Unidentified Nicky Hopkins Instrumentals

update: Mark Mattson has identified the number as "Lucky Old Sun" - wow!

There may be others, but I am right now pondering two distinct instrumentals that Nicky does out of "Lady Sleeps" with the JGB in the last month or so of his run with the band.

11/23/75: about 1:38:30ff here --> https://ia600902.us.archive.org/9/items/jgb1975-11-23MackeyAuditoriumBoulderCO/jgb1975-11-23MackeyAuditoriumBoulderCO.mp3

He announces that one before as one of his originals, I think.

12/19/75: about 51:30ff here--> http://www.archive.org/serve/jgb1975-12-19WinterlandArenaSanFranciscoCA/jgb1975-12-19WinterlandArenaSanFranciscoCA.mp3 a little peppier, sounds kind of Beatles-ish to me (though it's not "Mother Nature's Son")

Help!

The still-unidentified funky instrumental from 8/20 and 8/30/75

UPDATE: researcher David Kramer-Smyth spoke with Hadi al-Saadoon, who identified David Kessner as the composer. David Kessner confirms he wrote it, but is not sure if it had a name.

At Jerrybase, we are now calling this "David's Tune (Gm)"

On August 20, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall, and again on August 30, 1975 at the Orphanage, both times with Garcia, the Keith and Donna Band played a funky instrumental number the title of which has eluded me for well over ten years.

Looks like I asked about it five years ago.

Someone must be able to identify this tune.

I post mp3s of the two versions here to aid in that identification.

Please help!

untitled-19750820 from 8/20/75

untitled-19750820 from 8/30/75

Woody's Rag

For years, I have wanted to know the name of the second song from the first "real" live Garcia-Grisman gig, 2/2/91 at the Warfield, which has previously just been identified as "Instrumental". They played it again the next night, and they would never play it publicly again.

Well, the great Neil V. Rosenberg, whose book Bluegrass: A History, is totally essential, has sent along an identification. It's "Woody's Rag", written by the one and only Woody Guthrie, and done among others by The Weavers.

Thank you, Professor Rosenberg!

untitled 19750820b

UPDATE: researcher David Kramer-Smyth spoke with Hadi al-Saadoon, who identified David Kessner as the composer. David Kessner confirms he wrote it, but is not sure if it had a name.

Anyone know the funk-fusion instrumental that ends set I of 8/20/75, Keith and Donna Band at the Great American Music Hall, a week after the Dead's picture-perfect performance in the same hall, a personal favorite space of Jerry's from playing it with Merl? On the much-appreciated Reinhart Holwein tape (shnid-107746), it is d1t08.

JGC doesn't seem to know either, but rather than laying out there as an unknown, they just excise it, leaving the poor unsuspecting fan to imagine that "Sweet Baby" ended the set, which it patently did not.

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1975-08-20-great-american-music-hall-san-francisco-ca/

This track is hot as hell in lots of places. What is it?

update
 
Commenter Nick offers this:

I have it labeled "David's tune (Gm)" in my notes.  If you strain your ears, you can hear someone on the sbd recording saying, “David’s tune… David’s tune… G minor” (this is d2t06 @1:26 on shnid=21672).  And, indeed, the funk instrumental (d2t07) is in G minor (the circulating sbd runs a half-step sharp, but it's definitely in Gm on the pitch-corrected MOTB aud).  There was no one named David in the band, though (??), and I've never bothered to dig around as to who David might be.  Any ideas?

Based on this, I think "David's tune (Gm)" is a great working title, or maybe for now I'll just keep both names, i.e., untitled 19750820b - "David's tune (Gm)".

update2: still searching for the ID five years later.

Recall that Corry has written up this night's version of Freddie Hubbard's "Straight Life" through the lenses of, variously, Art Pepper and Jerry Garcia in the summer of 1975.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2012. August 20, 1975 Great American Music Hall, San Francisco: Keith And Donna with Jerry Garcia ('Straight Life"). Lost Live Dead, March 29, 2012, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/03/august-20-1975-great-american-music.html, consulted 12/27/2013.

It looks like that will be "the book" on this gig.

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.

Darben The Redd Foxx

Commenter Nick's encyclopedic discographical resources (vinyl and knowledge) rescue me/us from an error and afford a little glancing blow through American culture that helps us situate Garcia in his world.

The song currently understood as "Ptah, the El Daoud" (Alice Coltrane), previously understood "Bag's Groove" (Milt Jackson), performed by Garcia-Saunders on June 4 and June 6, 1974, is actually what I will spell as "Darben the Redd Foxx", which Nick first finds on James Moody (Argo LP 648, 1959) [youtube | wiki]. He supplies a very helpful starter discography:

• "Darben the Redd Foxx" on James Moody s/t (Argo 1959)
• "Dobbin' with Redd Foxx" on Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Bacalao (Prestige 1960, rec 1959)
• "Darbin and the Redd Fox" on Milt Jackson, Vibrations (Atlantic 1964, rec 1960)
• "Darben the Redd Foxx" on Don Patterson, Mellow Soul (Prestige 1967)
• "Darbin the Redd Fox" on James Moody, Don't Look Away Now (Prestige 1969)
• "Darben the Red Fox" on Dizzy Gillespie, live recording 1980 (sextet with Moody), see http://jdisc.columbia.edu/session/dizzy ... er-24-1980
• "Darben the Red Fox" on Rutgers University Livingston College Jazz Ensemble, Music of the Masters - Past and Present (RJE/PJ, 1981)
• "Darben the Redd Foxx" on James Moody/Hank Jones, Our Delight (IPO, 2008)

I think Nick suggested we go with "Darben The Red Fox", and WTF am I to say otherwise, but when in doubt I like to use the oldest known title. (Not sure I actually adhere to that rule, but regardless it's the one I am applying here.) So, again, I'll call it "Darben the Redd Foxx", credited to James Moody.

Do your own comparisons:

• Moody's original, starting from 12 seconds in: http://youtu.be/5jzzWcl7bbE?t=12s
• JGMS 6/4/74
• JGMS 6/6/74

A little more context from Nick.

It's a random one-shot jazz tune for them to play, but it's certainly possible that Fierro was familiar with Moody and brought it to the group, or maybe even that it was a tune that Tony Saunders was familiar with … It doesn't seem like a complicated song to learn right before a gig. I don't think it was a standard, but it clearly had enough cachet for a few major jazz artists to record versions of it, so maybe it was something that jazz musicians played often at jam sessions or something -- I don't know. The real mystery (for me, at least) is how Alice Coltrane of all people came to reappropriate the exact same melody for one of her own songs -- I wonder if it isn't lifted from some classical or folk melody, but I have yet to get to the bottom of that one.

I look forward to learning more! In the meantime, let me paint around the edges a little, as is my wont, four rough-hewn sets of strokes.

First, #jazz, fine jazz. That's all.

Second, Redd Foxx -- John Elroy Sanford (December 9, 1922 – October 11, 1991) – wow. Hello to an America you couldn't, initially, see on your TV: "Foxx was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised on Chicago's South Side. His father, Fred Sanford, an electrician and auto mechanic from Hickman, Kentucky, left his family when Foxx was four years old. He was raised by his half-Seminole Indian mother, Mary Hughes from Ellisville, Mississippi, his grandmother and his minister." (Obviously, I want … to ... compare and classify!) But, then, amazingly, in his 50^th year, Redd Foxx was an American you could see on your TV, in "Sanford and Son", which ran from January 14, 1972, to March 25, 1977. White America, mostly guided, pushed and instructed by Black America itself, of course, and Foxx pushed it further still, making all kinds of marginalization mainstream, having and getting some good laughs along the way. It was a good show, and, though I don't much about Garcia's TV watching habits –sci fi and B horror flicks come to mind, and he testified to watching hellfire-, brimstone- and amphetamine-breathing preachers on late night Bay Area TV, probably variously that guy/those guys on Channel 2 for awhile, Channel 12 for awhile). Foxx's standup and some musical stuff appeared on more than fifty records, and it's just hard to imagine that Garcia hadn't taken some it that in at some point in his Beatnik youth or his still-transgressive early thirties. Here's the "Redd Foxx"-GRAM over the course of his lifetime:

Figure xxx. Ngram "Redd Foxx", 1922-1991

Third, on our history with this tune. It's been called "Bag's Groove" (no) and, lately, "Ptah, the El Daoud". To err is human, and is often the fun and interesting stuff. I am glad we thought it was Ptah, because that's a great tune that I probably would have missed if we hadn't. (Same goes for another candidate, Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band's " "The Crossing (Oubour)".) And it's a lot like Darben. But the song JGMS played was the latter and not the former, we now know. Cool. Updated your song lists – I have (s-Darben the Redd Foxx, #songs-D).

Fourth, a little spray-can Mona Lisa: I get a kick Garcia smiling behind his beard (or maybe not, in June 1974; so, smiling beneath his chins), maybe Tony Saunders brought it to them, someone thinks of Redd grabbing his chest and yelling "I'm coming, Elizabeth!", a chuckle is had. But then, the serious work, maybe important is the better word, the meaningful work of playing some fine jazz – because it's a great tune. It's a chuckle, but make no mistake about it – this material, in the setting in which it was played, finds Garcia in some of his healthiest, most challenging musical engagements. This is not his native musical idiom, but his willingness to tackle it speaks volumes.

As is so widely the case, the blackness of these engagements often remains hidden, mostly by deeply subtle forces, for example that, as a proportion of white paper (let's say, posters, handbills, business files and records), there was less black paper to begin with, less was ever collected/preserved/archived, less has been analyzed, and so forth. There's less tape from Slim Jenkins’ Supper Club or Esther’s Orbit Room in West Oakland (Hildebrand ND), to say nothing of the Marin City joints, than came out of the Lion's Share or the Keystone Berkeley. Even now race is a hard conversation to have – but it's a great conversation to have. Garcia was having it in tackling "Darben The Redd Foxx", and the sonar's return ping at forty years' vantage maps all kinds of American cultural depth. But it also reveals a sweet simplicity that would diminish over time. Thinking of Garcia thinking of Redd Foxx in early June of 1974, and then tackling a nice little piece of jazz, puts a little smile on me in the way that I hope it was able to put a little smile on him, free, still, to just play, something new and interesting, no strings attached.

REFERENCE

Hildebrand, Lee. ND. Blues on Seventh Street: Recollections of the West Oakland scene in its heyday. The Monthly, URL http://www.themonthly.com/upfront1302.html, consulted 1/24/2015.

The Group with George Tickner: Keystone, March 7, 1973

LN jg1973-03-07.jgms.s2p-48mins.sbd-alligator.31501.flac1644

Update 4/22/2012: The second guitarist is George Tickner.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone
2119 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA
March 7, 1973 (Wednesday)

--Set II (3 tracks, 48:42, partial set)--
t01. untitled 19730307 [19:59] [0:08] % [0:06]
t02. Merl's Tune [14:18] ->
t03. Georgia On My Mind [13:44] (1) [0:27]

! 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.

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/19730307-01

! db: shnid 31501 (this source). This is one of the mostly-uncirculated "third batch" of Betty Cantor-Jackson's tapes, which came to light around late 1995. Rob Eaton professionally preserved the tapes, many of which were seemingly-irredeemably water-damaged and filth-encrusted. Thank goodness he did. Tapes like this show us stuff that otherwise would be completely unknown. Eaton supplied DATs of these tapes to Latvala and/or the Garcia vault. It would seem that Lossless Legs user 'alligator', who shared these with the world, was indeed very well-connected.

! Given lineage: "MSR > DAT3x > Delta Dio 2496 > Soundforge > WAV > FLAC1644"; seeded to Lossless Legs by alligator.

! Seeder note: "There are some low volume digital pops that can heard during the quieter parts of the performance. They did not detract from me thoroughly enjoying this show."

! personnel: Garcia, Saunders and Fulcher are easy, and the little bass solo in Georgia On My Mind is almost certainly (p <. 05) by John Kahn. We can assume it's Vitt drumming, I guess. The historcal assumption was that the second guitarist was Tom Fogerty, but it turns out to be George Ticker. GT has better lead guitar chops than Tom, who actually is never known to have played with JGMS in 1973 despite having been billed in the early part of the year.

! setlist: t01 is almost certainly a song with a name. This is the one with Jerry and Sarah singing, duet-style, as if to each other, "ba ba, ba ba, da dah". It's really nice. The vocals start up around 3:20 in.

! P: t02 Tickner makes himself heard at  @ 1:02, then plays a hot solo from 1:15-2:35. He is good, and it strikes me unusual for someone other than Jerry or Merl to take the first solo. This guy is tearing it up.

! P: t02 Merl's Tune is in a really nice jam space in the 4-min mark, with Merl moaning, groaning, howling, burning. Very nice. Garcia tries to double-time it around 5:09, Merl swirling around, Jerry's saying at 5:20 that he has an idea and runs with it for a bit. There's a deep, screaming space in the 11-minute mark. Tickner is also then wailing around 11:20 for awhile.

! P: t02 I think this version of Merl's Tune is fantastic.

! P: t03 Garcia is the one who drops them into Georgia On My Mind. Subtle, delicate, beautiful. John Kahn plays a beautiful bass solo in the 10-minute mark of GOMM. Right on, man! Great American Songbook, baby.

! t03 (1) @ 13:55 JG "Well the light is on, as you all know. So ... we have to call a close to the evening's festivities." The crowd calls for more, or one more, and Garcia says "I know they're not gonna dig it" as he appears to call for "How Sweet It Is" with his guitar. I'd bet dollars to donuts they closed the show with HSII.

LN19690219 High Country "2/19/69" Matrix, San Francisco, CA

LIA's argument that the GD set circulating under the date of 6/19/68 is actually the 2/19/69 GD show is totally persuasive to me. Of course that probably implies that the 2/19/69 dating of the High Country set from the Matrix, with Garcia and Nelson joining Butch Waller and Rich Wilbur, is probably mis-dated. (A Wednesday afternoon show at the Matrix strikes me as unlikely.) Unless someone knows something I don't, I'd guess I'd say, based on understanding gleaned from Corry and Yellow Shark, that the "2/19" dating is indicative of a general timeframe.

(Parenthetically, does anyone know anything about the GD show at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore, MD, on February 9, 1969, listed at Deadlists based on Deadbase IX?)

Anyway, LIA's post led me to revisit this little bluegrass set, which I thoroughly enjoyed. This is important, of course, as the first known Garcia bluegrass (and banjo) playing since the Warlocks went electric in 1965. Makes you wonder what else we don't know! It's also always nice to hear Garcia just relaxing and picking a little bit.

UPDATE: Of course LLD has posted on this gig, which I had forgotten about.

Anyway, I post my listening notes below. The song titles are all over the place in terms of how Deadheads keep track of this stuff; I have confirmed all but the unidentified ones below. Thanks in advance for corrections/additions!

High Country (w/ Jerry Garcia & David Nelson)
The Matrix
3138 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA
"February 19, 1969 (Wednesday)" [probably incorrect date]

MSR > ? > R > CD, via fstop.

(16 tacks, 56:13)
t01. /Mississippi Sawyer [1:58] [0:48]
t02. On And On [2:36] [1:30]
t03. Walls Of Time [3:18] (1) [1:12]
t04. Pike County Breakdown [2:09] [0:08] % [0:19]
t05. Teardrops In My Eyes [2:29] [0:36]
t06. Big River [1:57] [1:05]
t07. Working On A Building [3:42] [1:12]
t08. Brand New Shoes [1:42] (2) [1:04]
t09. Soldier's Joy [3:07] [0:56]
t10. Swing Low Sweet Chariot [2:08] [0:55]
t11. I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome [2:39] (3) [1:03]
t12. [0:15] Bluegrass Stomp [3:40] [0:14] %
t13. //I Wonder Where You Are Tonight [#2:22] (4) [1:03]
t14. unidentifed country bluegrass 19690219-2 [3:01] [0:22] % [0:18]
t15. Live And Let Live [2:27] (5) [0:12]
t16. Bluegrass Breakdown [3:15] [0:14]

! ACT1: High Country
! lineup: Butch Waller - mandolin, vocals;
! lineup: Rich Wilbur - bass, vocals;
! lineup: David Nelson - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - banjo.

JGMF:

! /=clip; //=cut; %=tape discontinuity; #=truncated timing

! Show: Frank Wakefield is sometimes identified as the mandolin player, but I think the evidence (including reference in Rothman 1998) suggests that it is Butch Waller and that the lineup listed above is correct. The show has conventionally been dated 2/19/69, but as of 1/1/11 that seems unlikely, since the GD played the "Celestial Synapse" show at the Fillmore West. Deadheads have attached many different song titles to lots of these numbers. I have pretty well confirmed the titles given above, with the obvious exception of the two unidentified tunes (t01 and t14).

! Recording: This version comes from fstop, who was one of those who copied Peter Abrams's reels in the 1970s. It is mono throughout, but a nice recording overall. We can't really know the lineage with any certainty. I didn't necessarily note all of the between-song tape discontinuities.

! t01 clips in

! t01 unidentified bluegrass standard 19690219-1 is identifiable. We need some bluegrass ears on this!

! Love how they are calling out the song keys to Garcia, and deciding on the spot when he'll take his break (e.g., t02 before Walls of Time)

! Sounds like there are about 20 people in attendance.

! t03 (1) @ 3:46: Guy asks Jerry if he wants to play "Pike County?" Jerry sort of groans and indicates he's not sure he can play it: "Oh, God, OK, I'll try it." The following song is indeed "Pike County Breakdown"

! t06 tick near start of Big River

! t08 (2) @ 1:47: guy to Jerry: "You let us know when we should call it a day." JG: "[inaudible] should keep playing." Guy: "All right!"

! t11 title confirmed from http://www.bluegrasslyrics.com/song/im-blue-im-lonsome/

! t11 (3) @ 2:4: guy: "What do you think we ought to do? You think we ought to stay here, or you think we ought to go away?" Garcia: "I don't know. Let's play some more." Guy: "OK. Let's play Bluegrass Stomp."

! t13 I Wonder Where You Are Tonight fades in, almost nothing missing.

! t13 (4) @ 2:26: Guy: "Bluegrass Breakdown" ... JG, about 2:34: "Oh, man. I'm gonna have a hard time  with this one." DNA/genetic code talk. JG: "Go ahead. You guys do it. ... I just can't play it." Guy: "You can do it in  'D'." JG: "I can do it in 'C'." Guy: "Me too, I guess." @ 3:03, sounds like guy changes the song: "Do this one. This one's easier." Then they do a more guitar-driven song the title of which I don't know.

! t14 TJS lists this song as "Don't Say Goodbye If You Love Me", but I don't think that's what this is. It's a really nice number, whatever it is. We need some folk/country/bluegrass ears on this!

! t15 Live And Let Live title confirmed at http://www.bluegrasslyrics.com/node/667

! t15 (5) @ 2:26: JG: "Let's do one more." Guy: "Bluegrass Breakdown."

References:
Rothman, Sandy. 1998. Jerry Garcia’s Musical Roots: The Banjo Years. Relix 25, 4 (August): 26-30.

The 1974 Garcia/Saunders instrumental previously listed as "Bags' Groove"

UPDATE 1/24/2015: Commenter Nick has determined that this is actually "Darben The Redd Foxx".

For fans of Jerry Garcia's pre-1975 excursions beyond the Grateful Dead, one of the great fun things is to hear Jerry trying on really unusual material, seemingly without much preparation. I think of the instrumental versions of "Day By Day" (from Godspell--previously misidentified as Jesus Christ, Superstar-- thanks to anonymous for the correction), the Motown "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and "Cucumber Slumber" as examples, but there are many others (and presumably more than we know based on circulating tapes).

Even more tantalizing is when there's a tune that "we" --i.e., the community of people who chronicle this stuff-- don't know. Sleuthing around and discovering the name and provenance of a mysterious jazz instrumental is a real challenge for someone as illiterate as me, but is also a lot of fun and is very rewarding when a previous unknown gets a designation.

I think we have a case of that here, though this is not 100% and should be further discussed.

The tune in question is the instrumental that appears on circulating recordings of Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders from the Lion's Share in San Anselmo on June 4, 1974, and the Keystone in Berkeley on June 6, 1974. I know of no other versions. The song has forever been listed at TJS as "Bags' Groove," but that is not what it is. I'd like to get more ears on the alternatives, so below I post (1) links to the Garcia/Saunders tunes; (2) hypothesized song titles, with links; (3) some existing analysis provided by folks more expert than me; and (4) a tentative conclusion.

(1) Here are links to the Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders versions:

June 4, 1974: [sorry, these are dead]

June 6, 1974: [sorry, these are dead]

(2) Here are the hypotheses we have in terms of what song this is:

H1: "Bag's Groove" (Milt Jackson)
http://www.last.fm/music/Milt+Jackson/_/Bag%27s+Groove (listening link at top right)

H2: "The Crossing (Oubour)" (Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band)
http://www.rushhour.nl/store_detailed.php?item=38588, then down to the playlist for the track in question.

H3: "Ptah the El Daoud" (Alice Coltrane)
http://www.last.fm/music/Alice+Coltrane/_/Ptah,+the+El+Daoud (listening link at top right). This was first identified by nick in an email to the Jerry Site.

(3) analyses

Santos L. Halper from DNC first proposed H2. When I suggested I didn't think that was it, he replied thusly:

after a few more listens, I agree with your assessment. The Crossing and the theme from 6.4/6.6 jam aren't exactly the same, though the middle phrase is so similar that I was thinking that the G/S version could be a simplified arrangement. But the G/S version certainly lacks the second half of the head from The Crossing.

And actually, having finally tracked down a copy of Ptah last night, it also sounds very similar to the 6.4/6.6 jam, though once again, the G/S verions lack the second half of the head where the melody is resolved into deep held notes. But something by Alice Coltrane seems more likely to have been in one of their record collections at the time.

Making things even more complicated, the two Garcia/Saunders versions also take different approaches compared to each other, with the 6.4 version played as straight ahead jazz with a walking bassline and the 6.6 version played more as a march with a simpler thumping bassline.

DNCer Blacula weighed in with this:

In listening to the two sound clips you provided against 6/4/74, it is my opinion that this is the head of Ptah, The El Daoud that has been stuck on a standard I-IV-V progression. It is also in a different key.

The middle (solo) section is different, but that is like comparing two versions of Dark Star (or Don't Let Go). They both have an identifiable theme which then progresses to the solo (jam) section. The theme is typically restated at some point near the end.

The track by Salah Regab is surprisingly similar at the head, but is not the theme from 6/4/74.

Then we had a little Q&A, Qs by me and As by Blac:

Q: What does "the head" mean? I assume it's just the start, but does it have a more precise meaning than that?

A: Basically it is the theme. It is performed at the "head" of the tune, and is a basis to launch off from. There may be a more specific definition, but this is how I've always understood it.

Q: Explain for a musical ignoramous?

A: The "I" is the root, usually the key of the song. The "IV" is a musical fourth which describes the interval between the root and this note. The "V" being the fifth.

Basically in layman's terms, this means a blues progression.

Q: So, would it be most accurate to call this "Ptah, the El Daoud"? How would you refer to this?

A: That was/is a tough call. If the head is the same, but the underlying chord progression is not, can it still be called Ptah?

I say yes, if you consider that it is likely derived from Ptah and extrapolated from there.

It could be called a Ptah jam, but to my ears there is a stating of the theme, a jam/solo section, and the theme is stated again before the end of the song. My contention is that this is a complete performance of Ptah, even though it has been slightly adapted. You'll notice that the Alice Coltrane version does not restate the theme before the end of the song.

(4) tentative conclusion

I tentatively conclude that we should be calling this tune "Ptah, the El Daoud" in our Garcia setlists. Thoughts/reactions/etc. most welcomed!

update: It is "Darben The Redd Foxx"

Reconstruction: August 10, 1979, Temple Beautiful, San Francisco, CA

I don't think I have blogged much about Reconstruction, the jazz-R&B-soul-funk-rock-disco outfit formed by John Kahn that performed in 1979 and that regularly "featured" Jerry Garcia on guitar. This is one of Garcia's most unusual side trips. It features lots of tunes that he had never done before and would never do again, with my favorites being instrumental numbers such as "Welcome to the Basement" (Saunders/Moore), "The Mohican and the Great Spirit" (Horace Silver), "Fast Tone" (Tony Saunders/Ed Neumeister), "Nessa" (?composer?), "Linda Chicana" (Mark Levine), "Sama Layuca" (McCoy Tyner) and "Another Star" (Stevie Wonder). It is also unusual in that this was Jerry's only relatively regular post-1975 excursion that didn't have his name on it. I have a lot to say on that general issue, but I'll save it for another time.

This particular show, on August 10, 1979 at the Temple Beautiful in San Francisco is one of my favorites.  Lost Live Dead has reported in characteristically informative fashion on the venue itself. It's a fascinating story. This show holds a special place in my heart, though, both because my friends Julie and John Anzaldo hooked up for good on this occasion and, especially, because the band ends the show with one of my favorite half-hours of Garcia music ever. Starting with McCoy Tyner's "Sama Layuca", they drift into a very spare space for a couple of minutes before Garcia starts picking some beautiful melodic stuff that morphs into one of the early Jerry versions of Dear Prudence. I used to say that the melodic passage contained Jerry's most beautiful stuff since the 2/18/71 "beautiful jam" between Dark Star and Wharf Rat, but I eschew such hyperbole here.

Bob Menke's tape is the best of the two circulating, though as I understand it a new transfer of the Phil Jaret tape may be in the offing, which is good news.

But I digress. My real purpose for posting was to seek identification of the unknown song that appears toward the end of the song.  I confess that I can't recall whether it's Ron Stallings or Gaylord Birch singing, but whoever it is it's the same guy who handles Reconstruction vocals besides Jerry. Anyway, it sounds kind of like an R&B standard, so I am hoping it'll be easy to identify.

Here's a link to a 25-second mp3 from the start of the song:  Unknown song link.

I have just been compiling a list of tunes that are represented among circulating Garcia on the Side recordings but that remain unidentified. So I expect that this will be a series of sorts.