Dating the September 1971 Lion's Share Gigs

Consider this a throwback post, in that it does what the blog started out doing, and that's just trying to correct and fill out metadata around Garciavents. Here, I argue that the material we know from circulating tapes as 9/24/71 is actually from the next night, 9/25/71, also at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. The post also serves to pin down a third set of music from the four played this weekend, from newly digitized (and, as of today, circulated) tape of what, I argue, should be seen as the 9/24/71 late show.

Tom Fogerty left Creedence Clearwater Revival on February 1, 1971 (Boucher 1972), seeking to escape the domineering shadow of his little brother John and carve out his own musical identity. Around May 26, 1971, he first sat in with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders and their unnamed group, at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. He gigged on and off with them for a year-and-a-half, while also doing all kinds of studio work at The House That Creedence Built (Fantasy in Berkeley). He continued collaborating on Merl's Fire Up into late spring '73 before exiting the Garciaverse. Some of his correspondence with Merl lives in the GD Archives, and from what we can glean he was a sweet and generous guy who was very fond of his labelmate. He continued to play and record through ongoing back problems, fell on some hard personal times, and apparently contracted HIV/AIDS from an unscreened blood transfusion connected with a back surgery in the early 80s. This led to his untimely demise from a tuberculosis infection at the age of 49 on September 6, 1990.

I have yet to come to a clear understanding of my own of the mix of music and commerce (especially, the role of Fantasy Records) in the "Tom Fogerty Era" of the Garcia-Saunders group, partly because, outside studio recordings, so few tapes of them playing live are available to hear. The first pop up almost four months after his arrival, in September 1971, with two widely-circulated sets from the Lion's Share which I will focus on here. After that, the next tape comes June 30, 1972 at the Korner, and then December 28, 1972, again in San Anselmo. That's it - though tape exists of September 20, 1971 at the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati, and December 5, 1972 at the Boarding House in the city, it does not circulate. And, while he figured in some billings early in 1973, it seems highly unlikely that he ever gigged with these guys after 1972. 

We currently list 48 Tom Fogerty events at Jerrybase, we have a few setlists from newspaper reviews and attendee recollections, and now pieces of five shows. Tragically, all of our JB listings are for public events. Fantasy has remained completely opaque in terms of session dates, which I estimate might number in the few dozens from 1970 or 1971 through 1974 or 1975.

As a result of all of this, the little tape that we have is precious. I have spent considerable time with it trying to glean some insight into the Fogerty Era. It's risky to extrapolate much from the little we can hear, of course. But it seems clear that he and Jerry shared a love for 50s R&B numbers such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters' "Annie Had A Baby" (1954), The Four Deuces' "W-P-L-J" (1956), and Jimmy Reed's straighter blues "Baby What You Want Me To Do?" (1959), the latter of which the Dead played a few times but none of which is known to have appeared in any other GOTS configuration. They also played Jesse Winchester's super-sweet "Biloxi" from his 1970 debut, and a bunch of tunes that otherwise seem part of the Garcia-Saunders repertoire of the period, insofar as we can know it.

The Lion's Share gigs on September 24-25, 1971 were well advertised and, in a refreshing change of pace, Fogerty's name preceded Garcia's. Yayyy, Jerry! (We celebrate this because the guy just wanted to play, he didn't need or necessarily want top-billing). Maybe it was just done alphabetically. Anyway, only the Berkeley Tribe specifies early (9 PM) and late (11:30 PM) shows. The ads all identify Jerry Corbitt, Billy Cox, and Charlie Daniels (yes, the one you've heard of) opening, though for some reason Jerrybase currently shows Loading Zone and Congress of Wonders the first night instead of them. Gideon and Power were also on the bill the second night, per the Lion's Share calendar.

My partner David Minches and I have just had the pleasure of working with 1971-1972 Lion's Share soundman Lou Judson to arrange a fresh transfer of these old tapes. The three from this September 1971 weekend present, first, a Sony PR-150 labeled "Friday 24 Sept 71 last 1/2 hr)".

The labeling is confirmed by the end of the recording, where the emcee says "Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty and Bill Kreutzmann. They'll be back tomorrow night, for another two shows, along with Jerry Corbitt and Charlie Daniels. Come back and bring your friends. Thank you for comin', and good night." So this is clearly 9/24/71b. As you will hear when the seed hits the ether, this is distinct music that has never circulated among collectors.

It seems that there probably was a first reel from this night, but, alas, it remains MIA.

But wait, you say - don't circulating filesets already purport to include 9/24/71b? Indeed, they do. But these tapes clearly establish that they are mis-dated, and derive from the second night. Lou's other two reels from the weekend are Sony SLH-180 stock, and clearly labeled "September 25 Saturday '71 first set" and "September 25, 1971 second set".

The material on these tapes corresponds to the material that has long circulated as 9/24/71. But it is actually 9/25/71.

Last thing to do is pin down what we can from the partial setlist for 9/24/71b, and post listening notes from all three sets of material. That stuff follows.

~~~~~

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Lion's Share
60 Red Hill Avenue
San Anselmo, CA 94960
September 24, 1971 (Friday) - Late Show / reel #2
Judson MSR > HD 2022

--end of late show (6 tracks, 5 tunes, 30:28)--
19710924-l-t01. [0:46] Annie Had A Baby [3:21] ->
19710924-l-t02. W-P-L-J [3:48] [1:07]
19710924-l-t03. Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? [5:16] [1:08]
19710924-l-t04. I Was Made To Love Her [7:51] [1:05]
19710924-l-t05. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [5:31]
19710924-l-t06. outro (2) [0:36]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Tom Fogerty - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums.

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/19710924

! db: none in circulation from this date. The following are mistakenly dated 9/24/71, but are actually 9/25/71: https://etreedb.org/shn/4497 (early and late, via Shriver shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/137584 (Reel Master 10inch Master Reel@7.5ips 1/2trk > DAT, via Eaton-Scotton-Miller-SirMick); https://etreedb.org/shn/138213 (raw version of shnid-137584)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/FCaYZGNhk21VzhvF6

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/lions-share-60-red-hill-avenue-san.html

! personnel: NB no bass.

! R: field recordist: Lou Judson

! R: field recording gear: PA line out > Viking 88

! R: field recording media: Sony PR-150 1/4" x 7" @7.5ips stereo (tape "GS6")

! R: lineage: MSR Sony 854-4 playback > Sound Devices 744T (24 bit / 96kHz wav) > editing and mastering by David Minches, July 2022.

! t02 (1) @ 4:27 JG: "No dancing in the Lion's Share. At least - nobody's dancing in the Lion's Share. [inaudible] dancing right around here [inaudible] I don't know [inaudible]

! R: t05 some kind of noise in TNTDODD, not sure if it's tape or equipment

! t06 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot folks. See y'all later." Emcee: "Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty and Bill Kreutzmann. They'll be back tomorrow night, for another two shows, along with Jerry Corbitt and Charlie Daniels. Come back and bring your friends. Thank you for comin', and good night."

~~~~~

Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders
Lion's Share
60 Red Hill Avenue
San Anselmo, CA 94960
September 25, 1971 (Saturday)
Judson MSR > HD 2022

--early show (7 tracks, 6 tunes, 51:56)--
e-t01. Introduction (1) [1:09]
e-t02. Save Mother Earth [11:38] ->
e-t03. Imagine [5:19] (2) [2:28]
e-t04. One Kind Favor [8:45] [1:25]
e-t05. I Was Made To Love Her [9:53] [0:32]
e-t06. Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? [3:47] [0:04] %
e-t07. Biloxi [6:51] [0:06]

--late show (7 tracks, 51:55)--
l-t01. [0:15] Hi-Heel Sneakers [8:36] [1:10]
l-t02. Man-Child [10:21] ->
l-t03. Summertime [10:07] [1:14]
l-t04. That's A Touch I Like [5:47] (3) [1:52]
l-t05. Annie Had A Baby [2:55] ->
l-t06. W-P-L-J [3:17] [0:13] %
l-t07. [0:19] The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [5:40] (4) [0:09]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Tom Fogerty - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - electric bass;
! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums.

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/19710925

! db, mistakenly dated 9/24/71: https://etreedb.org/shn/4497 ("MSR>1C>D etc.", via Ryan Shriver and Danny Metz); https://etreedb.org/shn/137584 ("MSR>DAT etc.", via Paul Scotton and SIRMick); https://etreedb.org/shn/138213 (raw transfer of Scotton DAT). Prior to 8/9/2022, no sources have circulated dated 9/25/71, which is the correct date for this material.

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/FCaYZGNhk21VzhvF6

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/lions-share-60-red-hill-avenue-san.html

! R: field recordist: Lou Judson

! R: field recording gear: PA line out > Viking 88

! R: field recording media: 2x Sony SLH-180 1/4" x 7" @7.5ips 1/4 trk stereo (tapes "GS7" and "GS8")

! R: lineage: MSR Sony 854-4 playback > Sound Devices 744T (24 bit / 96kHz wav) > editing and mastering by David Minches, July 2022.

! e-t01 (1) JG: "Hey - whoever it is that controls the lights, could ya turn 'em down, these ones here? Ahh, yes. Keep it going ... thanks, great. You can turn 'em down even farther ... that's good. [To band] Can you guys see well enough?" Tom: "Oh yeah, for sure." Emcee: Let's have a warm welcome for Jerry Garcia, Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders, and ... friends." JG: "That's, uh, John Kahn and Bill Kreutzmann, are the 'friends'." Emcee: "Thank you." JG: "Don't mention it."

! P: e-t02 SME very slowly paced. @ 7:30 JG pedals in a little wah or whatever that is. Things getting melty in 9.

! e-t03 (2) Tom: "Can we get some beer and apple juice, please?" JG: "And a little bit of light - just the tiniest little bit" [some chuckles].

! R: e-t07 Biloxi patched in from shnid-137584. How it could be complete there and not here is a mystery ...

! P: l-t01 HHS Tom's buzzsaw tone fatigues my ears

! P: l-t02 Man-Child John starts rumbling fantastically in 6

! l-t04 (3) Tom: "Can we please have some beers and, uhh, two apple juices?"

! R: l-t07 TNTDODD in mono

! l-t07 (4) JG: "Thanks a lot. Good night."

Enter Tom Fogerty

update 20230712

I have no idea why I inferred Tom Fogerty saw JGMS at Keystone Korner on 5/20/71. It seems more likely to have been 5/22/71, and his arrival may mark why they made tapes of the next two nights.

Further, I have no idea why I inferred he first joined in Berkeley on 5/26/71, when Tuesday 5/25 is even more likely, based on the "off-night" clause of The Iron Law of Breaking in New Band Members.

So, as of 7/12/2023, I am calling 5/22 the visit and 5/25 Tom's debut.

/update 20230712

A couple of years ago I discovered this youtube content called "Goodbye Media Man", featuring video of Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders, Bill Vitt, various studio engineers and others unknown to me, working on a track by that same title.

Here is the description (published October 9, 2013):

Tom was the original singer of the Blue Velvets and the Golliwogs, both of which evolved into Creedence Clearwater Revival. Tom Fogerty had the chops to be a star in his own right. Within the band (Doug, Stu, Tom and John), Tom was overshadowed by younger brother John, who's talent was clearly evident. "Goodbye Media Man", recorded in 1971, was Tom's first solo single after leaving Creedence. A great track with solid musicianship and hooks. To my knowledge, this is the first time this video has been posted. Tom left us far too soon, passing on September 6, 1990. Back in the day, he was a friend, and I miss him - Ken Levy, Brooklyn NY / Addlestone, Surrey England

Wow.

I continue to be amazed at the material that continues to crawl out of the woodwork. It gives me hope for the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival (GSCBF) film, among many other things. This post will pin down the metadata but also talk about how remarkable is the wealth of material we have available to study, across many different media - and why we get to enjoy that wealth.

Metadata
Location

Appears to be Berkeley, both at Fantasy Studios and at Tom Fogerty's professorial manse with a bunch of kids running around.

Date

The video is only dated 1971. Recall that Tom Fogerty had announced on February 2, 1971 that he was leaving the lucrative Creedence Clearwater Revival over differences with the band's dominant force, his little brother John, and to spend more time with his four children.[1] We also know that the House That Creedence Built, the new Fantasy Studios facility at 10^th and Parker in Berkeley, had come online right around this time. Local journo students Kathie Staska and George Mangrum ("KG") ran an amazingly rich column in the Hayward Daily Review starting in February, and got a tour of the new facility from the one and only Ralph Gleason, now working full time for Saul Zaentz at Fantasy.[2]

KG reported on March 11 that Tom had started work on his solo album.[3] Just after the solstice, on June 24th, KG reported that the record was done and was set for release the next week,[4] also noting that he'd be part of Merl Saunders's band for a release on the same label. On June 29th, Robert Hilburn noted in the LA Times that "Goodbye Media Man" was set for imminent release. So the video presumably features material from this late-winter to early-summer span. Intriguingly, a youtube posting of the "Goodbye Media Man" single associates a date of "the 17th of June 1971" with it:

With all of this, the studio film could come from anywhere between March and June, but I strongly suspect that the home material is from closer to June, as the single neared or achieved completion. Update: John Wasserman mentioned that Tom was cutting "Goodbye Media Man" in his Chronicle column of June 21st, so this is very much in the nearing-completion stage - right around the solstice.

Forging The Garcia-Fogerty Connection

Our Hero comes up in the interview, and I think this comment sheds some light on the Tom Fogerty version of the Garcia-Saunders band.[5] Tom says

I only want to jam around right now and perform with as many people as possible. I’ve learned more about music this last month [i.e., May-June] from meeting other people than during the whole time while I was with Creedence ... One night, I just happened to go over to Keystone Korner. Merl Saunders had invited me over to hear him and Bill Vitt and Jerry Garcia, and within a week I was up on the stage with 'em. And, uh playin' with 'em, and at that point I decided that that was ... the kind of music that I wanted behind the song. It was within about three days that the thing came together with Merl.

When might this have been, exactly? Let's investigate. Jerry and Merl had played the following Keystone Korner gigs from the first Freddie Herrera - Jerry Garcia Joint through mid-1971:

Table xxx. Garcia at Keystone Korner, 11/25/70-6/16/71. Follow this link for a more complete table of Garcia's Keystone Korner gigs. Click image to enlarge.

Tom's narrative and the overall evidence best fits Tom having seen JGMS on 5/20/71,[6] and sitting in with them on Wednesday 5/26/71. This frame fits "within a week" from Tom's filmed reckoning, and I am pretty confident about the interval, if not the specifics. "Three days" from Tom is a little unclear to me, certainly could suggest it was other nights than the ones I pinpoint. So, why these?

This is going to get really convoluted, and, despite my best efforts, I assume it will be somewhat hard to follow. You can just take my word for it, or you can try to follow me into the data.

First, there is tape of 5/20/71 and 5/21/71, the first out of the Garcia Vault and the second locked away there until its 2020 release. May 11, 1971[7] and these tapes represent the earliest-audible Garcia-Saunders performances (perhaps as many as eight months after they started gigging![8]), and they precede a four-month gap that audibly ends when Lou Judson becomes the second Marin County soundman to run PA tape of The Group in late September. The 5/20/71 tape escaped into the world because Garcia had it amongst his stuff when, ca. Christmas 1975, MG threw him out of Sans Souci --on which the couple had closed on ... May 5, 1971!-- and he shuffled off to Deborah's for the first time. Debbie took possession of the tape, someone found a way to copy it, and now anyone can hear it.

Second, I submit that the fact that Jerry had this tape amongst his personal stuff is not innocent with respect to the very question we are considering. I think he had the tape "pulled", either initially recorded or pulled out of wherever most of his tapes were kept, or both, precisely so Fogerty could give it a listen. We know the Dead were in the habit of pulling recent tapes to prepare their incoming members, e.g., the "Houseboat Tapes" of August 1971 that they gave Keith Godchaux to listen to. I think Jerry lent it to Tom or dubbed it for him so he could come up to speed with the band and its material.

Third, and with respect to the late boundary, I glean one other possible tidbit of information from the table above, in the advertising patterns. I am almost certainly over-reading this, but the Thursday-Friday-Saturday 5/20-22 run looks like Big Nights - advertised in the Chron, weekend shows, some real buzz. Even Tuesday 5/25 gets a Wasserman mention, which may well have been enough to sell the gig out. But 5/26, Wednesday, gets a measley mention in the Trib's "Bay Sounds" items, which usually ran more toward jazz and soul. Probably a much quieter night for Tom to step up and play some for the first time, dontcha think? I can't adduce all of the evidence here, but it is as close to an Iron Law as exists in the Garciaverse that new players are broken in off-nights, off-the-beaten-path, or both.

Art and Commerce

For Garcia of this vintage, the aesthetics of any musical choice should go without saying. He wanted to play more music with good players than the Dead could afford him (especially in this very fallow period between the closing of the Fillmores East and West). As Corry and I have elaborated, Tom Fogerty advened alongside huge changes in The Group's approach and repertoire, from spacey organ jazz to all kinds of Americana, white (The Band's "Dixie Down", Jesse Winchester's "Biloxi", some good ol' rockabilly), black (Stevie Wonder, Motown, etc. etc.) and everything in between, mostly more or less contemporary stuff. In short, I think Fogerty came in because Jerry wanted to sing some tunes, wanted to bring in more white contemporary, and Fogerty could sing, play rhythm guitar, and bring in some new material. [update: the release of the pre-Tom 5/21/71 Garcia-Saunders gig gives the lie to the idea that it was all space jazz pre-Tom, with white-roots-flavored stuff coming in with him. Dixie Down, Mystery Train and arguably a few others were already in the repertoire. This is a case where fragmentary tape evidence led us {at least me} a little astray.]

But there were almost surely also commercial logics operating here, too. Whether they came from Jerry, from Merl, from Tom, from Saul Zaentz (or Ralph Gleason), and/or others, I can't know. But Fantasy Records stands at the center of this.

Indeed, I want to revise my conjecture above about why the May 20-21, 1971 JGMS tapes were made (and recorded in 4-track, no less). This was long before Rex and then Betty started taping Jerry, so why is there this one pair of shows? I said a few paragraphs ago that it was so Tom could bone up. I think that's half-right – it was so Tom could bone up, and Tom joining this operation cannot be separated from Tom making records for Fantasy, Merl making records for Fantasy, etc. etc. Remember that Merl invited Tom down to the club. He might have had a purpose in mind - say, to make a Group for Jerry that would record on Fantasy and make them all rich, what already wasn't, and them richer what already was. Corry and I have concluded that Fogerty's arrival served a sea change in the Garcia-Saunders aggregation, taking it from space organ to Dylan, Band and Motown numbers. (update: we overstated the discontinuity here. The 5/21/71 show has "Dixie Down", for example.) Why this big artistic shift? Quite possibly, to work up some more commercially viable material than the "out-there" jams they had been doing. Hooteroll? (Douglas 5, December 1971) would cover the space-organ piece of the market for the jazz heads, while The Group could do some white and black contemporary tunes for the dormitory set. It's all made to order, including an eager press. Indeed, two days after writing about Fogerty's upcoming release, our intrepid collegians K and G found themselves at the New Monk in Berkeley, where Tom, Merl and Jerry were holding forth for a standing-room-only crowd, just blocks from Fantasy.[9]

Conclusion

I feel quite confident, though not certain, that Tom Fogerty first sat in with JGMS on May 26, 1971. I also think Fantasy Records was the Prime Mover behind this partnership.

Now, Garcia and Tom did end up on Merl's Heavy Turbulence (Fantasy 8421, 1972), which looks to me like it could have been recorded in 1971, and Fogerty's Excalibur (Fantasy 9413, October 1972) which, though seemingly released later, feels roughly contemporary. Merl's Fire Up (Fantasy 9421, 1973) feels more like 1972, though of course it's pretty hard to say. But Fantasy's big golden goose feast, 1973's Live at the Keystone (Fantasy F-79002), featured the Fogertyless quartet of the aforementioned goose plus Merl and the Kahn-Vitt rhythm section. As best we can tell, Tom left the fold at the end of 1972 after eighteen months with The Group. What happened? I dunno, but I welcome your speculations in comments.

---

[1] “Tom Fogarty [sic] Leaves Creedence,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1971, p. 42.

[2] See also Staska and Mangrum 19710225.

[3] Staska and Mangrum 19710311.

[4] Staska and Mangrum 19710624.

[5] I have written at length around all of this. See "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue" (with Corry Arnold), URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders-at.html; "Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders & Tom Fogerty Sat-Sun, New Monk", URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-merl-saunders-tom-fogerty.html; and "Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders and Friends - June 25, 1971 Keystone Korner", URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/tom-fogerty-merl-saunders-and-friends.html.

[6] See "'JGMS 5/20/71' is probably really JGMS 5/20/71," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-52071-is-probably-really-jgms-52071.html.

[7] See "JGMS: Matrix, May 11-12, 1971," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-matrix-may-11-12-1971.html; "'Hey Merl, you wanna do that tune in 'G'? Get spaced out a little?' LN jg1971-05-11.jgms.partial.aud.28784.flac1644," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/hey-merl-you-wanna-do-that-tune-in-g.html.

[8] "When did Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders first play together?" URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/11/when-did-jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders.html.

[9] Staska and Mangrum 19710701.

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.

Risk and Challenge in the 1970s

Here's a back-of-the-napkin sketch, my subjective assessment, of the musical risks and challenges associated with Garcia's 1970s bands (qua personnel and repertoire) playing black and race-fusion music. So, this includes Wales-Garcia, all of the Jerry and Merl outfits, and all of the JGBs. It excludes NRPS, OAITW, GAMB/GASB (playing mostly white roots music), and the Lagin construct.

I intend this at some rather inchoate meso level. There are incendiary flashes and moments in every period. There are great shows. But that's micro level, and not what I am after here. This is intended as a map, if you will, of the structural constraints posed by players, their skills and shared repertoires.

Happy to receive questions, criticisms, etc.!

Rough chronology.

• HWJG and early JGMS = highest risk and challenge
• JGMS Forgerty era considerably lower. I didn't include the spring '73 influection Tickner and Sarah experiments, basically show it declining monotonically to July '73.
• JGMS Fierro era, an uptick.
• LOM, perhaps a slight downtick.
• An uptick with Nicky. This is mostly a personnel artifact, less so a repertoire one. Basically, I am saying that Nicky could challenge Garcia in ways that Merl could not (any longer?).
• The opiate-cushioned descent down down down, though 1978 is certainly better (and generally at a faster tempo) than the preceding two.
• Reconstruction uptick.

After that, things are fluid on the personnel front, but not so much in terms of risk and challenge. Garcia and Kahn are tweaking the JGB recipe until the advent of JGB #21b in July 1983, which basically endures until both of the principals are, generally, too sick and far gone to care.

Again, comments, criticisms, etc., most welcomed!

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue

[ed: Corry sent me an email about Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix, which turned into a rather elaborate exchange on the subject. One piece of our correspondence involved the tape traveling as 5/20/71. This is some of Garcia's finest playing on tape in any context. I highly recommend that you check it out. I have done a little metadata analysis of the tape and reckon that there's no reason to doubt the David Lemieux-inspired conclusion that it is what it purports to be, and plenty of reason to concur in it.

Corry was stunned at how "out" this material is, sounding more like Howard Wales than Merl Saunders on keys, unmooring totally, in quasi-free jazz style, from the songs. I agreed with him, but, if my metadata analysis is right --and we both think it is-- then it is indeed Merl, and we may need, in my words (pace Bayes), to update our priors.

With Corry's permission, I am posting it more or less as we have it in email, with a few tweaks here and there. I originally planned that Corry would be in black and I would be in blue ("Tasty hemlock!"), but the quoting arrangement seems to work all right. Don't want too much formatting else Blogger will up and walk away on me.

Dialogue below the fold.]

"Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders & Tom Fogerty Sat-Sun, New Monk"

SFC 7/2/71 p. 52

Last year I spun some 1970 and early 1971 microfilm of the San Francisco Chronicle, and found seven new-to-The-List shows in a three-month span. If you follow the blog or scroll down a bit chronologically, you'll see that I have continued to discover more in the 1971-1972 period, and even as far out as 1974. I hope they are all tagged TJS-addition; that's my code for stuff that's new to The List, newly discovered Garcia shows. So long as there is nothing that fills the function of the much-missed Jerry Site, allowing updates from fan research, first-hand accounts, materials, etc., all in a classic List format, it will be especially important to track the bread crumbs that pop up along the way.

So, obviously I am searching these calendar listings and such because I believe there are still shows out there to discover, hiding in plain site on microfilm.

But, this, I never expected to find.

On Friday, July 2, the Grateful Dead played the Closing of the Fillmore West run, Garcia pulling off the rare trifecta of playing with three bands in the same day - the Rowan Brothers, the New Riders of the Purple Sage (NRPS), and the Dead. I need to think hard about when this might ever have happened again; maybe it never did. This night he played from 8:30 p.m. - 3 a.m. (Wasserman 1971).

The Fillmore West events would continue through the Fourth of July. Yet the 7/2 music listings show that Garcia would be otherwise occupied.

"Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders & Tom Fogerty Sat-Sun, New Monk"

It would appear that on July 3-4, 1971, while Fillmore West drew most of the eyes and ears, Garcia-Saunders-Kahn-Vitt and new arrival Tom Fogerty, did some tunes. Without elaborating all of the evidence here, I think Fogerty came in only mid-1971, and maybe as recently as the week before this (i.e., around 6/25/71 or 6/26/71). Fogerty lived in a big ol' Tudor or something in Berkeley, and the New Monk specifically, and working for Freddie Herrera generally (i.e., also at Keystone Korner) seemed to be working out really well. Fogerty would inhabit the Garciaverse for 18 months. The New Monk would become Keystone Berkeley, Garcia's musical home base for more than a decade (see also data).

The Sunday night July 4th show, especially, appeals to my aesthetic - a hot summer night (I haven't actually checked that - could have been cold and foggy) in Berkeley, friends and music for the 4th.  There's something very picturesque to me, very resonant with a une certaine idée de Garcia, about him finding a way, while he could, to take advantage of the fact that the spotlight was elsewhere to just play to the beer and sawdust set. Sign me up!

REFERENCE

Wasserman, John L. 1971. When the Music Finally Stopped. San Francisco Chronicle, July 5, 1971, p. 37.