Twin Wonder Powers, Activate? JGMS, October 11-12, 1973 at Keystone Berkeley

Tape Archaeology

What used to be known by some of us as the Third Batch of Betty Cantor-Jackson tapes proved the most grudging of all the batches in terms of finding broad circulation. This especially vexed Garcia freaks, because it contained a number of drool-inspiring Garcia-Saunders sets. You might imagine where the mind would go, seeing entries like these in 1996, a world in which very few had heard any Garcia-Saunders shows that had happened between July 1973 and January 1974:

JGMS 10/11/73 notes from Rob Eaton's mid-1990s work on the Third Batch of Betty Boards

JGMS 10/12/73 notes from Rob Eaton's mid-1990s work on the Third Batch of Betty Boards

Purchased in a storage auction in May 1986 along with the rest of the Betties, but lost to broader reckoning for around a decade before they became available to Rob Eaton for preservation in 1995-1996, some of these tapes still do not circulate. Fall '73 Garcia-Saunders tapes came into the world relatively late: the Winterland Legal Aid Benefit from 10/2/73 (etreedb | JGMF) in 2007 via Alligator, 11/3/73 (etreedb | JGMF) on NYE 2012-2013, and these October 11-12 shows only in 2016, almost twenty years after they were first digitized. Remarkably enough, all of these tapes are now home where they belong, having been gathered together by the ABCD crew and returned to their owners at no profit (in the case of the GD tapes) and at no cost (in the case of the Jerry stuff) - that is, effectively, pro bono. Will Wonders never cease?

Stevie Wonder in the Garciaverse

Speaking of which, let me use the occasion of twin Stevie Wonder tunes on October 11, 1973 to pin down Garcia's engagements with that legend's compositions, all of which occurred in the company of Merl Saunders. Alphabetically, I identify the following, all of which except "Reggae Woman" were done as instrumentals in the Garciaverse.

"Another Star" (Allan | deaddisc | wikipedia)
A hotty from 1976's double-sized Songs in the Key of Life, Garcia played it, hotly, with Reconstruction throughout that band's eight-month run in 1979.

"Boogie On Reggae Woman" (Allan | deaddisc | wikipedia)
From Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974), Merl sang this one very effectively starting on 11/2/74, on current reckoning (with Paul Humphrey drumming), appearing regularly until the demise of the Legion of Mary in summer 1975.

"Creepin'" (Allan | deaddisc | wikipedia)
Also from FFF, this one never lit me up during its 1975 Garciaverse appearances.

"I Was Made To Love Her" (Allan | deaddisc | wikipedia)
This 1967 title track, by contrast, almost always lit me up. It seems to have been one of the first songs in the Garcia-Saunders repertoire, showing up in setlists as early as Fall 1971, but also, regrettably, left relatively early, not making it past 1973. Indeed, the version I discuss below seems to represent its last known appearance in a Garcia setlist.

"Love Having You Around"
Garcia played this one, the first track from Stevie's 1972 Music of my Mind, with Aunt Monk at a San Francisco bar called the Generosity on May 9, 1975. There is rumor of at least one other Garciaverse performance, but details remain hazy.

You Are The Sunshine Of My Life (Allan | wikipedia)

The second single released from Talking Book (Tamla T 319 L, October 27, 1972), this one reached the top of the charts and won Stevie a Grammy.

Of course, please let me know if I am missing anything!

As a final note, the 10/11 show here features two of these numbers, and it looks to me like, besides this night, Merl and Jer and others played two Stevie tunes three other times, on 2/14/75, 3/1/75 and 4/10/75a. Every one of those occasions paired "Creepin'" and "Boogie On Reggae Woman" (and Creepin' only appeared once w/o BORW, 5/21/75).

This night, by contrast, we get the final JGMS version of "I Was Made To Love Her", played more slowly than any other Garciaverse version, and the singleton "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life", given a pretty spare and off-feeling 15-minute treatment.

What does this mean? Hell if I know. I am just pattern-matching.

On To The Music

The October 11-12, 1973 Garcia-Saunders performances at the Keystone strike me as, respectively, lackluster and about average. The first night proves especially disappointing, because look at that setlist, but boy is it low energy.

JGMS 10/11/73 reel #2, scan provided courtesy of ABCD. The handwriting is Rex Jackson's, and the information is very typical for how he labeled the tapes, with personnel characteristically listed (Merle [sic], "Kawn" [a joke]), date, DOW, venue on the left, and, on the right, we have reel #, speed and recording info, including "Revox", indicating that this was made on Rex's deck rather than Betty's Nagra. Oh yeah, one final note: those are mold stains along the bottom of the box. The Third Batch of Betties spent a long time in some pretty horrifying conditions, and Eaton worked heroically to preserve them.

"I Was Made To Love Her" - one of the great, poppin' vehicles for this band, is played too slowly and never really gets going. It would be permanently shelved after this performance.

"When I Paint My Masterpiece" - not a favorite of mine, but it was rare and Dylan is always interesting. Not much of note happens here, quite subdued, and ol' Jer puts it on the shelf until 1/20/80.

"One Kind Favor" - one of my very favorites, the version from the Cap in Passaic a month earlier, in the band's first out-of-state show, absolutely slays me. This one, again, never reaches any kind of boil.

"You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" - John is totally on this, but Garcia doesn't really know how it goes, maybe not in the right key? This sounds kind of like piano lounge stuff.

Even the "Harder They Come" from the 11th holds lots of flubbing and falling apart.

An off night, I guess. Probably the dullest '73 Garcia-Saunders show in circulation, despite the sexy setlist. What are you gonna do?

The next night comes out with more juice and sounds stronger overall to my ears on this listen, but After Midnight quickly returns things to the languid pace of the previous evening. "Train To Cry", very much not a favorite of mine, has perhaps never been played more slowly by anyone, ever. "My Funny Valentine" sounds great to my ears, and Jerry really lets it melt for awhile - probably the highlight to my ears. But, overall, and of course IMO (YMMV), 10/12/73 pales in comparison to every other show in circulation from the year, except the night before. Two weeks later, on 11/3/73, the band sets my hair on fire. Here? Well, not so much. And, somehow, the first 40 minutes of reel #1 turn up blank. Hm. Every night can't be amazing, I guess.

All of that said, and perhaps especially because it doesn't knock me out, I am inexpressibly grateful to all involved in getting these recordings into our ears: Betty and Rex, RE, Alligator and the rest, and to ABCD for doing the right thing by these precious artifacts.

Listening notes below the fold.

Garcia and Saunders at the Lion's Share

I see that 7/5/73 is slated for official release as (per B&N) Garcialive 6: July 5 1973 Lion's Share (Jerry Garcia / Merl Saunders).

• http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/garcialive-6-july-5-1973-lions-share/29919624;jsessionid=D74E41C2738E4500EC4D90119172BE33.prodny_store01-atgap05?ean=0880882255220 
• http://www.amazon.com/Garcialive-July-1973-Lions-Share/dp/B01F73YZZ0

See my post now titled "Garcia and Saunders at the Lion's Share" if you want to learn more about the very interesting songs, the great performance, the mysterious trumpet player.

This is a nice pick. I hope The Powers That Be consider trying to license use of the original reels or buying them, as the Dead should have done for 3/26/72 and did for the July '78 boxset, rather than using Rob Eaton's best-possible-at-the-time 1996 DAT transcriptions.

Friday Night at the Boarding House

edit: well, this is a first - turns out I had already posted a version of this. Heh heh. Presumably, this one is better.

April 13-16, 1973 saw Garcia "Four Nights at the Boarding House", two with Merl Saunders and The Group (JGMS), two with Old And In The Way (OAITW). So much about these shows tantalizes me – the legendary San Francisco venue, the only-in-the-Garciaverse blend of black and white, old and new, my love for the repertoires and performances of both bands, and the fact that of the four nights, and presumably at least nine sets/shows,[1] only one set circulates, the first set of the OAITW late show on Monday the 16^th (see shnid-100404 for the best copy, and my listening notes). We know a little about the other three nights from Rob Eaton: Friday the 13^th and Saturday the 14^th were represented among the Third Batch Betty Boards that he transcribed in 1996, and somewhere along the way (possibly also the Third Batch) he transcribed one of the Sunday night (4/15) bluegrass sets.

In this post I want to say just a bit more about Friday the 13^th, mostly triggered by a show review I found in the Stanford Daily.[2] I'll start with what we already knew, and then turn to what the review adds.

Metadata

The Soto-McNally-Arnold JG List, Garciaverse successor to the Soto List, had a listing for this show, which may have come from union contracts and/or the newspaper and other research of any of the named authors. I show a Barb "Scenedrome" listing (April 13-19, 1973, p. 18) and one in the Hayward Daily Review (April 6, 1973, p. 53) with scheduled 8 pm start.

Setlist

Rob Eaton contributed setlist details for the end of the show, updated by TJS staff:

--end set II--

Money Honey

Positively 4th Street

untitled-19730307

Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Tape Archaeology

These details came from a sound recording, and I'd like to dig into a bit of tape archaeology.

When Betty Cantor-Jackson and Rex Jackson got together in 1972, they mixed and mingled their lives and their tape collections. The legendary Betty Boards could be more accurately, if less fetchingly, understood as the Cantor-Jackson Collection, the tapes they merged and then made (together and apart) during Rex's foreshortened life (d. September 5, 1976) and beyond it, Betty flying where it's wing-meltingly-hot to make some of the finest sound recordings in the long history of live music.

This gorgeous personal collection of professionaly-curated tape got washed away along with everything else in her life over a number of years, by the early '82 floods and by a spate of equally natural human disasters, muck that doesn't come off with a Q-Tip. The tape went from a box in Betty's San Anselmo basement to the world of storage units (somewhere in the world exist documents that could help us pin down details, I just haven't managed to uncover them yet), lost from memory until it wound up auctioned-off with a thousand or more of its companion Betty Boards around May 1986.[3]

For over nine years, this tape hid in a goat barn until, in late 1995, its possessor called Rob Eaton to investigate and, eventually, preserve it. Armed with wood-stemmed cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol, an oven to bake flaky oxide to a vinyl backing, sweating over an Otari 50/50 reel to reel->Apogee 500 A/D converter-> Panasonic SV3700 DAT setup, Eaton spent 700 of his 1996 hours annotating, cleaning, repairing, spinning, and presumably soaking in and enjoying some of the sweetest sounds ever captured live – a Third Batch of Betty Boards, including the last 40 minutes of the Garcia-Saunders group at the Boarding House on Friday, April 13, 1973.[4]

Now I will get even more arcane about this particular artifact.

Eaton's "Kingbee" List gave the following:

04/13/73 The Boarding House, San Francisco Ca - xcerpt
4.8, 039min, Sbd, A0D1, Reel Master->Dat 1, 44k,
10inch Master Reel@7.5ips 1/2trk->3700 x 0->3800 x 1

Though he's almost never mistaken, I thought Kingbee had tripped up on this one. I thought this must be reel #3 of a show recorded on 7" tape. I was wrong, KB was right as usual. Not that anyone cares, but let me run through my reasoning.

It has generally been my sense that Betty usually taped Garcia on 7" reels running at 7.5 ips or 10" reels running at 15 ips (about 48 minutes). Sometimes tape diameter and recording speed would cross to the other diagonal, but not that much. What we have here is a 10" reel running at 7.5 ips (96 minutes), just such an off-diagonal tape. And, I have finally come around to the idea that this could indeed be the last 40 minutes of a contemporary JGMS gig, on these parameters – this looks a lot like the 49 minute end-of-show tape that lived with 4/13/73, March 7, 1973. I also note that Lion's Share 7/5/73 gives 10-7.5 parameters, though that one is a 180 minute monster. So maybe this is how she was doing it at this time.

Show Review

Happily, recent gatherings give me a bit more to report. The Stanford Daily has been beautifully preserved and presented at http://stanforddailyarchive.com/. Thanks to all involved in making that happen. Among many other delights, it yielded a review by Jay Harlow of this Friday the 13th at the Boarding House. 

Garcia and Saunders "returned for a two-night stay" (following a three night run in January[5]), "joined by guitarist George Pichner [sic: George Tickner], ... an important enough part of the group to deserve equal billing." They were late in starting: "At 9:30 we got word that the band was still waiting for the bass player. Five minutes later he was outside looking for a parking space, and eventually came walking in through the audience, being occasionally booed and heckled." The show eventually kicked off just before ten with "That's A Touch I Like". Garcia's guitar plays like a good, dry white wine (it was already Palo Alto, after all).

A friend named Sarah helped with the vocals on some numbers, and particularly shone on "Honey Chile". Her voice ... blends very nicely with Garcia's guitar. .. In the middle of the set there was a long, beautiful instrumental number in which everyone had some solo space. ... Pichner [sic], who had been playing mostly rhythm guitar so far, did some good leads, à la Eric Clapton at times. His somewhat harsher tone sets off Garcia and Saunders very well.

Harlow namechecks Bill Vitt for us, and has high praise for the Mule: "bassist John Kahn was certainly worth waiting for. Both in backup and solo playing, he is a real stylist. At times the flair in his left-hand fingerings reminded me of a classical guitarist." He gives us a few more setlist details ("That's All Right", "Lonely Avenue" and "I Second That Emotion"), and it sounds like a good time, "first rate musicians really working together".

Beautiful.

Unfortunately, Harlow doesn't say anything about the electric violin player reported present at JGC (via TJS). I wonder if George Tickner did any fiddling?

In Sum

Armed with this new information, let me sum up in the form of a draft TJS-successor entry.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

Boarding House

960 Bush Street

San Francisco, CA 94109

April 13, 1973 (Friday) - 10 PM

--unknown set and order status--

That's A Touch I Like

That's All Right

Lonely Avenue

I Second That Emotion

Honey Chile

--end set II--

Money Honey

Positively 4th Street

untitled-19730307

Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;

! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;

! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;

! lineup: George Tickner - el-g;

! lineup: Bill Vitt - drums;

! lineup: Sarah Fulcher - vocals.

! ?guest?: ?? – electric violin.

JGMF:

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19730413-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1973-04-13-boarding-house-san-francisco-ca/, noting "An unknown electric violinist sit in on this performance".

! db: none in circulation as of 8/11/2015.

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/boarding-house-960-bush-st-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/4JEC3

! ad: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook 19730401p12

! listing: Hayward Daily Review, April 6, 1973, p. 53

! listing: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook 19730408p04

! ad: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook 19730408p11

! listing: "Scenedrome," Berkeley Barb, April 13-19, 1973, p. 18

! listing: Hayward Daily Review, April 13, 1973, p. 53

! listing: San Francisco Examiner, April 13, 1973, p. 35

! listing: San Francisco Examiner, April 13, 1973, p. 44

! review: [positive] Harlow, Jay. 1973. Garcia, Saunders 'Together' At Boarding House Theater In SF. Stanford Daily, April 17, p. 7. Accessed via http://stanforddailyarchive.com/, 7/2/2015

! personnel: Harlow (1973) namechecks the whole band (though, as a few weeks earlier at the Inn of the Beginning, Sarah is just Sarah). The author identifies "George Pichner", but it's George Tickner on second guitar.

! setlist: The show was scheduled for 8, but started closer to 10 (John Kahn was late arriving). The set structure is uncertain beyond that That's A Touch opens the proceedings Dixie closes them down. I hypothesize that one of the sets was truncated due to the late start. For example, the songs from RE's reel transcription, Money Honey through Dixie Down, could be the entirety of set II. The rest of the songs derive from a review in the Stanford Daily (Harlow 1973), and I place them in set I, though that's not certain.

! song: " untitled 19730307" is the beautiful unnamed thing Jerry and Sarah did together on the March 7, 1973 tape.

---

[1] Normally, I'd say eight sets/shows, two sets per night for JGMS and two shows per night for OAITW. But the circulating tape of 4/16/73b suggests that that show contained two sets, bringing our presumed set total to at least nine, and possibly as many as sixteen sets (2 for each JGMS date and 4 for each OAITW date).

[2] Harlow 1973.

[3] Budnick 2014.

[4] See Eaton 2015 for more detail.

[5] See my write-ups for 1/24/73 (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/07/ln-jg1973-01-24jgmsearly-latesbd.html) and 1/25/73 (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/07/ln-jg1973-01-25jgmsearly.html). Betty taped and Eaton transcribed 1/23, but it has never seen the wider light of day.

Legal Aid for Unnamed Angels

LN jg1973-10-02.jgms.all.sbd-alligator.83809.flac1644

I am sure Blair and McNally and all the other sources go into the obscure story of the Legal Aid Benefit. I just re-read the one source I have at hand, John Wasserman's very suspicious-sounding piece in the Chronicle a few days later (1). Sounds like some Angels, facilitated by Sam Cutler and certainly abetted by Garcia, made a lot of dough with this gig, but it's not clear who, nor is it clear that the whole thing was correctly represented to, inter alia, Bill Graham himself. It sounds like an interesting story to dig more deeply into.

Of key interest from the GOTS perspective is the large number of guests. I work with a concept of the Shared Stage, which suggests that within the social networks of musicians, playing together is a deeply important form of linkage. These are "strong ties", as opposed to the "weak ties" represented by linkages such as joint billings and joint album credits. From my Garciacentric vantage, Shared Stage events can be broken down into a few categories, the most important of which are JG-host (Jerry hosting a guest) and JG-guest (Jerry taking a guest shot with someone else). Here we have a number of linkages to Jerry through the former channel in this gig:

• Another mystery trumpeter (see also 12/28/72, 7/5/73, 8/15/74, 9/1/74). Wolfgang's Vault identifies this as Bill Atwood, but that's apparently based on a conjecture by Corry, itself based on a mistaken assumption.
• Martin Fierro guests, for the second known time after 7/19/73.
• Sarah Fulcher sings on a song.
• Roger "Jellyroll" Troy plays bass at the end, and sings a couple of blues numbers.
• Matthew Kelly on harmonica.

I want to love this show. Things are good and reasonably interesting, but it just doesn't move me as much as I thought it should.

Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders
Winterland Arena
corner of Post and Steiner
San Francisco, CA 94115
October 2, 1973 (Tuesday)
92 min Betty Cantor-Jackson sbd

--(8 tracks, 92:00, presumed complete)--
t01. [0:18] % /It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry [5:21] [1:39]
t02. Finders Keepers [9:35] [1:34]
t03. The Harder They Come [10:42] [1:37]
t04. My Funny Valentine [18:27] [1:09]
t05. That's Alright Mama [11:30] [1:00]
t06. I Second That Emotion [10:12] (1) [1:15]
t07. Sweet Little Angel [7:09] -> I've Got News For You [1:23] [0:16]
t08. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:56] (2) [0:13] %

! Band: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass (t07-t08);
! lineup: Bill Vitt - drums;
! guest: Martin Fierro - saxophone (t02-t06, t08);
! guest: ??Bill Atwood?? - trumpet (t01-t04, t06, t08);
! guest: Matthew Kelly - harmonica (t05, t07, t08);
! guest: Roger "Jellyroll" Troy - el-bass (t07-t08), vocals (t07);
! guest: Sara Fulcher - vocals (t05).

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/19731002-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/83809 (this fileset).

! map: http://goo.gl/maps/hLCHp

! historical: Legal Aid Benefit for a Hell's Angel friend of Sam Cutler, who didn't really tell Bill Graham what was going on. Graham: "Was I lied to by omission? Yes. Was I lied to by Mr. Cutler? Yes. For now, the money is going nowhere. Not because it was for an Angel, but because I was lied to. They used me. When I am used, I want to know by whom. What a sad commentary on our supposed 'inside' community. Now, we're in the gutter" (Wasserman 19731005).

! R: Betty Cantor Jackson's master soundboard reel ("Third Betty Batch" reel #7, 10" @ 7.5 ips ½ trk, Nagra IV-S, uncertain tape stock); preserved by Rob Eaton early 1996: Otari 50/50 reel-to-reel > Apogee 500 A/D converter > Panasonic SV3700 DAT; lossless encoding "DAT4x" > Delta DIO 2496 > Soundforge > WAV > CD Wave Editor > FLAC, via Alligator. I have the "DAT4x" in quotes because I am not sure I believe it.

! R: came into general circulation in 2007, placed there by 'alligator' via Bit Torrent at Lossless Legs (shnflac.net) with a GEMS classification. This was among the "third batch" of Betty Cantor-Jackson's tapes, which came into some light in around late 1995-early 1996. These tapes contain a great many hours of otherwise-unheard players, songs, guests, etc., and very few of the Garcia tapes have ever come into circulation. It is very, very nice to be able to hear this recording. Without it, there is a four-month gap in recording coverage of Garcia/Saunders as a live act (between 9/6/73 and 1/17/74). That's an eternity given how much this configuration was playing and how fluid things were. [update 20130218: we now also have JGMS 11/3/73 in this frame! update later: 10/11/73, 10/12/73 now in the fold.]

! personnel: the fileset credited Saunders with keyboards and vocals, but he doesn't sing here.

! R: t01 18 seconds of recording, then clips into Train to Cry. Trumpet player is audible right away. Garcia's vocals are nearly inaudible for most of the song as the mix settles in. The mix is way off, lots of hiss, for a good long while.

! personnel: The trumpet player is good and tasteful. Wolfgang's Vault identifies him as Bill Atwood, but Corry presumes this is derived, ultimately, from him, and that the listing is possibly spurious. So we really don't know who it is.

! P: t02 Finders Keepers: half the band tries to stop around 6:54, the other half keeps playing. They pull it back together quickly enough, I guess.

! personnel: t02 Martin Fierro starts making himself audible late in the song, for example stepping forward @ 8:46. He is pushing Jerry nicely and Garcia is rockin' out

! R: t03 HTC some monkeying around in the 3-min mark, then bad sound fluctuations in 4-min mark. More weirdness, mix fluctuations, anomalies, around 6:30ish. AFter song, around 11:45, an odd spinning sound.

! personnel: t05 I think this is the same harmonica player as 7/19/73. Gotta be Matt Kelly.

! t06 (1) JG: "We're gonna get a friend of ours named Jellyroll out here to play some bass, sing a few songs for ya, maybe."

! P: t07 Sweet Little Angel: hearing Merl play some deep, swampy blues like this is pretty phenomenal. The stuff he is doing @ 6:32 is straight Church of Jimmy Smith. It feels a lot like Sunday here. Mmm mmm mm. @ 7:10 the "Ive Got News For You" verse. @ 7:48 harmonica back in. Let's assume that's Matt Kelly. Saxophone, maybe also trumpet at end, as well.

! setlist: wk: "The 'Unknown Blues Song' starts out as B.B. King's 'Sweet Little Angel' goes into a jam then finishes as Ray Charles' 'I've Got News For You. The vocals are handled by Jelly Roll Troy."

! personnel: t08 HSIII honestly cannot tell if this is Jellyroll or John Kahn playing bass here. HSII harp @ 2:52. Horns audible @ 3:35.

! t08 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. Jack and Jorma are gonna come out and play for awhile."

! WV: http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders/concerts/winterland-october-02-1973.html. "Following sets by Stoneground, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and Mike Bloomfield & Friends, the Garcia-Saunders Band took the stage at Winterland. They invited several friends to sit in over the course of the show, making this one of the more unique performances by the group. The recording begins with an original Saunders instrumental called "Finders Keepers." Here, Merl's dynamic keyboard playing and the punchy rhythms created by Kahn and Vitt create a funkfest that brings out a side to Garcia's playing few had heard before. Martin Fierro joins in at this point, adding freeform sax improvisations to the mix. Reggae music was just beginning to penetrate the music world in 1973 and a lengthy exploration of Jimmy Cliff's classic "The Harder They Come" follows. Garcia was one of the first American musicians to fully embrace reggae and he would absorb its exotic rhythms like a sponge. He also handles the vocals here. The highlight of the entire set is next as the ensemble tackles the jazz standard, "My Funny Valentine." This is absolutely infectious from beginning to end. Over the course of nearly 20 minutes, the ensemble floats along in a dreamy exploratory style. John Kahn's bass playing brings out lyrical magic from Garcia's guitar and Fierro's sax, neither of whom is at a loss for ideas. An unknown musician also joins in on trumpet during this number. It's an exquisite performance and the sheer joy in Garcia's playing is palpable. He rarely sounded sweeter or more comfortable than he does right here. The set continues with a rollicking romp through "That's All Right Mama." Matt Kelly, future founder of the band Kingfish, blows harmonica on this number and Garcia, with the help of local singer Sara [sic] Fulcher, handles the vocals on this rockabilly classic. A delightful rendition of Smokey Robinson's "Second That Emotion" follows, which takes the three-minute Motown hit and cooks it up for well over ten minutes. At this point, John Kahn exits and is replaced by Roger Troy, bass player and vocalist from Mike Bloomfield's band, who had performed earlier on the show. Troy leads the group into blues territory with "Sweet Little Angel," a tune he and Garcia had previously performed together during a stint in Howard Wales' band two years prior. Troy handles the vocals here, and it's obvious that all concerned are thoroughly enjoying themselves. Finally, the Marvin Gaye classic "How Sweet It Is" closes the set on another joyous note. They say goodnight and inform the audience that Jorma and Jack (aka Hot Tuna) will be taking the stage next."

REFERENCE:
Wasserman, John L. 1973. ‘Mystery’ Benefit at Winterland. San Francisco Chronicle, October 5, 1973, p. 56.

After Midnight: JGMS, November 3, 1973, Keystone, Berkeley

I just call this After Midnight. Tremendous.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone
2119 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
November 3, 1973 (Saturday)
123 minute soundboard

-sSet I (7 tracks, 83:05)--
s1t01. ... After Midnight [7:26] (1) [2:48]
s1t02. Expressway (To Your Heart) [10:59] ->
s1t03. collective improvisation [15:50] ->
s1t04. transition to Merl's Tune [2:13] ->
s1t05. Merl's Tune [7:58] [2:34]
s1t06. Someday Baby [16:19] [1:55]
s1t07. I Second That Emotion [14:50] (2) [0:11] %

--set II (2 tracks, 39:51, incomplete)--
s2t01. .. Mystery Train [10:01] [0:15]
s2t02. My Funny Valentine [29:05] (3)

! Band: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Bill Vitt - drums;
! Lineup: Martin Fierro - saxophone, flute.

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/19731103-01

! db: none as of 12/31/2012. shnid-123279 (this fileset).

! map: http://goo.gl/maps/z22BN

! metadata: The show seems originally to have been booked, and was billed, as Old And In The Way . It was listed that way in "Scenedrome," Berkeley Barb, November 2-8, 1973, p. 17 and Hayward Daily Review, October 26, 1973, p. 34, as well as on a Keystone handbill. However, the Staska-Mangrum column from 11/2 listed it as JGMS (Staska, Kathie, and George Mangrum. 1973. Rock talk from KG: Country song goes to town. Hayward Daily Review, November 2, 1973, p. 44), and the tape is, plainly, JGMS. Of course, the next night would feature the last complete OAITW show, and it only occurred as late as November 4th because of a rainout at Sonoma State on the initial date of October 7th.

! R: the recording information I report is pieced together from available information, and may not be definitive.

! R: analog source tapes 1) Betty Cantor Jackson’s 10" master soundboard reel [MSR] @ 7.5ips 1/2 trk (Nagra IV-S, uncertain tape stock) (3rd Betty Batch, tape #53, 11/3/73 reel #1, set I, 83 minutes); 2) Betty Cantor Jackson’s 10" MSR @ 7.5ips 1/2 trk (Nagra IV-S, uncertain tape stock) (3rd Betty Batch, tape #36, 11/3/73 reel #2, end of show; first part of reel blank).

! R: Analog to digital transfer by RE, winter 1996: Otari 50/50 reel to reel > Apogee 500 A/D converter > Panasonic SV3700 DAT @ 16 bits, 48 kHz. The story of these tapes was written up in the late 2012 New Yorker article (Paumgarten 2012).

! R: subsequent: uncertain DAT > WAV > CD > EAC (extraction) > CDWave (tracking) > TLH (flac8 encoding) > foobar2000 (tagging) by JGMF.

! R: This recording is nothing short of spectacular. It enters in the pocket and stays there. Betty Cantor-Jackson, thank you! Listeners: we are truly blessed to care about the music that Betty cared enough to record for us. It’s like Rudy van Gelder or something. We are truly lucky music fans. And thanks to whoever had the foresight to salvage these tapes, and to have RE, a Grammy-winning recording engineer, preserve them. Posterity thanks you.

! historical: So good to hear this show. As of this writing, the only Garcia/Saunders shows in circulation after the thoroughly-documented (and now completely officially released as Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings, Fantasy, 2012 [Allan | deaddisc]) July 10-11, 1973 Keystone shows are the fragment of the 9/5/73 Hell's Angels show, the complete Capitol Theatre (Passaic, NJ) show of September 6, 1973, and another Hell's Angels thing at Winterland on October 2, 1973. After that, it's all the way out to January 17-18-19, 1974. Hearing this November show is potentially really important in stitching together a musical analysis of the band's evolution.

! s1t01 (1) @ 7:58 JG: "Mr. P.A. man, turn up the monitors and the P.A. please, would ya? That is, could ya?"

! P: s1t02 The jam portion of Expressway is very, very nice.

! setlist: s1t02-s1t05: I had a real bear of a time deciding how to track the 40-minute continuous piece of music between After Midnight and Someday Baby. It's pretty extraordinary! I used to prefer more markers to fewer, then I eased off of that for some years, and now I am feeling that they have great value. One way or another, we need good metadata on what was actually performed, and the timings of the various pieces. Future musicologists will thank us, or not. And with a jam like this, it's an exercise in false precision and linearity no matter how you slice it. This is how I slice it. I feel reasonably comfortable with s1t02 as Expressway. They leave the song structure, key, tempo, etc. at that point, which is when I drop in the "jam" track (something else that I have gotten away from). The "collective improvisation" covers lots of terrain. It even contains hints of the tune to follow, the Merl Saunders original "Merl's Tune". So, obviously, I split the baby with the tracking of Merl's Tune. What I do is just logically indefensible, not least since there are hints of Merl's tune all through the "jam". Merl's Tune has a pretty distinctive three-note start. Once Merl plays that and it "takes" (i.e., he doesn't wander away from it until Merl's Tune has definitely been played), I start the transition track. Then I track the song proper, well, when I think the song proper starts. Finally, though, they bail out of Merl's Tune before the end of the track I have made for it. So, if I were being consistent, I'd probably track this out, too. I am not being consistent.

! Personnel: the personnel identified is per the tape box as noted by RE.

! setlist: the start of the second reel was blank, and we clearly have an end of show announcement (see note (3), below). So we appear to be missing the start of set II.

! R: s1t01 After Midnight very low amplitude, lots of mix and level fluctuations, first minute and a half or so.

! P: s1t03 neat little jam JG descending at 3:44, GDish ... @ 4:00 Martin jumps in with a descending, decaying run of five notes, and then a more melodic, higher, quicker five-note melody that he copped from somewhere. Garcia starts vamping a little bit, and things really swing for a nice little 90 second thing, check it out around 4:45. Martin doing some very distinctive lines @ 5:10, really smooth (quoted again @ 5:30 ... Garcia playing very structured melody. If this were the GD, this jam would have gone somewhere, I hate to say it. Then Jerry is articulating some long sentences toward the late 7- and early 8-minute range. Again, late in the 8-min mark, with some very distinctive clusters of notes, definitely saying something. Starts bending @ 9:19 .. mmmm ...

! P: s1t03 John Kahn locks in on the three-note opening bass line of "Merl's Tune" for awhile @ 9:30

! P: s1t03 @ 10:15 Martin is playing his After Midnight thing. John joins him and so does Jerry. Merl is doing the MT line at 10:44 but since he abandons it for awhile again I don't start tracking it here. For a few minutes, if you started playing this at any point here and forced me to say what song it is, I think I'd say After Midnight. Jerry is strumming his After Midnight strum. John could be repetitively doing his After Midnight bass line toward the end of this segment, too. I guess these are their Merl's Tune lines? Maybe it's just that Merl's Tune has a melodic structure that sounds (to me) a little like After Midnight.

! P s1t03 Martin some copped CTI-type line @ 10:54, 11 ish. @ 14:00-ish one could almost imagine "Eleanor Rigby" emerging, or maybe that's just an echo from the future.

! P: s1t03 this jam is @@ extraordinary. This may be one of the finest pieces of Garcia-Saunders jamming on tape.

! s1t05 “Merl's Tune” is a neat composition. It has the voodoo bite of lots of Merl Saunders's tunes, but also has a little swing break that puts me in mind of a carnival whirlicue, a spinning thing.

!P:  s1t05 MT Merl switches @ 1:59 to an electric piano or clavichord kind of sound, back to organ @ 2:14. Martin comes in on flute @ 2:13.  @ 2:42 Garcia enters a descending Grateful Dead kind of space ... descending 8-note lines ... absolutely gorgeous. Some beautiful, fragile, melodic stuff. This is a @@ beautiful jam. Then Martin comes in cheek-squealing and spitting and farting, and the moment passes. Martin hits a familiar lick @ 3:38. By about 4:45 they return do a dark space pretty well unmoored from the song. @ 5:15 JG does some mournful whale-wailing that's too brief.

! s1t07 (2) JG: "We're gonna take a break for a little while. We'll be back in a few minutes. Thank you."

! setlist: s2t01 has traditionally been listed as "That's Alright Mama", but it's actually Mystery Train.

! R: s2t01 Mystery Train enters in progress.

! s2t02 (3) JG: "Well, it's closin' time in Berkeley, everybody. Thanks a lot for comin' by and all that."

! s2t02 after the show-closing announcement, Garcia strums After Midnight. Funny. As I heard in the long set I jam, "After Midnight" permeates this show, thematically. And since the announcement probably came sometime near or after 2 a.m., that chord might just be a musical accompaniment to the announcement. "After Midnight", indeed. If I were bootlegging this, that's what I'd call it. How original.

! Thanks to all involved in making and preserving this music.

! URL: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/

even though I am on hiatus until ca. March 2013, I

thought I'd leave a breadcrumb here for the return. Lotsa new info on the Third Betty Batch, or info new-to-the-record, anyway.

Paumgarten, Nick. 2012. Deadhead: The afterlife. New Yorker, November 26, 2012, URL http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_paumgarten, consulted 11/20/2012.

Also, I never knew that Betty and Brent were an item. But then again, there's an awful lot of stuff that's known that I've forgotten.