"Hoagy Carmichael is making a fortune – Jerry Garcia is starving"

So said in August 1969 one David Rubinson, Fillmore Records head who had been a producer at Columbia Records, working with Big Brother, Mike Bloomfield, Moby Grape, The Chambers Brothers and Taj Mahal, and other groups ("if picasso" 1969).

It's a good line.

It especially caught my eye because, in sniffing around 12/12/73, I went to the Archive to check out the Dead show from that night. The show is not very good, especially for the period. But this particular fileset has the Atlanta soundcheck, lots of interesting little nuggets. There are far fewer soundcheck tapes out and about than there should be, if you ask me. The first track is identified as "Sleigh Ride" (wiki), and there is a bar of that. But at around 2:40 of that first track, Keith and Jerry work up a few turns with "Heart And Soul" composed by none other than, you guessed it, Hoagy Carmichael.

So let's consider this a marker to talk about Garcia (named after Jerome Kern), who in this period was working up a stunning version of Irving Berlin's "Russian Lullaby", playing show tunes, and a tie-in to Hoagy Carmichael, who twice, independently, crossed my radar on this day.

REFERENCE:
"if picasso fucks my wife i'll kick his ass," NOLA Express, August 29, 1969, pp. 8-9; apparently reprinted from Good Times.

Reading Notes: Dupree 1974

Zoo World, January 31, 1974. "Cover photo captured by Mario Algaze the afternoon of a Leas Campbell presentation of the Grateful Dead at Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa, Fla.", December 18 or 19, 1973.

A clean-shaven Jerry Garcia in Tampa, Florida, December 18 or 19, 1973. Photograph by Mario Algaze, published in Zoo World, January 31, 1974, p. 12.

Dupree, Tom. 1974. Grateful Dead: Hipper Than the Average Corporation. Zoo World, January 31, pp. 12-13.

The pictures are from Tampa. As the Thoughts On The Dead guy might say, Billy looks like he wants to kick punch some dicks. Anyway, Donna Jean was back home giving birth, and the band played two kickass shows December 18-19, 1973, really great.

The article draws from December 12th in Atlanta, meetings and interviews with band members, a few expost reax to the show. As the title implies, the main topic of discussion is Grateful Dead Records, and business matters (this appears to have been an industry paper based in Nashville, I should probably know that).

p. 12

booking firm: Out Of Town Tours

Dead inspired travel agency Fly By Night

"Garcia's country group Old And In The Way"

Sparky And The Ass-Bites From Hell

Weir interview

Meeting in the Regency Hyatt House Hotel, not where band is staying. Bob is there to sightsee the tony hotel's glass elevator, architectural emanation of American opulence, on the side of a newspaper interview downtown. Pull-quote paints picture of a wine-snobby Bobby, which is partly true but pretty unfair for a guy who has worked hard for fifty years despite probably sitting on a pile of family money (the Atherton house he grew up in alone would make quite an inheritance). In his seventies as I type this, tonight he's playing the second night of GD50 in Santa Clara.

Weir: the hippie thing was a good time, but we've moved on.

Record company: "the Dead organization picked a network of conventional distribution firms" to get the Wake of the Flood into the stores.

p. 13

Rock Scully is current road manager – when did Cutler leave the road?

Weir says they have reduced their risk by having a less diversified portfolio than most record companies. They don't have to pay for the 6 or 7 Donnie and the Doughnuts records that lose money. They have just the 1 GD record, which they have some idea can sell. "Any fears about the company's success in its initial stages have been quieted: the album is about to go gold, with RIAA certification expected to come in January, just about two months after release" (Dupree 1974, 13).

"The Dead organization … is hoping the LP will provide capital to bolster and expand other aspects of its operation" (Dupree 1974, 13). Interesting – note that at this early stage, no mention of Round Records, Round Reels, etc. I want to triangulate to when we get the first mention of the Round stable of shell corporations.

Ever the anti-businessmen, Rock and others say the album kind of sucks! (Dupree 1974, 13).

"I like it," Garcia says of Wake of the Flood. "I thought the material was very good. And there's no question that we were rushed on it. We did that to ourselves, really, by leaving ourselves too short off time. But, considering, I think it turned out pretty well" (12/12/73, Dupree 1974, 13).

JG: "Phonograph records are misleading … First of all, there's an artificial start and stop, the physical dimensions of an album. … There's only, what, 22 minutes to an album side, and our thoughts are much longer than that" (12/12/73, Dupree 1974, 13).

Odd moment 12/12/73 Garcia to say they now like big rooms because of the WOS: "If we couldn't get off in them, we wouldn't play big halls. But now we understand them about as well as we understood theaters when we were playing them" (Dupree 1974, 13).

Rock 12/12/73 says the band will take five days off, play the Florida gigs, then take a month or two off. "That's the whole band I'm talking about. Garcia has never taken a moment off since he picked up his first guitar. He is playing somewhere every night" (Dupree 1974, 13).

Keith speaks! 4^th column, p. 13 "I'm sure there are a lot of relatively honest ways of calling attention to yourself, as long as it's not hype. We are not in a position to be ripped off. We can't afford yet to give $3,000 to a local distributor and then have him forge newspaper receipts on us. Where we're at right now is, we have people on the inside we can trust. Now we're trying to find the people on the outside that we can feel the same way about. But with this operation, we're gonna be honest if we have to beat some ass."

"Or take it in the ass," Weir says. "We've done both. We just are trying to take some of the sleaze out of it, and say that things should be done in an above-board manner or not at all."

At the end of the interview, Keith "Godchaux drags on his cigarette, then leans over purposefully: 'I'm not averse to hustling, either'" (12/12/73, Dupree 1974, 13). 

RN Abbott 1979 Dead Reckoning and Hamburger Metaphysics

Abbott, Lee. 1979. The Jerry Garcia Feature: Dead Reckoning and Hamburger Metaphysics. Feature (March): 32, 34-37. Also reprinted in Dodd and Spaulding 2000.

Reading Notes

Tags: 1978, Atlanta, interviews, drugs, Army, why, death, fascism, reading notes, GA

Took place in Atlanta 12/18/78, at the Colony Court’s Savannah Suites hotel. Not sure the name address.

Jerry, with his “chemically lit” eyes, is grooving in this interview.

Doesn’t want to talk about himself. He’s old news.

“Jerry is in a self-described ‘state of happiness’ (Abbott 1979, 34).

''I was a fuck-up in high school," Jerry says, easing himself onto the couch. Outside, a hard rain threatens. Inside, Garcia is in high animation, giggling and working over the past with a bantamweight's vigor. "When I was a kid, I was a juvenile delinquent. My mom even moved me out of the city to get me away from trouble. It didn't work. I couldn't stand high school 'cause I was burning my bridges as I went along. But I didn't have any way to go. I don't think I did any more than anybody else. It's just that I was always getting caught-for fighting, drinking, all the stuff you're not supposed to do. … I was involved in more complex ideas. I started reading Schopenhauer, Heidegger and Kant when I was in the seventh grade. After that, school was silly” (Abbott 1979, 34).

Unfiltered Camel

“there were gunfights in the halls, but I didn't fit into that either. I was happening on a different plane entirely. That's one of the reasons I got into drugs. In all that teenage craziness, it was the only good trip around" (Abbott 1979, 34). #drugs

"I had been court­martialed twice and had tons of extra duty and was restricted to barracks. I was just late all the time. 1 would miss roll call. I had seven or eight or nine or ten AWOLs, which is a pretty darn serious offense in the Army. So one day I'm called to the CO's office. No heavy trip or anything. He says, 'Private Garcia, how would you like to get out of the Army?' And I said, ‘I’d like it just fine.' Two weeks later I was out" (Abbott 1979, 34). #army

Car accident changed his life, no more coasting.

"I was in a good automobile accident." Jerry grows anxious. "I was with four other guys in an old Studebaker Golden Hawk- supercharged engine, terrible suspension, ninety-plus miles an hour on a back road and we hit these chatter-bar dividers. It was just Wham! We went flying, I guess. All l know is that I was sitting in the car and that there was this ... disturbance ... and the next thing, I was in a field. I went through the windshield and landed far enough away from the car where I couldn't see it. It was at night. It was very, very quiet, you know. It was like a complete break in continuity-from sitting in the car roaring down the road to lying in a field wondering what had happened- nothing in between." Anybody get hurt? "Yeah," Garcia says with genuine awe. "One guy did die. He happened to be the most gifted of our little group. It was like losing the golden boy, someone who had a lot of promise, the person who had the most to offer" (Abbott 1979, 34).

"You were lucky," I suggest.

"Oh, yeah," Garcia agrees. "The car was like a crumpled cigarette pack. It was almost unrecognizable. And there were my shoes in it, dig? I had been thrown out of my shoes and through the windshield." He pauses over the memory of a pair of scuffed Army-issues lying on the floorboards of a violence sculpture. "That's where my life began." He breathes. "Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance." [#why] He looks at me hard, his expression earnest, grateful, dead. "Then I got serious.” Another toke. A deep suck of mortality. "I dig the affirmation side of death. Death is one of those things that's been taken from us as an experience. We hide it. As a result, it becomes fearful, scary, because it's unknown. Really, man, it's the other side of being born" (Abbott 1979, 34). #death

“Garcia is on his knees, praying to the coffee table. The toot is vicious, cut with meth, not with quinine, and it’s enough to rip your sinuses out. It goes straight to the forebrain – a howling blizzard of Insight and Truth. The rush is, well, chilling; your scalp tingles, a hospital sourness scours the back of your throat.  Then a Con Ed generator of electricity sizzles your synapses … Your smoke is tasty. You are ready to Talk.” (Abbott 1979, 35). #drugs

“my most palpable experiences have all been psychedelics” … there was one in particular, the ne plus ultra trip, the apocalypse” at the end of what Jerry describes as his psychedelic period” (Abbott 1979, 35). #drugs

"It featured countless-thousands, millions-- births and deaths. The phoenix trip, you know. And in my consciousness, it went all the way from, uh, insects to vegetables to mammals to civilizations-to organisms of every sort."  What happened? ''Everything," Garcia barks, drawing closer, the glint of his eyes grave and dear. "For me, my trips began to take a different kind of form. The first ones were visual, you know, patterns, colors, profound revelations, 'Yeah, I get it'- the standard stuff. Then I started going to the Acid Tests and experiences were happening to more than one person at a time. They had this telepathic quality. Then into that stepped another level which was between and amongst the telepathic explosions. Between the flashes and surprises was this 'You're almost getting it.' An urging. Then there was a presence which I think of as the Teacher, which represents a higher order. There would be this feeling of déja vu. All these little bits of input-people talking, certain sights-would start to coalesce: 'Damn, You Got It! BOOM!' It took on this teacher-pupil relationship: Me and my other mind! … It scared the shit out of me, man. It was like, What do you believe?' It removed everything I was certain of. And in its place was a new set of circumstances. And these circumstances were like pages in a book. They started moving until I was living out a whole lifespan with all the intricacy of one's life, all the way up to the moment of one's death. The final realizations, the summation” (Abbott 1979 35).

"Cosmic is the only word for it," he sighs. "Nothing has happened in my life since then, man. Nothing was as climactic, as complete as that." (Abbott 1979, 36). Everything after was anticlimax.

Story of a tripper with a big knife threatening JG on stage at a ballroom (Abbott 1979, 36). The power of the crowd “comes somewhere close to losing your will” (Abbott 1979, 36). #fascism

Rock Scully is onetime cellmate of Bob Haldeman (Abbott 1979, 37). JGMF: is this true?

"I don't want to be a leader because I don't want to be a mis-leader. I haven't put any safeguards there. I haven't paid the dues to be responsible for leading people. The most I would want to do would be to indicate, using my life as a model, that it's possible for you to, uh, go for it. But following me is like a dead end street. There's nothing here but me. I can't multiply fishes and loaves and turn water into wine” (Abbot 1979, 37).

"I remember going down to Watts Towers after the Watts Acid Tests. It had been a hard night, I'd gone through a lot of heavy changes, and it was dawn. I remember looking at this stuff. It was just junk. Nobody could tear it down, so they made a monument out of it. I remember thinking that I'd rather have a life that gets me off while I'm living it and leave nothing and not litter the world with concrete relics or ideas or things that will hang you up” (Abbott 1979, 37).

REFERENCE:

Dodd, David G., and Diana Spaulding. 2000. The Grateful Dead Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.