LN jg1973-05-04.jgms.all.sbd-alligator.31283.flac1644
I. Introduction
Acquisitiveness is a real affliction. Not only is it
unattractive in its own right, but the pursuit of the “unhad” oftentimes crowds
out other, periodically more productive activities. Consider my own pursuit of
Garcia recordings. While I imagine what could be on a tape (real or imagined)
that I don’t have, I could be listening to the great cornucopia that already
populates my many hard drives, analyzing it. Hell, just enjoying it. I am sure
it’s true for any music collector.
Case in point: the
Jerry
Garcia – Merl Saunders (JGMS) shows at Homer’s Warehouse, 79 Homer Avenue, Palo
Alto, CA, 94301 on Friday-Saturday, May 4-5, 1973. We, the collecting community,
are blessed with gorgeous Betty Cantor-Jackson live recordings of these shows. One
of the great, unsung benefactors of the Bit Torrent era, Alligator, dropped a
handful of these Third Batch Betties into the world between 2005 and 2008. (I
have described this a little in my post on
3/9/74.) These included 5/4/73 (
shnid-31283; previously wholly
uncirculated) and 5/5/73 (
shnid-32030;
previously only partially circulated, as part of “Dick’s Gift”, e.g.,
shnid-4502). I have listened to each
tape probably on the order of a half-dozen times, but I have never annotated
them. Preoccupied with all kinds of other things, I can’t sniff out the jewels
that are right under my nose.
Well, I have finally gotten around to annotating these
shows, and boy are they interesting. In guise of a an entry in my
Listening Notes
series on the first show (5/4/73), I’ll try to write some of it up here. After
this introduction, I’ll proceed (II) with the easy stuff: the show metadata
(date, location). Then I’ll (III) insert this into Corry’s narrative about the
commercialization of Garcia on the Side (GOTS). Finally (IV), I’ll talk about
the recording and the show before just dropping a brief summary, references,
and the raw listening notes (V).
II. Metadata
Jerry Garcia – Merl
Saunders [JGMS], Homer’s Warehouse, 79 Homer Avenue, Palo Alto, CA, 94301, Friday, May
4, 1973 and Saturday, May 5, 1973.
There’s no doubt about the metadata. In addition to Betty’s
tapes (and Rob Eaton’s transcriptions of her tape box notations) we now have a
handbill
shared on the Merl Saunders Facebook page and-reposted by Corry, me, and, in its time, at TJS. In terms of the
precise location of the building then known as Homer’s Warehouse, Corry says
it’s correctly (contemporaneously) addressed and mapped on the handbill:
“Homer's Warehouse was located at 79 Homer Avenue, across the train tracks, as
the inset map accurately depicts” (from handbill
picture
caption in his “
Old
And In The Way FM Broadcasts, 1973” post).
YYYYMMDD
|
DOW
|
VENUE
|
STREET
|
CITY
|
STATE
|
ACT1
|
NOTE
|
19730304
|
Sunday
|
Homer's Warehouse
|
79 Homer Avenue
|
Palo Alto
|
CA
|
OAITW
|
|
19730504
|
Friday
|
Homer's Warehouse
|
79 Homer Avenue
|
Palo Alto
|
CA
|
JGMS
|
|
19730505
|
Saturday
|
Homer's Warehouse
|
79 Homer Avenue
|
Palo Alto
|
CA
|
JGMS
|
|
19730518
|
Friday
|
Homer's Warehouse
|
79 Homer Avenue
|
Palo Alto
|
CA
|
OAITW
|
|
19730724
|
Tuesday
|
Homer's Warehouse
|
79 Homer Avenue
|
Palo Alto
|
CA
|
OAITW
|
|
19731003
|
Wednesday
|
Homer's Warehouse
|
79 Homer Avenue
|
Palo Alto
|
CA
|
OAITW
|
|
Jerry Garcia at Homer’s Warehouse, 79 Homer Avenue, Palo Alto,
CA, 94301
I am given to understand that one Andrew Bernstein was like
a younger brother to the GD folks during their time in Palo Alto in the early
60s, took banjo lessons from Garcia and all that. He also ran Homer’s Warehouse
during the early 70s, and wrote a good book,
California Slim, about it. At some point, someone needs to find a steady supply of
listings from Palo Alto (e.g., the
Stanford
Daily?) and chronicle the shows at Homer’s, because I only have a handful
of non-Garcia related dates from the venue based on scattered mentions in,
e.g., the
Hayward Daily Review. I
have found references from 1971-1972, but very few. I’d certainly be curious if
Garcia played there during this earlier period. Anyway, from the GOTS
perspective nothing jumps out at me in terms of patterns (or non-patterns) in
the above data – just a room that he played a few times in 1973, including,
with Merl, the May 4-5 weekend.
III. May 1973 and
the Commercialization of Garcia on the Side (GOTS)
By late 1972, Jerry Garcia has founded the Grateful Dead and
has just or nearly made the monumental decision to take the band “independent” from conventional record labels. He helped found the
New Riders of the Purple Sage (NRPS), which was, by this time, a Columbia
recording artist working on a lucrative album deal. He probably helped
establish Howard Wales’s lifetime financial security with
Hooteroll? It
looks as if
Garcia
leveraged his own commercial appeal to finance a home studio at Mickey Hart’s
barn (and maybe the land and barn themselves) in Novato, which gave rise to
a whole series of albums and associated paydays for a wide range of folks (see,
e.g.,
Corry
on solo contracts). His own solo album,
Garcia (1972), sold well
and bought Mountain Girl the house she wanted for their young family, at
Sans Souci in Stinson Beach. I am
guessing Kreutzmann, who was the only other player credited on that album, also
got a nice payday and maybe a chunk of Marin County land out of the proceeds.
There is lots of success and money sloshing around this
scene. And, in ca. late 1972 – early 1973, Jerry Garcia, thirty years old, is
looking to act substantially, at least in his professional dealings, like a
grown-up. The days of just riding the tiger are over. That’s a young man’s kind
of vocation, anyway. From the rearview mirror, 1972-1975 represent a sustained
effort at stabilizing Garcia’s various musical dealings, an attempt to
construct the equilibrium which would govern Garcia’s musical life from roughly
1976 until his death. The key to this, as to any of our dreams of establishing
and sustaining a fulfilling adult life, is cash flow. “Gotta have enough to
make it all work. Then you can pursue your dreams.” Or so goes the Siren’s Song.
Corry Arnold has mapped this key element in the evolution of
Jerry Garcia’s musical life outside the Grateful Dead, with his analysis of “
Jerry
Garcia Album Economics, 1973-1974”.
Garcia’s
overriding musical imperative, in the GOTS context of 1972-1973, was to have
good local bands that would be around for him to play with when the GD was off
the road. The time when he could just drop in at the Matrix and pickup a
jam session had mostly passed (not least since the Matrix had been shuttered
for a couple of years at this point). He was too busy and too ambitious to play
with random hackers, taking the chance of a deeply subpar musical/performing
experience. It’s like busy people choosing which book to read: some of us try
to read “classics” because the opportunity cost of wasting time on a bad book,
on a lemon, is just too high. So it was with Jerry. He needed guys to be
around, but he needed them to be good. But good guys wouldn’t just wait around
for the Grateful Dead to come home. Garcia needed to offer them “financial
rewards beyond the occasional nightclub payout” (Arnold, “Album Economics”).
For that, in turn, and finally, he needed to make records with them. I still think this is a case of a musical/artistic/creative imperative driving an economic imperative, which would not always be the case.
Such was the lesson Garcia drew, Corry
tells
us, from temporarily “losing” John Kahn and Merl Saunders to Michael Bloomfield
in mid-1972. Corry mostly focuses on the Garcia-Saunders aggregation (
JGMS) in working through this logic.
John Kahn, Corry has laid out, is the
linchpin. Induced through steady gigging income, performing credits and, over
the years, producer credits, John
took care of the musical business of the Jerry Garcia Band.
Kahn hired and fired musicians, organized rehearsals and often helped choose
material. Although Jerry approved every move, of course, without Kahn's
oversight Garcia could not have participated in the Jerry Garcia Band. In many
respects, the Jerry Garcia Band (under various names) was to some extent the
Jerry Garcia and John Kahn Band; if Garcia had not met Kahn he would have had
to be invented.
The same logic applies to Merl Saunders. Jerry clearly thinks very highly of him as a player,
and he likes what Merl does. Merl has outside options, as his diverse musical
career indicates, and as the summer 1972 Bloomfield interregnum pointed out
much, Corry plausibly suggests, to Garcia’s consternation. Merl also has a recording
relationship with Fantasy, and so access to some cash and other resources that
can facilitate record making on the input side (studio time, tape stock) and on
the output side (i.e., a label on which to release stuff, promotions, etc.).
They had already pre-flighted all of this with a series of albums recorded and
released between 1971 and early 1973:
- Merl Saunders, Heavy Turbulence,
Fantasy 8421, recorded ??1971-1972??, released 1972 (re-released as Merl
Saunders and Friends, Fire Up Plus, Fantasy
FCD 7711-2, 1992).
- Tom Fogerty, Excalibur, Fantasy 9413,
recorded ??1971-1972??, released October 1972; see Corry’s
post on this record.
- Merl Saunders, Fire Up, Fantasy 9421,
released ca. April 1973 (Kelly 1973).
At the small price of recording and sharing proceeds from the Garcia/Saunders/Kahn/Vitt
double album
Live at the Keystone
(Fantasy F-790002, 1973), with equal performing and producer credits for the
titular players, and paying John Kahn to produce
Garcia [a.k.a.
Compliments of Garcia] on
Jerry’s
own co-owned label (Round RX 102, June 1974), Garcia’s felt need for steady
band in which to play contemporary black R&B, soul, jazz and funk would be
satisfied, and grounded in newfound financial stability augured by steady album
releases.
But it’s a lesson that travels. As Corry pointed out in his
comments,
the fact that
OAITW
recorded a studio album in March 1973 (Tolces 1973) (unreleased and publicly
unheard to this day) probably relates to this same insight. If you want to play
rural white music (bluegrass, country and traditionals) with hot players,
if you want them around when you get the itch to pick some banjo, then you had
better for a revenue stream for Old And In The Way (
OAITW).
David Grisman and
Peter Rowan gotta eat, pay Stinson Beach
rent/mortgage, and get high, too. It didn’t work out that way –the OAITW album
wasn’t released until 1975, and then was based on live and not studio tapes—but
it was a sensible plan. And, oh yeah, if you want a good songwriter to be
around when the Song Muse visits (or the collector comes knocking), continue
making it worth his while, and put out
Robert
Hunter’s
Tales of the
Great Rum Runners on Round (RX 101, June 1974).
A
good songwriting partner is a rare and valuable commodity, after all. Round Records itself is part of the narrative, of course (need to develop). Finally,
you need a place to play, and all of this rationalization, regularization,
commercialization, etc. found expression in a dense
symbiotic
relationship between Garcia and Fred Herrera, whose
Keystone,
Berkeley may be the venue most played by Garcia, in any band.
In my subheading, I have referred to this as the “Commercialization of GOTS”. This has no
negative connotation in my usage. We could refer to “Monetization” just as
easily, which I would also use neutrally. Either way, or alternatively
formulated, it’s just in the nature of things that we need to find ways to
place pursuit of our dreams on whatever financial (and other real-world) footing
they require (and no more!). We need to use whatever we’ve got in this
connection, bearing in mind, as always, that life involves tradeoffs. It looks
as if Garcia dreamed of (or had settled on, or would soon settle on) being 1) Jerry
Garcia of the Grateful Dead, and 2) having a steady, musically/creatively
competent (if not challenging) band for working out contemporary black music in clubs, and 3) having a steady, musically/creatively challenging band in
which to play "hippie bluegrass" half-traditional half-stoned rural white music.
I have always held the view that he
wished these latter opportunities to be relatively low-key, less focused on
Garcia and more Romanesque where the Dead were nothing if not Baroque. So he needed
them to be successful enough to be self-sustaining, but not so successful that
they became a hassle. This is the tightrope we all try to walk, I'd guess.
This wouldn’t all resolve right away, and certainly, as
ever, not costlessly. In fact, the equilibrium wouldn’t really find full
expression until something like 1976, and that only after massive additional
concessions to reality. Not least, institutionalization and all the rest meant
that some of the dream had to die. Or maybe it was just too much for one guy, maybe the GD piece was just too big to handle with all of the others. Or maybe he lost interest in the concept. Who knows. But, as it happened, the Jerry Garcia Band (JGB) would not only, eventually, merge the musical concerns of
parts II (black) and III (white) of The Dream, but because it bore his name, it
would, albeit at minor scale, reproduce some of the pathologies and Burden of
Being Jerry (Garcia Of The Grateful Dead) (Gans and Greenfield 1996). What we
find in early 1973 is still a less compromised synthesis, in which the dream
remains that all good things might well be able to go together.
All of this is the
context for the Friday, May 4, 1973 JGMS
show at Homer’s Warehouse. Garcia was right in the midst of a moment in which
he was trying to figure out not only what was artistically satisfying (which
had always driven his non-GD musical pursuits), but also what would start
paying some bills (which he had not much considered prior).
Personnel was a big part of that, of course. This show features
the “core quartet” that we should associate with 1973 JGMS (Garcia, Saunders,
Kahn and Vitt), as well as the elusive vocalist
Sarah
Fulcher and almost equally-mysterious
George
Tickner playing second guitar. (This guitarist traditionally been
listed as
Tom Fogerty, but it’s
definitely not, based on my own listen, prompted by Heckstall’s careful
analysis posted at
Workingman’s
Tracker.)
As Corry points out (“Album Economics”), these personnel
variations “were not casual exercises”. We don’t know whether there was already
a Fantasy contract for what would become
Live
at Keystone. What we do know, I think, is that the idea was close to
fruition and that decisions about personnel and other factors were probably
made with a live record in mind. It is hard to arrive at anything other than what Corry
concludes:
“Garcia, Saunders, Kahn and Vitt seem to have been trying out various band
members to see how they wanted to constitute the band, but by June they seem to
have decided on a quartet.”
Sarah Fulcher had been around for a few months (at least January, see my
1/14/73 IOTB post) and I get the sense that she was "in the mix" in terms of the group's thinking around a record. She would continue to appear with JGMS at least into October 1973, and would lay down some vocals for the GD's
Wake of the Flood (Grateful Dead Records GD-01, October 15, 1973). How that all went down, with her not being around for the
Live at the Keystone dates (
July 10, 1973 and
July 11, 1973) remains obscure and puzzling. It's one thing if she dropped out before the record. But her time performing live with the band straddles the record, on which she is absent. Curious.
George Tickner, seems, in some sense, more straightforward. He enters and exits the Garciaverse in the span of something like eight
weeks in March-May 1973. He seems to have gotten a tryout to be part of the recording band, and it seems not to have worked out. It’s not clear where this came from or what the impetus for that decision might have
been. It could be that Tickner decided not to opt-in. Jerry's World could be a
weird, intense place, and it’s not for everyone. He did help found Journey
within a year of leaving, and apparently went on to medical school, so maybe he liked his outside options better. Or maybe
it was G/S/K/V who made the decision because of musical or personality fit or
because, if I have my math right, payday/4 > payday/5. We don’t know. What we know is that the May 4-5
Homer’s tapes gives us a chance to hear him, at length, playing with the band.
While he was billed for
JGMS
gigs at the end of the month at the legendary Ash Grove (May 29-30, 1973),
the existing piece of tape and a contemporary review from those shows reveal no
trace of him. It seems that there were plans (or thoughts) for him to be there,
but that the Tickner-Garcia connection shorted out before June rolled around.
Though they recorded the albums in July as a spare (unfortunately so, from my
perspective) quartet, JGMS was still seemingly trying to add another player
to the mix There's the chronologically-interesting case of
July 5, 1973 at the Lion's Share (five days before the shows that were recorded for the album), which features a mystery trumpet player. Eight days after the Keystone shows, we'd see the
arrival of Martin Fierro on 7/19/73. In that Lion's Share post I said the following, which still makes sense to me:
It’s probably worth noting that Garcia (I presume – could also have been
Merl and/or John) was looking for something more than what he got out
of the guitar-bass-keys-drums quartet setup. Of course there had been
second guitarists, from Tom Fogerty (ca. 1971-early 1973) to George Tickner (ca. spring 1973). Sarah Fulcher
had been around in the first part of ’73 and would appear with
Garcia/Saunders at least as late as October, singing in her very
distinctive scatting style. Martin Fierro would come in two weeks
to the day from the performance being noted here (7/19/73, Great
American Music Hall) and would be more or less around for two solid
years, seemingly giving the band the fill and color that they (or
someone) wanted.
IV. Recording,
Performance
Thank goodness, Betty Cantor-Jackson took it upon herself to
record Garcia-Saunders, and we collectors are extremely fortunate to be able to
listen to her sonic craftsmanship. These are Third Batch Betty tapes, 2x 10"
reels @ 7.5ips ½ track, which fell into private hands in the 1980s, which were
brought into the light in 1995-1996, which Rob Eaton digitized and annotated,
and DAT copies of which reside in the Garcia tape vault. They came to the
outside world via the great Alligator, whom I have discussed in connection with
3/9/74. There are lots of gremlins, including bad static on Sarah Fulcher’s vocal
mic. Some of these may have been on the masters (they could well have been amplified over the PA), and others could very well
result from the wretched state of the tapes. What’s especially nice about the
recording is how clearly the two guitars are separated (Tickner in the left
channel, Garcia in the right) and how high up in the mix Tickner is. These
features really allow us to hear him, one of the relatively small handful of
guitarists to share a stage with Garcia.
The show runs about 147 minutes across two sets (77 and 70
minutes, respectively). We have so little JGMS material from this period –one
has to go all the way back two months, to
March
7, 1973, for the next-earlier JGMS recording, and that is only a partial
set—that it’s hard to say whether this is representative or not. It seems
pretty typical for the period, as best as can be determined, which is to say
that, relative to Garcia’s long musical career outside the Grateful Dead, there
are some nice rarities here. The performance is a little uneven, though where
it’s good I find it fantastic.
“That’s A Touch I
Like” [
Allan
|
Scofield
|
JB]: Allan and
Scofield conflict on the name of the song, but since Scofield mentions the
incorrectness of the definite article for “touch” (i.e., The Touch), and uses
the indefinite, I follow his usage. He also notes that “That's A Touch I Like
was one of three
Jesse Winchester songs covered by Jerry Garcia, the others
being
Biloxi and
Every Word You Say.”
This version is fine, and while Tickner’s rhythm playing gets a little
repetitive, I like his jazz guitar tone here.
I’ll say more about Expressway, which is a real highlight
for me, below. The half-hour piece that starts with Merl’s
“She’s Got Charisma” and runs into J.J. Cale’s
“After Midnight” looks great on paper, and at least one reviewer
finds it to be top-shelf material. According to
SteveSw
at Workingman’s, things start off
with a flute-like synth solo from Merl, whose playing is
great there at the beginning: Jerry howls a bit, but mostly the early vibe is
verry smooth and slow. [Tickner’s] solo raises the energy, and then Jerry plays
a beautiful, peaceful solo that brings the vibe back down. Jerry's longer solo
towards the end of the instrumental is fascinating, well worth repeated
listening, and then BANG the song walks right off the gang-plank and into a
loud raucous space. Jerry takes us far out into cosmos with questioning atonal
screaming notes, then quickly back to earth for a very strange entry into
"After Midnight" (what is that bass line doing there?). This is quite
well played, Merl and Jerry each contributing great solos.
Heckstall, same thread, thinks this version of After
Midnight is just a trainwreck. I am somewhere in between. First, I like
“Charisma” a little less than some of the other Merl instrumentals (such as
“Merl’s Tune” or “Little Bit Of Righteousness”), and nothing in this version
jumped out at me. Second, yes, it does take them a long time to figure out that
they are playing After Midnight. Indeed, I re-tracked my copy because the first
three and a half minutes, as tracked, just seemed halfway there to my ears. But
I think we have to judge this in the context of JGMS, and of trying on a new
player. JGMS rarely did full-on (“true”) segues, and this is one. They’re hard,
and this ain’t the GD. Second, they’ve got a new guy on board. Even if After
Midnight is familiar, it’s partly so because it’s so like so many other songs.
Things could have gone a number of directions. I think it's the next night when half the band is playing one song and half is playing another, 50s rock n rollers all based on the same chord progressions, of course.
For me, things don’t really pick up again until the
Sarah-sung
“Honey Chile” [
Allan |
Scofield |
JB], which
is just an awesome driving tune that stays close –fruitfully so—to the Martha
Reeves and the Vandellas version, a 1967 Motown hit (Gordy 7067). I had
written more about this song, but seem to have lost some material here. I
especially like how Ms. Fulcher stays within the parameters of the song, and
knows and mostly sticks to the words. She is not over-singing, sounds great,
and conveys just the right man-done-me-wrong-but-I-still-need-him burn from the original. Very nice.
“Lonely Avenue” [
Allan |
Scofield |
JB], a late 1950s hit
for
Ray Charles, is played here by JGMS for the last time until August 1974.
This version really features the dissonant (good!) buzzsaw guitar of George
Tickner, and is certainly the raunchiest version done by this group. Tickner’s solo
@ 6-mins in is great. The tone is distorted, intentionally ... lots of fuzz and
reverb, and well-played. Intense. Some hard fanning at 7:01-7:10 ... loud, wild
shit. Very nice, solo runs from around 6-7:45. Then Jerry steps in with a much
softer tone, strikingly contrasted with Tickner's. He's letting it fuzz and
prickle a little bit in the very highest parts of the register. Then at 8:38 he
drops down an octave and starts playing some faster Jerry Garcia leads. Mr.
Vitt is keeping the '1' just perfectly here, really providing the bedrock for
Jerry. Kahn starts doing some really nice rumbling around in the 9-minute mark,
great. Vitt is a rock. Jerry starts doing some fanning @ 10:12, fast fanning
down low ... Wow! Very uncommon guitar playing for GOTS. Much raunchier than
anything they'd do in, e.g., July. I think Tickner's grungy guitar is forcing
or inspiring Garcia to play around with these different textures. Loud and
reverby again at the end: the most dissonant Lonely Avenue ever played.
“Soul Roach” never
really does much for me, and the last two songs (Dixie Down and How Sweet It
Is) strike me as pretty uneventful. In between there’s a rare version of “Georgia On My Mind”, which is distinguished
especially by a nice bass-led interlude (~solo) from 7:20-9:33. Nice job, John!
The song also ends quite cacophonously, which is just nice as a palate
cleanser.
All of that said, for me the absolute highlight of the show,
and of most any show in which it appears, is
“Expressway (To Your Heart)” [
Allan
|
Scofield |
JB]. This was great jam
vehicle for the Garcia-Saunders band for a number of years. So little is known
about the early JGMS repertoire that it’s hard to say when they started playing
it. The earliest reported version dates to October 3, 1971 at the Frost
Ampitheatre (Grushkin 1971;
JGMF).
I doubt it appeared much earlier than that: the material dated “May 1971”
(e.g.,
5/11/71,
5/20/71) tends to be more ambitiously spacey, too astructural
to engage this upbeat chunk of street struttin’. The song was
the first big hit for the songwriting team of [Kenny] Gamble and [Leon] Huff,
the founding fathers of the Philadelphia Soul sound, reaching #3 on
Billboard’s R&B charts for the Soul
Survivors in late 1967 (
Crimson
1010). Gamble and Huff would go on to pen countless hits (including “Love Train”,
still iconic thanks not least to a Coors Light advertising campaign). The Soul
Survivors, for their part, would never have such a smash again, though it seems
they gigged for many years. There is some indication online (e.g.,
here,
here)
that the band came together as the result of a car accident, which would seem
to have had some special emotional resonance with Garcia, who survived but lost
his friend Paul Speegle in a fatal crash near Stanford in 1961.
“Expressway” is sometimes represented as a cultural watershed,
pairing the “blue-eyed soul” of some white boy toughs from New York City with
two of the hottest black producers outside of Motown, and resulting in a
national crossover hit from Philly’s black soul stations to the white airwaves
(
inter alia!) of Spokane, Washington.
The 1967 LP
When The Whistle Blows
Anything Goes (
Crimson Records LP-501, 1967) (
wiki) features psychedelic lettering over a racially
ambiguous group of hip-looking young men (see also Lassen 1968). The tune itself has some urban heat,
opening with blaring car horns, an homage to I-76 in Philadelphia, with the
swelter of an east coast summer.
Garcia-Saunders (JGMS), of course was a
mixed-race band with tons of crossovers from black soul/R&B to white
country and everything in between. Not unheard of, of course, but not entirely
typical, and rarer still in bringing together guys with backgrounds as diverse
as Merl (piano bar jazz) and Jerry (bluegrass). Indeed, the
JGMS
billings at the Ash Grove in Santa Monica in late May (29-30) 1973 was part
of a “long, ambitious series spotlighting the vitality and influence of black
music in America” (Hilburn 1973), and this with Merl as the only African
American in the band! The band’s racial and cultural cross-pollination, of
course, went beyond the mere demographics, and went to the experiences,
influences and interests of the members. Drummer Bill Vitt had cut his teeth
playing the multihued soul/R&B clubs of Sacramento, Kahn knew his way
around the blues, and so forth.
I have no idea who brought “Expressway” into the band’s
repertoire, but it was a great choice. Over three-plus years and some three
dozen performances, it would evolve from a tight 8-12 minutes in early 1972
(tight for this band!) to an often 15-22 minute monster, complete with meltdown
spaces, by late 1974. This version is fuckin' smokin' from the start. George Tickner, especially, really shines. He has a jangly, buzzsaw kind of style (a tone he shared with Tom Fogerty, in my estimation), but he has a lot more reverb when he wants it. During the chorus parts here, the high melody that he is playing, he is just soaring above beautifully. Both Garcia and Merl launch really tight solos (Jerry-Merl-Jerry), pinning down what Tickner is stretching and pulling. Sarah does some singing @ late 3-min mark for only about 30 seconds. It's nice, she sounds good. Bill Vitt sets a hard floor late in the 4-min mark, perfect foundation for Sarah from 4:45 ff. She sounds really good. 5:10 or so George Tickner makes himself heard, giving some edge and melancholy, a nice timbre which Sarah picks up on ... "I can't dance with you! I can't dance with you!" Tickner ignites early 6-minute mark, solos until about 7:15, fucking hot. The guitar solo in the 6:30 range is absolutely
filthy. Wow. George Tickner is the real deal, this upside is so much above what Tom Fogerty was able to provide, and Sarah is also a real contributor. Excellent. This version of @@ Expressway is lighting me up, big time. Wow. Great interplay as they stretch out with it. Jerry with a fanning flourish, Sarah channeling some deep soul, a nice little melodic vocalization a few times through at late 9-min mark, early 10th. Jerry wailing but mixed too low 10-minute mark. I'd like to have this solo, fanning at 10:45, 10:58, tear my ears apart. Jerry wailing, Sarah wailing. Wailing and burning.
They'd play it more, of course. There are some super-long and super-freaky from '74 that I look forward to analyzing. So I'll have more to say. As a postscript here, I'd just add that when Merl and Jerry got back together at one of Merl’s
gigs in October 1978 (which I’ll write up in the context of Reconstruction),
the only tune from the known setlist that they had played together before was
none other than “Expressway”. As far as I can recall, Garcia would never play it publicly again.
V. Summary,
References, Listening Notes
No grand finale here. Nice tape, interesting time period, a
fun listen. The next night’s tape is the last known date with this same lineup,
and I’ll hope to listen to it closely before too long.
REFERENCES:
LISTENING NOTES:
Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders [JGMS]
Homer's Warehouse
May 4, 1973 (Friday)
147 min Betty Cantor-Jackson sbd recording
--Set I (6 tracks, 76:58)--
s1t01. That's A Touch I Like [8:32] [1:29]
s1t02. Expressway (To Your Heart) [12:47] [1:26]
s1t03. She’s Got Charisma [18:23] ->
s1t04. After Midnight [11:07] [2:50]
s1t05. It Ain't No Use [9:45] [0:49]
s1t06. That's Alright, Mama [9:36] (1) [0:13] % (2)
--Set II (8 tracks, 69:46)--
s2t01. tuning [0:46]
s2t02. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry [7:10] [0:44]
s2t03. Honey Chile [10:25] [0:54]
s2t04. Lonely Avenue [14:38] [1:23]
s2t05. Soul Roach [6:19] [0:03]
s2t06. Georgia On My Mind [12:30] [0:56]
s2t07. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [5:33] [0:11]
s2t08. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [7:12] (3) [0:38] % dead
air [0:10]
! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: George Tickner - el-guitar;
! lineup: Bill Vitt - drums;
! lineup: Sarah Fulcher - vocals (s1t02 Expressway, s1t06 TAM, s2t04 Honey Chile,
s2t06 GOMM, s2t07 TNTDODD [harmonies])
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.
! R: Lineage: 2x 10" reels @ 7.5ips ½ trk > Otari
50/50 reel to reel playback > Apogee 500 A/D converter > Panasonic SV3700
DAT master (Eaton); given lineage: "MSR > DAT x3 > Delta DIO 2496
> Soundforge > wav > flac", the accuracy of which cannot be
determined.
! R: Seeded to Lossless Legs by alligator.
! R: Seeder note: "There are some imperfections that
seem to be from the master reels. No adjustments made."
! R: s1t01 Vocal mic out at start of TATIL
! R: s1t01 Levels rise up a minute in, Betty is just dialing
things in beautifully.
! personnel: George Tickner, second guitar.
! R: The second guitar player, George Tickner, is really
nicely high up in the mix in the 3-minute mark. He sounds great. Way better
than Tom Fogerty (RIP). Garcia's guitar, by contrast, is buried. So this mixing
anomaly, with the second guitarist way up and Jerry way low is actually useful to
hear what would be distinctive. Maybe he's turned up so Jerry can really hear
him (though Betty's mixes for tapes should have been different than the stage
mix). Whatever, it's cool!
! P: s1t02 ETYH holy shit does Tickner hit some stuff in the
1-minute mark. Dude can tear it up. Jerry's first little solo @ 1:45 shows that
he has heard, and is responding in kind. This Expressway is fucking burning
from the get-go, my friends. Betty's got the mixed locked in, and
drums-bass-keyboards-guitars are syncd up beautifully.
! song: s1t02 “Expressway (To Your Heart)” was great jam
vehicle for this band for a number of years.
It was the first big hit for the songwriting team of [Kenny] Gamble and
[Leon] Huff, the two key “founding fathers” of the Philadelphia Soul sound,
when it reached #3 on Billboard’s
R&B charts for the Soul Survivors in late 1967 (Crimson 1010). Gamble and
Huff would go on to pen countless hits (including “Love Train”, still iconic
thanks not least to a Coors Light advertising campaign). The Soul Survivors
would never have such a smash again, though it seems they gigged for many
years. Culturally, “Expressway” was a watershed: so-called “blue-eyed soul”,
sung by white boy toughs from New York City, meets two of the hottest black
producers outside of Motown, and they get a national crossover hit from
Philly’s black soul stations to the white airwaves (inter alia!) of Spokane, Washington. Garcia-Saunders (JGMS), of
course was a mixed-race band with tons of crossovers from black soul/R&B to
white country and everything in between. Not unheard of, of course, but not
entirely typical, and rarer still in bringing together guys with backgrounds as
diverse as Merl (piano bar jazz) and Jerry (bluegrass).
! personnel: s1t02 Sarah Fulcher comes in on vocals @ 3:48
! P: s1t02 the guitar solo in the 6:30 range is absolutely
filthy. Wow.
! P: s1t05 IANU Jerry loses track of the vocals more or less
entirely.
! s1t06 (1) JG: "We're gonna take a break for a little
while. We'll be back pretty soon."
! R: (2) s1t06 does not correspond to d1t6 as originally
seeded. After the song ends add the stage announcement is made, the tape runs
for 13 seconds, then splices. The next [0:53] was pre-set II material. I have
thus split the original "d1t6" into s1t06 (TAM >> set break to
tape splice) and s2t01 (the pre-set II tuning). I cut the tracks with CD Wave.
I have maintained the original version of d1t6 in the fileset folder. If anyone
were ever to try to verify the original fileset against the one I have, you'd
find, first, that the folder is larger, since I basically have an extra
ORIGINAL version of d1t6 in there. Once the other ORIGINAL files were re-named
(in the ffps, for example), they'd verify. Another way to check is just visual
comparison of the two ffp fingerprints, the original one and the one based on
my re-naming. That said, the two newly-created tracks would obviously not have
ffps in the original fingerprint file. Anyway, I have just tried to make this
process traceable For The Record.
! P: s2t01 @ the very start of this tuning, the note Merl is
playing (what is it, someone?) sounds like the one that starts "Merl's
Tune". I would have loved to hear that tune here. Instead, we get a
ITALTL, ITATTC. Too bad (ducking).
! R: s2t02 IALTL, ITATTC static
! R: s2t02 static @ 3:40-end.
! R: s2t03 static seems under control, then comes in harsh
and heavy @ 3:15- I think there's a loose chord on Sarah's vocal mic. This
could be speaker-shredding stuff if one were blasting the volume ... caveat
auditor.
! P: s2t03 @ 8:57-9:05 Honey Chile Jerry (I think!) does
some fanning that I find uncommon for this GOTS era, and follows up with some
really nice lead runs behind Sarah in the 9-minute mark. She seems to step back
from the vocal mic, which lessens (though doesn't eliminate) the static which
plagues the song, and allows us to hear Jerry a little more, too. They gotta
fix that mic!
! P: s2t04 Lonely Avenue George Tickner's solo @ 6-mins in
is great. The tone is distorted, partly intentionally ... lots of fuzz and
reverb, and well-played. Intense. Some hard fanning at 7:01-7:10 ... loud, wild
shit. Very nice, solo ran from around 6-7:45. Then Jerry steps in with a much
softer tone, strikingly contrasted with Tickner's. He's letting it fuzz and
prickle a little bit in the very highest parts of the register. Then at 8:38 he
drops down an octave and starts playing some faster Jerry Garcia leads. Mr.
Vitt is keeping the '1' just perfectly here, really providing the bedrock for
Jerry. Kahn starts doing some really nice rumbling around in the 9-minute mark,
great. Vitt is a rock. Jerry starts doing some fanning @ 10:12, fast fanning
down low ... Wow! Very uncommon guitar playing for GOTS. Much raunchier than
anything they'd do in, e.g., July. I think Tickner's grungy guitar is forcing
or inspiring Garcia to play around with these different textures. Loud and
reverby again at the end: the most dissonant Lonely Avenue ever played.
! s2t06 GOMM static @ 2:15, 3:33, 3:51- end, more or less
! s2t06 GOMM John Kahn takes a lead piece (~solo) from 7:20-9:33.
Nice job, John! Jerry steps in with next solo. Haven't heard much Merl soloing
this night. GOMM ends quite cacophonously.
! R: s2t08 horrible static. This, again, seems associated
with Sarah's vocal mic, but I am not sure - it's bad through the whole song.
! s2t08 (3) JG: "Thanks a lot, g'night everybody. See
y'all later."
