New-to-The-List from the Digitized Chronicle

After spending X hours over X years spinning microfilm to try to find the needles of unListed Garcia gigs in the haystack of the Chronicle, the paper has been digitized.

Je ne regrette rien!

That said, I was able to find a few listings for The List. At this point, I cannot imagine we are missing more than a handful of Bay Area gigs about which information was actually printed somewhere.

2/15/71 JGMS at Matrix (via JLW "Something Else").
11/3/71 JGMS at Keystone Korner ("" "").
12/22/71 JGMS at Keystone Korner ("" ""). Just says Jerry Garcia, presume JGMS.
12/28/71 JGMS at New Monk ("" "").
12/29/71 JGMS at New Monk ("" "").
1/31/73 JGMS at Keystone Berkeley (via listings). This one turned up on a search for Tom Fogerty, who is listed, because JG is listed as Jerry Garcilea.

Update your Lists.

New-to-The-List from the Examiner, 1970-1972

In addition to the tantalizing May 20-21, 1969 Garcia gigs at the Matrix, the newly-digitized Examiner has yielded a good number of previously unlisted, mostly-midweek Garcia gigs. A little list  from 1970-1972 follows.

update: see also a subsequent list from 1973-end

11/2/70 (Monday): Jerry Garcia / BBHC / Ice / Cleveland Wrecking Company. Harding Theater. Benefit for A Learning Place. I don't know if this would have been NRPS or JGMS; I am listing as JGMS for no particular reason.
! Listing: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, November 1, 1970, p. 27;
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, November 2, 1970, p. 35.
! seealso: https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2019/11/ca-november-1-2-1970-fragments.html.

1/5/71 (Tuesday): JGMS at Matrix
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 5, 1971, p. 24.

2/4/71 (Thursday): JGMS at Matrix
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, February 4, 1971, p. 25.

3/30/71 (Tuesday): NRPS at Matrix. I interpret this as warmup for the east coast tour. BTW, they also played the next night, according to a redacted source, so we can add 3/31/71 (Wednesday), same band and room.
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, March 30, 1971, p. 24.

11/24/71 (Wednesday): JGMS at Keystone Korner. Garcia's first-known gig for Freddie Herrera had happened the night before Thanksgiving the year before with the New Riders. Jerry and Merl reprise the gig on its first anniversary.
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, November 24, 1971, p. 20.

1/18/72 (Tuesday): JGMS at Lion's Share
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 18, 1972, p. 21.

3/1/72 (Wednesday): JGMS at Keystone Berkeley (formerly New Monk). I now understand this to be the very first night for the so-named Keystone at the corner of University and Shattuck. It's a fitting indicator of the centrality of Garcia to Freddie's enterprises that he would play this opening night at the old Monk. (See also "Jerry and Freddie, mid-March 1972".)
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, March 1, 1972, p. 33.

6/3/72 (Saturday): JGMS at Keystone Korner
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, June 3, 1972, p. 10.

8/31/72 (Thursday): JGMS at Keystone Berkeley
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, August 31, 1972, p. 31.

12/26/72 (Tuesday): JGMS at Keystone Korner. This one puzzles me, because the KK would have been under Barkan's ownership at this point. Barkan has narrated that he once hosted Jerry and Merl (after he started booking the room on July 7th), but didn't dig the vibe and stuck thereafter with jazz. This could well be that very gig. I still don't know what to make of a listing for JGB at KK four years later, of course ...
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, December 26, 1972, p. 28.

Enter Tom Fogerty

update 20230712

I have no idea why I inferred Tom Fogerty saw JGMS at Keystone Korner on 5/20/71. It seems more likely to have been 5/22/71, and his arrival may mark why they made tapes of the next two nights.

Further, I have no idea why I inferred he first joined in Berkeley on 5/26/71, when Tuesday 5/25 is even more likely, based on the "off-night" clause of The Iron Law of Breaking in New Band Members.

So, as of 7/12/2023, I am calling 5/22 the visit and 5/25 Tom's debut.

/update 20230712

A couple of years ago I discovered this youtube content called "Goodbye Media Man", featuring video of Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders, Bill Vitt, various studio engineers and others unknown to me, working on a track by that same title.

Here is the description (published October 9, 2013):

Tom was the original singer of the Blue Velvets and the Golliwogs, both of which evolved into Creedence Clearwater Revival. Tom Fogerty had the chops to be a star in his own right. Within the band (Doug, Stu, Tom and John), Tom was overshadowed by younger brother John, who's talent was clearly evident. "Goodbye Media Man", recorded in 1971, was Tom's first solo single after leaving Creedence. A great track with solid musicianship and hooks. To my knowledge, this is the first time this video has been posted. Tom left us far too soon, passing on September 6, 1990. Back in the day, he was a friend, and I miss him - Ken Levy, Brooklyn NY / Addlestone, Surrey England

Wow.

I continue to be amazed at the material that continues to crawl out of the woodwork. It gives me hope for the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival (GSCBF) film, among many other things. This post will pin down the metadata but also talk about how remarkable is the wealth of material we have available to study, across many different media - and why we get to enjoy that wealth.

Metadata
Location

Appears to be Berkeley, both at Fantasy Studios and at Tom Fogerty's professorial manse with a bunch of kids running around.

Date

The video is only dated 1971. Recall that Tom Fogerty had announced on February 2, 1971 that he was leaving the lucrative Creedence Clearwater Revival over differences with the band's dominant force, his little brother John, and to spend more time with his four children.[1] We also know that the House That Creedence Built, the new Fantasy Studios facility at 10^th and Parker in Berkeley, had come online right around this time. Local journo students Kathie Staska and George Mangrum ("KG") ran an amazingly rich column in the Hayward Daily Review starting in February, and got a tour of the new facility from the one and only Ralph Gleason, now working full time for Saul Zaentz at Fantasy.[2]

KG reported on March 11 that Tom had started work on his solo album.[3] Just after the solstice, on June 24th, KG reported that the record was done and was set for release the next week,[4] also noting that he'd be part of Merl Saunders's band for a release on the same label. On June 29th, Robert Hilburn noted in the LA Times that "Goodbye Media Man" was set for imminent release. So the video presumably features material from this late-winter to early-summer span. Intriguingly, a youtube posting of the "Goodbye Media Man" single associates a date of "the 17th of June 1971" with it:

With all of this, the studio film could come from anywhere between March and June, but I strongly suspect that the home material is from closer to June, as the single neared or achieved completion. Update: John Wasserman mentioned that Tom was cutting "Goodbye Media Man" in his Chronicle column of June 21st, so this is very much in the nearing-completion stage - right around the solstice.

Forging The Garcia-Fogerty Connection

Our Hero comes up in the interview, and I think this comment sheds some light on the Tom Fogerty version of the Garcia-Saunders band.[5] Tom says

I only want to jam around right now and perform with as many people as possible. I’ve learned more about music this last month [i.e., May-June] from meeting other people than during the whole time while I was with Creedence ... One night, I just happened to go over to Keystone Korner. Merl Saunders had invited me over to hear him and Bill Vitt and Jerry Garcia, and within a week I was up on the stage with 'em. And, uh playin' with 'em, and at that point I decided that that was ... the kind of music that I wanted behind the song. It was within about three days that the thing came together with Merl.

When might this have been, exactly? Let's investigate. Jerry and Merl had played the following Keystone Korner gigs from the first Freddie Herrera - Jerry Garcia Joint through mid-1971:

Table xxx. Garcia at Keystone Korner, 11/25/70-6/16/71. Follow this link for a more complete table of Garcia's Keystone Korner gigs. Click image to enlarge.

Tom's narrative and the overall evidence best fits Tom having seen JGMS on 5/20/71,[6] and sitting in with them on Wednesday 5/26/71. This frame fits "within a week" from Tom's filmed reckoning, and I am pretty confident about the interval, if not the specifics. "Three days" from Tom is a little unclear to me, certainly could suggest it was other nights than the ones I pinpoint. So, why these?

This is going to get really convoluted, and, despite my best efforts, I assume it will be somewhat hard to follow. You can just take my word for it, or you can try to follow me into the data.

First, there is tape of 5/20/71 and 5/21/71, the first out of the Garcia Vault and the second locked away there until its 2020 release. May 11, 1971[7] and these tapes represent the earliest-audible Garcia-Saunders performances (perhaps as many as eight months after they started gigging![8]), and they precede a four-month gap that audibly ends when Lou Judson becomes the second Marin County soundman to run PA tape of The Group in late September. The 5/20/71 tape escaped into the world because Garcia had it amongst his stuff when, ca. Christmas 1975, MG threw him out of Sans Souci --on which the couple had closed on ... May 5, 1971!-- and he shuffled off to Deborah's for the first time. Debbie took possession of the tape, someone found a way to copy it, and now anyone can hear it.

Second, I submit that the fact that Jerry had this tape amongst his personal stuff is not innocent with respect to the very question we are considering. I think he had the tape "pulled", either initially recorded or pulled out of wherever most of his tapes were kept, or both, precisely so Fogerty could give it a listen. We know the Dead were in the habit of pulling recent tapes to prepare their incoming members, e.g., the "Houseboat Tapes" of August 1971 that they gave Keith Godchaux to listen to. I think Jerry lent it to Tom or dubbed it for him so he could come up to speed with the band and its material.

Third, and with respect to the late boundary, I glean one other possible tidbit of information from the table above, in the advertising patterns. I am almost certainly over-reading this, but the Thursday-Friday-Saturday 5/20-22 run looks like Big Nights - advertised in the Chron, weekend shows, some real buzz. Even Tuesday 5/25 gets a Wasserman mention, which may well have been enough to sell the gig out. But 5/26, Wednesday, gets a measley mention in the Trib's "Bay Sounds" items, which usually ran more toward jazz and soul. Probably a much quieter night for Tom to step up and play some for the first time, dontcha think? I can't adduce all of the evidence here, but it is as close to an Iron Law as exists in the Garciaverse that new players are broken in off-nights, off-the-beaten-path, or both.

Art and Commerce

For Garcia of this vintage, the aesthetics of any musical choice should go without saying. He wanted to play more music with good players than the Dead could afford him (especially in this very fallow period between the closing of the Fillmores East and West). As Corry and I have elaborated, Tom Fogerty advened alongside huge changes in The Group's approach and repertoire, from spacey organ jazz to all kinds of Americana, white (The Band's "Dixie Down", Jesse Winchester's "Biloxi", some good ol' rockabilly), black (Stevie Wonder, Motown, etc. etc.) and everything in between, mostly more or less contemporary stuff. In short, I think Fogerty came in because Jerry wanted to sing some tunes, wanted to bring in more white contemporary, and Fogerty could sing, play rhythm guitar, and bring in some new material. [update: the release of the pre-Tom 5/21/71 Garcia-Saunders gig gives the lie to the idea that it was all space jazz pre-Tom, with white-roots-flavored stuff coming in with him. Dixie Down, Mystery Train and arguably a few others were already in the repertoire. This is a case where fragmentary tape evidence led us {at least me} a little astray.]

But there were almost surely also commercial logics operating here, too. Whether they came from Jerry, from Merl, from Tom, from Saul Zaentz (or Ralph Gleason), and/or others, I can't know. But Fantasy Records stands at the center of this.

Indeed, I want to revise my conjecture above about why the May 20-21, 1971 JGMS tapes were made (and recorded in 4-track, no less). This was long before Rex and then Betty started taping Jerry, so why is there this one pair of shows? I said a few paragraphs ago that it was so Tom could bone up. I think that's half-right – it was so Tom could bone up, and Tom joining this operation cannot be separated from Tom making records for Fantasy, Merl making records for Fantasy, etc. etc. Remember that Merl invited Tom down to the club. He might have had a purpose in mind - say, to make a Group for Jerry that would record on Fantasy and make them all rich, what already wasn't, and them richer what already was. Corry and I have concluded that Fogerty's arrival served a sea change in the Garcia-Saunders aggregation, taking it from space organ to Dylan, Band and Motown numbers. (update: we overstated the discontinuity here. The 5/21/71 show has "Dixie Down", for example.) Why this big artistic shift? Quite possibly, to work up some more commercially viable material than the "out-there" jams they had been doing. Hooteroll? (Douglas 5, December 1971) would cover the space-organ piece of the market for the jazz heads, while The Group could do some white and black contemporary tunes for the dormitory set. It's all made to order, including an eager press. Indeed, two days after writing about Fogerty's upcoming release, our intrepid collegians K and G found themselves at the New Monk in Berkeley, where Tom, Merl and Jerry were holding forth for a standing-room-only crowd, just blocks from Fantasy.[9]

Conclusion

I feel quite confident, though not certain, that Tom Fogerty first sat in with JGMS on May 26, 1971. I also think Fantasy Records was the Prime Mover behind this partnership.

Now, Garcia and Tom did end up on Merl's Heavy Turbulence (Fantasy 8421, 1972), which looks to me like it could have been recorded in 1971, and Fogerty's Excalibur (Fantasy 9413, October 1972) which, though seemingly released later, feels roughly contemporary. Merl's Fire Up (Fantasy 9421, 1973) feels more like 1972, though of course it's pretty hard to say. But Fantasy's big golden goose feast, 1973's Live at the Keystone (Fantasy F-79002), featured the Fogertyless quartet of the aforementioned goose plus Merl and the Kahn-Vitt rhythm section. As best we can tell, Tom left the fold at the end of 1972 after eighteen months with The Group. What happened? I dunno, but I welcome your speculations in comments.

---

[1] “Tom Fogarty [sic] Leaves Creedence,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1971, p. 42.

[2] See also Staska and Mangrum 19710225.

[3] Staska and Mangrum 19710311.

[4] Staska and Mangrum 19710624.

[5] I have written at length around all of this. See "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue" (with Corry Arnold), URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders-at.html; "Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders & Tom Fogerty Sat-Sun, New Monk", URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-merl-saunders-tom-fogerty.html; and "Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders and Friends - June 25, 1971 Keystone Korner", URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/tom-fogerty-merl-saunders-and-friends.html.

[6] See "'JGMS 5/20/71' is probably really JGMS 5/20/71," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-52071-is-probably-really-jgms-52071.html.

[7] See "JGMS: Matrix, May 11-12, 1971," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-matrix-may-11-12-1971.html; "'Hey Merl, you wanna do that tune in 'G'? Get spaced out a little?' LN jg1971-05-11.jgms.partial.aud.28784.flac1644," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/hey-merl-you-wanna-do-that-tune-in-g.html.

[8] "When did Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders first play together?" URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/11/when-did-jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders.html.

[9] Staska and Mangrum 19710701.

Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner, December 19-21, 1976 (UNCERTAIN)

I am a stickler for accuracy with things like band names, and yet, given what we know, you would think that the words in my title, "Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner", could not be strictly accurate. Garcia stopped playing Keystone Korner in 1972, three years before the Jerry Garcia Band existed, the stickler would say.

That's true, but, imagine my surprise when, in spinning through some more BAM listings that I gathered this summer, I find the following.

BAM no. 9 (December 1976), p. 34. (Sorry about the obnoxious watermark over it.)

Listing for Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner, December 19-21, 1976. Fascinating.

Did These Shows Happen?

12/21/76 almost definitely seems not to have happened, since JGB played Keystone Berkeley (1st of three nights just before Christmas). The show was reviewed (Kelp 1976), there's tape (shnid-20474), and there was a listing in the Oakland Tribune based on considerably fresher information than BAM, still a monthly at this time, could have had.

What about Sunday-Monday, December 19-20? My hunch is that they did not happen, confident to maybe 75%. I couldn't tell you how I come to that assessment so, again, a hunch. Maybe the note to call to confirm the dates plants an extra seed of doubt about it in my mind.

The Listings Themselves Are The Point

Even if the shows did not happen, the listing is fascinating. Someone with calendaring knowledge at Keystone Korner conveyed to someone at BAM that JGB would play Todd Barkan's Keystone Korner in December 1976. Beyond merely stretching the period of known Garcia-Barkan engagement by four years, it ties back into a legendary jazz room. Garcia wasn't playing very jazzily at this time, so bringing him in would have been an exception to the regularity that, after the first six months or so of Barkan's proprietorship (let's say, starting January 1, 1973) it was strictly jazz.

I have a sneaking suspicion the shows never materialized, but either way I am fascinated to contemplate the possibility.

REFERENCES

! review: Kelp, Larry. 1976. A Showcase for Garcia’s Styles. Oakland Tribune, December 23, 1976, p. 22

! listing: "Bay Area Calendar," Oakland Tribune, December 19, 1976, p. E-14

! ref: URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/10/december-21-22-1976-keystone-berkeley.html

! JGMF: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/10/john-rich-question-reply-to-corry.html

! listing: [contra: Keystone Korner] BAM no. 9 (December 1976), p. 34.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Keystone Korner, May 20, 1971 (LN jg1971-05-20.jgms.80mins.sbd-boswell-smith.126365.flac2496)

Corry heard a lot of this keyboard work as Howard Wales. So did I. I also heard Jerry's guitar tone as 1968, and the recording as the Matrix. I parsed the tape, which seems correctly identified, we talked it over, and I think we agree that this is some very interesting tape.

Speaking for myself, I consider this some of Jerry Garcia's finest guitar playing, period. I can't recommend strongly enough that you check this out.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone Korner
750 Vallejo Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
May 20, 1971 (Thursday)
80 min Boswell-Smith flac2496 shnid-126365

--(6 tracks, 80:26)--

--piece-of-tape-01 (43 minutes)--
t01. Save Mother Earth [8:40] -> collective improvisation [4:37] ->
t02. Save // Mother Earth [3:#56] -> collective improvisation [10:56] ->
t03. collective improvisation [14:54] %% [0:24] %

--piece-of-tape-02 (9 minutes)--
t04. noodling [0:12], untitled-19710520-1-blues [8:06] [0:20] %

--piece-of-tape-03 (28 minutes)--
t05. [0:59] Little Bit of Righteousness [22:45] ->
t06. untitled-19710520-2-slow// [4:42#]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards, ?synthesizers?;
! lineup: ?John Kahn? - el-b;
! lineup: ?Bill Vitt? - drums.

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/19710521-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1971-05-20-keystone-korner-san-francisco-ca/

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/ODu2T

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/keystone-korner-750-vallejo-street-san.html

! db: shnid-93137 | shnid-100855 | http://db.etree.org/shn/126365 (this fileset). All three capture the same source reel. See notes below.

! metadata: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-52071-is-probably-really-jgms-52071.html

! see also: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders-at.html for some general discussion of the period. http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/hey-merl-you-wanna-do-that-tune-in-g.html (5/11/71 listening notes) for a contemporaneous version of Save Mother Earth.

! R: likely lineage: MSR @ 7 1/2 ips > 1st copy reel (made by Kidd and owned by Jerry Garcia, in possession of Debbie) > 2nd copy reel (made and owned by Will Boswell) @ 7 1/2 ips;

! R: transfer: Revox A77 > Bottlehead tube tape pre pair Tesla tubes circa 1980 > Apogee Mini Me 24/96 > Apogee Mini DAC monitoring and mastering > FLAC, transfer by Matt Smith.

! R: seeder notes: "Here's a fresh transfer by Matt from Will's reels using his new frontend."

! R: "This reel was first transferred by Matt in 2008 (shnid-93137).  It was retransferred in 2009 by GEMS (shnid-100855) due in part by the additional research Matt and David Lemiuex did. This transfer using the Bottlehead, December 2013. Remember that the nature of the tube transfer results in much lower gain, but a richer and deeper content. That's what 11 is for."

! R: the pitch of 5/11/71 (shnid-28784) and this SME are very different. I presume that one is off-pitch. Since Garcia says it's a tune in G (5/11/71 note 1), it should be fixable.

! P: t01 @ 8:32 Jerry strums the SME groove, but no-one else really bites. Jerry pursues something shiny 9:10. 11:19 we are drifting in space, a little cosmic drift, space dust. This is way outside the song structure. One way to think of the tracking is the various movements. It was SME, and we can take Jerry's strum @ 8:32 to signal departure from the theme. By 12:33 he is off in a deep, very Grateful Deadish space.

! R: t02 @ 2:38 there is tape discontinuity, but it doesn't feel very long to me. This occurs about 16 minutes into the recording, FTR.

! t02 I would have tracked this differently. The track marker is precisely where Vitt drives them back to SME, and they are playing SME.

! P: t02 in the 2-min range Jerry is playing some beautiful Spanish flavor, John matches the feeling very nicely. Things get good and dissonant 3:57, first taken out by John Kahn! Merl makes it spooky, and Garcia starts really doing some hammering, into a Tiger space 4:59 over 5, perfect scrubbing, more near-Tiger @ 5:06, some very stringy stuff, 5:38 piercing, controlled feedback, more squealing over 6, really riding it 6:07, Vitt splashes 6:12. Jerry drops from violin to viola register, but only briefly, Merl swirls some stuff forward, everyone out spacy together 7:30, Merl louder, Jerry strum more gently late 7, slowing it down and letting it breathe, Vitt splashes again 8:15, JG and BV putting some tempo on it, a slow sad thing 8:30. vitt is such a great player. Right around 9:40 he picks up the pace and drives the band into a faster piece, Jerry is playing BEAUTIFULLY here. This really is some of his finest guitar playing. BV's opening could be called the return to SME, because I can feel the song again in this part, especially from Merl, but I guess really from Jerry, too. 11:20 he's playing SME. @ 11:25 Jerry and Vitt both hit a three-beat run *perfectly in time with each other*.  Vitt is playing like magician here. This is a little faster, John is playing his After Midnight thing, Jerry playing lead guitar, overflowing, 12:42, fluent and voluble in this segment, lots to say. Listen to Garcia's fast runs 14:20! What a concept! Dropping down to spacy feeling to the end of the track.

! P: t03 At the very start of the track, he strums the Tighten Up theme. This is tracked at a new theme that Jerry promotes, louder. This stuff reminds me of the Hartbeats, say, at 45 seconds in.  This new theme comes up again 1:20 ish, it reminds me of Tighten Up. Drummer is SWINGIN', some great splashes 3:30 ish. track 3 really sounds like 1968 guitar tone to me. Yes, I hear what you are saying about the organist @ 5:36 - that's Wales. And the drummer is swinging really hard. And the bassist is walking it with a little modal feel that doesn't sound like John Kahn, necessarily. @ 6:45, 7:00 - Wales sound. Scrubbing 7:26, more through 7:45, plucks some stuff 7:54, plucking, pluck, pluck ... Garcia is suggesting some melody 8:30, but it doesn't take. Pretty good deep space over 10 - end.

! t03: applause analysis: sounds like a few dozen people in a small room. Sounds like Matrix, though since there are no tapes from KK it's hard to say what that room would have sounded like.

! t04: original notes: "This is one of the Wales songs, I think. Sounds like Wales on organ to me. Around 4 keyboardist switches to a piano for a bit, then 4:18 to organ." But 9/26/2014 I have revisited, and I am revising my opinion. I don't think it's a Wales original. It's something, but since the tape is JGMS, per the provenance, it can't be Wales.

! t04: Applause analysis: Not much of a crowd - sounds like Matrix to me.

! P: t05 this sounds like the same organist to me, but how can Howard be playing a Merl Saunders original? The bass @ 9:42 sounds like John to me, but I now feel thoroughly confused. Definitely the Wales thing @ 13:44. Bassist is feathering like Jack late 15. Garcia is hinting The Other One just before that, and still @ 16:11. I have never heard John Kahn play bass like that. @ 17:56 the drummer drops them right back to a great, fast LBOR thing, and it wanders away again. In late 22 early 23 bassist seems to be calling back LBOR, but it's not happening.

! P: t06 I may have been responsible for this being called Summertime, but it's not quite Summertime. Maybe late spring, har har. Bassist is playing some great stuff as the tape ends.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue

[ed: Corry sent me an email about Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix, which turned into a rather elaborate exchange on the subject. One piece of our correspondence involved the tape traveling as 5/20/71. This is some of Garcia's finest playing on tape in any context. I highly recommend that you check it out. I have done a little metadata analysis of the tape and reckon that there's no reason to doubt the David Lemieux-inspired conclusion that it is what it purports to be, and plenty of reason to concur in it.

Corry was stunned at how "out" this material is, sounding more like Howard Wales than Merl Saunders on keys, unmooring totally, in quasi-free jazz style, from the songs. I agreed with him, but, if my metadata analysis is right --and we both think it is-- then it is indeed Merl, and we may need, in my words (pace Bayes), to update our priors.

With Corry's permission, I am posting it more or less as we have it in email, with a few tweaks here and there. I originally planned that Corry would be in black and I would be in blue ("Tasty hemlock!"), but the quoting arrangement seems to work all right. Don't want too much formatting else Blogger will up and walk away on me.

Dialogue below the fold.]

"JGMS 5/20/71" is probably really JGMS 5/20/71

The tape traveling as Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, May 20, 1971, Keystone Korner (a.k.a. xx/xx/71 and 5/xx/71) probably really is Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, May 20, 1971, Keystone Korner (750 Vallejo Street, San Francisco, CA 94133) [map | JGC | JGBP | shnid-93137 | shnid-100855 | shnid-126365 |shnid-126389 and listening notes]

The most important reason to believe this is that Dead audio archivist David Lemieux, who has also had his hand in a number of Garcia releases, says it is, having compared it to an uncirculated Garcia Vault recording dated the next night, 5/21/71. Update: now officially released as GarciaLive volume 15!

For whatever reason, maybe because the music is just so mindfuckingly awesome and people get distracted, the metadata around this tape have been slippery. Corry prompted me to clarify my own understanding of the tape, which I have done and report here.

Current Metadata

As of late 2013, this presented as a Debbie tape of JGMS 5/20/71 at Keystone Korner. Note the four dimensions: the provenance of the tape, the band, the date and the venue.

1) Tape: Pat Lee (from JGMF shnid-93137 notes): "It originated from a stash of tapes that Kidd Candelario made for JG back in the early '70's for his listening pleasure. It was labeled Garcia/Saunders jams with no venue or date associated with the tape. I don't remember if it was a cassette or reel source." I have gathered that Jerry's tapes found themselves in the possession of his ex-/"it's complicated" Debbie, whose Cincinnati-area acquaintance, or acquaintance's acquaintance Will Boswell obtained copies in ca. spring 1979. Note: contrary to the assertion in shnid-93137, the tape did not come from Peter Kafer. Later shnids have more accurate information, though none of them have complete and correct information.

2) Band: see Pat's testimony: "Garcia/Saunders".

3) Date: We are given the date of 5/20/71 based on an analysis by David Lemieux, apparently comparing this with Garcia Vault tape dated 5/21/71. See shnid-100855.

4) Venue: Pat Lee and friends concluded that the tape was from the Matrix, based on its sound profile. Matt Smith reached the same conclusion, as reported in shnid-93137. The venue is currently given as Keystone Korner, which seems to derive from Lemieux's analysis. I think KK is right, see below.

Metadata Analysis

First, along with Rob Eaton, Lemieux would be the guy likeliest to be able to make this judgment, just for his ears and understanding of the music. The fact that he has access to a piece of tape that no-one else can compare, and that his A/B comparison leads to the JGMS 5/20/71 KK, is probably sufficient to call QED.

But, of course, I don't give up that easily when there are dead horses to beat. ;-)

Second, related, DL2 understands something that I think is hard to see from outside the Vault: tapes were probably recorded in batches at this early stage. In Bayesian terms, knowing that there's a tape of 5/21/71 in the Vault leads us to raise the subjective posterior probability that the prior night was also taped. Jerry wanted to have some tapes of this newish outfit to listen back to. He did that sort of thing. He had Kidd or Bob Matthews or someone come down to the club and spin a couple of nights' oxide. Maybe he leaves with the tape, or maybe he asks Kidd for it a day or month later. Kidd grabs one of the nights, while another night travels a different path, to an acclimatized Vault shelf in southern California somewhere. (It is noteworthy that "5/20/71" does not appear to be in the Vault, while 5/21/71 does - I agree with MS that this suggests that Jerry's tape --i.e., Debbie's tape-- was a master reel, so we are listening to a first copy. However, the tape feels edited down, too, so unless Will introduced these, it's possible that master reels are with Kidd or elsewhere.) Regarding specifically whether this might be Thursday 5/20 or Saturday 5/22, that's of course hard to say, but the tiny crowd makes Thursday sound more likely than Saturday. These shows were listed in the paper ("Rock, Pop Entertainment Here," San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 1971, p. 59), but a Thursday might have been reasonably quiet.

 

Third, we are blessed with a 20 minute tape fragment traveling as "5/11/71 Matrix" (shnid-28784 | listening notes), also featuring "Save Mother Earth". Lemieux A/B'd two pieces of tape, but we can triangulate to publicly-traded tape. The "5/11/71 Matrix" performance of SME sounds very much like this one, on every level. It especially strikes me that Garcia's guitar sounds the same, and it sounds a little 1968ish to me. A few times I said "sounds like Hartbeats 1968" when auditioning. Yet these two pieces of tape must be very nearly contemporaneous to each other, and they seem to have arrived by reasonably independent routes within 9 days of each other in May 1971. (To ensure independence of observations, I'd like to ask Lemieux if he has listened to 5/11/71 or not.) Again, the fact that these seem to say "May 1971" makes it more likely that they really are from May of 1971. And, Bayes again, the fact that we have collector tape called "5/11/71 Matrix" joins the fact of Vault tape from 5/21/71 in increasing the likelihood of escaped-Vault tape from 5/20/71.

Contra

What about the old notion that this was a Matrix tape? I agree with Pat et al. that it sounds like the Matrix, both in terms of some monitor fuzz around the recording characteristic of tapes made there and in terms of the room feel. I did an "applause analysis" after t03 and t04, and it sounds like a few dozen people in small room. Moreoever, it sounds for all the world like a few dozen people in small room at 3138 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, based on all of the circulating tape from that room from about the same time period. It sounds like a Matrix Tape.

Yet, as Pat has said, "It was purely our guess that it came from the Matrix, due to the sound, nothing else" and here's the kicker - we have no idea what Keystone Korner sounded like. My notes have it as capacity 200. So, while I guess it was bigger than the Matrix, it was not a big room. If Lemieux is correct that this is a Thursday night, a reasonably small crowd might be indicated.

What worries me more is the consonance of this tape with every Matrix tape I have ever heard, which is, well, a lot, in terms of monitor fuzz, the sound of the hardware. The fact that "5/11/71 Matrix" is labeled as such and is very similar worries me a little bit, too, but not as much. He could have asked for tape to be spun both times and places that month, and although "5/11/71 Matrix" sounds like an ambient (i.e., aud) rather than a line (i.e., sbd) recording, that's not dispositive, either. Dead sound guys were known to record from the hall, no reason it couldn't have happened on a Tuesday at the Matrix. The tape is a little degraded (SME is pitched very differently on the two tapes), and it's hard to see. But, again, my point here is that we don't have a baseline of what KK should have sounded like. Lemieux does, and he thinks it sounds the same. So I reckon that what we are picking up is that as contemporaneous performances in small rooms, possibly recorded on the same gear, tend to sound a lot alike.

Bottom line

I conclude that these pieces of tape are correctly labeled JGMS 5/20/71 Keystone Korner.

Corry concurs: "I have done a little listening and decided that your analysis is fully supported by the evidence, even if the evidence itself is pretty sketchy. A Thursday night tape (May 20), recorded and casually edited by an insider (like Kidd Candelario) for Jerry's pleasure and analysis makes sense of what is missing and present."

Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders and Friends - June 25, 1971 Keystone Korner

The title gives a listing found in "The Music Scene--Complete Listings," SFC, June 25, 1971, p. 43.

Further down the same listing is Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders and Tom Fogerty at New Monk on Saturday-Sunday (June 26-27, 1971). I certainly do wonder if Jerry was a "Friend" at the Friday show in the City. Perhaps he told them not to list him in case he was jet-lagged. Or maybe he was doing something else.

JGMS: May 25, 1971 Keystone Korner: new to The List

San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1971, p. 42.

Garcia and Saunders listed for Tuesday, May 25, 1971 at Keystone Korner. New to The List.

More color around Friends and Relations and the Tuesday Fillmore West auditions.

Jerry Garcia of Garcia-Saunders

Love this for the Keystone Korner, ca. May 1, 1972, sounds like Selvin to me: "With Jerry Garcia of Garcia-Saunders out of town, not too much happening right now." (listing: Night Times, May 3-16, 1972, p. 5.)

In addition to reinforcing my point about the symbiosis between Jerry and Freddie, how quickly and deeply it forged in this period, the idea of "Jerry Garcia of Garcia-Saunders" tickles me, probably the only time these words have ever been written.

There are periods, such as the second half of 1974, at least, when he's on record with it, when all he might have wanted to be was "Jerry Garcia of Garcia-Saunders". That's a Jerry Garcia of more circumscribed professional ambition, mostly a local guy, one of those guys whose name you'd see year after year in combing through Bay Area music listings; a guy whose name you don't have to write in 36 point Marquee, or even in bold in the big City column, a guy who never visits the 3-Dot Lounge constructed wholly of legendary SF columnist Herb Caen's mentions. He's like Mike Finnigan of Finnigan & Woods, maybe. Probably super-talented, hopefully made a great and satisfying life for himself playing music. Had his moments of professional achievement and, as human, his fallow periods. Cool.

Musically, Jerry Garcia of Garcia-Saunders is probably playing more Merl stuff (or, as Night Times, perhaps Selvin? seems to have insisted on having it, as I insist on rednering it, "Merle [sic] Saunders" stuff), more black secular contemporary, R&B, blues, soul, jazz and funk and fusion, more Legion of Mary, eventually (1979), if the same path unfolds with Jerry that unfolded without him, something like Reconstruction, horns and disco elements. Tony Saunders growing into his bass, if the 1974-1975 material we have of them together is any indication, is gonna push Jerry all sorts of sideways as John Kahn, for all of his erudition and, when healthy, talent in these idioms could never do. In many ways, this is one of Garcia's key musical roads not taken.

Why didn't he take it? Quick answers to a huge question.

First, the most Garciacentric view: it would have limited him too much musically, or professionally, or both. I do not advocate this view, nor do I reject it. I won't even evaluate it here. I'll just say it's a a possibility. At the very least, it's possible that Garcia thought this, and/or that others around him advocated this view.

Second, the Grateful Dead just had too much pull - "This battle station is ... fully ... operational." That's a big part of the story. It's more complicated than the Death Star imagery implies, though. Garcia needed the Dead and the Dead needed Garcia, their DNAs were too interwoven, the fabric of their lives too mutually imbricated to permit for any clean extraction, clean separation. The Grateful Dead became the sine qua non of his life, more central than his wives, children, friends.

Third, maybe the same story as the first two: ego, ambition, drive. The need to stake claim to his name, his thing, proper. Is it any coincidence that The Jerry Garcia Band is born at the latest within a couple of months of Jerry and Merl splitting up in mid-1975? Of course not. This was driven by claiming his name in many senses, the key but quotidian one of monetizing it and capturing those rents as well as the big, the-man's-life's-journey big picture. Let's call this "claiming his name".

Fourth, the Saunders-centric perspective: Jerry couldn't hang with where Merl and Tony were musically. Identified for the record and without comment.

Fifth, simply, it wasn't quite what he wanted in his non-GD musical life, repertorially and stylistically speaking. I think what he wanted was what he settled on (tautology alert!), neither predominantly black (as perhaps a Merl-Tony outfit would have been) nor too white (as NRPS, OAITW, GASB, were). JGB #21b was the combination of all of the relevant genres, with Melvin Seals, Gloria Jones and Jaclyn LaBranch bringing the black church feel that the Saunders outfits lacked --again, this was black secular contemporary-- with the whole band able to do that plus R&B, a little reggae, and all the white Americana that JGB sampled in cross-section, sipping from the pool. In equilibrium, Garcia's musical palette included all of these things (to say nothing of Grateful Dead music). A lifetime of Garcia-Saunders music was probably just off the equilibrium path of history.

There's of course more to say, but I'll stop repeating the questions: What would "Jerry Garcia of Garcia-Saunders" have looked like? Why might we have entered that alternate universe, or why didn't we?

Jerry and Freddie, mid-March 1972

Above are the music listings from Night Times, March 8-21, 1972.

Check 'em out if you're interested, of course, but let me be Garciacentric and offer the following tidbit, about the deepening relationship between Jerry Garcia (et al.) and Freddie Herrera: Jerry and Merle [sic] --Night Times misspelled his name without fail through this point, always adding the erroneous 'e' to his first name-- as I say, Jerry and Merl played for Freddie 8 times in 11 nights between Wednesday the 8th and Sunday the 18th. Here's a table view:

Table xxx. Jerry and Freddie, 8 gigs in 11 nights, March 8-18, 1972

Both weeks, it's Wednesday-Thursday at Keystone Berkeley --formerly the New Monk and renamed, as far as this evidence goes, as from the March 8th (update: March 1st) JGMS show!-- and Friday-Saturday at Keystone Korner in the City. The Keystone Berkeley would continue operating as such for a dozen years, based in large measure on the informal partnership --I believe that nothing was written down-- between Jerry Garcia and Freddie Herrera. It worked really well for a really long time.

Note that Armando Peraza is billed consistently with JGMS during this period.

JGMS January 28-29, 1972 Keystone Korner - CANCELED

Interesting to see Jerry Garcia and Merle [sic] Saunders billed for Keystone Korner on Friday-Saturday, January 28-29, 1972. Suggests that, as of whenever the deadline for these listings might have been, a second weekend for the Hooteroll? tour had not yet been pinned down. #AHATT.

According to listing in the next day's HDR, Grootna filled the open spot. Hopefully The Fabulous Geoffrey didn't lose a payday when Garcia-Saunders empted him from that February 3-4 space, part of a 3-4-5 run, maybe to make it up to Freddie for having to cancel the weekend before. Maybe he opened for them.

Color: January 12-25, 1972 Night Times listings

Here are some listings from the Night Times, with a few scattershot thoughts.

1) The Berkeley Night Times is a gem.

2) It's especially good re: race.

The range of clubs it covers exceeds most other sources - you've got the country clubs, the rock clubs, the black soul/R&B/gospel clubs, the Latin clubs, a little bit of the crooner set, a little of everything. I think I have noted, and Corry and I have certainly discussed so he may have noted, as well, the racial disparities in our work, derived in part from the material fact of the source materials we use. The white college kids and hippies going to the Longbranch, to say nothing of the martini set at the Circle Star, probably generated more paper, and certainly more enduring (i.e., filmed, digitized) paper, than did the folks getting their gospel on at the On Broadway or one of the Oakland rooms. Night Times had informants seemingly quite consistently across a wide set of sociocultural (and hence musical) strata - valuable stuff for future researchers who might want to look at how race played though all of it.

3) Some foreground, and not just color: JGMS 1/14-15/72

There's also a piece of foreground for me, in this listing. Garcia-Saunders have the January 14-15, 1972 weekend at Keystone Korner, still a Freddie Herrera joint.

I have done up some listening notes for the delightful tape of the Saturday show. It's the only tape fragment between 9/25/71 and 2/6/72, and it's worth a listen - very sweet, indeed.

And yet, as I continue to p.6 (looks like their ads expanded and so did their listings around late 1971, after maybe two months), I see JGMS listed for the same nights at the Lion's Share.

A Jerry Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

To recap, there are four pieces of contemporary evidence, of uncertain independence (relative to each other, including relative to some common prior cause).

1. listing: Hayward Daily Review, January 13, 1972, p. 35:  Jerry Garcia and Friends at Keystone Korner;
2. listing: Night Times, January 12-25, 1972, p. 5: Jerry Garcia and Merle [sic] Saunders at KK;
3. listing: Night Times, January 12-25, 1972, p. 6: Jerry Garcia, Merle [sic] Saunders and Tom Fogerty at Lion's Share
4. http://etreedb.org/shn/8644, the circulating audience tape says KK.

Based on a preponderance of the evidence standard, I'll go with KK, but I am open to arguments either way.

4) Stoned Sunday rap info?

Joel Selvin or someone at Night Times drops this tidbit into the listing: "fresh from being interviewed by Charles Reich and Jann Wenner (whew!)". I need to check when the Rolling Stone piece, because he might be reacting to its published length. Otherwise, I wonder if this is a scrap from telephone game that helps us pin down the dating of this event? Here's a scenario: Garcia talks about how long these stoned raps were, or he mentions it to Freddie, Freddie tells Selvin over the phone and they have a chuckle about it, it's good fresh banter if the interviews just took place. Could have happened. That'd put the rap (or is it raps? I can't recall) sometime between Christmas 1971 and the second week of January 1972.

update: JGMF, "Signpost to a New Space and Stoned Sunday Rap - Dates"

5) What Would You See?

Lots of great music happening in the Bay Area during this fortnight. Besides the Garcia stuff, I don't know what I'd pick, if I had to pick one. Doc Watson would be good. The George Duke Trio gig at El Matador is tempting, I wonder who was in that band? You'd be deaf for a week after that synth assault.

6) Other Notes

Gideon and Power always intrigues because I have it in my head that Melvin Seals was part of the band (Power) at some point. The Night Times has some cool little asides about Gideon, who seems to have been quite the showman with his "hard-driving gospel soul".

The aside about Malo is also interesting, because it brings the Latin scene into focus. The band had gotten and/or would get lots of press, as part of an exploding Latin scene in San Francisco that had Carlos Santana's fingerprints all over it. Malo was a sort of supergroup with all kinds of hot players. The listing blurbs it as "a local big band that is fronted by Carlos Santana's brother Jorge and that has a Warner's album scheduled for release this month". I have some other 1971-1972 listings and such to go through and Cesar's Band at Cesar's Club, Luis Gasca, the percussionists Armando Peraza and Mongo Santamaria, and all kinds of other maniacs were tearing up the clubs. This whole scene feels very heavily fueled to me.

7) "All the beer you can drink"

One last piece, another piece of Fred Herrera color, as he is getting the New Monk, which would become Keystone, up and running at 2119 University in Berkeley. Ever the entrepreneur, the deals sound great: Clover is the regular band on Monday night, $1 and free food; Doobie Brothers on Thursdays, $2.50 and all the beer you can drink. Forget the still-scrappy Doobies, "all the beer you can drink"? I am on that.

Jerry Garcia Sometime Before Christmas

Night Times, published out of Berkeley for about a year (as far as I know) in 1971-1972, is a treasure. I found a review of Chez Panisse just shortly after it opened, but it's loaded with great music, art, etc. content.

Anyway, I liked this one, from the December 23, 1971 - January 3, 1972 issue, for what it says about Jerry's life at this time. He is listed as appearing at Keystone Korner (still run by Freddie Herrera) "sometime before Christmas". I wonder if, toward the end of his life, he ever actively mourned such freedom? Or had it been dead and buried so long that it no longer crossed his mind?

JGMS: January 6-7-8, 1972, Keystone Korner

I had a Friday, January 7, 1972 Garcia-Saunders gig at Keystone Korner based on an ex post discussion by Ken Hunt in the San Francisco Chronicle (1). But a bit of sniffing reveals a Thursday-Saturday run, January 6-8. No TJS, so update your own spreadsheets.

(1) Hunt, Dennis. 1972a. Guitarist Jerry Garcia Never Stops. San Francisco Chronicle (January 10), p. 42.

This should be related to an earlier "new to the list" post.