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.
