The Group Probably Will Be Short-Lived, Because Hopkins Has Other Contractual Obligations

The titular line comes from an interview Garcia gave ca. November 22, 1975 to a Twin Cities journalist, Jon Bream, and references JGB #1. It could be that this was true all along, and the plan was just to monetize the Jerry Garcia name in the new Band, as well as Nicky's name, for the couple of tours the band did in October and November 1975, and then to call it quits in the new year. That's not how the conventional narrative, deriving from Blair Jackson's interviews with John Kahn, has it. The conventional narrative has it that Nicky was just too much of a wreck and was cut loose, the implication being that the band ended before John and Jerry had initially planned.

The quote is consistent with either story. It could be that this was always the plan, but no earlier interviews elicit the information. But it's also possible that by Thanksgiving Jerry had had enough with Nicky, and the "contractual obligations" were the musical equivalent of "irreconcilable differences" in marriage settings and "spending more time with the family" in political ones.

Anyway, the November 22, 1975 show at the St. Paul Civic Center Theatre was a very long one, something like three hours of music, and was mostly captured in a totally beautiful recording by Greg Overlid which especially picks, without much beyond air in the way of mediation, the play of Jerry's fingers and strings. The "Let It Rock" shows off Nicky's virtuosity, "Russian Lullaby" benefits from a peppy tempo, and there's a singleton goof with "Blackbird" as well as either a single or rarity, noted in one of the reviews, of "Old Man River", composed by Jerry's namesake Jerome Kern.

But the show, on this listen, doesn't slay me. The closing medley of "Let's Spend the Night Together -> Edward the Mad Shirt Grinder" was the band's big, huge jam vehicle, and as it goes, usually so goes my assessment of a JGB #1 gig. In this case, it never really achieves escape velocity, so I find myself a little disappointed, overall.

LN jg1975-11-22.jgb.161mins.aud-overlid.141918.flac2448

Jerry Garcia Band
Civic Center Theatre
143 W. Fourth Street
Saint Paul, MN 55102
November 22, 1975 (Saturday)
Greg Overlid aud, unlineaged cassette copy flac2448 shnid-141918

--set I (8 tracks, 81:43)--
s1t01. //Let it Rock// [taper moves seats]
s1t02. Blackbird tuning jam -> Positively 4th Street [11:55] [0:07] %
s1t03. tuning [1:02], All By Myself [8:45] % [0:02]
s1t04. [0:09] They Love Each Other :10-
s1t05. Pig's Boogie
s1t06. tuning and Nicky Hopkins intro (1), Mississippi Moon
s1t07. Sugaree
s1t08. [0:17] Roadrunner [11:44] (2) [0:11]

--set II (7 tracks, 91:28)--
s2t09. tuning [1:30], How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [6:19] [0:09] %
s2t10. Catfish John [11:07] [0:07] %
s2t11. Russian Lullaby [8:35] [0:40]
s2t12. Friend Of The Devil
[MISSING: Lady Sleeps > Ol' Man River {suspected setlist location}]
s2t13. Mystery Train
s2t14. I'll Take A Melody
s2t15. tuning -> Let's Spend The Night Together ->
s2t16. Edward The Mad Shirt Grinder [11:15] [0:18]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #1
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Nicky Hopkins - piano, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums, 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/19751122-04

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/nYdwPE5yV8J2

! JGBP: https://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/05/st-paul-civic-center-143-west-fourth.html

! venue: Band itinerary calls it "St. Paul Civic Center Theatre". Contract cover page also says that, as does contract p. 1. That satisfies me: I am changing the last word of the venue from "Arena" to "Theatre".

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/20552 (s1p aud shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/138733 (3 source compilation); http://etreedb.org/shn/141929 (this source, flac1648); http://etreedb.org/shn/141918 (this fileset).

! band: Jerry Garcia Band #1 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html).

! preview: Minneapolis Star, November 7, 1975, p. 9B

! listing: Minneapolis Star, November 18, 1975, p. 4C

! preview: Minneapolis Star, November 20, 1975, p. 6C

! review: Bream 1975, Anthony 1975

! historical: Price $5.50 pre-show/ $6.00 day of show. Cloudy day, high temperature of 37 degrees. JGB guarantee of $5,000 plus $1,250 for lights and sound. Anthony identifies capacity crowd, ca. 2,900, but boxoffice says 2,628, a sellout, gross of $14,454. I had a larger capacity for the room, over 4k, but no source for that info. Promoter John Ballard/Edgewood Agency had taken a bath on the 4/75 Legion gig in Milwaukee, I think, asked for good terms; Zippy didn't want him to cry over spilled milk.

! R: field recordist: Greg Overlid

! R: field recording gear: 2x Shure 545 microphones > Nakamichi 550 cassette deck

! R: field recording location: front row

! R: first digital circulation of 3 songs from set2- CFJ, RL and ITAM (27 mins of new music)

! R: missing first notes of Mystery Train patched with SHNID-138733

! R: taper notes: "The Jerry Garcia Band / Garcia / Hopkins / Kahn / Tutt / St. Paul Civic Theatre / Saturday, November 22, 1975 / Nakamichi 550 w/Shure 545's / Sandy / "Tex" / Joey / Greg / Rhesa  / Dikel / S & Ggg get stage passes / get in before general admission crowd /  get us front row seats / not 10-15th / pulled out at end of first number by usher / talked to John Ballard, prom. / missed 1 to 1-1/2 min. Let It Rock / 1 to 1-1/2 limbo / Nicky Drunk!! /  DUBS: Buddy & Nancy / Stu K. / Rhesa / Jeff S./ Russ F./ Dave P. / Jeff C./ Joe S. / Steve B."

! R: lineage: From the collection of Jeff Knudsen. Recorded by Greg Overlid. Archived & Transferred by Tom Markson. Critical Assistance by John Wenzel, Andrew F. and Joe Jupille. Speed Correction by Jason Chastain. Edited and Mastered by Jamie Waddell, 24 bit 48 kHz.

! R: provenance: Jeff Knudsen has been an avid Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead and San Francisco Sound music fan for over 40 years. From a letter to Dead Relix Magazine asking for help cultivating a tape collection, Jeff developed a relationship with Dick Latvala and many other tapers, building an enormous music collection.  He also taped many Jerry Garcia shows at venerable institutions like the various Keystones. Jeff loved to share tapes in a twinkle of an eye.  He was a key player in leaking the Betty Boards back in the day.  A few years ago, he decided he should pass his collection on to someone who could properly archive and transfer.  After a few years of offering it publicly, there were no takers. In 2008,  Arizona LL members Jamie and Tom felt the Knudsen collection was too valuable to let go.  After a flight so bumpy that we almost cried, and a great visit, albeit too short, with Jeff... 1200 lbs of tapes, gear and cds were lovingly packed at his Florida homestead.  The next era of his beloved collection summer camp for the tapes in the desert... an ongoing process of cataloging and transferring the contents to share.  Born from decades of Jeff's passion for live music collecting and the archival efforts of many, it's an honor and a privilege to share the Knudsen Tapes with you.  Enjoy! originally shared at www.shnflac.net"

! R: this is a really pretty tape. The finger-string interplay is directly audible, and it sounds sweet! Over and over again, strings directly recorded, nothing between them and the mics but air.

! R: s1t01 LIR clips in, cuts out; taper moves seats after the tune. Nicky very prominent - love it! The end cut is a COD.

! P: s1t01 LIR comes in amazing, Nicky truly doing the virtuoso thing right out of the gate. Jerry is filligreeing a lot, matching Nicky who continues to just play some beautiful stuff.

! s1t06 (1) JG: "Nicky Hopkins on piano".

! s1t08 (2) JG "...take a break"

! P: s2t10 CJ some great glassy picking by ol Jer.

! P: s2t11 RL I love this peppy tempo.

! P: s2t15-16 LSTNT > Edward never really achieves escape velocity. Tutt does a little drum feature late 7 of Edward, which is uncommon and neat.

One Kind Favor

I presume this is 9/6/73.

Elizabeth Cotten

Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten (née Nevill) (January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was a profoundly original American folk musician, vectoring between the music of isolated early 20^th century North Carolina and the multimodal hypersounds of the present – check her out playing in crystal clear black and white on your youtube. A southpaw church and porch picker, Ms. Cotten played a righty-tuned guitar upside down and sang the folk and blues of a self-possessed and sassy little girl, who are known to come in all genders, ages, and sizes, Scout Finch a few decades earlier and from the unscripted side of town. 

Ms. Cotten's musical family and environs might have foreordained her, but that destiny nearly passed her by. She mostly stopped playing around 1910, when she became a single teenaged mother in Chapel Hill. Then, "In the mid-1940s, [she] chanced to meet composer Ruth Crawford Seeger at a department store. They began to talk, and Seeger soon hired Cotten to work in the Seeger household. It was here that Cotten became motivated to pick up the guitar again" (cite). Mike Seeger recorded her on reel-to-reel tape and projected her through barriers of race, class, gender through the folk revival and into national memory.

Her first record, Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar, appeared on Folkways (FG 3526) in 1958 (youtube), and it introduced the world, including eager young white (wannabe or legit) folkies with turntables and a bit of disposable income, to a totally localized and yet probably universally appealing "country ragtime" style and a set of songs like a bracing draw from a cold spring. Cotten's repertoire tapped timeless British Isles-meet-Africana –i.e., American—stock such as "Going Down The Road Feeling Bad", a bunch of honeybabe songs and, of course, "What A Friend We Have In Jesus" (discogs), but her biographic originals are what will slay you.

She was on in years by the time she was "discovered", but this suited her frailing country voice just fine, a spirited gem coming through loud and clear on Folkways vinyl, which rescued many a prospective legend from the obscurity that befell those who never got wire-recorded and waxed in. But it's not just that, it's also the great store of the written word, promising extended-if-not-eternal life for those it picked up and, in the absence of vinyl, utter obscurity for those it missed. "Cut off by the cataclysms of the Great Depression and the Second World War and by a national narrative that had never included their kind," Greil Marcus wrote of many of the musicians appearing on the Harry Smith's Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music (1952), "they appeared now like visitors from another world, like passengers on a ship that had drifted into the sea of the unwritten" (Marcus 1997).

Cotten was double-lucky, because not only was she recorded, but she also found pulp-and-glue permanence when Mike Seeger and John Cohen included two of her originals in their New Lost City Ramblers Songbook (1964).

Garcia fell in love with both "Freight Train" and "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie". Both are utterly haunting, based in Ms. Cotton's childhood and expressing a yearning place-boundedness that has been the fate of most everyone who has ever lived, statistically speaking, yet a world that nevertheless can remain alien and estranged. Ms. Cotten explained OBIANL:

That's the song I wrote about a lady who lived next door to us. My mother had to go to work and this lady would teach children. She told my mother something: made my mother punish me. They hurt me all the day. 'Cause I know what she told my mum was not true. That song's 'bout me getting punished. My feelings got hurt, 'cause I did not do what Miss Mary said I did. And I used cry in a bed, and a little verse came to me, a pretty tune came to me, and I made a little song, a little tune I love.

One old woman, Lord, in this town
Keep a-telling her lies on me
Wish to my soul that old woman would die
Keep a-telling her lies on me

Oh babe, it ain't no lie
Oh babe, it ain't no lie
Oh babe, it ain't no lie
You know this life I'm living is [mighty] high

If OBIANL is a wise child's lament at a world dark with injustice, "Freight Train" provides the dream of escape. Ms. Cotten:

We used to watch the freight train. We knew the fireman and the brakeman, and the conductor, my mother used to launder for him. They'd let us ride in the engine, put us in one of the coaches while they were backing up and changing ... That was how I got my first train ride. We used to walk the trestle and put our ear to the track and listen for the train to come. My brother, he'd wait for this train to get real close and then he'd hang down from one of the ties and swing back up after the train had passed over him.

No wonder this one, too, brings ample morbidity – that kind of shit can go really wrong in a hurry.

When I'm dead and in my grave
No more good times here I crave
Place the stones at my head and feet
And tell them all I've gone to sleep

When I die, oh bury me deep
Down at the end of old Chestnut Street
So I can hear old Number Nine
As she comes rolling by

Garcia tried on both tunes for an abortive Arista album project during November 1976 sessions at Elliot Mazer's His Master's Wheels (HMW) Studios (OBIANL features on All Good Things, disc 3, track 11). (For more on the '76 studio work, see.) They would have fit perfectly. OBIANL found the more fulsome later live expression, appearing in every Garcia acoustic configuration of the 1980s, from the Dead's September-October 1980 treatment (immortalized on Reckoning, Arista A2L-8604, April 1981), to Amsterdam with Bobby Weir (10/11/81), Garcia's only solo engagement after 1965 (4/10/82), to the many Garcia-Kahn and Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band (JGAB) gigs later in the decade. "Freight Train" had preceded OBIANL at the solo acoustic show, but Garcia couldn't remember the words and shelved it, as a known and public proposition, for over a decade. He took it back up with Grisman, and it appeared on their Not For Kids Only (Acoustic Disc ACD 9, 1993) chock full of New Lost City Ramblers Song Book chestnuts. By that time, and when it appeared as an acoustic one-off during an electric JGB equipment failure at the Knickberbocker Arena in Albany (11/3/93), but especially on its two 1994 public voyages, the song's lullaby came across a sad Siren's song, a stone being laid at Garcia's own pleading head and feet, buried deep under ol' Chestnut Street.

In response to a fan's concern that the Dead had ripped Elizabeth Cotten off with its "Sugaree" (evoking, as it did, her "Shake Sugaree"), manager Richard Loren said in May 1981 that she was a "great hero" to Garcia (1). When she died, Garcia took to dedicating OBIANL to her memory, the only artist he ever consistently recognized in this way, as far as I know. At many of these shows, these were the only words he spoke to the audience, a testament to the high esteem in which he held her.

! ref: (1) Grateful Dead Archive, MS332, Business Papers, Second Accrual (preliminary), Box 1008.

Old Folks at Home for a Very Long Show: JGB at the Uptown, November 17, 1981

LN jg1981-11-17.jgb.all.aud-mason.131710.flac1644

Not much to report. Note that I have just been doing a bunch of listening and most of my reports are lukewarm - what are the odds that it's as much to do with me-in-these-moments as what's actually on the tapes?

Anyway, there were no early and late shows on the Chicago stop of the JGB's "Return of Ron Tutt" tour in the fall of 1981 - normal, two-set Garcia Band show.

That said, I can see why people might have thought otherwise, because the second set here clocks in with a good solid 90 minutes of music; at 169 minutes, this is a very long show for the period.

Also from this tour:

• 11/3/81
• 11/4/81
• 11/10/81b Palladium
• 11/13/81 Boston
• 11/15/81 Provy

One last thing: John twice noodles "Old Folks At Home" at the start of set II. I'll tag #songs-O and call that a singleton, because they're fun.

Jerry Garcia Band
Uptown Theatre
4816 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60640
November 17, 1981 (DOW) - 7:30 PM
Mason Taylor MAC flac1644 shnid-131710

--set I (7 tracks, 69:11)--
s1t01. [0:38] How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:01] [0:45] %
s1t02. /They Love Each Other [#6:46] [0:20] % [0:41]
s1t03. Sitting In Limbo [12:10] [0:31]
s1t04. Valerie [7:00 ][0:05] %
s1t05. Let It Rock [8:26] [0:31] % [0:19] [-0:09]
s1t06. Mississippi Moon [0:09 + 12:03] ->
s1t07. Tangled Up In Blue [10:09] (1) [0:36] %

--set II + encore (8 tracks, 89:00)--
--set II (7 tracks, 80:19)--
s2t01. [0:20] (2) The Way You Do The Things You Do [7:54] [0:13] % [0:46]
s2t02. I'll Take A Melody [13:07] [0:39] % [0:43]
s2t03. Mystery Train [8:19] [0:06] % [0:04]
s2t04. Simple Twist Of Fate [15:10] [0:12] %
s2t05. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:48] ->
s2t06. Dear Prudence [12:10] [0:04]
s2t07. Harder They Come [11:35] (2) [0:07] %
--late show encore (1 track, 8:42])--
s2t08. Sugaree [8:22] [0:20] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #14b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;
! lineup: Jimmy Warren - electric keyboards;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums;
! lineup: Julie Stafford - vocals;
! lineup: Liz Stires - 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/19811117-01

! JGC: https://jerrygarcia.com/show/1981-11-17-uptown-theater-chicago-il/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/19607 ("early show" aud, shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/33423 (2nd gen aud ["maybe 1st"] from Gary's master); http://etreedb.org/shn/79043 (same as shnid-33423?, but via Moses-Minches); http://etreedb.org/shn/131710 (this fileset).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/NaU24

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/uptown-theatre-4816-n-broadway-chicago.html

! seealso: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/02/jgb-november-17-1981-uptown-theater.html. Show was originally scheduled for 10/29/71, at the front end of the tour. Instead, it ended up, reasonably enough, between Boston and Denver as the penultimate show of the 18 show "Return of Ron Tutt" tour in the Fall of 1981.

! seealso: my engagements with 11/13/81 Boston (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/03/ln-jg1981-11-13jgbearly-lateaud.html) and 11/15/81 Provy (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/03/ln-jg1981-11-15jgballaud.html) from this tour.

! setlist: this has often been misconstrued as early and late shows, but it was a single two set show, confirmed by MP at the JGMF metadata post and by note 1's setbreak announcement on this tape. This second set is uncharacteristically long, I'd say, and 169 total minutes is way north of the mean for the period. Note to self: IIRC 11/19/81 Denver used to be listed as a three-set show. Maybe it's really long, too? Update: nope - that one *was* early and late.

! P: Overall, not much struck me as noteworthy, but I have been in a very churlish listening mood (3/23/2015).

! R: field recordist: Mason B. Taylor

! R: field recording gear: 2x Nakamichi 300 shotguns > Nakamichi 550

! R: field recording media: chrome cassettes

! R: transfer: playback on original deck -> wizardry -> flac1644, via Lossless Legs, 11/6/2014.

! R: info: "Mason B. Taylor was a taper from Chicago that recorded concerts by many bands in the Chicagoland area and on Dead tours. He used a Nakamichi 550 with Nakamichi 300 mics with shotgun capsules for most of his earlier recordings. In later years he used Sony D-5 and Sony D-3 cassette recorders with Nakamichi 300 mics. Mason captured spectacular musical moments and loved to share them with his closest friends. In honor of Mason and all the love he put into his recordings we are now able to share these moments with those who can appreciate them most. As the shows get uploaded we would love for you to share your stories about the epic times the music evokes so we can all dial back into that moment when the magic was happening. Thanks to Mason’s family and his Chicago and Cleveland friends for opening up Mason’s Jar ... Recorded By Mason Taylor on a Nakamichi 550 Cassette Deck, on chrome tapes, with Nakamichi microphones. Transferred on Mason's restored Nak550 properly."

! P: s1t01 late 6 Jerry playing some nice plucky guitar, with a little extra sum'in-sum'in.

! R: s1t02 TLEO clips in

! P: s1t03 SIL Jerry sounds vocally ragged, but his guitar work in the 4-minute mark is quite nice.

! R: s1t05-s1t06 wonky tracking, Miss Moon starts nine seconds before end of t05

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

! s2t01 (2) They play a little snatch of "Old Folks At Home", again after the splice after the song, John playing it.

! R: s2t01 TWYDTTYD L channel out 6:25-6:43

! P: s2t03 MT Garcia's guitar very fluid, e.g., in 3 minute range.

! P: s2t04 STOF very slow. Bass lead 8-11:26. Three and a half minutes. Crowd is yelling "Cmon, Jer!"

! s2t07 (2) "See ya later."