out of the second Betty Batch (via, e.g., Dougal Donaldson). But I had thought these were Third Betty Batch tapes rescued by RE. I need to clarify this. As the notations indicate, there seem to be two-second gaps at every track marker, as if somewhere along the lines there was a "Track at Once" (TAO) CD copy, or possibly sector boundary errors (SBEs). There are so many warts on the recording, I didn't dare get further under the hood, e.g., by trying to get rid of these gaps.

! R: seeder note: "The sound is greatly distorted for first 2 songs and partly distorted for songs 3 and 4 due to problems on the reels."

! R: Seeder notes: "This is one of the shows discovered in the Betty Cantor auction."

! metadata: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/07/jgms-19730114-19730115-inn-of-beginning.html

! SteveSw analysis: http://gdvault.com/tracker/forum.php?action=viewtopic&topicid=2596

! R: s1t01 HHS cuts in near the start with severe mix problems. Only the guitar is directly audible through, with the vocals for the first two verses merely an echo. Bass @ 3:30 and a touch of organ and drums toward 4-min mark. Drums in @ 4:05, moving around. Things become nearly inaudible from 7:50-end. The guitar is low in the mix for the start of ETYH, starts coming in a little better around 3:45, which is also when Sarah's mic comes up a little bit.

! Personnel: Sarah Fulcher is here, in what was probably only her second performance with Jerry et al. She sings on almost every number.

! R: s1t03 LA lots of hiss first 30 seconds, then locks in.

! P: s1t03 LA Garcia is pulling and bending some very, very bluesy notes in the 8-min mark.

! R: s1t03 @ 8:42 digifart

! song: s1t04 "Find A Rainbow" (Allan). Nothing is really known about this song. Maybe it was a Fulcher original?

! s1t04 (1) lots of chatting and laughing (JG: "How do you start this thing?").

! R: s1t04 bad recording issues @ 7:10-end, music disappears, lots of static and such, then it cuts out

! s1t05 (2) JG: "Let's do 'Georgia On My Mind'."

! R: s1t05 GOMM bad static @ start, lots and lots and lots of little gremlins.

! P: s1t05 GOMM @ 6:40 Merl does a tasteful little solo, synth or electric piano, while Sarah laughs and lightly moans. In the late 10-minute mark into the 11-min mark, John Kahn takes some beautiful leads, Garcia and Merl comping behind him. JG solo 11:52, some pulling whale crying right at the start, until around 12:00.

! R: s1t05 truly bizarre sound anomalies 10:40 for awhile.

! R: s1t06 still bad anomalies, bad bad stuff.

! s1t06 (3) JG: "We're gonna take a break for a lil while. Thanks a lot."

! s2t02 (4) Sarah: "If it's possible, could somebody bring some apple juice and beer to the bandstand?

! R: s2t02 bad, intermittent buzzing during the tuning.

! s2t02 @ 1:29 (5) Jerry Garcia: "Let's do 'Soul Roach', Merl."

! P: s2t02 JG sounds a little tentative at the start of SR.

! R: s2t03 IWMTLH splice @ 9:25

! R: s2t04 Go Climb A Mountain clips in

! song: s2t04 "Go Climb A Mountain" remains almost totally mysterious. Possibly a Fulcher original? (Allan).

! R: s2t04 seeder note: "Go Climb A Mountain has a 12 second splice presumably due to reel flips."

! s2t04 @ 5:33 (6) One of the players: "Hey Steve, I think my parking meter on my car's expired." Someone says "Saw it off", and Garcia says "Yeah, run out there and saw it off." Loose stage goofiness. @ 5:54, Garcia starts strumming Summertime. Guys start joining in. Someone says "How 'bout we do a slooowww blues." Jerry starts digging in a little deeper with Summertime, at 6:34 he calls it, and off we go.

! R: s2t05 Summertime some skips e.g. 3 minutes in

! P: s2t05 Summertime Sarah vocals: "Your daddy's rich and your mom is good lookin'." Merl very promising entry @ track 12:14, ca. five and a half minutes into Summertime. He doesn't really bring it in the second measure of his solo after coming in strong. After a minute, around 6:30, Garcia lays down some whole paragraphs, and at 7:00 he is finding some sharply bent spaces, Sarah exclaiming, and then some sharp, glassy feedback. At 8 minutes in, Sarah starts doing a little little thing and Garcia digs in, comping behind her, and they hit a nice groove, but her scat at 8:30 falls a little flat. Into the 9-minute mark she has some nice improv singing going in, Vitt joins in right nice at 9:15, picks her up, and now everyone is fucking cooking, with Bill Vitt just bashing and everything on key. In the late 9-min mark Jerry leads them back home and John locks in with him to get back to melody.

! P: s2t06 Jerry suggests TAM to Sarah. Sounds like he is singing it right at her. Steps back in his black t-shirt and cowboy boots and plays his guitar for her. He sounds a little bit like a sloppy puppy dog, but he is definitely getting an A for effort. After the stumble around for most of the song, Garcia wisely takes charge in bringing TAM to a close. I think Sarah could have kept going.

! s2t07 (7) JG: "Everybody has to send their beer to the bar, but we can still do another tune." They are deliberating what to play. Somebody yells "Hey Sarah."

! R: s2t07 Money Honey lots of glitches. It Is What It Is.

! s2t07 (8) JG: "See y'all later."

jgmf.blogspot.com

Aunt Monk: June 1, 1975, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

May 1975 Inn of the Beginning calendar, courtesy Mark Braunstein

What a great piece of art, first of all. I am afraid I neglected to note the name of the artist/artists on the IOTB fliers. Mea culpa!

Anyway, bottom right tells me that on Sunday, June 1, 1975, Jerry Garcia played with Aunt Monk (comprising inter alia Merl Saunders on keyboards and Martin Fierro on saxophone/flute) at the Inn of the Beginning, 8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA 94931. This is the May 1975 IOTB calendar, and the names are handwritten in, with the standard Sunday evening free folk crossed out. The provenance makes it pretty certain that Garcia was there.

This is the last of the new-to-me Garcia dates to come out of these IOTB materials. To rehash, here’s the list:

1. NRPS 8/20/71: new-to-me
2. NRPS 8/21/71: new-to-me
3. JGMS 9/20/71: new-to-me
4. JGMS 1/14/73: new-to-me
5. OAITW 3/5/73 8 pm: new-to-me
6. OAITW 3/5/73 11 pm: new-to-me
7. OAITW 4/24/73: new-to-me
8. OAITW 7/18/73: confirmation
9. Merl Saunders and Friends 5/31/74: new-to-me
10. Merl Saunders and Friends 6/1/74: new to me
11. Aunt Monk 6/1/75: new-to-me [this post]

Basically ten “new-to-me”, new to The List shows. That’s pretty awesome. I have a few more Garcia-related tidbits from these materials, but they are generally more speculative and/or less consequential than these. Thanks again to Mark Braunstein for sharing this wonderful trove of information.

So, who knows the ca. 1971-1975 proprietors of the Orphanage, the Boarding House, the Record Plant or the Longbranch Saloon? :)

Anyway, I won’t elaborate much on Aunt Monk’s 6/1/75 show, since I have already talked around many of the same issues on my post on the Merl Saunders andFriends shows on May 31-June 1, 1974. Just a few points.

First, I expect this’d be Tony Saunders on bass. He was pretty regularly listed in Merl’s bands from 1974 forward.

Second, I suspect the material we are able to hear from the Generosity on 2/14/75 and 5/9/75, thanks to amazing taper Robert Castelli and the crew at Mouth of the Beast who helped preserve and document his tapes, probably closely resembles the material that might have been played in Cotati on the night in question. Lots of jazz, funk, soul, R&B and Saunders originals, maybe even all instrumentals, though by this time Merl might have started singing a song or two, as he had in Legion of Mary and as he would eventually do in most all of his bands.

Third, Jerry and Merl would take a 3-plus year hiatus within six weeks of this sit-in. While Legion of Mary would sputter on through July 6^th before ending mysteriously, the little one-offs seem to end. The next time Garcia would sit-in with Merl would be October 2-3, 1978 at the Shady Grove in San Francisco, according to TJS. (The older McNally-Arnold JG List only lists October 3, 1978, from which there is tape [shnid 20027 | shnid 97200]. TJS says these were benefits to keep Shady Grove open, but I don’t know the basis for either the Oct. 2 listing or that characterization. I don’t doubt it, but I just don’t know.) That little sit-in would seem to relate to their shared involvement in John Kahn’s 1979 band Reconstruction, which would be the last sustained live Jerry-Merl collaboration.

In a way, this sort of completes the skimming of the cream from these beautiful Inn of the Beginning documents. Ross has kindly entered lots of dates and (eventually) images from this IOTB research over at the Chicken, so that it’s preserved for posterity. Thanks again to Mark Braunstein for sharing thoughts, memories and filing cabinets!

Merl Saunders and Friends: May 31 – June 1, 1974, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati

Here is one of the tantalizing little performances that you come across and really, really want to know more about, while understanding how miraculous it is that you are able to know anything about it at all.

The Inn of theBeginning in Cotati hosted Merl Saunders and Friends, including Jerry Garcia, with Paul Pena opening, on Friday, May 31, 1974 and Saturday, June 1, 1974.

The May 1974 IOTB calendar had listed Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1 as TBA, supported by local folk artist Cris Williamson. The May ledger leaves the top of the bill a bit unclear, but the June calendar and ledger fill in the blanks. First, the calendar. It lists “Merl Saunders and Friends” for the weekend, with Paul Pena opening the evenings’ proceedings.

Inn of the Beginning calendar, June 1974. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

Paul Pena

Pena’s story seems an interesting one, just entering the GOTS narrative enough to warrant attention, but obscure enough to motivate some digging. I have talked about him a little in my 2/16/74 post.

A Boston native, blind from birth, the first trace of Paul Pena I can find in the Garcia nexus is as opener for the Grateful Dead at the Electric Factory in Philly on February 14-15, 1969. I’d guess he settles into the Bay Area around July 1973, since that’s when he starts showing up as the opener for Garcia/Saunders. He may even have been the single most frequent opener for these guys from 1973-1975, most often at the Keystone. On this evidence, we’d conclude that Keystone proprietor Freddie Herrera, Jerry and/or Merl liked him and/or his music enough to make him the “regular” opener where the three of them interfaced. Merl and Jerry also laid down some tracks for Pena’s New Train on October 4, 1973, though the album was not released, on CD, until 2000. It is most relevant here for Garcia’s pedal steel credits on “Venutian Lady” and “New Train”, tracks on which Merl is also credited. More broadly it’s just a pretty nice album (I like “Gotta Move”) and is noteworthy for Pena’s version of his “Jet Airliner”, later famously covered by a certain non-playin' motherfucker.

The IOTB materials, as rich as they have proven, again have interest, though I am not sure if this answers the question of how Pena came to be connected to these guys. On the back of the April 1974 ledger there’s a note to reach Pena through Annette [presumably Annette Flowers] at the GD offices. So, somehow, Paul Pena seems to have been in the GD orbit. Yet he was either also, or eventually became, close to Merl, for whom he’d continue to open shows at least into January 1976 (i.e., during the Merl-Jerry live performance interregnum beginning in ca. July 1975).

Anyway, the June 1974 calendar gives us a listing of Merl Saunders and Friends with Paul Pena opening for this weekend. The Inn of the Beginning Flyer gives its usual nice, informative, locally-contextualized blurb, which I reproduce with its surrounding nice, informative, locally-contextualized materials from the Flyer.

June 1974 Inn of the Beginning Flyer, first page. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

Jerry Garcia in the IOTB Ledger

As has been the case so often with these Inn of the Beginning materials, the ledger sheds new light, in this case about a heretofore unknown GOTS performance:

Excerpt of Inn of the Beginning June 1974 ledger. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

As I have elaborated over and over, I find these ledgers to be incredibly robust forms of evidence. The man who kept them kept (and retains) extremely accurate records, on my impression. So, to my satisfaction, this establishes that Jerry played on these nights.

So, eventually, The Jerry Site and anyone’s respective Garcia lists should be updated to reflect these dates:

• Merl Saunders and Friends (with Jerry Garcia), Friday, May 31, 1974, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA
• Merl Saunders and Friends (with Jerry Garcia), Saturday, June 1, 1974, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

update: now at Jerrybase: May 31, 1974 | June 1, 1974

Some speculative and overdone reconstruction of these newly-discovered dates

How do I imagine this coming about? Clearly going too deeply into something that’s probably really simple, let me say a few things.

In my mind’s eye, this is Merl calling for a gig (or Mark Braunstein checking in with him), “I’ve got a bunch of guys together and am free that weekend”, kind of thing. The May-June gigs were booked late, since they didn’t make the May calendar, but the “TBA” listing suggests to me that the Inn was holding that weekend for something special. They usually had things fully calendared in time to go to print. My hunch is that Merl was trying to get Jerry to come up to Cotati on this free weekend and that this accounts both for the delay and for the slightly more tantalizing “and Friends’ formulation. Merl: “Hey Jerry, wanna come up to Cotati and jam this particular weekend?” Garcia: “Yeah, man. I gotta check.” Merl, next phone call: “Hey Mark, can you hold that weekend for me? I might be able to get Jerry.” Mark: “Hell yeah.”

It probably takes a while to get Garcia to (be able to) commit, what with Jerry being Jerry (overcommitted somewhere, on something). Indeed, the record shows that Garcia was at Heider’s on May 31^st. Shenk and Silberman (1) report that the “The Vault” (as of the mid-1990s, so presumably containing GD and JG material) holds some Garcia studio work such as “Some Enchanted Evening” (yes, the Rodgers and Hammerstein showtune from South Pacific) and “Cardiac Arrest”. This latter, a little jam really, was released as an outtake to Compliments on the All Good Things box set, and I presume that the released version is from this date. It may also shed some light. According to deaddisc, the players are Garcia, Michael Omartian on the piano, Merl Saunders on organ, John Kahn on bass, and Ronnie Tutt on drums. (I thought I heard some rhythm guitar, but what do I know?). So maybe Merl and Jer drove up to Cotati together, after playing around at Heider’s?

Win-win-win. The Inn is guaranteed a sellout at its standard mid-1974, strong-act-on-a-weekend-night rate of $2. Stuffing 250 people in, they gross $500 in tickets and pay out $400 to the talent (70% of the door for the band, blowing through the $150 guarantee, and $50 for Paul Pena), clear a C-note and then have a nice haul on beer and soda. Merl gets to keep playing with Jerry, which he obviously loves and which, crassly, is always in his pocketbook interest to keep doing. (Man was a cash cow, I tell ya.) Jerry, Being the May-June 1974 Vintage Jerry, The Youngish, Healthy-ish, I-Gotta-Jam-Somewhere-With-Someone Jerry, gets to play. Oh, and he leaves with $80 bucks in his pocket, which oughta keep him in smokes for a few days. Multiply all of this by two for the whole weekend, and we get these gigs.

What “Band” Played?

What should we call this collectivity that performed in Cotati? The listing itself –Merl Saunders and Friends—is interesting, insofar as I care about the formalities of band names, billings, and so on. And I care deeply about those things. When Merl played the Inn on Friday-Saturday April 5-6, 1974, he as just billed as Merl Saunders (note that Paul Pena opened). The “and Friends” formulation in May-June is probably not just an elaborated version of the same thing: it signals something that might interest the cognoscenti, i.e., that Jerry might be there. Just the name and the "and Friends" formulations suggest something looser and more ad hoc than a “band”. Merl Saunders and Friends is probably the best we can do. I would not call it a “band” at this point, just a picked-up group (though possibly with ideas about institutionalization, moving forward, at least on Merl’s part).

To get a sense of how fluid the billings were around Merl’s non-Garcia-related “bands”, I have just poked through some of my notes and listings for Merl’s bands without Jerry in the 1971-1975 period. Here are just some of the “bands” that I have seen mentioned or listed:

• Heavy Turbulence. A six-piece band which  released the single “Little Bit of Righteousness”, with “Iron Horse” on the B-side in ca. late November 1970 (2). I don’t know who the players were. Not Garcia. But maybe Kahn, Vitt, Fogerty. Matt Scofield’s Merl Saunders discography lists the band as Merl Saunders and Heavy Turbulence, with a catalog number Galaxy 776 (1970), but no players are listed. (As an aside, Heavy Turbulence was also the name of a Saunders record, probably released around mid-March 1972 (3). That album, of course, featured Garcia, Tom Fogerty, John Kahn and Bill Vitt.
• Merl Saunders Quartet. This was the listing at the Inn on December 14-15, 1973 at the Inn, with John Kahn apparently on bass.
• Merl Saunders Band. The Oakland Tribune published a piece on Martin in July 1974 using this name (4; see also my posts on July ’74 shows at Keystone and the Sand Dunes). In late August 1974 (5), the Trib reported that “The Merl Saunders Band, which featured Jerry Garcia on guitar and Martin Fierro on sax on alternating weeks at the Sand Dunes in San Francisco, has changed its name to” …
• … Aunt Monk. So we should date this from around late August 1974. The next usage of this name, which is seems to refer to a bona fide “band” (a name, a relatively fixed membership, a perceived “going concern”, an album) enters my data in September 1974 and continues sporadically for several years.
• Merl Saunders and Martin Fierro. What interests me about the previous little hints of institutionalization (for a “band” to change its “name” it had to be a band with a name in the first place, if you follow me) is that on the same date as the Fierro article (5) the Trib referred to the folks playing at the Sand Dunes as Merl Saunders and Martin Fierro, not Merl Saunders Band (6). No biggie, but just weird. Maybe they needed the extra letters for the type to set properly right-justified, who knows.
• plus lots of ad hoc listings of names, lots of interchange of nouns (band, group, aggregation), and every possible permutation of Merl/Merle [sic]/Mel [sic] Saunders/Sanders [sic]’s name.

It doesn’t really matter, of course. But I like that, in parallel with the Garcia/Saunders group itself, which didn’t have a name –about which I’ll have too much to say, at some point—things were just really, really fluid around all of this. Jerry and Merl would settle in with Legion of Mary for the first-half of 1975, and then, for Garcia, comes the crucial, fateful fall 1975 choice to put his name (and himself) out front in the Jerry Garcia Band, which would be the name of his “main” side band until his death twenty years later (except January-September 1979, with Reconstruction). It’s a terribly important inflection point. Putting his name on it, commodifying his name, professionalizing the band, institutionalizing it, all hearken to the end of a kind of dream of being able to jam anonymously, to play music without all the bullshit that attached to being Jerry Garcia Of The Grateful Dead. I suspect that Jerry would lament, in later years, his increasing inability (or unwillingness, or whatever) to just sit in anonymously in some small club with a band with no name, play some funk.

Who was in the What?

Who played? Well, we know Merl and Jerry played. Let’s assume there’s also bass, drums, and another instrument. We just really, really don’t know.

update 20210713: we pretty much do know. Tony Saunders has posted a pic of what he has said was one of his first gigs with Merl and Jer, from the Inn. Jerry is beardless and may even be wearing that black turtleneck he favored at this time. Tony identifies the players as Jerry, Merl, himself, Tom Donlinger on drums, Martin Fierro on sax, and Peter Welker on trumpet. And I am about 99% sure that the pic relates to these gigs.

What I had written is now greyed out some - I want the words to still be there, but they of course give way to the more solid information that has since arisen. Thanks to David Kramer-Smyth for the tip in comments.

Regarding bass, the December 1973 IOTB Flyer tells us that the Merl Saunders Quartet of December 14-15, 1973 featured John Kahn. By 1974 Merl’s son Tony Saunders, who would turn 18 in that year and who is a monster funky bassist, appeared more and more frequently and effectively supplanted John (insofar as John was ever implanted at all). But since John would appear to have been at Heider’s with these guys earlier in the day on May 31st, Occam’s Razor probably points to him, at least for that date. The truth is we just can’t know.

I would also suppose that Martin Fierro was there. He had been playing with Merl and Jerry pretty steadily for something like ten months by this time. We know from the band discussion above that he was playing in the Merl Saunders Band at the Sand Dunes in ca. the first half of 1974, apparently alternating Monday nights with Garcia. Of course, that’s right in this time period.  We don’t know he was there, but there are all kinds of reasons to think that he probably was.

There was also presumably a drummer. Bill Vitt thinks he was out of the Saunders/Garcia scene by mid-1974, so we should probably rule him out. Bill Kreutzmann is possible, but we just can’t know. It seems unlikely to me, since Merl’s “friends” could easily have included some other drummer. My bet, based on a thin scrap of evidence (his credited presence on the 5/31/74 “Cardiac Arrest” jam) would be Ronnie Tutt. This is presently the earliest direct Garcia-Tutt connection known to me, and given that he’d be around from 1975-1977, a live gig this early would be of particular historical note. But, as with all of this, I am speculating. It could just as well have been that guy from Cotati. You know—that guy. Whatshisname.

What did the Who/What Play?

In terms of the repertoire (i.e., the what that the What and Whom played), again, no specific idea. I imagine that these kinds of gigs, where it’s really Jerry sitting in with Merl, are the ones that turned out to be all-instrumental, such as the “7/21/74” or "7/22/74" Keystone stuff, which is actually 1/21/75 and 1/22/75 (for analysis, see nick, or me, or me again), or the 2/14/75 and 5/9/75 (May 9^th) gigs from The Generosity in San Francisco. (As an aside, Merl Jr.’s first reaction to the 2/14/75 Generosity gig is that it would have been Aunt Monk, with Tony Saunders on bass.) I thus imagine “When I Die”, “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)”, “Little Bit Of Righteousness”, “Valdez In The Country”, etc. Maybe a Stevie Wonder number. I doubt they even had a vocal mic set up. Anyway, that’s all speculation. We just don’t know.

Summary

So, my initial goal was just to establish the evidentiary basis for adding these two gigs to our Garcia lists (i.e., The Garcia List). But the post turned into a little discussion of Paul Pena and some broader historical context, including Merl’s (Jerryless) bands around this time and some possible players and songs. Lots of wild speculation, once I left the fact of the gigs themselves, but fun stuff to think about. May-June in Sonoma, jamming with friends (or strangers). Not too bad.

REFERENCES

(1)  Shenk, David, and Steve Silberman. 1994. Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads, s.v. “The Vault”, p. 301. New York: Doubleday.
(2)  Gene Robertson, “On the Beam,” Sun Reporter (San Francisco), November 28, 1970, p. 29.
(3)  Dennis Hunt, “Playing Small Rock Clubs is a ‘Release From the Dead’.” San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, April 9, 1972, p. 8, notes that HT was “released a few weeks ago”.
(4)  R.B. Ragg, “Life Out on the Side,” Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1974, p. 3-RAP.

(5)  "Rap-Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, August 25, 1974, p. 2-RAP. 

(6)  "Rap-Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1974, p. 2-RAP.

OAITW: July 18, 1973, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati

The McNally-Arnold JG List had listed an Old and in the Way show at the Inn of the Beginning, 8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA, 94931, on Wednesday, July 18, 1973. This carried through to Deadbase (Corry Arnold having given a copy of the list to Stu Nixon) and through to The Jerry Site (Ryan having used Deadbase IX for the Jerry Site's foundational list). I have no idea how Dennis originally tracked this date down, because as far as I have known there's no tape, no ad, no nothing.

I don't have a copy of the IOTB calendar from July 1973, for some reason, though somehow I have the "July Notes" from the Flyer, which usually had the calendar on the front. Maybe July 1973, exceptionally, had no single calendar, but was laid our only through the narration of the Flyer. I can't remember. Anyway, here's the page where it discusses July 18th:

Inn of the Beginning Flyer, July 1973, 2nd page. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

At the bottom-right we see blurb for "Wed. & Thurs. July 18 and 19 SPECIAL SHOW" has a listing that will probably be of interest of anyone who cares about It's A Beautiful Day: "Many of you who follow rock and roll scuttlebutt know that the name IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY was awarded to the man who thought it up, so technically that group is no more. The music, however, belongs to the people making it. We are happy to to Sonoma County MOON featuring four out of five former members of It's a Beautiful Day."

There's also a little tidbit on Joy of Cooking, if any one cares: "On Wednesday [July 18, 1973], joining them will be David Anne and Friends. David, the original bass player from Joy of Cooking, will be introducing his new band." I think "Anne" is supposed to be "Annie", based on other materials, BTW.

Anyway, there's no mention of OAITW at the Inn this night in any of the pre-published materials (e.g., monthly calendar, Flyer, posters, advertisements).

But the ledger has MOON crossed out on these nights, and above Wednesday is written "Old + In The Way 80%". These ledgers were cross-checked at the end of every month and they strike me as extremely accurate as to who actually played (as compared with the pre-published calendars). So here we have this particle of a show floating in the air, and now we have a piece of information that confirms it perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that I wonder if at some point McNally didn't see these notebooks? Mere speculation, but it'd be cool  if that were the case.

Oh yeah, and the show is historically very, very interesting. As I noted in my post on the 7/21/73b gig, Clarence White died on July 15, 1973. It seemed to hit all of these guys (Grisman, Garcia, Rowan, Greene) really, really hard, because by all accounts the guy was both a genius guitarist and a real Mensch. Beyond the emotional, there was also the professional reality for Rowan, Grisman and Greene that the Muleskinner Band would end. (Though one wonders, with the last known [to me] Muleskinner gigs being in March, whether that conclusion hadn't already been reached?) As I narrated it,

A few days later, we have a show listed as OAITW, a Wednesday (7/18/73) in Cotati, which I find perfectly plausible. This would be Vassar Clements's first Bay Area OAITW show. Gotta get warmed up together, run through some numbers? Do it midweek in Cotati.

This was in support of a post the main thesis of which was that Vassar Clements's membership in OAITW nearly merely qualifies as "membership", because he was basically a hired gun. I have much, much more to say about that at some point. Suffice it to say, for purposes of this post, that anything to do with Vassar's first Bay Area gig with OAITW qualifies as reasonably important. Even if it's "just" an entry in a notebook ledger. Given the overall verisimilitude of a gig this Wednesday night in Cotati, I feel pretty near 100% about this regrettably obscure evening.

OAITW 19730424 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

Tuesday, April 24, 1973: Old And In the Way featuring David Diadem (Grisman), Jerry Garcia and Peter Rowan played the Inn of the Beginning at 8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA, 94931. George Edwards opened. This was billed as a "Special Show" (as 3/5/73 had been) and the $2.50 ticket price was just about the most expensive the Inn had ever offered.

April 1973 Inn of the Beginning Calendar, courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

OAITW had just come off their first weekend gigs, April 20-21, 1973 at the Lion's Share (60 Red Hill Avenue, San Anselmo, CA, 94960), and would do another Friday-Saturday in a few days, the 27th and 28th at Keystone (2119 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94704). (See Corry's post at LLD on the 4/27/73 billing, with broader analysis.) This is what I call the second period of OAITW's too-brief existence, during which they are trying to integrate fiddle into the band, working specifically with Richard Greene during this period. But Greene was and remains a very busy musician, and my imprecise reckonings suggest that he was around or not pretty sporadically. Here's how I currently code Greene's presence/absence during this period, though none of this is very firm.

4/12/73 Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara: present (stuff | listening notes)
4/15/73 Boarding House: present ("Four Nights at the Boarding House")
4/16/73a Boarding House: present (listening notes | "Four Nights at the Boarding House")
4/16/73b Boarding House: absent ("Four Nights at the Boarding House")
4/19/73 Lion's Share: present
4/20/73 Lion's Share: present
4/21/73 Lion's Share: present (listening notes)
4/23/73 Orphanage: absent (see below)
4/24/73 IOTB: absent (see below)
4/27/73 Keystone: present
4/28/73 Keystone: absent (I think)
4/30/73 Orphanage: absent
5/8/73 Eugene: present
5/9/73 Portland: present
5/18/73 Homer's: present
5/25/73 Bimbo's: present

Then Vassar comes in, and as far as I know Richard is done. For more on April 1973, see "Twenty-Four Performances in Twenty-Four Days: April 6-30, 1973".

The 4/23/73 gig at the Orphanage (807 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, 94133) was reviewed by Philip Elwood in the San Francisco Examiner (1). Scan below.

Elwood, Philip. 1973. A New Country Ear-Opener. San Francisco Examiner, April 24, p. 26.

Among other things, he notes that the band needs a fiddle and that Greene occasionally sits in to fill that need, implying that he was not there on the night in question. So much for Monday 4/23.

How do I reach the conclusion that Greene was not present for this Inn gig on Tuesday 4/24/73? Well, Richard Greene and Friends would play the Inn on August 2, 1973, and in that month's Inn of the Beginning Flyer, we are told that "Richard Greene played the fiddle with Seatrain the last time he was at the Inn." I think Mark Braunstein wrote that blurb, and I highly doubt the remark was an oversight. If Richard Greene had played the Inn with OAITW on 4/24/73, the blurb probably would have told us so, and certainly would not have told us anything to contradict that. Combined with the fact that such a gig was not in Richard Greene's own contemporary datebooks, I am about 99.9% sure he was not there on the date in question.

REFERENCE:
(1) Elwood, Philip. 1973. A New Country Ear-Opener. San Francisco Examiner, April 24, p. 26.

OAITW 19730305 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

Sharp-eyed readers who checked out the March 1973 Inn of the Beginning flyer in my post about Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders 1/15/73 and Sarah Fulcher may have looked to the top-left, and seen this:

Here we have listings for two Monday, March 5, 1973 shows (9pm and 11 pm) by Old And In The Way (OAITW) at the Inn of the Beginning, 8201 Old Redwood Hwy, Cotati, CA 94931. The named players are David Diadem, Jerry Garcia and Peter Rowan. The Rowan Brothers are set to open. As a factual note, the March 1973 IOTB ledger page says the early show was at 8pm, and I think that’s the “correct” time for the early show.

Fascinating on so many levels.

First, some calendar context.

Barring very early bar gigs, Old And In The Way played its first paying gig Friday March 2, 1973, after doing a radio hit earlier in the day. That's five musical events in its first three days. (They also recorded a little jingle for KSAN!) Here at the Inn would be gigs number 5 and 6 by the end of the fourth day. Of course, our guy being our guy, he keeps playing, Tuesday-Wednesday with Merl.

If you continue the timeline forward, you have Pigpen’s death on March 8 and then the wake and funeral, an off-night gig with Merl (March 11), blow off some steam, and spend Monday-Tuesday March 12-13 at Keystone Berkeley. Then the GD are on tour all the way through early April, followed by what must have been a relatively long-booked weekend chez Freddie (Keystone) with Merl. By my reckoning, after debuting at the Share OAITW wouldn’t play another weekend until April 20-21, 1973, by which time they had Richard Greene. So it seems to me like they really needed a fiddle player, and that, among other of its complicated aspects, OAITW fell prey to the vicissitudes of Garcia’s schedule, and some odd circumstance. The man was just fundamentally a workaholic and had too many irons in the fire. What’s more, the fact that OAITW would have this “false start” of sorts in March, then have to begin anew in April, must have been frustrating to Rowan and Grisman. (I have recently written about the transition through what I might now call the "third phase" of OAITW, the Vassar Clements period.)

Anyway, it’s always neat to recover a date and put it into its calendar context, so there you have it.

Second observation, smaller: David Diadem. This was the nom-de-freak that David Grisman was using at this time, as far as I can tell for reasons known only to him. He was a highly spaced-out dude at this time, from what I can tell, but a mind-blowing player, composer and eventually band-leader who was just about ready to carve his own channel of genius through the world, and then walk it, strongly. We should all be blessed with such strengths and opportunities!

Third, aside on the Mark Braunstein collection. The March 1973 IOTB calendar was the front page of the Inn of the Beginning Flyer. I didn’t take careful notes on the evolution of the flyer itself, but roughly it began as a single calendar sheet and evolved into at least an 8-page Flyer, a newsletter of sorts that was mailed out to folks on the Inn’s list. And it is a rich, rich source of information. I was able only to scan the calendar pages and selected other pages, as well as the handwritten “ledger” of bands and arrangements compiled at the end of each month. So there are countless pages of amazing narratives on the bands, the scene, stuff going on in Cotati, Sonoma and beyond, etc. I hope someday some museum will take these materials and catalog them fully. They deserve it. And thanks, Mark, for letting me go through this amazing stuff!

Fourth, a business aspect or two. The IOTB had calendared this as a “Special Show” and run the blurb above at the top left of the inside cover (p.1 of the Inn of the Beginning Flyer proper). As ever, Being Jerry Garcia involves not being able to escape on a Monday night to pick some banjo, but having to be part of a “Special Show”, with Your Name In Lights. An insider reminds me that there’s ego involved here, and Garcia was as subject to that kind of motivation as anyone else. So I don’t want to pluck the harp strings for him here. It might be “having to do this”, but it’s also “choosing to do this”. But it might also be just a little bit of a drag, dontcha think? Maybe a reflection of a constrained choice-set rather than some underlying preference to be on the marquee? Pigpen is laying in his bed and dying, Garcia has to help launch a new band, on top of being Jerry Garcia Of The Grateful Dead (“Let’s start a record company!”) and headlining with Merl. (Aside: no wonder he had John Kahn manage band decisions for him! With Sarah, and George Ticker, and Martin, and Tom Fogerty, and Vitt and Kreutzmann, and mystery rhythm guitar players [at least once, no, at least twice and mystery harmonica players and mystery trumpet players and all that, Garcia/Saunders alone should have been a full-time job. Have John do it!)

I nearly left out the most interesting business aspect that these IOTB materials reveal. On the back of the February 1973 ledger there is a handwritten note, written and circled with palpable excitement, that says "Jerry Garcia | new group: "Old And In The Way" | Peter Rowan guitar, David Diadem mando, JG banjo" and maps out the contours of the night with the Rowan Bros opener, the percentages, a note to "turn house" (i.e., have separately ticketed/charged early and late shows), etc. It's great to see such rich contextual evidence for the fact that a band with Garcia was a relatively "big deal" and a sure money maker in Cotati. We "knew" this, but now I feel like I "know" it in a fuller way.

Anyway, I am sure everyone did well this night. Tickets are two bucks. The ledger shows the band’s guarantee as $500 or 80%. I am betting the place was packed to the damn rafters, because insofar as I understand it the capacity might have been 250 or so. So they might have sold $1,000 or more of tickets, depending on how crowded they let it get. So be it. Be Jerry Garcia. Grab your banjo, go out there and put one guy’s kid brothers on first, make some bread ($800 four ways, not bad!), pick some bluegrass, maybe start a band and cut a best-selling record.

Do y’thing, mang.

JGMS 19730114-19730115 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

We know of the Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders show at the Inn of the Beginning on Monday, January 15, 1973 from the circulating tapes (http://db.etree.org/shn/9573), which are Betty Boards rescued by Rob Eaton from the muck and filth of God-knows-what-or-where (listening notes). There are severe problems with the recording, especially with the start of the show, but once you get past them you get a great tape.

The Inn of the Beginning's January 1973 calendar does not advertise this show (nor anything for Monday, 1/15). The night before, Sunday, January 14, 1973 is listed as "to be announced".

What little experience I have with these tells me that from October 1970 through the end, "to be announced" shows often ended up having special guests or being otherwise notable.

As it turns out, the handwritten ledgers fill in the missing detail. For January 14-15, 1973, they list "Merle [sic] Saunders, Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, Tom Fogerty, Bill Vitt". As far as I know, January 14, 1973 is new to "The List".

No mention in the ledger of the most historically mystifying person on stage that night, Sarah Fulcher, who features on several lead vocals from the 1/15/73 tape. I am hoping to learn more about Sarah Fulcher and would gratefully receive any and all information that anyone might have. I know she was from San Antonio, spent some time in NYC, went back to San Antonio, and ended up in the Bay Area. I believe she was in the Bay Area ca. late 1972, and then the last trace I can find of her is in the credits of Wake of the Flood and then the October 2, 1973 Winterland Garcia/Saunders show. After that, basically nothing. Anyway, by my back of the napkin-reckoning I have her on the following shows:

• 1/14/73 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati
• 1/15/73 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati
• 1/19/73 Keystone, Berkeley (also NB Marty David, not John Kahn, on bass)
• 1/23/73 Boarding House, SF
• 1/24/73 Boarding House, SF
• 1/25/73 Boarding House, SF
• 3/7/73 Keystone, Berkeley
• 5/4/73 Homers Warehouse, Palo Alto
• 5/5/73 Homers Warehouse, Palo Alto
• 7/19/73 Great American Music Hall (also NB Martin's first appearance w/ JGMS; also NB guest harmonica player)
• 10/2/73 Winterland, SF (also NB Jellyroll, unknown trumpeter)

A seemingly-odd batch of shows, on the one hand. Lots of other personnel fluidity, and that apparent six-month gap ... no idea what to make of it. On the other hand, maybe that's just how fluid things really were, which is nice to remember! There were people coming and going and jamming and all of that. Good stuff.

I learned a bit more about Sarah from the IOTB materials. I found "Sarah & Friends" listings for March 30-31, 1973 at the Inn. Here's a page from the March 1973 IOTB flyer:

March 1973 Inn of the Beginning Flyer, "Entertainment" Notes". Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

For those of you who didn’t catch her name before. Sarah is the lady who sang with Merle [sic] Saunders and Jerry Garcia last January. She and Bill Vitt, who played drums on the same show, and a few friends will give you more of the same. 

For whatever reason, Ms. Fulcher seems to have had a taste for the anonymous by this time in her life. Note that they don't ever give her last name.

(As an aside, these notes from the IOTB flyers are incredibly precious. There is tons of information in there about who was playing with whom, etc. I have a few other nuggets that I'll post about that come from these amazing contemporary observations and analyses. Thanks to Mark Braunstein for documenting this scene so thoroughly back then, and for sharing the data now!)

I reproduce this both to reproduce it (these things are gorgeous!) and because it sheds small light on a few other things. First, it tells us that Vitt was drumming at the January JGMS show that had Sarah singing. Maybe we knew that, but it's nice to know. Second, this makes me think that Bill Vitt was how Sarah Fulcher came to sing in these Garcia-Saunders shows. I had always assumed that the Texas angle meant Martin or Dough Sahm. I can't remember if Vitt has any Texas connections, but anyway I am guessing Bill was closest to Sarah, effectively "sponsoring" her to sing with the band. Wild speculation, I know, but there it is. Finally, this blurb provides some nice crossing evidence that Jerry, Merl, Vitt and Sarah played the Inn in January 1973. We have this information from tape, but now we also have contemporary text. Nice.

The whole point of this post was to say that the Inn of the Beginning "ledgers" (handwritten lists, compiled monthly, of artists who played) show Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders shows on both Sunday, January 14 and Monday, January 15, 1973 at the Inn. Personnel was Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, Tom Fogerty and Bill Vitt, with Sarah Fulcher on vocals for at least 1/15/73.

JGMS 19710920 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

Inn of the Beginning, 8201 Old Redwood Hwy, Cotati, CA 94931, USA. What a fantastic spot, and a review of the calendars and other materials so presciently and conscientiously preserved and generously shared by former employee-then-proprietor Mark Braunstein highlights its importance in the whole thing, *that* whole thing, as well. (I didn't see any evidence of the alleged Neil Young and Crazy Horse gig in '75 mentioned at RnR Roadmaps, but there are a number of Van Morrison dates.)

Lots of neat things have come up from these materials. I have already posted two newly-discovered New Riders of the Purple Sage shows at the Inn, August 20-21, 1971 (the latter presumably in the evening after "Mickey Hart's Barn Jam" happened earlier in the day). Now I have another one, Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders from 9/20/71.

September 1971 was an interesting time, and it has come up a bunch. There's the whole keyboard thing. I had posted about September 3-4, 1971 GD shows that were listed for the Harding Theater, but that LIA doubts happened. In that post I speculate that these very shows --Sept. 3 and 4-- were the "Howard Wales" tryouts for the keyboard slot. I think we also got into how weird it is that for this little two month period the Harding Theater becomes part of the GD/Garcia universe. Why? Given that we know they started rehearsing with Keith ca. September 27, is it possible they rented this great little room as a rehearsal hall? This gave rise to "More on the Keyboardist Change ca. 1971" from me, again with lots of great comments.

I had also once posted about a possible NRPS gig in NYC on September 15, 1971. Here's an ad:

Village Voice ad for New Riders of the Purple Sage (open John McLaughlin), Manhattan Center Ballroom, New York, NY, 9/15/71.

As I noted in my original post, Billboard blurbed this as "Columbia's New Riders of the Purple Sage", so this looks for all the world like an industry thing. Scofield says that New Riders of the Purple Sage was released August 1971, so that fits, too.

Anyway, I have uncovered what a believe to be a faint record of a Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders gig at the Inn of the Beginning (8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA, 94931) on Monday, September 20, 1971. On this date the September 1971 IOTB ledger --not really a ledger, just an end-of the-month list of acts and their guarantees/percentages-- reads "Merl Saunders … [illegible] …Jerry Garcia". My scan is not very clear, but I saw it in person and scanned it because of this listing, so I am about 95% sure it's Saunders/Garcia.

When we add this listing into our current understandings of Jerry's whereabouts at this time, here's what we get, in reduced form:

What a week-and-a-half! From NYC w/ NRPS to Keystone Korner (where, I allege, he was connected by Donna Jean with Keith Godchaux) with Merl, to what used to be The Family Dog at the Great Highway --not sure who was running it September 1971-- --NRPS again-- to this newly-discovered show at the Inn, another New Riders show, then two nights of JGMS at the Lion's Share. All of this before GD rehearsals with Keith start on ca. Monday, September 27, 1971. Hell, maybe this 9/20/71 was Merl's tryout ... small room, Monday night, no publicity (ledger entry only) ... why not? Or maybe he was just jonesing to play, since the GD had been relatively quiet while figuring out the keys, and he was just packing in every gig he could. Maybe both.

Man, this stuff is fun.

NRPS 19710820-21: Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

Inn of the Beginning calendar of events, August 1971. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

The August 1971 calendar of events for the Inn of the Beginning, 8201 Old Redwood Hwy, Cotati, CA 94931, shows The New Riders of the Purple Sage playing there on Friday, August 20, 1971 and Saturday, August 21, 1971. These dates are not presently at the Jerry Site.

I am not in a position to blog extensively about this, but I think it's really interesting. Feel free to discuss in my absence of another 5 days or so.