Did You Ever Notice the 9/18/81 JGB Rehearsal Has Jerry Playing Acoustic?

The spine of Betty's 9/18/81 JGB rehearsal tape box

A beautiful piece of tape: Betty's reel from the 9/18/81 JGB rehearsal

I just revisited this little 20+ minute rehearsal fragment. Thank you Betty! This is the latest piece of Betty Board of interest to me: some of the abortive Brent solo album material came from later in '81 and into '82, but this is the last scrap of tape with ol' Jer on it.

 A few things to note.

First, Jerry is playing acoustic throughout, and doing so tastily.

Second, this is Ron Tutt drumming. Right before "Dear Prudence", as the reel winds up, Jerry comes in with a "hello?" while beautifully strumming Prudence on his acoustic. Tutt asks "Is that the right tempo, or should that be a little slower than the other'n?" Jerry replies "it should be a little slower than the other one."

Third, Melvin Seals sounds simply wonderful here. 

That's all I've got.

Jerry Garcia Band - Studio Rehearsal

Club Front

20 Front Street

San Rafael, CA 94901

September 18, 1981 (Friday)

MSR -> P -> D shnid-13881 shn2flac

--partial rehearsal (3 tracks, 21:38)--

t01. Tangled Up In Blue [7:36]

t02. Dear Prudence (1) [6:28] (2) [0:49] %

t03. //Tangled Up In Blue// [#6:45#]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band

! lineup: Jerry Garcia – acoustic guitar, vocals;

! lineup: John Kahn – electric bass;

! lineup: Jimmy Warren – electric piano;

! lineup: Melvin Seals – organ;

! lineup: Ron Tutt – drums.

Donny's Debut: JGB at the Warfield, February 4, 1994

LN jg1994-02-04.jgb.all.aud-vasseur.146010.flac1644

Friday, February 4, 1994 through Sunday, February 6, 1994 are super interesting, for reasons that may not be independent. The amazing drummer David Kemper was let go at some point between the end of the fall '93 tour and the first night of this run, for reasons that seem unclear even to him. After over ten years in the chair, they didn't give him so much as an explanation. It is well established from the historical record, and has been repeatedly stated by those who knew him best -- I am not going to cite chapter and verse here, so if you want to imagine I am going beyond my paygrade, sure, fine, whatever -- that Garcia's greatest personal failing involved an unwillingness to tell (former) lovers and (former) bandmates that they were out. He seemed more inclined to have Big Steve deliver hard news. So, first, this inaugural set of 1994 shows featured the debut of Donny Baldwin, from the Starship orbit and also a veteran of the Elvin Bishop Group. I imagine, but don't have it pinned down, that this latter connection between Donny and Melvin facilitated the drummer's entry into the Garcia Band. Second, as astute student of the music Nick has framed it, the run provides "one last flash of greatness" for Jerry and friends. This is most obvious in the 2/6/94 "Don't Let Go", which my memory tells me is a true monster that stands up to any versions that Jerry ever played. I have found a lot to love in '94 and '95 Jerry Band over the last few years, but I agree that he never again played anything so great as that "Don't Let Go".

Indeed, I have often held February 14, 1994, eight days after that show, to augur Garcia's irreversible (though not monotonic) physical decline. The game of trying to pin such things too precisely doesn't get us very far. I might point to GD keyboardist Brent Mydland's passing on July 26, 1990 as signaling Garcia giving up the emotional ghost, and impresario Bill Graham's death on October 25, 1991, as removing all doubt. (See how this game works?) We can point to plenty of pictures from before Valentine's Day '94, the day on which Jerry married Deborah Koons, showing him looking haggard. But, after that day, he never looked anything but like a man shambling toward death's door. Deadheads held no love for Garcia's "Black Widow", who certainly treated the legendary Mountain Girl and all of the other women in Jerry's life very badly during the probate and other proceedings that followed his death, whose taste in music (no "Reuben And Cherise"??) and cover art (Shining Star - what in the almighty fuck?!??) affronted fan sensibilities, who allegedly either passively accepted or actively abetted Garcia's hard drug use, and whose love of tasteless licensing and merchandising strikes us, from the vantage of 2021, as decidedly Trumpian. Be all of that as it may, the observation I just cannot shake is that Garcia's decline accelerated markedly after those nuptials.

All of which makes the triumph of the February 4-6, 1994 shows so remarkable. Nick speculates that the band actually, y'know, rehearsed some with the new guy. The older pattern would have been to break him in on an off-night, off-the-beaten path, or both. Just about every new addition to the Garcia Band prior to Donny was afforded this possibility. So, they may or may not have gotten any rehearsal time, but they did get a gig. But, by 1994, as Bob Barsotti reported a few years later, "the only place [Garcia] could get it together physically to play with the Jerry Garcia Band was by getting in his car and driving for a half an hour to the Warfield" (Greenfield1996, 300, cited in context on my post on 3/4/95). So we might imagine that there were some rehearsals, and, indeed, as Nick points out, Jerry sounds generally together and the band sounds quite tight, consistent with some rehearsal. I have no data to that effect, but it seems likely.

So, onto my sense of Donny's Debut, 2/4/94. He's good, and it's good. Jerry sounds especially together in the first set, sprightly for the very common --indeed, statistically modal-- How Sweet -> Stop That Train opener, and working some great strong grunge into "Lay Down Sally". Nick elaborates:

The one major [2/4/94] high point is a steaming Lay Down Sally jam: Garcia's chugging along, sounding fine, and then decides to hit his distortion pedal and something clicks into place.  The audience feels it, Garcia responds, and you get one of those brief moments of aud-tape perfection as everything clicks into place.  Nice work, old man!

Jerry fades pretty hard at the end of set I (Deal) and through much of set II, sundowning especially noticeably in "The Maker", where I swear he departs from the lyrics and sings @ 1:40 "cannot see for the pain in my life". "Don't Let Go" is the other relative highlight of the show. It's a compact version, 12 minutes, and you'd think they might have held off on it to let the new guy get up to speed. But Donny plays very strongly. True, Jerry does no vocal-instrumental doubling on either the front or the back end of the song, which could often provide him a rare opportunity to engage in true vocal improvisation. But, even listening for limitations, I find a lot to like in this version, and a foreshadowing of the monster that'd spring forth two nights later, before the tune mostly faded into a shadow of its former self in its remaining fourteen months.

All in all, then, a nice show from a characteristically gorgeous Janet and Chuck Vasseur aud pull with the vintage Neumanns. Check it out if you can. If you are feeling impatient, go straight to 2/6/94 - do not pass Go, do no collect $200. If it's as good as I remember it being, and as (more reliably) Nick says it us, you can thank us later.

Oh yeah, one more thing: Melvin Seals sounds awesome this night, all big loud joyful swirly energy.

Listening notes follow.

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
February 4, 1994 (Friday)
Vasseur shnid-146010

--set I (7 tracks, 53:29)--
s1t01. [0:05] How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [6:00] [1:04]
s1t02. Stop That Train [7:11] [1:16]
s1t03. You Never Can Tell [6:41] [0:08]
s1t04. Lay Down Sally [10:01] (1) [1:39]
s1t05. Struggling Man [6:25] [0:42]
s1t06. My Sisters And Brothers [3:56] ->
s1t07. Deal [8:11] (2) [0:09]

--set II (7 tracks, 61:16)--
s2t01. Shining Star [15:24] [0:13]
s2t02. Money Honey [6:31] [0:13]
s2t03. Wonderful World [4:29] [0:15]
s2t04. The Maker [7:10] [0:11]
s2t05. Don't Let Go [11:45] [0:15]
s2t06. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:41] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [6:04] (2) [0:07]

! ACT1: JGB #23
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, v;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Donny Baldwin - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing 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/19940204-01

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/15602; https://etreedb.org/shn/94747; https://etreedb.org/shn/95234; https://etreedb.org/shn/146010 (this fileset). Every one of these derives from the Vasseur master.

! band: JGB #23 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/warfield-982-market-street-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/ZW52vfHTbjs

! ref: Nick, "Feb 94 JGB: one last flash of greatness", URL https://deadthinking.blogspot.com/2017/11/feb-94-jgb.html.

! personnel: Donny Baldwin's first show in the drum chair, succeeding the impossible-to-replace David Kemper. I am typing this listening to Don't Let Go - you have to give the guy his due, because this cannot have been easy.

! R: field recordist: Janet and Chuck Vasseur

! R: field recording gear: 2x Neumann KM54 > DAT

! R: transfer: DAT Master > CDR (Kyle Porter); extract: CDR clone > EAC > WAV > FLAC16 (Bill Shaw aka Shark)

! R: Source Notes: Sometime in the early 2000's, Chuck loaned Kyle all of his 92-95 JGB masters to transfer to CDR. Kyle "mastered" the DATs to CDR, fading in/out as needed, adjusting levels (as needed) and tracking. Kyle then gave Chuck his masters back, with nice CDR copies of all of it. Chuck offered to clone the entire set for me, so I gave him a spool of 100 blank MITSUI CDRs and the next time I saw him, he gave them back to me, filled with his JGB recordings. Many of the Chuck V. JGB recordings do circulate already, but probably not all of them, and those that do may not be the Kyle Porter transfers. So, Here they are! --Shark

! P: s1t01 HSII Jerry sounds stoked. Melvin swirls up huge peaky feature late 3.

! P: s1t01 STT everyone sounds good. Donny hits nicely. Jerry bending some pitch.

! P: s1t03 YNCT Melvin, 3:30 I am typing, is on fire this night. He really sounds enthusiastic.

! P: s1t04 LDS oh man, what a killer grungy tone on LDS in the 7 range. A little modal, very firey. Nick: "The one major high point is a steaming Lay Down Sally jam:  Garcia's chugging along, sounding fine, and then decides to hit his distortion pedal and something clicks into place.  The audience feels it, Garcia responds, and you get one of those brief moments of aud-tape perfection as everything clicks into place.  Nice work, old man!"

! s1t04 (1) JG: "The new guy is, uhh, Donnie Baldwin. Playin' drums."

! P: s1t05 Struggling Man is done peppy - very good. Late 1 it slows down a little bit.

! P: s1t07 Deal a number of lyrical miscues. He is sounding a little tired.

! s1t07 (2) JG: "... take a break for a little bit ..."

! P: s2t04 The Maker he sounds pretty wobbly on the lyrics. @ 1:25 trying to get to second verse, mumbles. @ 1:40 sounds like he says "cannot see for the pain in my life". Goes across the great divide to Jean-Baptiste here early on. @ 2:09 "Body | is bent and broken". Donny nicely triggers Garcia's feature at 3ff.

! P: s2t05 DLG he doesn't do any vocal doubling at all. So by 3:15 he has already stepped back and away from the mic. But I confess that this is just perfectly good Jerry Garcia guitar work happening, e.g., around 6:30, when it has a real edge. I think I came into this listen of this wanting to hear its limitations. They're there, because this is not Eden. And I keep looking at the clock realizing that this is only going to run 12 minutes. But the quality is high. He strums it without quite such thick effects, Melvin swirly, Donny nicely picks up the pace. 8:15 Jerry definitely signals a connection to the tune. 9:20 assertively back to the tune, Donny be damned. Fully back to tun 10:12, no doubling.

! s2t14 (2) JG: "See y'all later."

The Romanesque Church Design Was Based On The Roman Basilica: Discuss (JGB at the Knick in Albany, November 3, 1993)

I just marveled at the almost 90-minute second set offered up on 12/22/90, and got to wondering about post-coma others that might match or beat it in duration. I recalled some long sets on the 11/93 tour, recalled that I had unposted (because not very informative) notes on 11/3/93 (my 23rd birthday, though I was somewhere in the vicinity of Monterey, CA), and checked them out.

Indeed, 89+ for this set II. We are envisioning being able to analyze real data on set and show durations via Jerrybase at some point in the not-too-distant future.

The show is maybe below average for the tour overall, with a few guitar highlights that I mention in the notes below. The real interest lies in the impromptu version of  Elizabeth Cotten's "Freight Train", which Garcia plays with an acoustic sound as a 'quippie fixes a string on John's bass. First, he lets the crowd know what's going on: "We've gotta change a string on the bass. You can all talk amongst yourselves." This latter formulation absolutely, positively echoes Mike Myers' contemporaneous SNL skit "Coffee Talk" - I use it myself when equipment challenges interrupt my teaching. I may also give a topic, as Linda Richmond does in the skit. In my case, it's something on-topic like "Vladimir Putin: strong man, or the strongest man? Discuss." In hers, the title gives a sample subject.

Then, without further ado, Our Man in Albany starts picking the tune. Melvin Seals accompanies extremely well on piano, so well that it makes me wonder how he knew the tune, since it is not associated with the "Band Electric". Maybe they had worked it up? I certainly would have liked to hear it more. Anyway, Melvin's great, and he weaves in a few bars of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" for good measure, last heard (by me) in the JGB being done by the great (if very drunk) Nicky Hopkins on 12/31/75. Jerry gets the verses mostly sung, if a little imperfectly (see my rough transcription just below), and this whole thing is just a stone cold fucking delight.

1- (chorus) Freight train, freight train, run so fast | Freight train, freight train, run so fast | Please don't tell what train I'm on | They won't know what route I'm gone
2- When I'm died oh bury me deep | Down at the end ol' Chestnut Street | Place the stones at my head and feet | Tell 'em all I'm gone to sleep
3- (chorus) Freight train, freight train, run so fast | Freight train, freight train, run so fast | Please don't tell what train I'm on | They won't know what route I'm gone
4- When I'm dead and in my grave | No more good times here I'll crave | [mumblyverse] | Tell 'em all I'm gone to sleep
5- When I'm died oh bury me deep | Down at the end ol' Chestnut Street | So I can hear ol' number nine | as she goes rollin' by
6- (chorus)

Here are Elizabeth Cotten's lyrics:

Source: Cohen and Seeger 1964, 136

At 4:30, John drops a note of electric bass to signal that he's ready to play, one of his few contributions on this night, in the era when he mostly fluttered around pretty inaudibly.

The song is one of my favorites, a perfect choice for Garcia and Grisman's then-recently-released masterpiece Not For Kids Only (Acoustic Disc ACD-9, 1993), and something Garcia had played since the pre-Dead period (see Jerrybase for the overview). In the GD era (and so the GOTS era) it showed up in the studio around 1975-1976. Jerry played it live 4/10/82a, his only "modern" solo acoustic date, but it was pretty cursory, just two and a half minutes without a good handle on the words, before running into the Cotten tune he did a lot more and in a range of contexts, "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie". After this impromptu version eleven years later, it came up twice more in the 1994 Garcia-Grisman live sets before ol' Jer landed at the end ol' Chestnut Street himself.

For more on this tour, the Garcia Band's last out east, see also "The Reedman vs. the Gunslinger at at the Garden" (11/12/93), "Good Clean Fun" (11/14/93), the sweet little BS passes for this "Slack Tour" featuring Church of the SubGenius prophet J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and take a gander at the crew tourbook.

Listening Notes below the fold.

Firing On All Cylinders: JGB at the SF Civic, December 22, 1990

LN jg1990-12-22.jgb.all.aud-stucco-gems.149794.flac1648

When you say something sucked, or point to some darkness, you are scandal-mongering. When you rave, your are homer-fanboying. In all cases it's subjective. But, fuck it - it's my blog, and these are my impressions, and if you want to compare notes put 'em in comments or somewhere's else I can find 'em!

The JGB show at the cavernous SF Civic on December 22, 1990 is a late masterpiece.

There, I said it.

I cannot believe the many levels on which this show works. Garcia sounds very much like he wants to be playing this very music with this very band for these very fans on this very night in this very room. The 90-minute second set is not just an artifact of DAT taping, because not one but two songs happen after the big jam of "Don't Let Go". This is one of the longest sets of the post-coma Garcia Band, maybe the longest. Someday I will be able to show a time series testing this claim.

That's not to say that it's a gigglefest. Indeed, notes of nostalgia, sadness, world-weariness, a little darkness and edge definitely strike. But so do moments of light, easy joy.

My post on 11/15/90 referenced the "rehearsed, post-Brent Garcia Band", and I think both the claim and the allusion were spot on. The allusion to Brent speaks to the emotional range on display, on my subjective hearing. Brent's death hit him hard, and the Grateful Dead, to my subjective hearing, was never really the same. (Bob Weir agrees, by his own telling in the Long Strange Trip documentary, Act VI, around 22:45.) I guess Vince was a nice enough guy, but, in my certainly controversial and not-intentionally mean view, the band's sound verged on the ersatz with him in it. It is conventionally claimed that Garcia enjoyed his own band more than the GD for these last five years or so (i.e., post-Brent), and, as I have said, he certainly sounds very much like this is where he wants to be on this particular night. So if the sadness and world-weariness reflect the emotional toll of the losses he had experienced (which would further accumulate with Bill Graham's passing 10+ months later), the joy and lightness reflect the comfort of playing easy tunes with an easy band in an easy setting. That's my story, anyway.

And, the band speaks to the "rehearsed" part of my earlier analysis. I have no evidence of this, but this band absolutely sounds like it has been rehearsing. This will not appear in my notes, I don't think, but the Jerryettes are doing more and more forward work here than earlier in the year. I wish I had some digital musicologist on hand to check arrangements and quantify these things, but all I can go on is my impression. I don't think it's just the tape. The arrangements seem to invite the ladies to be more involved and more audible. Melvin Seals, for his part, is playing electric piano, organ and synth here. As with vocals, I don't have any firm baseline data around Melvin's instrumentation. I wish someone would dig into this stuff so I don't have to - when was he playing synth? Anyway, there's just tons of range on display here, lots of colors and textures and tones.

Here are a few song-centered bullet points to illustrate some of the wide spectrum of highlights.

Mission In The Rain: Hunter called this one of the only explicitly autobiographical songs he wrote for Garcia, and being at the SF Civic, right downtown across from the library, late in the year (solstice or a day off of it), Jerry definitely sounds nostalgic. His guitar work is contemplative, gentle, very soft and round and comforting. He picks out his words carefully. Beautiful.

Señor, Throw Out The Lifeline -> Let's Spend The Night Together: Garcia displays huge emotional range across these three tunes. The nautical themes of the first two connect them to Mission in the autobiographical sense, young Jerry having spent a chunk of his childhood at his mom's waterfront bar, "where the sailors all come in", soaking in the gin-and-cigarette scented salt air and their wild and wooly tales of the sea. They also unify in dark imagery, with Dylan's wicked wind necessitating Edward Uffin's lifesaving action (h/t Allen):

Throw out the life line to danger fraught men,

Sinking in anguish where you’ve never been;

Winds of temptation and billows of woe

Will soon hurl them out where the dark waters flow

They part ways tonally, though, and again this gives expression to the post-Brent Jerry Band, the dark Armageddon of death that we all confront leavened by the lived realities of at least local and temporary salvation, not least through music. The song lilts along pleasantly enough, bringing a little bit of redemption. And my goodness, the music that follows! Garcia absolutely cuts loose on this version of LSTNT, with some absolutely huge, raging guitar. I used to think this was the BOAT version, but on this listen it didn't strike me that way. It seems like it was just great in this period, as my notes from a month earlier, 11/21/90, remind me. The relentlessness of his attack here certainly speaks to ongoing vitality - check it out.

So much for set I. As I noted above, set II clocks in at almost 90 minutes, which is pretty dang amazing, but the quality matches the quantity quite nicely.

The Way You The Things You Do: the Temptations' 1964 original of this sweet little piece clocked in around three straightforward minutes. As I first observed in listening to 11/15/90, the band seems to have extended the arrangement in this period, giving it a big open part that, if this were the GD or Jerry had other aims for his side band, could very well have segued into something else. Indeed, I nominated that version for BOAT consideration, but now, having heard this one from a month later, think 12/22's is even better. That one went out about 7-8 minutes in, this one I really noted it decoupling a minute or so later. But these versions would be worth comparing, others from this period will bear paying attention to, and I would *love* for someone to compare what they are doing here with how it played out earler in the year. I note that the 6/12/90 version clocks in as long as this one, but I generally find that show and the next night to be very sluggish, and I specifically noted this tune as "low energy". It's not fast here, not at all, but it's rich and deep and interesting.

Tore Up Over You: Few songs invoke the imagery of young Jerry, inspired by older brother Tiff, listening to (Black) R&B-cum-rock 'n' roll on the Oakland and SF AM stations in the 1950s than this Hank Ballard number. It wormed its way into his DNA and operated just as systematically on his playing. And here he plays some seriously shredding electric guitar that can reach back in time to melt the conformist shackles of Eisenhower's (White) America. You can hear the joyful transgression, the wide freedom he has to play what he wants, and loud! Ballard's version came out in '56, and I have little doubt but that it caught young Jerry's ear early on, and that he at least noodled it when he got his first electric guitar two years later. I don't know any of that, but you can't prove it didn't happen, so there.

Don't Let Go: always a highlight. This version interests me. When he brought it back in '88 it was a punchy 8-9 minute treat. I think it would run over 20 minutes again within the next few years. It's in Goldilocks-land here, 15 expressive minutes. Melvin's synth really colors it beautifully early on, at 4:45 Garcia doubles the vocals and guitar very precisely and totally uniquely, showing great intention, and it starts getting a little weird already 6 minutes in, Ballard giving way to Coltrane, with a dose of Kesey/Owsley for good measure. Kemper is such an amazing drummer, and things keep bouncing until about 9, Garcia pedals in some effect, and we are fully unmoored for awhile, but not super long. At 10:26, it returns to structure, but not the DLG melody, per se, alluding to it while still out melodically. (I am not sure I am using the right words here.) He spends some time in that space and drops into DLG at 13, closing these particular proceedings. Nice.

On almost every other night, at this point we'd get one more song. Here, we get two, and while I can often make mountains out of molehills, I want to really emphasize that I think this is highly informative. Autopilot would have taken him to Midnight Moonlight. An alternate flight path would have been straight to Tangled Up In Blue. Instead, we get a little "Struggling Man", again giving perfect expression to the emotional tenor of the evening - it's hard, but we keep going. Saying good night after Tangled Up, he sounds absolutely wiped out, and justifiably so. Man gave is all this night. Thank you, Jerry!

Man, what a show! Two snaps up, with a swirl. Listening notes below the fold.

Carl Lockett and the Side Trips Social Network

Preface: Reconstruction #2

Jerry Garcia's commitment to Reconstruction never seemed total, a big problem if you're John Kahn, first, and then Merl Saunders, looking to reboot the lucrative Garcia-Saunders-Kahn Fantasy Records franchise. It's no good if the G is wobbly, because "multiracial dance and jazz band with a rotating cast of Bay Area guitarists, including perhaps Jerry Miller or some other hot player who is not Jerry Garcia" may be a fine concept musically --Reconstruction was a frequently hot and risky enterprise-- but a tough sell, not least on evidence of its short, sociometrically-turbulent, falls-off-a-cliff tenure.

Sometimes, and at some point, Reconstruction happened without Garcia. Corry's canonical "Jerry Garcia Band Personnel, 1975-1995" listing (bookmark it!), sociometric data handbook of a big chunk of the historical Garciaverse, catalogs that outfit "Reconstruction #2":

First show-August 4, 1979 Keystone Palo Alto
Last show-September 29, 1979 Keystone Palo Alto

! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - organ, keyboards, vocals;
! lineup: Ron Stallings - tenor sax, vocals;
! lineup: Carl Lockett - guitar;
! lineup: Ed Neumeister - trombone;
! lineup: Gaylord Birch - drums;
! guest: Jerry Miller - guitar, vocals (for a few shows, presumably in place of Lockett).

Corry notes "It's possible that the last date was actually September 4 in Bolinas, but I am not pursuing that subject in this post", so let me go ahead and ask him for the "short version" in comments. :)

Introduction

My purpose in this post it to drop a few Carl Lockett crumbs I have come across, building up and working around and through a little node in the Side Trips Social Network. Carl Lockett orbits the Garciaverse at one remove, as far as I know. They never shared a stage or an album credit, but they alternated or sequenced as guitar players with Reconstruction. As it happens, they also have a lot of shared ties to others, and I can use this as a case study to map some triadic closure in a little piece of the network topography.

Carl Lockett: Profile

From a little profile I just came across:

Carl Lockett is a Bay Area legend. A musical child prodigy, Carl started out as a drummer, then went to the guitar. By the age of 14, he was playing gigs around the Bay Area, even opening for the legendary Redd Foxx's comedy shows. For over 4 decades, he has made a name for himself in the music industry ... Carl has played live, and on studio albums with Chuck Mangione, Randy Crawford, Jimmy Smith, Joey DeFrancesco, Hank Crawford, Jimmy McGriff, Plaz Johnson, Tammy Terrell, Esther Phillips, The Platters, The Ink Spots, Big Mama Thornton, Jackie Wilson, The Drifters, Papa John Creach, Brook Benton, Dakota Staton, The Coasters, Bill Summers, and David Ruffin. His complete mastery of his instrument and his class and talent, has had him in diverse settings, ranging from a perfect third in a traditional organ trio (touring with Jimmy McGriff and Jimmy Smith), to sitting in for Jerry Garcia when Jerry was unable to make a gig with David Grisman.

In descending order of frequency/intensity of crossings with Jerry this population would sort to Grisman, then probably Papa John (at least a few crossings) and, at the level of shared billings, Big Mama Mae Thornton. Note, at a remove, Jimmy Smith, with whom I believe Merl Saunders studied and/or played. (BTW, note the presumed error in Lockett standing in for Jerry - it was almost certainly not with Grisman, but with Reconstruction.)

Carl Lockett Discography

Discogs identifies 16 credits, which bring out all kinds of stuff. Let me pick some stuff out from across the credit chronology there.

First, Carl Lockett's earliest credit is Walter Hawkins And Selah ‎– Walter Hawkins Selah (Fantasy ‎– 9410, 1972. Merl Saunders and Tom Fogerty produced the record at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, and Garcia was around - he shares a few credits with Walter Hawkins and the Hawkins Singers (notably on The Group's 1973 Fantasy, Fire Up, catalog 9421).

Second, astute readers will recall that Merl Saunders' ‎ Do I Move You (Crystal Clear Records ‎– CCS-5006, 1979) was mostly comprised of tunes associated in the Garciaverse with Reconstruction, but as Corry has pointed out in comments it did not come after Garcia and Kahn had bailed on the project, but at the front end, recorded just four days after Reconstruction-with-Garcia's debut in late January. So this suggests that Merl brought these tunes into the band, rather than taking them out, as I had surmised.

Recall that John Kahn founded and owned Reconstruction. It meant a lot to him, as I have described in "Risky Reconstruction":

He seems to have had real ambitions for Reconstruction. He saw it as a kind of update to the Garcia-Saunders-Kahn-et-al group which had sold (and continues to sell!) so many records for Fantasy. The outfit would be rebuilt, playing some of the stuff that John had picked out for Jerry's 1974 Compliments of Garcia (Round RX 102, June 1974), notwithstanding that the latter hadn't sold enough to make Round Records viable, some more nightclub numbers and Merl vocals, a beautiful batch of Latin and other jazz, drop some disco danceability and play the black sinner music that John loved so much.  Reconstruction was aptly named, the mixing and mingling of old and new players and materials.... "I want it to last," [Kahn said]. "We're a serious band, and I want it to stay together" (Brown 1979).

Eventually, though, Merl goes from bringing stuff to the table in a partnership to seemingly owning the band. When and how did this happen? I am not really sure. I have a listing for Reconstruction, subtitled "Merl Saunders and Friends", at Frenchy's in Hayward on Monday, 9/3/79; that seems a strange way for John's band to be advertised. The Keystone Berkeley gig on Saturday, 9/22 was demonstrably the original Reconstruction, with Jerry and John, albeit with guest. A week later Reconstruction is booked into the same room, a Saturday night, which means that somewhere Freddie Herrera came to think that Jerry would be present. Yet there are good reasons to doubt he was, since the show never entered The List and the collective memory it inscribes - not impossible, but unlikely. I would infer that around or by 9/29/79 Jerry and John had walked away, and were probably already working stuff up with Ozzie Ahlers (keys) and Johnny D (drums) for the next Jerry Garcia Band.

I pretty much figure that Jerry and John bailed between Saturday 9/22 and Saturday 9/29. John must have assented to Merl taking the name, and he could afford to, given that he had already won the much more lucrative Garcia Loyalty Sweepstakes, a freaking lifetime lottery ticket, John's decisive victory over Merl for control of the Golden Goose. Just a hunch, of course. In November, Merl undertook an east coast tour with a hornless aggregation of name unknown to me (Merl Saunders - keyboards, vocals; Andre Goosland - Guitar; Tony Saunders - Bass; Jay David - Drums; Pamela Rose - Vocals), working a bunch of the same material, but no sign of the name. On 11/29/79 there's a band called Reconstruction playing Rancho Nicasio in West Marin, and then nothing again as far as I can find.

Here are the discog credits for Do I Move You:

Alto Saxophone, Flute – Martin Fierro
Arranged By – Mark Isham, Merl Saunders
Backing Vocals [Background] – Bernetta Rand, Frances Pye, Lynette Stephens Hawkins*, Sherlene Hall, Tramaine Hawkins, Walter Hawkins
Bass – Tony Saunders
Directed By [Technical] – John Meyer
Drums – Larry Vann
Guitar – Carl Locket*
Lead Vocals, Keyboards, Electric Piano, Organ, Clavinet, Synthesizer, Effects – Merl Saunders
Mastered By – Larry Van Valkenburg
Mixed By [Live] – Pat Malonie
Percussion – Kenneth Nash
Producer – Ed Wodenjak, Merl Saunders
Producer [Associate] – Tom Wiggins
Tenor Saxophone – Pee Wee Ellis
Trombone – Ed Neumeister
Trumpet – Mark Isham

Third, after more funk and soul, Lockett again worked for Walter Hawkins on I Feel Like Singing (Light Records ‎– LS-5789, 1982), which includes a couple of Tony Saunders credits (A3-"Do Your Best"; B4-"Try What You May") and rhythm tracks by future 14-year Garcia Band keyboardist Melvin Seals.

Wow.

So, into the Garciaverse, through this node and at this resolution, enters Melvin Seals, who enjoyed the third-longest continuous musical relationship with Garcia, after the Grateful Dead and John Kahn. We also cross Martin Fierro (many dozens of shows with Garcia 1973-1975, and once again on 7/16/88), Tom Fogerty (a few dozen shows with Garcia 1971-1972), Tony Saunders (played with Garcia probably at least a handful of times ca. 1974-1975), Larry Vann (probably shared a stage a time or two with Garcia at The Generosity in 1975, in Merl's band), and Mark Isham (suspected but not established shared stage and probably some shared credits lurking around). The Side Trips Social Network is a small world.

Fourth, Elvin Bishop makes an appearance on Lockett's credits in 1995.

Bishop was present at the Big Bang of the Garciaverse, the Dawn of a particular Man, the portal that opened to become Garcia's name-claiming journey, the 5/21/68 Carousel Tuesday Night Jam, on a cheap handbill on which, right in the eye's spot, we find "Jerry Garcia" billed, an sich, for the first time in the Grateful Dead Era.

Bear recorded it, and, amazingly, the recording circulates freely among fans (shnid-22727). According to Rhoney Stanley (2013, 157-163), Elvin, nicknamed "Pigboy", also provided visual inspiration for the purple pig that Stanley Mouse used to advertise the Carousel Tuesday Night Jams. update: Stanley Mouse says that the visual inspiration for the purple pig was none other than LBJ.

You'll recall that Elvin sat-in with the Hartbeats at the Matrix on October 30, 1968, subbed for him with the Grateful Dead on June 8, 1969 --which, along with August 1, 1969, present the only known times that the Grateful Dead played without Garcia-- and called Garcia onstage for a number to soothe a sunstroked crowd in the football stadium of beautiful UC Santa Barbara on June 4, 1978 . I am sure it's just a coincidence that this was a decade to the day since the June 4, 1968 Tuesday at the Carousel when they jammed together into the night and entered the light of day witness to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, and a man found his country "fated to keep spinning out of control, down some grim spiral to madness".

Speaking of which, Jerry Garcia and the aforementioned Melvin Seals, who played many hundreds of times together, first did so on that same sunny Santa Barbara afternoon in 1978, when old pal Elvin induced an already opiated-coked-hermetic Garcia to step out and play on his call-to-fun "Right Now Is The Hour" (not, I do not think, as some reports have it, "Goin' Fishin'"), one of the very few times Garcia sat-in with anyone in the hazy decade that bounced lazily and weaved wildly out from the Bicentennial. (Warren Zevon was apparently little better off, guzzling Stoli, heckling the crowd as a bunch of acid casualties, and reportedly booed off that same stage not long after.) I don't have the personnel down, entirely. There were three guests on this tune: Garcia, Chuck Cochran, talented lead guitarist of the Santa Barbara reggae band called Wha-Koo, which had opened the show,and that same band's singer Dave Palmer, joining Elvin band members Jerry McKinney on saxophone, Johnny Vernazza ("Johnny V") on guitar, plus a bassist, Elvin and, perhaps, Melvin Seals. (Keyboards could have been manned by Bill Slais during the Garcia sit-in, but it is not clear -- see Corry.)

Conclusion

Well, here we are. This began as a question about Carl Lockett, and it became a little stroll through aspects of Georg Simmel's notion of triadic closure in social networks, here that two people who have crossed (or nearly done), are also more likely to have crossed some of the same others. It's amazing how bound up these networks really are, so that even though Lockett and Garcia never formally crossed, they are still woven from, into and through patches of the same cloth.

Color: January 12-25, 1972 Night Times listings

Here are some listings from the Night Times, with a few scattershot thoughts.

1) The Berkeley Night Times is a gem.

2) It's especially good re: race.

The range of clubs it covers exceeds most other sources - you've got the country clubs, the rock clubs, the black soul/R&B/gospel clubs, the Latin clubs, a little bit of the crooner set, a little of everything. I think I have noted, and Corry and I have certainly discussed so he may have noted, as well, the racial disparities in our work, derived in part from the material fact of the source materials we use. The white college kids and hippies going to the Longbranch, to say nothing of the martini set at the Circle Star, probably generated more paper, and certainly more enduring (i.e., filmed, digitized) paper, than did the folks getting their gospel on at the On Broadway or one of the Oakland rooms. Night Times had informants seemingly quite consistently across a wide set of sociocultural (and hence musical) strata - valuable stuff for future researchers who might want to look at how race played though all of it.

3) Some foreground, and not just color: JGMS 1/14-15/72

There's also a piece of foreground for me, in this listing. Garcia-Saunders have the January 14-15, 1972 weekend at Keystone Korner, still a Freddie Herrera joint.

I have done up some listening notes for the delightful tape of the Saturday show. It's the only tape fragment between 9/25/71 and 2/6/72, and it's worth a listen - very sweet, indeed.

And yet, as I continue to p.6 (looks like their ads expanded and so did their listings around late 1971, after maybe two months), I see JGMS listed for the same nights at the Lion's Share.

A Jerry Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

To recap, there are four pieces of contemporary evidence, of uncertain independence (relative to each other, including relative to some common prior cause).

1. listing: Hayward Daily Review, January 13, 1972, p. 35:  Jerry Garcia and Friends at Keystone Korner;
2. listing: Night Times, January 12-25, 1972, p. 5: Jerry Garcia and Merle [sic] Saunders at KK;
3. listing: Night Times, January 12-25, 1972, p. 6: Jerry Garcia, Merle [sic] Saunders and Tom Fogerty at Lion's Share
4. http://etreedb.org/shn/8644, the circulating audience tape says KK.

Based on a preponderance of the evidence standard, I'll go with KK, but I am open to arguments either way.

4) Stoned Sunday rap info?

Joel Selvin or someone at Night Times drops this tidbit into the listing: "fresh from being interviewed by Charles Reich and Jann Wenner (whew!)". I need to check when the Rolling Stone piece, because he might be reacting to its published length. Otherwise, I wonder if this is a scrap from telephone game that helps us pin down the dating of this event? Here's a scenario: Garcia talks about how long these stoned raps were, or he mentions it to Freddie, Freddie tells Selvin over the phone and they have a chuckle about it, it's good fresh banter if the interviews just took place. Could have happened. That'd put the rap (or is it raps? I can't recall) sometime between Christmas 1971 and the second week of January 1972.

update: JGMF, "Signpost to a New Space and Stoned Sunday Rap - Dates"

5) What Would You See?

Lots of great music happening in the Bay Area during this fortnight. Besides the Garcia stuff, I don't know what I'd pick, if I had to pick one. Doc Watson would be good. The George Duke Trio gig at El Matador is tempting, I wonder who was in that band? You'd be deaf for a week after that synth assault.

6) Other Notes

Gideon and Power always intrigues because I have it in my head that Melvin Seals was part of the band (Power) at some point. The Night Times has some cool little asides about Gideon, who seems to have been quite the showman with his "hard-driving gospel soul".

The aside about Malo is also interesting, because it brings the Latin scene into focus. The band had gotten and/or would get lots of press, as part of an exploding Latin scene in San Francisco that had Carlos Santana's fingerprints all over it. Malo was a sort of supergroup with all kinds of hot players. The listing blurbs it as "a local big band that is fronted by Carlos Santana's brother Jorge and that has a Warner's album scheduled for release this month". I have some other 1971-1972 listings and such to go through and Cesar's Band at Cesar's Club, Luis Gasca, the percussionists Armando Peraza and Mongo Santamaria, and all kinds of other maniacs were tearing up the clubs. This whole scene feels very heavily fueled to me.

7) "All the beer you can drink"

One last piece, another piece of Fred Herrera color, as he is getting the New Monk, which would become Keystone, up and running at 2119 University in Berkeley. Ever the entrepreneur, the deals sound great: Clover is the regular band on Monday night, $1 and free food; Doobie Brothers on Thursdays, $2.50 and all the beer you can drink. Forget the still-scrappy Doobies, "all the beer you can drink"? I am on that.

I sing the blues, where has it led?

LN jg1983-05-31.jgb.all.aud-vita.76578.flac1644

On Tuesday, May 31, 1983, the Jerry Garcia Band (#15c) lit up an SRO West 52nd Street institution, the venerable Roseland Ballroom, with one of the finest shows of the 1980s.  On any given night, Jerry Garcia could deliver the fucking goods, and this is the fucking goods. Everything crackles. I have titled the post with a line from the show opening "Rhapsody In Red", the big rocker from 1978's Cats Under The Stars that worked beautifully with Jerry's grungy, metallic, 1983 JGB sound. This one is a rip-snorter.

I notice Greg Errico's deep, thudding percussion this night and Melvin being a little tentative. I feel Garcia very much in an R&B space, shaking his sweaty mane and tearing the shit out of several solos. Very high energy show. See notes.

The John Scher Presents program for this night is nothing to write home about, aesthetically. But I'll post scans of the last two pages, with a few comments.

John Scher Presents program for JGB at Roseland Ballroom, 5/31/83-6/1/83, p. 3.

Standard little band bio, of course. But check out these details, some of which hadn't quite stuck in my brain.

MELVIN SEALS | Organ | Has quite an extensive background in Broadway productions having worked on four shows, including " Evolution Of The Blues". Other music talents he's worked with include Oscar Brown, Buddy Miles and Elvin Bishop, as well as Maria Muldaur and Chuck Berry. Melvin is a producer for a company out of Nashville and has produced such Gospel greats as the Hawkins Family. The Martin Luther King television special is one prestigious project he has participated in. Melvin has been with the Garcia band for three years now, and also directs the current female singers in the band.

I have to check this info against what I know. But I found the last line, about Melvin directing the female singers, to be very interesting. I had always assumed that Kahn dealt with arrangements, but this implies a more elaborate (and possibly alternative) set of arranging responsibilities.

JACKIE LA BRANCH | Backup Vocals | A recent addition to the band, she has been mainly singing gospel with the San Francisco Inspirational Choir, and has worked with Maria Muldaur on gospel tunes.
DEE DEE DICKERSON | Backup Vocals | Another recent addition, she has been working with some of the industry heavies for years. Her long list includes Herbie Hancock, Taj Mahal, Pharaoh Sanders, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Both these girls have been a welcome addition to the band and the audience's enjoyment is evident. The ladies are great!

I sure would like to know more about the ladies, and be in touch with them if at all possible. If you know them, please have them be in touch! I'd like to learn more.

Finally, a little piece of capitalism from the back cover:

John Scher Presents program for JGB at Roseland Ballroom, 5/31/83-6/1/83, p. 4 (back cover).

I am sure there had been lots of GD and JGB cross-promotions over the years, but for whatever reason this struck me. I love how, for lack of something else to draw attention to, the ad for the GD's Go To Heaven promotes it on the basis of including "Don't Ease Me In," perhaps the only time in history capitalism managed such a crass feat. The Run For The Roses selections don't look that appealing either, come to think of it. Oh well. Play on, Jerry.

Jerry Garcia Band
Roseland Ballroom
239 West 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019
May 31, 1983 (Tuesday)
Vita flac1644 shnid-76578

--set I (7 tracks, 50:32)--
s1t01. tuning [0:37]
s1t02. Rhapsody In Red [10:17] [0:04] %
s1t03. They Love Each Other
s1t04. That's What Love Will Make You Do ]10:03] % [0:04]
s1t05. Valerie [6:48] [0:04] ->
s1t06. How Sweet // It Is (To Be Loved By You)
s1t07. Run For The Roses [5:00] (1) [0:06]

--set II + encore (8 tracks, 68:33)--
-- set II (7 tracks, 60:44)--
s2t01. tuning [0:15]
s2t02. The Harder They Come [15:16] [0:03] % [0:12]
s2t03. Mission In The Rain [9:28] [0:03] % [0:06]
s2t04. Mississippi Moon 
s2t05. Tangled Up In Blue [12:15] [0:03] %
s2t06. /Gomorrah [5:49] ->
s2t07. Deal [8:25] (2) [0:03] % [0:02]
--encore (1 track, 7:49)--
s2t08. Midnight Moonlight [7:43] [0:06] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #15c
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards (Hammond B-3 organ);
! Lineup: Greg Errico - drums;
! Lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals;
! Lineup: DeeDee Dickerson - vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] 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/19830531-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/4416 (unknown MAC shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/6624 (senn 441 shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/15617 (Cohen shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/76578 (Vita flac1644, this fileset).

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/roseland-ballroom-239-west-52nd-street.html

! band: JGB #15c (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/oGXPs

! R: field recordist: Jim Vita

! R: field recording gear: 2x Sennheiser 421 > Sony D-5 (Maxell UDXLII)

! R: transfer and FLAC encoding by David Minches:

Master played back on Nakamichi Dragon > ART DI/O > Digital Audio Labs Card Deluxe soundcard > Cool Edit 2000 > flac encoding > FLAC.

! R: shnid-4416 note: 04/07/2007, jjoops-garcia: "The cassette flip at the start of Run for the Roses suggests that this could be from Vita's master, though of course it's possible that others besides Vita got caught flipping there. "

! historical: Diamorphine, 2014-04-23 00:35:35: "Saw both shows and still remember being blown away by the Don't Let Go [on 6/1]. The place was hot and packed with people and the music just rumbled inside of you. It's seeing shows like this, with the band just feet away from you, the whole place dancing, made the thought of JGB at MSG or the like totally impossible." http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=571647

! P: s1t02 RIR hot hot hot late 5 acid molten playing, tearing the shit out of it over 6-minute mark. No warmup needed this night - he is fully frothed here. 6:35ish some interesting tone. Very fluid in 6:40 range, hot, tight, fast, sharp, lots of good adjectives for this, over 7. Pulling a little 7:11 ff, more pulling train whistle 7:17. Letting it breathe post 7:30. Man, so nice. On any given night, Jerry Garcia could deliver the fucking goods, and this is the fucking goods. 8:20 churning some chunkier stuff, 8:33, 8:38 pure metal strumming, chunky percussive but shorter pulls interspersed with those earlier longer phrases, 9:08, he's Chuck Berry, signalling back to the song. Seizes the '1' at 9:23 and sings. Wow. That is a masterpiece of a performance right out of the gate.

! P: s1t03 TLEO is not a song I love, but this version is really good.

! P: s1t04 TWLWMYD from 4:45 there is some exemplary playing, then he does some very well controlled pulls around 5:05 and 5:10 - check this out. More energy 5:30, another turn round the bases. 6:05 he steps back and comps, Melvin is a little slow to take the cue. He's playing 6:15ff, but not loud at all. Now 6:30 he does a big B3 swoop. Still super low in the mix, but that could be the tape. See also a similar reaction I have from, when, 8/11/84? Melvin coming in with about a 'C' grade feature. Now louder over 7. There you go, big fella, lean into it, groove to it, loosen up! (Then again, maybe he was tearing it up, but wasn't mixed loud!) 7:30ff Garcia steps up for some guitar playing, playing of the guitar. Hitting real hard over 8, tight and clean and fluid, an extra up 8:15, great tone, and yet another run 8:27ff! Really hot. Everything has something extra this night. Wow. Errico does a big run down 9:21 ish,  hits again 9:34, he's awesome. Gar gives it his best R&B head shake.

! P: s1t05 Valerie the shit Garcia is doing 4:30 is absolutely evil. He lands cleanly on "I ain't afraid of the cold cruel world outside" ... he sounds great. He's really got his R&B-guy-singing-about-his-baby working well this night.

! R: s1t06 HSII some kind of tape nastiness @ 4:10.

! P: s1t06 HSII even this rocks this night! He puts a filter on in the 4-minute range, a little more flavorful tone, and he's really hitting some great notes through the minute mark. Melvin steps up post 5 with his nice HSII solo that he did. Garcia only comes to lead 6:30, and he is awn fiyah. 6:58 more high register work, 7:16 nice pull. He is one with Motown, huge chords 7:30, really loud, loud major chording guitar playing to the "open my eyes at night" @ 7:44. This is a huge performance to this point. Huge. Man, Jerry loved NYC.

! P: s1t07 RFTR I love that he played this extra song. He could very well have called it after that incendiary HSII. But he is not settling on this night. So, tip o' the cap. His voice is starting to sound a little ragged, but his guitar playing is great and the band is very tight.

! R: s1t07 RFTR 0:02 - 0:07 patched (crossfade) from Mark Cohen's master; Nak 700s > Sony D-5.

! s1t07 (1) JG: "We're gonna take for a few minutes. We'll be back in a little while."

! P: s2t02 HTC classic JGB version of this song. Notes shoving each other aside 5:30, another set of scaling runs 6:05ff. Fingers are going a mile a minute. His voice sounds tired, I am worried about some of these tunes coming up.

! P: s2t03 MITR has pep. Good but brief fan @ 7:15

! P: s2t05 TUIB very hot. Garcia puts some big effects on late 7 over 8 and this is rockin'. More big effects 8:39, more a minute later. Very expressive, articulate, powerful guitar work. Still really extending his phrases a minute later, not phrases, sentences, or even mere paragraphs, but whole narratives, hits a great little note 11:07. Wow, this is absolutely rockin'. Errico is BANGING.

! R: s2t06 Gomorrah clips in

! P: s2t07 Deal is also hot. Listen to little run 5:28. Whole band is on, but Jerry is smokin' hot.

! s2t07 (2) JG: "Thank you. See ya later."

! P: s2t08 MM even Midnight Moonlight has it all this night. What a show.

RN Sandy Troy's Captain Trips (1994)

Reading Notes

Troy, Sandy. 1994. Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.

JG devoted to music Troy 1994, xiii

JG was into all kinds of music: folk, bluegrass, country, acid rock, R&B, gospel, jazz. But he never dabbled, he always “plunged in” Troy 1994, xiii

Jose Ramon Garcia emigrated from La Coruna, Spain in 1919 Troy 1994, 1

Ruth Marie Clifford - married 1934  -- 121 Amazon Avenue, San Francisco, in the Excelsior District -- Ca. 1937 Jose’s music career came to an end -- 1937 Jose bought a tavern Four Hundred Club at 400 First Street, corner of Harrison near Bay Bridge (Troy 1994, 2).

8/1/42 JG born at SF Children’s Hospital (Troy 1994, 3)

surrounded by music. Father played clarinet. Mother listened to opera. Maternal grandmother loved country music. Troy 1994, 3

Ruth played piano, JG took piano lessons Troy 1994, 3

87 Harrington Street with grandparents for five years. William and Tillie Troy 1994, 5

Tillie listened to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs Troy 1994, 6

Ruth marries Wally Matusiewicz 1952. Family moved to Menlo Park, 286 Santa Monica Avenue. Troy 1994, 6:: lived in Menlo Park for three years. Troy 1994, 10

aged 13, move back to SF, attend Denman Junior High School Troy 1994, 10-11

Balboa High School Troy 1994, 11

Turned on to MJ at age 15, with a friend Troy 1994, 11

Attending Saturday classes and summer sessions at the California School of Fine Arts in North Beach (beatniks!) Troy 1994, 11-13

heard and liked Big Bill Broonzy. Troy 1994, 13

JG’s first guitar idol was Chuck Berry Troy 1994, 15

Ca. age 15, moved to Cazadero, attended Analy HS in Sebastopol. Played a gig: piano, two saxes, a bass, and his guitar. Won a contest and got to record a song. Did Bill Doggett’s “Raunchy”. Troy 1994, 15

age 17, enlisted in military. Basic at Fort Ord, then stationed at Fort Winfield Scott in the Presidio. Lasted nine months, discharged 1960. Troy 1994, 16

while at Presidio, met a country guitar player who got him into finger-picking. Troy 1994, 17

“it was not in his nature to have several girlfriends at one time.” ST says this lasted until present. “This is a trait that he seems to have maintained to the present … he has been married three times and has had a number of affairs, but when the relationship has been right, he has stuck with it.” Troy 1994, 25

early girlfriend Charlotte Daigle. Her girlfriend Chris Mann dated Hunter. Troy 1994, 25

Charlotte Daigle: “he really did things on his own terms, the way he wanted to, without a lot of concern about what he should do or what people wanted him to do. He listened to his inner voice.” Troy 1994, 26

February 1961 Paul Speegle death. Studebaker Golden Hawk. Jerry had switched places with Paul just before the accident. P. 27: JG: “That’s where my life began. Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance. Then I got serious.” And he got serious about music, giving up art. Troy 1994, 26-27 #1961

“He chose music because he liked the interaction with other people that it provided.” Music had other players and an audience. Later on, Garcia would say that “the symbiotic relationship of band and audience was integral to his musical experience, what made it come alive for him” (Troy 1994, 27).

Marshall Leicester got him back into bluegrass. Introduced him to the New Lost City Ramblers. Troy 1994, 28

NLCR. Early influence on Jerry. Troy 1994, 28 Also influenced by Joan Baez (Troy 1994, 29). Summer 1961 Garcia went to see Joan Baez at Palo Alto HS. Troy 1994, 29: Watching her, Garcia noted that he could play better guitar than her. (Corry: The girlfriend in question is probably Phoebe Graubard. http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/03/december-12-1981-fiesta-hall-san-mateo.html?showComment=1300209441338#c4828597825817592833; this in response to ““A friend of mine, who was Garcia’s girlfriend in 1961, recalls sitting with him in the front row of Joan Baez’s concert at Palo Alto High that summer. He watched Baez intently, saying ‘I can do that! I can beat her technique.’” Kahn, Alice. 1984. Jerry Garcia and the Call of the Weird. West (SJ Mercury News) (December 30), pp. 14-17, 20-22. reprinted in Dodd and Spaulding 2000, pp. 196-203), quote from p. 202 of the reprint. Dodd, David G., and Diana Spaulding. 2000. The Grateful Dead Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/03/december-12-1981-fiesta-hall-san-mateo.html?showComment=1300209154277#c7489269821427829383

summer 1961, Garcia met David Nelson at Kepler’s. Troy 1994, 30

September 1961 JG goes to see Monterey Jazz Festival. NB 9/22-23-24/61. JG went two days with Charlotte Daigle. Troy 1994, 34

summer 1962, Jorma meets him at a place called the Folk Theatre, on First Street in San Jose (became the Offstage). Troy 1994, 38

Hart Valley Drifters Troy 1994, 41

another girlfriend, Diane Huntsberger, classmate of Daigle’s. Then Sara Ruppenthal, also Paly HS. Troy 1994, 46

Heather born 12/8/63. Troy 1994, 48

GD split into two camps: Gar and Lesh more improvisational, Weir and Pigpen on the other side, more structured and song oriented. Troy 1994, 119

“to play the music that he had decided on, Garcia formed the group Mickey Hart and the Hartbeats”. Troy 1994, 120

TC: “Mickey Hart and the Hartbeats was a period of time when Garcia and Lesh were into a more extended improvisation trip, which was exactly what Weir and Pigpen were less into.” Troy 1994, 121

“The Hartbeats was an interesting side trip for Garcia, but it wasn’t enough by itself to hold his attention.” Liked the GD dynamics. “However, the short break opened his eyes to the advantages of playing with other musicians when his schedule would allow it, and in 1969 he began doing more of that. This extracurricular performing allowed Garcia to scratch his musical itches in a way – he could play music he liked that the Dead didn’t ordinarily do, and he could try out new instruments and new techniques.” Troy 1994, 121

TC was brought in as part of the GD’s move toward more experimentation. Troy 1994, 122

LAG strike, 8/1/69. Garcia couldn’t cross the picket line because of his union sympathies, inherited from his grandmother. When asked why he didn’t cross, he told McNally: “My grandmother.” Troy 1994, 126

JG credited CSN with helping the GD’s vocal harmonies. Troy 1994, 133

JG: “I play music because I love music, … and all my life I’ve loved music.” Troy 1994, 135

“one of his joys was simply putting together an impromptu group, finding a willing watering hole, and filling the space with music. He explained ‘I’m a total junkie when it comes to playing. I just have to play. And when we’re off the road I get itchy, and a bar’s just like the perfect opportunity to get loose and play all night.” Troy 1994, 141

“he clearly preferred playing with other musicians in front of an audience. ‘Rather than sit home and practice, scales and stuff, which I do when I’m together enough to do it, I go out and play because playing music is more enjoyable to me than sitting home and playing scales.” Troy 1994, 142

Merl signed with Fantasy Records in 1965. Troy 1994, 143

PERRO as cross-pollination. Troy 1994, 145

“Another reason for Jerry to spend time away from the Grateful Dead was that he could work out his own personal musical dreams that the other members of the band might have stunted.” Togotigi. Troy 1994, 146

JG got $10k advance for the Stinson Beach house, paid by the solo album. Troy 1994, 147

6/30/72 was Fred Herrera’s swan song at Keystone Korner. Troy 1994, 153

9/22/72: “Playing with Saunders meant so much to Garcia that he even flew back from New York in the middle of a GD tour to play a benefit concert with him at BCT on September 22 [1972].” Troy 1994, 153

Rakow’s plan in So What papers approved on 4/19/73. “In April 1973 Grateful Dead Records was set up, co-owned by all the voting members of the organization, with Rakow as president and general manager. A second label, Round Records, owned fifty-fifty by Garcia and Rakow, was set up to [156] handle solo projects” (Troy 1994, 155-156)

OAITW Troy 1994, 158

JG quotes (maybe from splendor in the bluegrass or something) early 1973 re OAITW: “we got together a little over a month ago, started playing, and then decided, ‘Shit, why don’t we play a few bars and see what happens?’ We’re thinking about finding a fiddle player and then doing some of the bluegrass festivals this summer. … That’d be a lot of fun.” NB the “Bluegrass at Grisman’s” thing confirms that this is more or less exactly how it happened! Troy 1994, 158

“In 1972 and 1973, the Garcia and Saunders Band did three albums for Fantasy Records –Heavy Turbulence, Fire Up, and Live at Keystone.” Troy 1994, 159

JG is the one who pushed Merl to sing! Merl: “He also got me singing. We’d come off a tour and he’d say, ‘Man, you gotta help me out singing.’ I didn’t think I could sing, but I figured if Jerry could sing, I could sing. … That’s how I started singing.” Troy 1994, 160

re GD hiatus. JG: “It had turned into a thing that was out of our control, and nobody was really doing it because they liked it. We were doing it because we had to.” NB solo stuff would always more or less be in his control. Troy 1994, 167

airport porter: “Oh my God, what kind of band is this? You’ve got a hippie [Garcia], a black guy [Saunders], a white guy [Kahn], an Indian [Fierro] and a Super Fly [Humphrey, who dressed in sharp flashy colors].” JGMS Mention of Golden Bear shows, October 1974: “sold-out house” Troy 1994, 168

The “Imagine” story, per Merl: Fall 1971, “I was at Fantasy Records that fall with Garcia, Tom Fogerty, John Kahn and Bill Vitt to record my album. This guy at the studio had a promotional copy of the record.” This is consistent with them playing it September 1971. Troy 1994, 169

no details on end of LOM: “in the summer of 1975 the two musicians decided to go their own way.” Troy 1994, 169

Deborah Koons. JG had met her in Cincinnati during a tour (December 1973?). Troy 1994, 170

“The majority of Garcia’s third solo LP, Reflections, was also recorded at Weir’s studio in 1975.” I don’t think so – His Master’s Wheels. Troy 1994, 173

Jerry Garcia Band. Troy 1994, 175

Keith and Donna join JGB. Kahn: “Keith lived over on Paradise Drive [in Corte Madera], and we used to play over there all the time. He had a room downstairs that was set up so we could just go in and play … we’d get together just about every night and [176] play. … We had Dylan songbooks and we’d do stuff like play everything from Blonde on Blonde. Then we’d do all sorts of Beatles songs. It was great.” Troy 1994, 175: 1975,

“Playing with this group [JGB] was like sitting in a favorite old easy chair for Garcia. He claimed, ‘I haven’t been as happy with any little performing group since Old and In the Way in terms of feeling this is really harmonious.” Comfort, JGB as harmonious. Contrast with GD: challenge, dissonance. Troy 1994, 176

late 1978, Jerry’s voice ragged, “a condition exacerbated by the three packs of unfiltered Camels he smoked every day and by his chronic use of central nervous system stimulants.” Troy 1994, 190

Reconstruction “played primarily black music – funk, jazz, soul, blues and reggae. … But Garcia’s desire to have his own band as a creative outlet was strong”, so we got the Ozzie JGB. Troy 1994, 193

Seals “was suggested to Garcia by Kahn, who had met Melvin through Maria Muldaur. A Bay Area native, Seals had spent much of his life involved with the music of the black Baptist church. … his roots were firmly in gospel music, and he found inspiration in the music of the church. The gospel influence that Seals brought to the Garcia Band was very much to Garcia’s liking” Troy 1994, 199

“Soon after Garcia completed the drug diversion program”, the GD had their 20^th anniversary stuff. Troy 1994, 205

GD played 71 shows, sold out all but six, and grossed $11.5 million in 1985. Troy 1994, 205

Merl says that he was on a beach in the Caribbean, and suffered some kind of heat stroke at precisely the same moment that Jerry was short circuiting (July 10, 1986). Troy 1994, 207-208

more on friends and the coma. David Nelson. Merl: “I started walking with him every day from the house out to the road and back to the house. [211] We started practicing five minutes a day.” Troy 1994, 210

Graham on Garcia wanting to play Broadway: “One month prior [Garcia was] playing five sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden … that’s 100,000 people. For the lead guitarist of that same group to play eighteen shows at a 1,400 seat theater, obviously there’s a desire to do this, not a need to do this. Since the very first day I met him, he has not changed his seemingly unquenchable thirst to just play.” Troy 1994, 223

Blues from the Rainforest began recording March 1989. Troy 1994, 231

Midland “had been fighting a drug problem for more than a year and had been rushed to the hospital when he almost overdosed the prior December [1989].” Troy 1994, 233

Garcia/Grisman earned a Grammy nomination and sold more than 100,000 copies. Troy 1994, 239

JG, ca. 1992: “Ideally I’d have the Dead play two nights a week, play bluegrass two nights a week, and play with my band two nights, and on the other day go to a movie.” That doesn’t seem like too much to ask for! Such simple tastes! Troy 1994, 239

1991, GD grossed $34.7 million. Troy 1994, 245

“for a couple of months in early 1993 Garcia was seeing Barbara Meier … but in the spring he reconnected with Deborah Koons.” Troy 1994, 250.