JGMS: October 3, 1971, Frost Ampitheater, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

Garcia and Saunders played the Pamoja Jazz Concert on October 3, 1971 at Frost Ampitheater, sharing a bill with Big Black and the Bobby Hutcherson - Harold Land Quintet. Love that jazz billing.

Anyway, for a long time I have been aware of a show review by Paul Grushkin from the Stanford Daily a few days later (1). I think I learned of it in the wonderful (though in need of an update!) Dodd and Weiner bibliography (2). I have been after it, but Stanford doesn't seem to play nicely on interlibrary loan and the Daily doesn't seem to have been sent to many other university libraries. Anyway, with the help of Corry and another generous soul I have gotten a hold of it. [update: now available online - ain't progress grand?] I had been hoping for some setlist information, but alas there was none to be found.

Instead, there are a few other tidbits, both of which appear in the clipping below, which is discussing Garcia and Saunders.

From the back, I wonder who this Charlie Conn is? At first I thought it might be a rare case of Jerry playing with a bassist other than John Kahn, but the homonymy --five dollar word alert-- of "Conn" and "Kahn" makes me wonder if Charlie is John misunderstood or if some Pranksters were afoot or something.

Of greater interest is this: Garcia and Saunders "played a memorable week-long stand last April at the Matrix." Now, the meaning of "last" in this context in American English is a little fuzzy, so this could be April 1971 or April 1970. April of 1971 is booked with astonishing solidity by the Grateful Dead. April 1970 hardly seems more likely, based on the existing state of our knowledge. Not only is the month fully booked, but this seems still to have been the Wales period, with known Wales/Garcia billings happening and no Garcia/Saunders ones for another six months.

So whatever Grushkin is referring to here, it doesn't seem to be April 1970 or 1971. What could he be referring to instead?

I'd like to propose May 1971, so that when Grushkin said "last April" he meant "last May" in the sense of "the last May that passed [1971]" and not "May of the last calendar year [1970]". Why? Well, looking at my Garcia spreadsheet, May 1971 is among the most sparsely populated non-coma months, and yet we know that the man was a pickin' fool at this time.

After the GD Fillmore East run that ends 4/29, I have a JGMS listing on 5/11 at the Matrix, a three-night JGMS stand at Keystone Korner from 5/20-22, another JGMS at the Korner on 5/26, and then the seemingly pretty wacky Winterland shows at the end of the month. To reiterate, that's a suspiciously empty month for live gigs.

Not sure what else he was doing (e.g., working on Skullfuck?), but it's entirely possible that there were more Garcia/Saunders gigs during May 1971. There is certainly room in Jerry's calendar (as far as is known) for a weeklong stand at the Matrix. The alternative may perhaps be that Grushkin is referring to the multinight run at the Keystone Korner, which might transmogrify into a weeklong stand at the Matrix (the previous month) under the right ... conditions. So I'll keep my eyes open for more in May.

Update: I have researched the last few months of Matrix gigs in the SFC, and I don't find anything that fits the bill. I have to check the Examiner. But this still remains a little bit of a head-scratcher.

Caveats, criticisms, questions, codicils, cavils and other commentary most certainly welcomed.

REFERENCES:
- (1) Grushkin, Paul D. 1971. Garcia, Saunders Impressive at Frost. Stanford Daily, October 5, 1971,  5.
- (2) Dodd, David G., and Robert G. Weiner. 1997. The Grateful Dead and the Deadheads: An Annotated Bibliography. Music Reference Collection no. 60. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/12/frost-amphitheater-lasuen-street-palo.html

NRPS: January 19, 1970, Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley

My Blackberry takes the world's worst pictures (see below), and there was neither scanner nor photocopier handy as I was going through a handful of Berkeley Tribes from late 1969-early 1970 today. But I found a reference to a NRPS gig on January 19, 1970 at Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley.

Scan from Berkeley Tribe, January 16-23, 1970, p. 28.

Here's the translation:

DANCE CONCERT: Benefit for Center for Educ. Change. New Rider [sic] of Purple Sage, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, lights by Dr. [illegible]. Pauley Ballroom, UCB [then either price or time].

Kind of funny that I would stumble into this today, since Corry has just posted about Pauley Ballroom and since we are discussing (here, here and here) the paucity of NRPS gigs from December 1969 possibly into April 1970.

So here we have a possible gig in January 1970. The GD were in Portland, OR on 1/18/70 and Jerry would apparently go down to LA to record the "Love Scene Improvisations" for Antonioni's Zabriskie Point on 1/20/70. In the past I would have scoffed at the possibility of a Bay Area Garcia gig on 1/19. But the more I learn about this guy's workaholism, the more I come to believe in the possibility of such things.

We have no earthly idea if it actually happened, of course. But if it did, then
1) we have a new NRPS gig;
2) we have a NRPS gig in the middle of what is apparently, and otherwise, a very long performing hiatus between December 1969 and, maybe, April 1970; and
3) Garcia was a nut. What's three separate gigs, in three separate idioms, in cities a thousand miles apart, in 72 hours?

jug band note

Probably a reference to Mother McCree's, but this from a ca. late 1970 - early 1971 interview with Jerry by one Frank Fedele, who asks him about what he was doing before GD. Jerry says "We had a jug band together, me and Bob Weir and Pigpen and we worked once or twice a year. I mean, nobody fucking hires jug bands."

Seems obvious, if a bit hyperbolic, but I thought it was worth pointing out that there may not be that much MMUJC stuff out there in part because they may not have performed that much.

REFERENCE:
-->Fedele, Frank. 1971. Fuck No, We’re Just Musicians: An Interview With Jerry Garcia. Organ 1, 8 (June): 14-15, 22 (quote from p. 14).

GD: September 11-12, 1970: Pepperland, San Rafael (POSSIBLE) (NOW DISCONFIRMED)

**UPDATE: DISCONFIRMED. SEE COMMENTS**

I don't have tremendous confidence that this ever happened, but since Corry has educated me a little about booking practices and such, the fact that it's a Friday-Saturday that is otherwise unfilled in GD/Garcia chronologies makes me more open to it.

In a July 1970 Billboard article on Pepperland ("scheduled to open on Labor Day Weekend") , venue operators Nat Shind and Ben Blatt report that they have booked the Grateful Dead for the September 11-12 and 18-19 weekends. They also note that the band planned to record for a new live album, which is presumably what became "Skullfuck" and featured spring 1971 recordings.

We know the dates are at least half wrong, with the GD at the Fillmore East on September 18-19. But my spreadsheet shows September 11-12, 1970 to be an open weekend for Garcia, so it certainly seems possible. I'll file it as such.

TJS deletion: 7/5/71

slip added a listing for NRPS 7/5/71 at Fillmore West, based on this poster from Wolfgang's Vault. But the poster is clearly for the movie "Fillmore" and has been mis-interpreted and it has now been deleted.


I will be tagging this with "TJS-deletion." Since there's no other way to track what's been cut, I'll track them here in the hopes that TJS doesn't accidentally re-enter them.

Godawful Palo Alto Bluegrass Ensemble

Pete Wernick recounts spending some time in the Summer of 1963 out West, playing banjo with Jerry Garcia (mandolin!) and David Nelson in an outfit called The Godawful Palo Alto Bluegrass Ensemble.

I don't recall seeing this name in the historiography, though as I have noted before I am not particularly up on the pre-GD stuff. So I thought I'd put it down here for the (my!) record, as it were.

JGB: December 31, 1975, Keystone, Berkeley: who was drumming?

update: we know now it was Greg Errico, with Hart sitting in in the third set, so enjoy this post as a waystation in the growth of knowledge. Jerrybase exists now!

update: see also my "Jerry's New Year's Eve" post.
 
I am not the big fan of the 12/31/75 JGB show that most people seem to be. I think they are seduced by the date, the long-circulating and high quality recording, and the guests and unusual setlist. I find the show sloppy, with Nicky's drunkenness especially painful.

But that's not what this is about. I want to know who was drumming? Apparently Tutt had en Elvis obligation, but I have seen conflicting information on who it actually was.

• Corry's post on JGB 12/31/75 says that it was Greg Errico.
• I read something a few weeks ago (can't remember what, now) that it was Bill Vitt, but he told me in email that it was not him.
• The "Grateful Dead Book of Lists" feature in Golden Road no. 13 (Winter 1987), p. 33, compiled by some guy named Corry (must be a different guy! :)) indicated that it was Mickey Hart.
• The Jerry Site had diversified its risk: "Entire show with Mickey Hart. Greg Errico replaces Ron Tutt on drums, who was absent due to his touring as the drummer for Elvis Presley.

1966: Darby Slick et al. "Jammin' With Garcia"

Chapter 5 of Darby Slick's autobiography, I guess (1), is entitled "Jammin' With Garcia" and recounts a Friday evening jam session, ca. 1966, in the Mission District. These one-offs are inherently interesting, of course, but especially interesting to me is the question of how often they occurred. I had always bought into the mythology that the GD (and its personnel, especially Jerry) were playing around pretty much all the time in the Halcyon days before the Summer of Love (TM). Corry Arnold has asserted that this probably happened a lot less than the mythology would have us believe, for example calling notions about frequent free concerts in Golden Gate Park "sadly wishful". Slick's vignette doesn't get at the question of frequency, but it does provide a first-person account of one free-form gig in these very early days of the hippie scene. The jam was apparently some sort of party to raise funds for something, perhaps the Mime Troupe. The crowd was SRO and flowing outside, where as many as 50 people were trying to get in.

I will just make a few notes about this as extracted from Slick's account. I'll focus especially on personnel, what they played, location, and date.

Personnel:

• Jerry Garcia: electric guitar;
• Bill Kreutzmann: drums;
• ?Peter Albin?: bass;
• ... joined by ...
• Jerry Slick: drums;
• Darby Slick: guitar.

Performance:

• "we all started to jam the blues, almost the only music we could launch into with no more discussion than 'It's in "A".'"
• ca. 45 minutes

Location:

• Mission District
• in a loft
• Slick parked three blocks away, across the driveway of a cement company
• MJB coffee plant nearby

Date: I have no idea; a Friday night ca. 1966.

I don't know much about Slick, but he certainly writes glowingly of this night and of Jerry: "There was magic in the room that night, and though I have played in many jam sessions over the years, that is the one I remember with the most love, the most respect. ... I was left with a conviction that Jerry Garcia is a man of great spirit."

REFERENCE:
(1) Slick, Darby. 1991. Don't You Want Somebody to Love: Reflections on the San Francisco Sound. Berkeley: SLG Books. {pdf of chapter 5}

Where were the NRPS in late 1969 - early 1970?

Light Into Ashes notes the following about the April 17-18, 1970 NRPS billing:

these were the first known shows Garcia had played with NRPS since November '69

NRPS shows were advertised for March 12-14, and March 18, 1970 (see), while the NRPS concert history lists 2/7/70. The latter seems very unlikely (see comments to this post, below). 

Still, LIA's observation is one worth emphasizing: there is no known (to me!) NRPS activity during December 1969 or January 1970 (well, maybe 1/19/70), and at most sporadic activity through March 1970.

I find this puzzling, so I'll pose the question: where were those guys and what were they doing? Did the GD's studio work crowd out or swallow up everyone's efforts? Were the GD working on their acoustic sets, leaving less time for Jerry to work on pedal steel (which is a variant of the same question)? Were the New Riders gigging without Jerry, but I have just failed to note it (entirely possible)? Something else?

I'd love to hear thoughts or to get some info on the whereabouts of Marmaduke and Nelson during this timeframe.

GD at Mammoth Gardens, Denver CO, April 24-25, 1970

It seems that these shows have been shrouded in mystery and legend for a very long time. Maybe it's because April 1970 was such a hot month, because the tape circulating from this weekend reveals a characteristically hot show, because the next gig (4/26/70 at Poynette Wisconsin) is similarly enshrouded, because "Mammoth Gardens" just sounds so damn primal, and/or because Colorado is a special place. Maybe all of the above. At first there seemed to be some question as to whether two shows took place at all, or only one on Friday, April 24th. This has been pretty well resolved (there was a show on Saturday 25th), and I will bring additional evidence to bear on this question. Next, there has apparently been lots of confusion over the correct date of the circulating material. I believe I can resolve this question, as well. My primary aim in this post is to argue that the circulating tape belongs to Saturday, April 25th. I have a few other points to make as well, but that's the main one.

The value-added here is based on a second show review that I unearthed in the Chinook (1), which appears to have been a Denver/Boulder "underground" newspaper. A previously-known review from the Colorado Springs Sun (2) (supplied by Uli Teute and Hanno Bunjes and reproduced in the Deadlists forum), plus all of the other information wonderfully compiled at Deadlists, plus eyewitness information from Ken Condon, plus this new review can all be combined to generate a fuller picture than has heretofore been available of what seems to have been a pretty freaking remarkable pair of shows.

Preface

Let me preface this with a word on methodology. Ross Hannan sent me something to this effect, so I should tip my hat to him and apologize if I haven't rendered this accurately or as he would. But, in short, contemporary accounts (I would give special priority to published, ex post reviews) are the evidentiary gold standard when it comes to documenting events such as rock concerts. After this come other presumably "vetted" contemporary information by those with a business stake in the issue, such as posters, tickets and other ephemera, contracts, etc. I'd put ex ante calendar listings next. The informational quality of things such as tape labels and long-distant memories shows tremendous variance, in my experience. Some sources are good as gold, others ... not so much. Anyway, contemporary show reviews are my favorite sources, the ones in which I have greatest confidence. That's why I was so happy to find a second one for the GD at Mammoth Gardens.

The State of Our Knowledge:

Here is what Deadlists currently shows for 4/24/70. It mentions some confusion over the dating, but says that eyewitnesses place this set on the 24th and not the 25th.

One	[33:11 +]] [0:10] ; I Know You Rider [7:57] ; [1:22 Intro] ; Monkey And The Engineer [1:44] ; [0:56] ; Friend Of The Devil [3:42] ; [0:13] ; Me And My Uncle [3:26] ; [0:25] ; Candyman [5:40] ; [0:29] ; Uncle John's Band [6:34] ; [0:25]
Two	[1:07:09 +] [0:41] ; Easy Wind [8:55] ; [0:44] ; Cumberland Blues [4:44] ; [0:08] % Dire Wolf [3:56] ; [0:11 "broken string"] % Dark Star [24:39] > Saint Stephen [5:54] > The Eleven [13:55] > Drums [1:23] > Jam [2:02] % It's A Man's Man's Man's World [#5:22]

All we know about 4/25 is that the show happened. This is based on the scans below and on eyewitness accounts.

Why we should consider the circulating tape to be from 4/25/70 and not 4/24:

1. The DeLong article purports to review the Saturday show (4/25), and the setlist given for the electric set matches the tape.
2. We can infer that the Milt T. review covers the Friday show; he mentions seeing QMS in Boulder "two days later", which happened on Sunday, 4/26. (QMS historians, take note!) He only mentions three songs by name, and none of them is on the circulating tape: Wake Up Little Suzie (acoustic) and Not Fade Away -> Lovelight (2nd electric set, to end the show).When we couple this with DeLong's statement that the GD didn't play anything after the long St. Stephen medley, we have accounts for two distinct endings to two different shows which, indeed, claim to be from two distinct nights.
3. DeLong mentions "Good Lovin'" being played before "It's a Man's World," and Deadlists notes that though Good Lovin' is not present on the tape, it sounds like it's coming in the jam that cuts out before Man's World. Furthermore, attendee Ken Condon knew only this song, and he is 100% certain he attended the Saturday show. They could well have played it both nights, of course, but in conjunction with everything else I'll consider this another point in support of the view that the tape is from 4/25.

Open Issues

1. Did these shows follow the electric-acoustic-electric format? Milt T. is very clear that the 4/24 show did indeed follow this format. Attendee Ken Condon states that this is how the show he saw, which was the 25th, was structured. DeLong's review says that "the first part of [the GD's] set" was acoustic. Hopefully new eyewitness accounts can be gathered that might shed more light on this.
2. Were the NRPS present? There is no mention of them in either review, both of which are pretty clear that the acoustic set was guitars, bass, drums; no mention of pedal steel at all, or of different personnel. Deadlists cites audience member Spencer Wren as remembering a NRPS set, but I sure would like some other evidence before coming to any judgment about that. Update: attendee/commenter ehukai clearly recalls there was no steel guitar, which he would certainly have remembered.
3. The encore(s): Milt T. mentions that the encore involved John Hammond backed by Pigpen on harp and guitar. Deadlists cites Wren to precisely this effect as well. DeLong says that, having blown everyone's minds, the GD sagely decided not to come back for an encore: "after that devastating medley, anything else would have been painfully anticlimactic." So I propose that this encore happened on 4/24/70, and that there was no encore on 4/25. Aside: I can't think of any other known Pigpen live performances without the GD this late in the game.

Conclusions

1. There were two GD shows at Mammoth Gardens in Denver, CO on Friday April 24 and Saturday April 25, 1970. This much has already been well established.
2. The circulating tape is from 4/25 and not, as it currently circulates, from 4/24.
3. We can add Good Lovin' to the setlist of 4/25 (along with what circulates on the tape), and it should precede It's a Man's World, which is from the same show.
4. For 4/24/70 we can list a drum duet in electric 1, Wake Up Little Suzie in acoustic (set II), and Not Fade Away -> Lovelight to close electric 2 (Set III overall). We can also note that Pigpen's backing of Hammond took place on this date and not on 4/25/70.

References

1. Milt T., “San Francisco Sounds,” Chinook, April 30, 1970, pp. 4-5. Text available via URL http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2015/12/april-24-1970-mammoth-gardens-denver-co.html.
2. Mike DeLong, "Magic Exists ... Grateful Dead Stuns Crowd," Colorado Springs Sun, April 30, 1970, unknown page. Retrieved from Deadlists May 30, 2010. Text available via URL http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/april-25-1970-denver.html.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2009. Mammoth Gardens, Denver, CO Performance List April-October 1970. Rock Archaeology 101, November 8, URL http://rockarchaeology101.blogspot.com/2009/11/mammoth-gardens-denver-co-performance.html, consulted 11/26/2014.

GD at Eagles Auditorium, Seattle, WA, January 1968

 I am going to argue that the Quick and the Dead played Eagles Auditorium in Seattle, WA on Friday, January 26 and Saturday, January 27, 1968, and *not* on Monday 1/22 and Tuesday 1/23. This may well be widely accepted, but since the tapes still circulate with the latter dates, and Deadlists remains a bit noncommittal, I thought I'd lay it out.

Argument 1: The GD played Eagles Auditorium on Friday 1/26 and Saturday 1/27, 1968.

There is both ex ante and ex post evidence for this.

For ex ante evidence, to the left is an item in the Seattle Times dated 1/23/68.

Here is a calendar listing for 1/27/68, published on the day of the second (Saturday) show:

There were also articles written ex post in the Helix, as the following two. Note that I am not entirely sure about the volume/issue/date. I noted these as v2 n 13 (2/1/68), but according to the University of Washington's Special Collections Helix scans, this is v2 n10. The microfilm from which I was working made it exceptionally difficult to figure out this sort of thing, insofar as it was legibly identified at all.

What do we learn from this? The Quick and the Dead played late January 1968 Friday-Saturday shows at Eagles Auditorium. The GD, on 'jc''s account, opened the second show with Lovelight.

There is a poster in Art of Rock, plate 3.104, p. 287; see also p. 249.

By the way, the liner notes from the Golden Road boxset give the Seattle Eagles Auditorium dates as 1/26-27/68.

In sum: I believe the evidence establishes that the GD played Eagles Auditorium on January 26-27, 1968.

Argument 2: The Quick and the Dead did not play Eagles Auditorium in Seattle on January 22-23, 1968 (Monday-Tuesday).

As far as I can tell, the only evidence in support of this dating is the labeling of GD vault tapes. Now, I am aware that notwithstanding the chemicals that could have been involved, GD vault tape labels are incredibly reliable. So when I say "only" I don't mean to deprecate this empirical source; I merely mean to say that this is the unique evidence that is known to me. Material from "1/23/68 Seattle" has been issued on the official release Road Trips v2 n2, and of course material with both dates has circulated for some time in collecting circles.

Evidence against the 1/22 and 1/23/68 dating is entirely mostly of the "dog that didn't bark" sort. There are no known posters. There were no show announcements in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the University of Washington Daily, nor, most importantly, in that masterpiece of Seattle psychedelic underground journalism, the Helix.

Update: I have found a dog barking, albeit quietly, about 1/23/68. The Seattle Times, January 14, 1968, p. 85 (or is it B5?), has a little item entitled "Hanauer, David in 10-Rounder Here" about a World Wide Boxing Club event. Seems Jack Hanauer, a middleweight from Pasco, was going to meet Indian Joe David of Oakland. There were a few other fights on the card. Most importantly, the fight was scheduled for January 23rd in Eagles Auditorium. Indeed, the January 23rd opening date for the fight club was announced as early as 12/31/67 in the same paper.

Based on spending a little bit of time with these sources, I am 100% persuaded that any GD show at Eagles and/or otherwise in Seattle would have been advertised and/or otherwise covered in some of these sources, ex ante and/or ex post. The GD's first visit to Seattle, AFAIK, was in July 1967. That show was extensively advertised, including with a poster. The "Be-In" that afternoon at Golden Gardens Park, before the Eagles' show, was reported in the P-I. Similarly, the Eagles Shows on September 8-9, 1967, featured a nice ad in the Helix. The January 26-27 shows were advertised widely and much-discussed.

Finally, reading the above in particular, there is just zero intimation that the GD shows on Friday-Saturday are taking place after a set of Monday-Tuesday shows that same week. Does this make sense? There's no mention anywhere that they had just played the same venue a few days before. By contrast, there's lots of "sense" in the coverage that the Quick and the Dead came upon a Seattle that was barely ready for them. The rube Seattlites are made to seem like they have a lot to learn. Hard to imagine that'd be necessary if the GD had warmed them up just a few days before.

In sum, notwithstanding the apparent existence of taped in the GD vaults labeled with these dates, I argue that no GD shows took place at Eagles Auditorium in Seattle on January 22-23, 1968.

I have no idea what would explain the mislabeling of the tapes. Maybe 1/22-23 were originally scheduled, and maybe since the GD were recording for the album tapes were pre-labeled before they were rescheduled. Just one less thing to do on tour, and all that. I have no idea. But unless some other evidence turns up, I am compelled to conclude that 1/22-23/68 Quick and Dead shows are phantoms.

NRPS, January 1971

update: NRPS now confirmed for all three of these shows

I have had some uncertainty about whether NRPS played with the GD during the handful of January 1971 shows. The New Riders' official tour history from 1971 has listed these shows:

1/21/71, Freeborn Hall, UC Davis, Davis, CA
1/22/71, Lane Community College, Eugene, OR
"1/25/71", Seattle Center Coliseum, Seattle, WA (should be 1/24/71)

The problem, for me, is that I haven't been for some time I wasn't able to find any evidence that the NRPS were actually at these shows. update: 1/21/71 is now confirmed. I have seen a nearly illegible scan of a University of Oregon Daily Emerald piece dated 1/21/71 that, as far as I can make it out, makes no mention of the New Riders. A report on a gate-crashing incident from the same publication, date unknown but certainly right afterward, is simililarly silent. The Seattle Times mention to the left notes that Ian and Sylvia are on the bill --interesting in its own right for us NRPS-ologists, given that Buddy was probably still with them!-- but no NRPS.

Rob Bleetstein, the NRPS archivist, told me where the listings came from, and while I don't recall the specifics I think it was just assumed that the NRPS were at these shows. I have my doubts, for two main reasons.

First, the dog don't bark in any documentary evidence that I can find. I'll keep looking.

Second, NRPS were at Wally Heider's on 1/18-20/71, based on documents I have seen.  I wondered if they had to stay home and work on the album while Jerry and the boys took off for a few days, but the answer appears to be NO.

JGB: October 27, 1982, Rissmiller's Club, Reseda, CA

Photo credit: Karen Verity

Tapes have circulated dated October 27, 1982 from Rissmiller's Club in Reseda, CA. I seem to recall that at ont point such a date was listed at the Jerry Site and that I myself got the idea that it was bogus and deleted it. I can't remember why. Anyway, the image of the Rissmiller's marquee, above (I'd like to give photo credit, but I don't know where it came from), seems to suggest that there were indeed shows on the 27th and the 28th. Would love to get confirmation from someone who attended and/or knows the story ...

Update: I have posted listening notes from a "Closet Call" audience tape of the 10/27/82 show.

Update2: 100% certain that this gig happened, now having seen various papers around it. https://jerrybase.com/events/19821027-03

Jerry with Merl and/or Martin, ca. 1974, The Sand Dunes

We know that Jerry Garcia was playing around outside the GD to a varying, but always non-zero, extent throughout the career of his most famous band. We have a sense that this was happening more, and more loosely, in the early days (at least pre-1976) and less, and in a more routinized/institutionalized way after that. How much this was happening in the "early days" is probably impossible to fathom, because by definition the less institutionalized stuff leaves less of a footprint (tapes, advertisements, etc.) than the more so. Measurement is harder, and the data are biased against the real loose stuff. We are left with some stories, a vague sense, but little else.

I don't want to go into more detail about all that here, but I want to report on a few tantalizing tidbits I found in the Oakland Tribune in 1974. A first reads as follows (1):

The Merl Saunders Band, which featured Jerry Garcia on guitar and Martin Fierro on sax on alternating weeks at the Sand Dunes in San Francisco, has changed its name to Aunt Monk featuring Saunders and Fierro with equal billing. Mondays at the Sand Dunes.

A second article discussing the Sand Dunes (2) at slightly greater length also notes that "Merl Saunders and Martin Fierro play Monday nights when not with Jerry Garcia, and Garcia has shown up on some Mondays, too."

Gaaahhh.

It certainly sounds plausible. We know that 1974 was a busy year for Jerry playing around (TJS has 119 entries for the year). We know that Merl had regular non-Jerry gigs as the house performer around this time (as, apparently, at the Generosity in 1975), at which Jerry would sometimes drop in (as, apparently, at the Generosity on Feb. 14, 1975 and May 9, 1975). As the information below will show, Jerry had almost every Monday night in 1974 free as far as is known to me: 27 free and not known to be outside Bay Area, 12 booked and/or out of town. So what's to stop him?

Regarding the venue, based on another mention from earlier in the year (3), it seems that the Sand Dunes was at 46th and Taraval. Here is a regular Google map of the location:


View Larger Map

Here is a street view:

View Larger Map

Hard for me to tell on this basis where the bar might have been. I am intrigued by the idea that it might be 3639 Taraval, apparently a watering hole now called The Riptide ("On the edge of the Western world"). It's not the corner of 46th and Taraval, but it's less than a block away and may have been the obviously intended location at the time, who knows.

[update: in comments, Yellow Shark has confirmed the address as 3599 Taraval St, San Francisco, CA 94116]

Anyway, below is a list of the Mondays in 1974 up until the October 6th article. I have provided info where there seems to be a conflict. That leaves lots of open dates, about which we are of course very unlikely ever to know anything. BTW, the dates with (*) probably warrant some explanation (i.e., a further post), and I do think I'll get to the 7/22 one at some point, but not now.

19740107
19740114
19740121
19740128
19740204
19740211
19740218
19740225
19740304
19740311
19740318
19740325
19740401
19740408
19740415
19740422 - JG probably in LA*
19740429
19740506
19740513 - GD between Reno and Missoula
19740520 - GD between Portland and Seattle
19740527
19740603
19740610
19740617 - GD between Des Moines and Louisville
19740624 - GD between Miami and Providence
19740701 - JGMS in NYC
19740708
19740715
19740722
19740729 - GD in Landover
19740805 - GD in Philly
19740812
19740819
19740826 - Merl Saunders's Aunt Monk at Macarthur's in San Anselmo
19740902 - JGMS gig in Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park
19740909 - GD in London
19740916 - GD still in Europe
19740923
19740930

References:

- (1) "Rap-Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, August 25, 1974, p. 2-RAP.
- (2) Art George, "The State of the Small Club," Oakland Tribune, October 6, 1974, p. 4-RAP.
- (3) "Rap Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1974, p. 2-RAP.

1969 NRPS: new data

Just a tip of the hat to Lost Live Dead, which has been doing yeoman's work unearthing early New Riders gigs based on various sources, but especially on careful digging through late 1969 San Francisco Chronicle (and notably Gleason's column).

Because of their hard work, TJS has recently added inter alia the following dates:

Aug 6, 1969  The Matrix **including first known public usage of the NRPS moniker

Aug 8, 1969  The Matrix

Aug 9, 1969  The Matrix

Aug 13, 1969  Family Dog at The Great Highway

Oct 9, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

Oct 16, 1969  Mandrake's, Berkeley

Nov 3, 1969  The Matrix

Nov 4, 1969  The Matrix

Nov 6, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

Nov 13, 1969  The Poppycock, Palo Alto

Nov 18, 1969  Family Dog at The Great Highway

Nov 20, 1969  The Poppycock, Palo Alto

Nov 27, 1969  Family Dog at The Great Highway

Nov 28, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

Nov 29, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

This is just awesome stuff. It really helps to flesh out the heretofore relatively obscure early gig history of the New Riders. Thank you, gentlemen!

Eyjafjallajökull

JGMF is stuck in Paris. Anyone know anywhere in town where there might be some rock & roll memorabilia?

Teabonics

Awesome.

ht Sully.

Garcia, Gravenites, Jules Broussard: ca. 1973, San Quentin Prison

**update: I have it in my mind that this never happened. I spoke with Nick the Greek once and seem to have come away with that idea**

On 4/29/90, Garcia sat in with "Nick Gravenites and Animal Mind" for a Brian Wilson Defense Fund Benefit at the South of Market Cultural Center in San Francisco. If you haven't heard it, the circulating fileset is well worth seeking out. The whole thing is great, but "Small Walk-In Box" will leave you marveling at Jerry's ability to pick up a tune (presumably with little preparation) and nail it. I tend to conceive of Jerry's various one-off guest shots from the 1986-1990 period as of a piece with each other, with a relatively healthy/happy Jerry really on his game, but that's a matter for another post or several.

What I want to mention here is an otherwise unknown-to-me gig that Garcia seems to have played around 1973 at San Quentin.  Lost Live Dead did a post on Grateful Dead performances at San Quentin, to which this might need to be added.

In Jimbo Juanis's regular Relix column that discusses the 4/29/90 thing (seemingly mis-dated 4/30, but anyway), he reports a bit of chatter with Nick Gravenites. Nick the Greek says that he had played with Garcia once before:

About 17 years ago, Garcia and I and Jules Broussard (a local sax player) played for the inmates at San Quentin Prison. All the inmates at the gig were musicians and they all brought their horns and we all played together. We did the gig in the room that used to house the gallows.

I don't have a lot to add, except that I sure would like to learn more! I wonder if records of this sort of thing might be requestable under some kind of state of California open records provision?

REFERENCE: 
(1) Jimbo Juanis, "Bay Area Bits," Relix 17, 4 (August 1990): p. 25.

Guitars Unlimited, Menlo Park

This is a bit beyond my ken, but since I have one Warlocks post, and an early Phil post, and since LLD has a Menlo Park angle, I thought I'd make a note of it. This may well be in the record, but I don't recall it. This is from a ca. early 1991 interview with John Dawson.

Describing his hook-up with the GD and eventual NRPS people, Dawson notes that Garcia and Nelson gave music lessons "at various and sundry music stores around Palo Alto." He mentions Dana Morgan's of course, but also describes Dana Morgan, Jr. leaving and Phil coming in thusly: "It was in a different music store called Guitars Unlimited, which is in Menlo Park."

Again, I haven't consulted my old GD stuff in a long time, so this could well be well-known. I thought I'd put it out there for you Menlo Park types, just in case.

BTW, Dawson also mentions a place called Pinky's Pizza in Menlo Park as the place where Dana Morgan played with the Warlocks. I have no idea if that's new information or a muddle of Magoo's, but, again, there you have it.

Source: Brown, Toni A. 1991. New Riders of the Purple Sage Interview. Relix 18, 3 (June): 19-20.

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"