Emerge and See: Hunter Hosting Garcia at the Cellar Door - May 15, 1978 (DISCONFIRMED)

update 20210526: this seems not to have happened. David Kramer-Smythe reached out to David Morgenstern, who was with Comfort at this time. He remembered this gig for other reasons, but said Garcia definitely did not join, and that, in fact, Garcia never sat in with Comfort. So this is one of those cases of .... hmmm ... how does such a specific (if uncertain) memory form? What do we do with such a memory? In the absence of other advice. I will just keep this here for posterity.

Courtesy of slip at JGBP, this:

May 15, 1978 Robert Hunter and Comfort 

This was a three night run, the 14, 15, 16th at the Cellar Door in Washington DC.  

(The 14th  we saw the Dead play in Providence, RI. We were just finishing a post  spring semester  Vermont > Springfield > Providence run, so my memory of this event is extremely fuzzy, but it happened.) 

Anyway – towards the end of the Hunter show, Steve Parrish..what was he doing there?... helped roll a doorway sort-of-thing out on stage. It was like a big stage prop with a man-size keyhole shape cut-out. What…A giant keyhole? 

Then, I remember smoke machine and a siren howling like an ambulance. Lights flashed. The Cellar Door was a pretty small and dark venue as I recall, so this was kind of jarring. 

And then the PA screamed “Emergency…Emergency…Emergency” and gradually slowed to say “Emergggge an Seeeeee,” “Emergggge and See,” “Emerge and See,” Emerge and See!!!” 

And a fellow in a bozo mask walked through the keyhole. The fellow was Garcia. 

This is where it gets fuzzy....I forget what he played, maybe Boys in the Ballroom [sic]? Promontory Rider? Goodnight Irene? It wasn’t a standard Dead tune. 

Who’s got the tape?

Who, indeed? Can anyone confirm or deny?

Kicking off the January '86 Garcia/Kahn acoustic tour

LN jg1986-01-24.jgjk.all.aud-CC.138168.flac1644

A huge bulge of heretofore elusive Garcia tape from the late 70s and especially the 80s has been hitting cyberspace. I don't have much time for this, just a few scattered notes laying down some markers for eventual discussion of the tour.

First, a tour snapshot.

Snapshot of the January '86 Garcia/Kahn acoustic east coast tour

Then, listening notes from newly-circulating closet call material from the first night out. For some reason, two short sets for JGJK seems fine - it's not always easy to listen to.

Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
D.A. R. Constitution Hall
1776 D St NW
Washington, DC 20006
January 24, 1986 (Friday) - 8 PM
CC shnid-138168

--set I (7 tracks, 37:13)--
s1t01. /Deep Elem Blues
s1t02. Friend Of The Devil
s1t03. When I Paint My Masterpiece
s1t04. Little Sadie [4:19] ->
s1t05. Spike Driver Blues [4:26] ->
s1t06. Jack A Roe
s1t07. Run For The Roses

--set II + encore (6 tracks, 38:52)--
--set II (5 tracks, 31:07)--
s2t01. Dire Wolf
s2t02. To Lay Me Down
s2t03. I've Been All Around This World
s2t04. Bird Song
s2t05. Ripple//
--encore (1 track, 7:45)--
s2t06. Goodnight Irene [7:37] (1) [0:08]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and John Kahn [JGJK]
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - ac-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - ac-b.

JGMF:

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19860124-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/138168 (this fileset). Nothing in digital circulation prior to 4/17. Probably very few copies of this show were traded.

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/constitution-hall-311-18th-st.html. Notes the following gigs in a room in which "every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended events": 11/2/75 Jerry Garcia Band; 11/27/83 Jerry Garcia Band; 8/8/84 Jerry Garcia Band; 11/20/84 John Kahn (acoustic); 1/24/86 John Kahn (acoustic).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/8FVYgH5QiCK2

! ref: Billboard, February 8, 1986, p. 37.Ticket I see went for $14.50. Show did well, selling out 3,741 for reported gross of $53,288.

! R: AUD (marked 2nd Gen) kindly provided by wk & http://jgmf.blogspot.com/

! R: transfer: TDK SA90 > Nakamichi CR-5A > Edirol FA-66 > Wavelab 2448 > R8Brain > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644 tagged. Transfer by Andrew F. 04/2017

! R: s1t01 DEB enters in progress, not much missing. PA mix improves about a minute in, and tape follows.

! historic: The January 1986 Garcia/Kahn acoustic tour --seven shows in nine days for John Scher in interesting, core northeast halls-- was a lucrative proposition for the two partners. Billboard reported this show as a 3,741 sold sellout grossing more than $50,000.

! song: "Little Sadie" (s1t04): Every Deadhead of this era knew the tune from the amazing and massively circulated 2/13/70 Fillmore East tapes, but of course it's draws in several great American song forms and traditions. See http://www.deaddisc.com/songs/Little_Sadie.htm.  "Sadie" presents a character fragment of the sort that avowedly drew Garcia in, illiterate antihero Lee Brown having shot the titular girl in the street for no apparent reason, slept soundly, and rather ineffably turned himself in to get "41 years to wear the ball and stripes".

! P: s1t04 LS @ 1:20, 1:35 very good guitar work at these instances and around. Very solid. There are moments here that sound as engaged as the later work with Grisman, very nice acoustic guitar, John also holding things down well. @ 3:30 Garcia revisits the first verse, then closes the song. There was a little fumbling around the end, but he was decisive and mostly hit it. This was an *excellent* Little Sadie.

! song: "Spike Driver Blues" (s1t05): Garcia didn't do many work songs, but this one is fun.

! P: s1t05 SDB: The acoustic setting is really good in letting him just sing vocals without too much strain. That helps him give more expression. "This is the hammer | that killed John Henry" is done with great around-a-fire-in-a-holler feeling and movement.

! P: s1t06 JAR here's another one that the show-attending Deadheads would have known, from Reckoning. But, yikes, the vocals are too much, first half of 2.

! R: s2t05 Ripple cuts out at "there is a fountain".

! P: s2t06 GI I am coming to this after having FF >> from Jack A Roe to here, not necessarily compelled to hear set II. 

! song: "Goodnight Irene" (s2t06): This is a favorite of mine. "Gonna take another walk downtown" is Garcia alchemizing New Orleans and his beloved San Francisco, and of course "jump overboard in the river and drown" is a mighty close reference to his own father's death. He played it with the Dead on 12/31/83, the night he and MG finally married after 17ish years.

! P: s2t06 GI @ 2:37 he does "sometimes I live in the country" -- but did he miss the "ramblin | stop all that gamblin'" verse? A little voice scratch early 3. I expect he'll want to play his guitar. He digs in with gusto, fluid and dextrous and with great energy. Good stuff. The vocals are too rough to really make this one to recommend to a novice. @ 4:20 he hits ramblin' / gamblin' ... "come home to your wife and children" all given great feeling. Shaky vocals late 4. 5:10ff he really swings and digs into his guitar pieces here, which I really like. 5:35ff drops into a jazzier swing, John not all there with him. Now John walking it up over 6, but I find him mostly not quite where I want him.

! s2t06 (1) JG: "Thanks a lot. See y'all later."

August 9th

This August 9th finds me thinking more about 70 years since Nagasaki than 20 years since Jerry Garcia, though that, too, is on my mind.

Might as well go straight for the cream: cue this one up from about 5:40 to hear Garcia wail. In the alternative check out the whole smokin' hot, first-night-of-tour set I closer, Wednesday night, February 4, 1981 at the Warner in Washington, DC:

"Tangled Up In Blue"

Thanks to taper Dave Redman, who also seems to have shepherded the tape to the DAT kingdom and from there, through the agency of unidentifed but much-appreciated agents, to the lossless realm (shnid-30859).

Turn it up!

p.s. Jim Vita also taped this hottie of a show (shnid-83742), and it's worth hunting down.

p.p.s. my notes for the Redman fileset below the fold.

Jerry Garcia Band
Warner Theater
513 13th Street NW
Washington, DC
February 4, 1981 (Wednesday)
Redman MAC flac1644 shnid-30859

--set I (7 tracks, 62:36)--
s1t01. ambience [0:04]
s1t02. I'll Take a Melody [13:16]
s1t03. //That's What //Love Will Make You Do [#6:#32]
s1t04. Mississippi Moon [11:06]
s1t05. Sitting In //Limbo [13:#04] [0:14]
s1t06. How Sweet It Is [8:54] ->
s1t07. Tangled Up In Blue// [9:23#]

--set II (8 tracks, 74:06)--
s2t01. ambience [0:09]
s2t02. Harder They Come [14:13] [0:03]
s2t03. /Mission In The Rain [10:46]
s2t04. //They Love Each Other [#8:10] [0:02]
s2t05. //Russian Lullaby/ [#12:36]
s2t06. Dear Prudence [12:25] (1) ->
s2t07. Deal [7:39] ->
s2t08. Midnight Moonlight [8:00]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #12b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;
! lineup: Jimmy Warren - el-piano;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;
! lineup: Daoud Shaw - 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/19810204-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1981-02-04-warner-theater-washington-dc/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/30859 (this fileset); http://etreedb.org/shn/83742 (Vita MAC all-1)

! map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Washington,+DC+20004/@38.8961209,-77.0296101,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x89b7b7976efcc7c5:0xb764664d930ed128

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/07/warner-theatre-513-13th-e-streets-nw.html

! review: [mixed] Lindsay, Dave. 1981. Garcia’s Solo Jamming. Eagle (American University), February 13, 1981, p. 7.

! R: field recordist: Dave Redman

! R: field recording gear: xx Nakamichi 300 > Sony TC-D5M

! R: lineage: cassette master > DAT > CD > EAC > FLAC.

! R: seeder: misSHN, 9/2005

! R: seeder notes: "Where it's good, it's quite a good recording. It may run a touch fast, but I am not really capable of judging that. There are also numerous patches of oversaturation, a good number of  cuts (and in general very tight editing), and a very chatty crowd. Beyond those presumed attributes of the master, there are a great many warts on this particular copy which would make a new transfer most welcomed.  I will try to list some of those warts below, but I am sure that I have not noted all of them.  Caveat auditor."

! P: seeder notes: "The show itself is extremely hot, IMO a contender for hottest show of the great month of 2/81.  Of note: a sweet version of Sitting in Limbo, a second solo in TUIB (around 8:40) that is absolutely filthy (watch your speakers!), and a pretty nicely executed transition from Deal into Midnight Moonlight.  A really fun show"

The Grateful Dead: Top-Grossing Act of 1991

I just picked up a copy of Pollstar's 1991 Year-End Special Edition, entitled Year of the Dead, dated December 31, 1991.

Though I don't do much GD stuff, blogger's stats tell me that GD posts are the most popular. People are funny. But I digress. One of the reasons I don't do it is that others are just so much better at it, and there's so much to do. I like my quieter, Garcia-on-the-side view of things.

But I couldn't pass this up. I just loved some of the data that I found in this magazine, and so want to present a few pictures, each with a few associated thoughts (though, thankfully, not a thousand words).

The GD was the top-grossing American live music act in 1991, bringing in almost $35 million for the year. At this point, Garcia is founder and de facto leader of a company grossing well over this amount, once we factor in GD merchandising, record sales, licensing, royalties (I'd love to know the details), in addition to all of that stuff from his "other" bands. He was an entrepreneur (I need to read Barry Barnes's book, I know). A lot of the messed up shit (such as the 1978 tax liens) that I report on needs to be put into this context. The Dirty Fucking Hippie was a massively successful businessman. He wasn't just some junkie rock star. He was an American success story: Jerry Garcia, Inc.

Here's the key table, with data from Pollstar. I have independently calculated the gross per ticket stuff and the column totals. Pollstar's narrative has some weird numbers, for example "76 shows in 27 cities", while I count 58 paid shows (plus free Bill Graham Memorial show on 11/3/91, no tickets of revenue, of course) across 23 cities.

Table xxx. Grateful Dead 1991 concert grosses.

I'll leave it to GD people to comment and parse as they might like. Let me just elaborate with one more picture from these data, focusing on promoters.

Figure xxx. Grateful Dead 1991 concert grosses, by promoter. Man that is some ugly-ass graph, isn't it?

Here are a few observations, bullet style.

• There is so much continuity in promoters! I was looking at tour information from the October 22 - November 2, 1975 JGB tour, and you see not only John Scher all over it, but Cellar Door in DC and Don Law in Boston, as with here. Seems like there were lots of first-mover advantages in this particular market.
• Barry Fey was the only holdout to the total market domination of Bill Graham and John Scher.
• This distribution is such a great artifact of high modernism. It's perfect how Scher and Graham divide the country, each with his domaine réservé or his chasse gardée, exclusive territoriality on a par with the sharply distinct domains of Westphalian states. No overlapping authority, à la the pre-Westphalian Holy Roman Empire, with its thousands of princes, dukes, suzerains and assorted monarchs and their associated principalities, duchies, suzerainties, and kingdoms.  Sharp lines. Modernity. From the article:

Grateful Dead Productions had the band's yearly excursions down to a science in '91 with Bill Graham Presents and Metropolitan Entertainment splitting the country in their roles as tour producers. All the Dead dates were co-promoted by one or the other except for a stop in Denver, where the two companies couldn't agree on who had the territory. It's safe to say the plan won't change much in the future. If there's one thing to learn from this success story in a year that had so few, it's 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

• Why would Bill Graham have co-promoted the May 1991 Shoreline shows, but not the August ones?
• Garcia, like all of us, wanted to simplify out the shit that didn't appeal to him (e.g., the business side of things) to make maximal room for the stuff that did. We should, and probably do, all strive for that sort of thing. Specialization and exchange. Pay the promoter to handle that stuff. Delegate.
• Look at how lucrative the eastern half of the country is. Man oh man! We have talked on the blogs, and the books talk a lot, about the importance of the core northeast fanbase over the years. It began very early on. The Dead perceived the importance of these folks (or are they markets?) early on and drew the appropriate conclusions in terms of engagement, marketing, outreach, etc. Constituency service, the pols would call it.
• The annual MSG and Boston Garden runs are just unbelievable. Again, high modernism. Capitalism at its finest.
• Scher seems to have been smart about working with local partners, and I am sure the GD folks were more than glad to have him sub-contract as he needed to. The Dead and Scher worked well together, they obviously trusted him, and you can't particularly argue with the results.
• The fact that the Dead staged an intervention after the Denver show 6/28/91, that Garcia entered a methadone-based recovery program that summer, and seemed burned out beyond all recognition in the fall (the Hornsby recollections, the Boston statement about taking a break from touring), gives us a little peek, as if we needed any reminder that life is full of tradeoffs, at the human toll, on Garcia in particular, of the "Year Of The Dead". A Year of Dying, too. Ain't creative destruction great?

One last point, on data and methodology: the entertainment industry has always documented itself very thoroughly, and especially in quantitative (and, specifically, monetary) terms. I guess that's true of all industries, but, like any ad-based industry, music, television, film, and the rest of the entertainment-industrial complex had a great incentive to make at least some data public. From very early on there are charts and lots of information about grosses and such.

So how is it possible that we don't have better quantitative data in the field of Grateful Dead Studies? We need  more graduate students writing more dissertations to start compiling more data; we oldsters can't handle the strain. Billboard, Pollstar ... etc. etc. I want graphs of the chart position of every Dead/Garcia record ever ... stat! (so to speak)

Who Was John? JGB at GWU, April 3, 1976 (early show)

 LN jg1976-04-03.jgb.early.aud-CC.xxxxxx.flac2448

OK, maybe the last post of my hiatus hiatus.

4/3/76a. This is probably the same source tape as shnid-82761. A nice show.

Jerry Garcia Band
Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University
730 21st and H Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
April 3, 1976 (Saturday) - Early show, 7 PM
80 min CC aud-1 flac2448 [upgraded version as shnid-138204]

(7 tracks, 80:10)
t01. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:00] [0:12] %
t02. Catfish John [10:00] [0:08]
t03. That's What Love Will Make You Do [10:40] [0:05] % dead air
t04. Who Was John [12:20] [0:08] %
t05. After Midnight [11:48] [0:05] %
t06. I'll Take A Melody [16:50] [0:05]
t07. Russian Lullaby [9:33] [0:04]
[MISSING: The Harder They Come]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #3
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums;
! lineup: Keith Godchaux - keyboards;
! lineup: Donna Jean Godchaux - 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/19760403-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/82761 (slipnut aud, probably related to this one in ways unfathomable); http://etreedb.org/shn/138204 (optimal version of this CC source tape).

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/05/lisner-auditorium-george-washington.html

! band: Jerry Garcia Band #3 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! R: at least four gens of hiss on this sucker before it gets to this point. It runs longer than shnid 82761, but this doesn't sound fast to my unreliable ears. Nearly every song clips in. There ain't nothing wrong with this tape, overall. It sounds fine and is worth being represented in the digital realm, in my not-too-picky opinion.

! historical: One of the best shows Garcia ever played started about four hours after this one. The Lisner Auditorium late show, 4/3/76b, is justly revered. It's a great show, with a top-3 version of "Don't Let Go", two amazing recordings (the attributed one, by Scott Jones, is breathtaking, as is the anonymous one), a great vibe. Top-shelf Jerry. One of the tapes that you should share with your friends who are Jerry-curious. The 4/1/76 show (Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT) is also a beaut, well-taped by Steve Rolfe ?and Jerry Moore?, with a monster "Lonesome And A Long Way From Home" to close things out. Generally speaking, though, there are tons of holes in our understanding of March-April 1976, because there are a lot of shows that were only very badly taped, and some for which no tapes circulate at all. That has pretty much been  the case for this show, which only late-in-the-day made the jump from slightly-raggamuffin cassettes to the digital realm. So, being able to report on this show is a pleasure.

! P: This show is has a few stumbles, but it is overwhelmingly in the pocket. Home churned butter, a nice stone dish and a silver knife, and a hunk of fresh crusty bread. Everything is well- (though not flawlessly-) played. Garcia's voice is sweet and his singing expressive. Not rushed. He's not embarassed by his voice or trying to figure out how to sing stuff - he can hit it just as he wants. The white Travis Bean is liquid electricity, the fingers' voice. It is smooth and round when he wants it to be, by turns bouncy, swampy, threadbare, and a little jagged. Tempos are toward the fast end of 1976, which I take to be a good thing. More like 4/3/76b (the same night, of course) than 2/14/7 .... zzzzzzz ..... 2/14/76. All in all, a totally pleasurable listen. A good palate cleanser for the late show.

! P: t01 HSII Jerry sounds wonderful, lively, totally into it. Like young love, it is.

! P: t03 TWLWMYD nice scream of appreciation. Everyone is feeling the groove that the band has laid down from 'go'. Tutt is such a rock. Keith does a sharp piano run right around the 9-minute mark that just shows him totally engaged. They lose the handle a little bit in the 9-minute mark.

! R: t04 Who Was John fades in, not much missing.

! song: "Who Was John": t04: "Who Was John" is one of those songs that existed in its time (25 appearances, throughout calendar year 1976), with no real hint of it before or since. It really spoke to its period very well. It ties in with the story of Keith and Donna's entry into the JGB, which is known in bits and pieces, but needs to be told at length. (Maybe Corry has already done it!) The upshot is that, at least from late 1975, Jerry was spending a lot of time at Keith and Donna's, listening to old gospel records, hanging out playing and singing. I know that as of the end of the year, Garcia and Mountain Girl split up, leaving Stinson, potentially kicking around a few weeks over the holiday (Rakow's?), and showing up at Deborah's Victorian in tony Belvedere in January '76. With Nicky flaming out phosphorescently in a three-month stint at the keys, Jerry and John and Ron Tutt had tried out a bunch of keyboardists: Larry Knechtel (I believe), the mysterious "Tim Hensley" (i.e., Tim Henson), and the Bayou Maharajah himself, James Booker. None of these guys seemed to work out, for whatever reason. So Keith became the keyboard player, with the added virtue of Donna's gorgeous harmony vocals, with the added virtue that they had been practicing singing and playing some numbers that could be played live, as well as a bunch of Jerry and John's old favorites. Anyway, that's what happened, and "Who Was John" was a piece of that puzzle. It's in the same space as "A Strange Man", the Dorothee Love Coats biblical sometimes known as "Sumerian Woman".

! P: t04 WWJ Garcia's playing in the 9:30 mark is scorching. He is totally in The Zone. This version of WWJ is played a little faster than it would be at other times in 1976.

! P: t05 After Midnight is quite hot. A slow, but not too-slow boil. Who can resist Donna's little "What it is all about" line? I am in love with her everytime she sings it. Hot as hell. Listen to his soloing in the late- 6-minute mark, continuing into 7-min mark. WOW, absolutely incendiary.

! P: t06 ITAM Jerry does some beautiful scaling late 13-minute mark into 14. Fluid and gorgeous. Then @ 14:55 he does some angry tearing and scratching, just a little burst, then drops back into the chorus. Nice.

! P: t07 not clear why crowd member felt compelled to sing the chorus of Grand Funk Railroad's "We're an American band!" at the start of Russian Lullaby, but there you go. Perhaps he just came to realize that JGB was an American band, and that he was part of it.

! R: t07 Some inaudible taper talk, mic movement, in the first minute.

! Disclaimer: This is part of a "Closet Call" project aimed at making missing Garcia dates available for study. These are "warts and all" ... straight transfers of the source cassettes with editing only of the most offensive tape transitions and such. If you don't like hiss, possible speed problems, etc., etc., then move along. And, to anticipate a FAQ: no, I don't plan on doing 16/44s of these. Thanks to wk for supplying these tapes!

JGB: female vocalists, late 1983 east coast tour

update 2016: there is overwhelming evidence that DeeDee Dickerson took part in the late '83 JGB tour. She is on the band's tour documents. As of 2/19/2019, I believe DeeDee was present until at least 5/19/84; the earliest confirmed reference I can find to Gloria Jones dates to 8/11/84.

update 2020: Gloria's first show appears to have been July 28, 1984. Or it could have been July 10th. But it is in summer 1984, just before the 8/84 east coast tour.

There is a lot that remains obscure, and much that probably forever will, about the various ladies who joined Garcia onstage as Jerry Garcia Band backing vocalists. The Jerry Site's band lineups page has the best information available, of course, but even there I know there are missing names, problematic dates, etc. etc. The 1981-1985 or so period is especially rife with incomplete or problematic information. (Probably true of drummers as well, but that's a whole other can o' worms!)

I don't have time to tackle the whole issue right now, but it's another very long and involved topic about which there will be much to say. Right now, I just want to ask about the late 1983 east coast tour of the JGB. Jacklyn LaBranch appears to have arrived on 10/24/82 and stayed through the end in 1995. According to TJS, it then went like this

DeeDee Dickerson	backing vocals	Oct 24, 1982	Jun 5, 1983
Gloria Jones	backing vocals	Jul 20, 1983	Aug 28, 1984
DeeDee Dickerson	backing vocals	Sep 15, 1984	Sep 28, 1985
Gloria Jones	backing vocals	Feb 21, 1986	Apr 23, 1995

By this reckoning, Gloria Jones was the backup singer in late '83.

In an unbelievably erudite analysis of the JGB from 1987 (1), Corry tells us that Gloria replaced Dee Dee on 9/30/83, not 7/20. This is not consistent with the fact that DeeDee was on the late '83 east coast tour. First, there's the ad below for the 11/27/83 show at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC:

Second, as noted above (discovered after the original date of this post), DeeDee Dickerson was "on the bus with the Garcia Band" for the November-December 1983 eastern tour. This, of course, modifies understandings of Gloria.

When did she start?

update: ca. July 10, 1984

REFERENCE:
(1) Arnold, Corry. 1987. The Jerry Garcia Band: 11 years and still rockin’. Golden Road no. 13 (Winter): 22-26.

GD: 1970 "Caravan of Love" tour

Found this fascinating little tidbit (1) that evokes a number of things worth mentioning:

The Grateful Dead are traveling eastward across the country on their Caravan of Love, en route to an Aug. 25th appearance at the Isle of Wight Music Festival. The Dead would like to liven up the Washington area with a free concert on Aug. 22, but are having a tough time finding a place to do it. The ideal place would be the Sylvan Theater, but it's being used for a production of "The Tempest."

Why is this worth mentioning?

First, there's the possibility of the 8/22 free concert. By my reckoning, Jerry was at Heider's in San Francisco on 8/21 (scheduled to work on "50 States of Freedom" and "Oh Mommy" in a 5-9 p.m. session for what would become Brewer & Shipley's Tarkio) and at the Matrix on 8/24 with Howard Wales.

Second, related but more broadly, there's the funny notion that the GD were "traveling eastward across the country." In the two months prior to the writing of this article the GD had been in the Bay Area; Hawaii; Bay Area; Memphis; Bay Area; Port Chester, then E-W from Toronto to Calgary on the Festival Express; Bay Area; Southern Illinois; Fillmore East; Bay Area. Through August they would mostly be in the Bay Area (with a quick jog down to San Diego). If caravans had worked like that on the Silk Road Queen Elizabeth would have been wearing cotton, I daresay.

Third, I had never heard of the Caravan of Love. On a quick Google I found the following from dead.net, the filename of which attaches it to the date of July 25, 1970:

The July 25th date (here's a direct link to the large size of the image) does suggest that the "Caravan of Love" was the way they were going to market things. Probably a groovy wrinkle on "Festival Express". Tom Zito of the Washington Post writing about this may just mean that he got the memo, so to speak.

Fourth, for the record I believe 8/22 would have been the GD's first appearance in Washington, DC. As it happened, that ended up taking place on October 23rd at Georgetown.

Fifth, I am fascinated by the assumption here that the GD were playing the Isle of Wight in 1970 (on 8/25). The festival seems to have been the last week of August. Does anyone know more about this? Were they scheduled to, but bailed out? (Perhaps they needed to finish the album?) Was this just wishful thinking? Just wrong?

Anyway, music business sure seemed like a pretty fluid proposition ca. 1970, all right.

REFERENCES:
(1) Tom Zito, "Rock Notes: Caravan of Love," Washington Post, August 3, 1970, p. B6.