Tony Orbasido was running the American Federation of Musicians' Local No. 6 in San Francisco when I started asking him about researching in whatever papers they had. What they had was two 4-drawer filing cabinets stuff with studio recording contracts. I think the union didn't keep gig contracts in hard copy beyond 3-4 years for space reasons, and there were no gig contracts relevant to me.
This was before I could take legible cellphone pictures. I had to run Xerox copies of what I wanted. In later years, I progressively digitized these paper copies. The sample is biased with respect to anything in the Garciaverse, because I was explicitly looking for and only gathering out to Spudfactor = 1 musicians, in addition to Garcia himself. As I have reported, the Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead contents of these files was dramatically light. I think Tony O said someone had come through and gathered them up. This could well have been the Jerry Garcia Estate, but I do not know that. Anyway, within the limits of the media I was working with, I was able to go through 1967-1972 pretty thoroughly.
I published the Garcia-relevant stuff in batches. By way of making an index, here they are.
Then we went back up to Frisco an' did it up at Keystone with Tom Fogerty where Jerry does that jam thing. We kinda learned a few tunes an' said we'll go see whut this audience loos lahk, makin' that trip 'n it was jes that monster same reaction. [He started to sing: "Well, it's not love ..."] Y'know, there's the Berkeley freaks, they dig it y'know an' it was weird because ah ain't played Frisco in years man, 'sbeen ages (Swenson 1973, 68).
By my reckoning, Tom Fogerty never played with The Group in 1973, though that's not 100% established. So the likely dates for this event are the following:
12/6/72 or 12/7/72 - note that we have some eyewitness recollections from one of these shows of Sarah Fulcher being around. Like Sahm, she was a Texan with plenty of San Antonio time. Not sure that makes Sahm more or less likely (or doesn't change my estimate) for these nights, but there you go.
12/20/72 or 12/21/72 - the only other JGMS Keystone Berkeley gigs in the window.
So, not sure the dates, but wanted to pin these here the best I could.
update: we have pinned these to 12/6/72 at Jerrybase, because it lines up with Sarah, who also guested that night or the next.
Rumor has long had it that Mickey has a massive trove of tape and information related to recordings made at his barn studio, a.k.a. Rolling Thunder, at 2495 Novato Blvd. between about 1971 and sometime in the early 1980s. As usual, Corry has done outstanding work pinning some of this down, but there's probably oodles more to learn.
If anyone here knows or is in touch with Mickey's people -- I saw yesterday they were sharing on social media the SF Chronicle preview I posted of the July 30 - August 1, 1970 New Riders (headlining) and acoustic GD shows at the Lion's Share -- please let him/them know I will help organize their data pro bono, so long as I can use them. I will create a giant database of times, people, tunes, etc. etc. As Mickey's amateur musicology involves him in collecting sounds, instruments, and stories from musicmakers in far-flung locales, so my amateur musicology would have me poring over Rolling Thunder data.
In the meantime, I have just spent some time in the Grateful Dead Archive on the beautiful campus of UC Santa Cruz, and I came across some Warner Brothers' interoffice memos supplying information about some of the dates on which the material appearing on Mickey's Rolling Thunder album (Warner Brothers BS 2635, September 1972) was recorded. The earlier document, dated 9/7, is full of handwritten notes, while the latter, from a week later, is cleanly typed. I should not that one scribble on the earlier document says these are dates on which recording began.
Me being me, I tabulate the existing credit information from deaddisc (linked above) with the new information on dates. (Click to enlarge.)
Table xxx. Recording credits and information for Rolling Thunder from Warner Brothers interoffice memos. Source: "Business: Rolling Thunder Productions, 1972-1973," Grateful Dead Archive, Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz, MS.332.ser. 2, box 20, folder 11.
Where the dates align, I obviously pin those. Where they conflict, I make a judgment: that recording was centered in 1972 and not 1971, except for The Chase, which was NOT recorded two months after the memo was written.
Me still being me, of course, the Garcia information draws my eye. (Jerry) Garcia is credited on four tracks: "The Chase" (begun 11/6/71), "Deep, Wide and Frequent" (begun 4/14/72), "Pump Song" (4/6/72) and "Gran'ma's Cookies" (7/20/72). While we can't be entirely sure he attended the initial sessions for any song, it makes sense to pin down the ones we can, and I will do so at Jerrybase with the confidence parameter set to "Uncertain Date" for the ones that don't conflict. Alas, two of the four *do* conflict, dated to when Garcia was manifestly in Europe and thus not, in body at least, at Hart's Barn. So those will just have to float, for now - unless and until Mickey et al. make it possible for me, or someone, to commune with more Rolling Thunder data.
BONUS EYE CANDY: Warner Brothers' Circular (its "weekly news device") pimping Rolling Thunder:
In addition to the tantalizing May 20-21, 1969 Garcia gigs at the Matrix, the newly-digitized Examiner has yielded a good number of previously unlisted, mostly-midweek Garcia gigs. A little list from 1970-1972 follows.
11/2/70 (Monday): Jerry Garcia / BBHC / Ice / Cleveland Wrecking Company. Harding Theater. Benefit for A Learning Place. I don't know if this would have been NRPS or JGMS; I am listing as JGMS for no particular reason.
! Listing: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, November 1, 1970, p. 27;
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, November 2, 1970, p. 35.
! seealso: https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2019/11/ca-november-1-2-1970-fragments.html.
1/5/71 (Tuesday): JGMS at Matrix
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 5, 1971, p. 24.
2/4/71 (Thursday): JGMS at Matrix
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, February 4, 1971, p. 25.
3/30/71 (Tuesday): NRPS at Matrix. I interpret this as warmup for the east coast tour. BTW, they also played the next night, according to a redacted source, so we can add 3/31/71 (Wednesday), same band and room.
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, March 30, 1971, p. 24.
1/18/72 (Tuesday): JGMS at Lion's Share
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 18, 1972, p. 21.
3/1/72 (Wednesday): JGMS at Keystone Berkeley (formerly New Monk). I now understand this to be the very first night for the so-named Keystone at the corner of University and Shattuck. It's a fitting indicator of the centrality of Garcia to Freddie's enterprises that he would play this opening night at the old Monk. (See also "Jerry and Freddie, mid-March 1972".)
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, March 1, 1972, p. 33.
6/3/72 (Saturday): JGMS at Keystone Korner
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, June 3, 1972, p. 10.
8/31/72 (Thursday): JGMS at Keystone Berkeley
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, August 31, 1972, p. 31.
12/26/72 (Tuesday): JGMS at Keystone Korner. This one puzzles me, because the KK would have been under Barkan's ownership at this point. Barkan has narrated that he once hosted Jerry and Merl (after he started booking the room on July 7th), but didn't dig the vibe and stuck thereafter with jazz. This could well be that very gig. I still don't know what to make of a listing for JGB at KK four years later, of course ...
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, December 26, 1972, p. 28.
In reporting that Epic/Columbia Custom Records and Douglas Records had re-upped on their distribution deal in spring 1972, Cash Box noted that one expected piece of product was "an encore of the collaboration between Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and keyboard man Howard Wales". News to me.
! ref: "Col, Douglas Dist. Renewal," Cash Box, April 1, 1972, p. 9.
There is nothing representative about these – I have information
on stuff that is a degree or two from Garcia, and a few other random tidbits of
idiosyncratic interest to me. I post them mostly for future researchers who
might be interested. (The six-digit numbers just reference my scans, so I can retrieve these as needed.) List after the jump.
Man, that interlude in The Other One on 7/25/72 is the bee's knees. Jim Powell's analysis (at Deadlists) just refers to it as "mystery theme". LIA: "the Allmans-like Jam in the Other One of 7/25/72 ... sounds so composed it's hard to believe they only did it once."
It sounded a little Jeffersonian, a little Youngbloodsish, a little this and a little that, to me. Discuss.
Blogging is a great hobby - if you have ever thought of just wanting to keep some intellectual interest of yours pinned down a little better than purely in your head, I highly recommend it.
Among Blogger's very limited features - You Get What You Pay For, Corry reminds us, and as a Braudelian he means it - is the statistics function. I check occasionally to see hit counts (pretty steady around 250, declines to 150 if I have a fallow month, increases to 350 and higher depending on idiosyncrasies of people dropping links), see what people are reading.
That latter is especially nice, just to see people skimming around, maybe get their chiaroscuro on. It's nice to be read, even when the prose is balky.
Seeing this, and thinking of my readers, inspires me to inspect a few freshly drilled rabbit holes. Thank you, reader!
I get to the thinking about Summer 1972 in The City (probably cold and foggy), great City room, not much on Garcia's mind since John's mostly not around to arrange gigs, play off some charts? (Who would have been in Bromberg's band?) Maybe a beautiful, marked-up copy of Night Times in the front seat, find some parking, see the show? Yes, please.
That picture probably never actually posed itself, but a fella can dream.
The Bromberg post mentioned harmonica player Will Scarlett sitting in, which
4.
led to me to think about the Garcia Band show at the Keystone, March 3, 1978, The List telling us not only that Scarlett sat-in, but that the band played two blues singletons, Little Walter's "Juke" and, putatively, Booker T & The MG's "Green Onions". See notes 7-9 for more.
5.
I wondered where those setlist details might have come (tape?), so I emailed Corry.
6.
It also led me deaddisc, and I thought its proprietor might
like to transcribe some of that into his DID page. Long story short, I
thought he might like to go through some of my "San Francisco Sessions" posts, and in getting links I did a little light housekeeping with those.
There's no particular reason I am showing this slice, just wanted to give you all a look at how some of the cancellations fit in, and how I have my data visualizations currently configured.
Since we're here, though, we can see the Hooteroll? tour contemporaneous with canceled Dead and Jerry gigs. Which is the chicken and which the egg, which the cause and which the effect, I leave to your speculation.
These are "reading notes" - little stuff I cull when I read. I copy and paste the quotes into thematic documents (e.g., drugs.docx), so all of this has been "processed" out of the book, and up one level, into thematic or other kinds of buckets.
You may not find the quotes of greatest interest to you. Obviously I am doing this for my own purposes.
One night I went to hear Jerry play a gig with Merle [sic] Saunders at a small place in Berkeley and one by one, for 'no reason', the rest of the Dead showed up too, and eventually they got on the stage and started playing -- Charles Reich, Spring 1972 (Reich 2003 [1972], xv).
Assuming that it wasn't all a dream that Charles Reich dreamed, is this --Grateful Dead at New Monk, Berkeley-- a thing that we might locate more precisely in time? We have the socio and the geo, how about the chrono?
Below, I'll speculate, with a bit more justification (but properly still a romanticized view) that it was
I have dated, as best as I can, the Rolling Stone Interview (SSI) and the Stoned Sunday Rap (SSR), which puts us in the June-October timeframe for the former and either March 5, 12 or 19, 1972 for the latter. We are looking for a JGMS gig in a "small place in Berkeley" during each. It doesn't have to be one of the interview dates, per se. Reich was living at the Co-Op in Berkeley at this time, so he might have moseyed down to see Jerry and Merl on any random night.
Let me start by saying that if the Jerry-Merl gig was not billed, I can
only guess at when it might have happened. This would have left no trace for me to find. I identify my favorite possibilities below.
If this substituted for a billed gig, I might have more to say. Let's go to the data.
RSI: June-October 1971
I provide below a list of Garcia playing small Berkeley places from June to October, 1971 - the first window. I have included New Riders gigs on the off-chance that Reich, writing in spring 1972 and probably still high from the Stoned Sunday Rap (SSR), crossed some wires. The Longbranch Saloon was a small place in Berkeley, but it was New Riders territory, and while Reich could have confused two of Jerry's very active side-gigs (NRPS and JGMS still working hard), I doubt it.
Figure xxx. Jerry Garcia at "a small place in Berkeley", late June - October 1971
That leaves 2119
University. Recall that Freddie
Herrera first booked Garcia on Thanksgiving
Eve, 1970 at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, with the New Riders.
They'd work together there another forty times into the summer of 1972. I don't
know when Herrera took over 2119 University –there are booking patterns that
would be detectable, I think, but I haven't quite parsed them—but in mid-1971
he was ramping the club up as the New Monk, which Garcia played eight times in
two months (all pictured above). In early 1972 Freddie would rename it, simply,
Keystone, transitioning it to his main club, and for the next dozen years
(March 8, 1972 - March 22, 1984) Garcia could play the room, on current count,
216 times, his home away from home and the lifeblood of the Keystone business
model.
JGMS at New Monk during this period runs June 4-5, June 26-27, or July 3-4. June 26 is known to have
happened as Jerry and Merl, from an expost
in the illustrious Hayward Daily Review (see
here). July 3-4 would be right on the closing weekend of the Fillmore West - were members of the GD at these shows? If not, maybe a nice little gig in Berkeley would be fun, no spotlight on that side of the Bay, all eyes turned to the West.
Accordingly, assuming we are talking about the Dead playing what was billed as JGMS gig at the New Monk during the time that Charles Reich was around for the RSI, I can conclude "ca. June-July, 1971".
SSR: March 1972
If it was during the time of the SSR, things are a little easier: Sunday in March 1972 with Jerry in town could only be March 5, 12 or 19. Assuming Reich was in town for more than just a Stoned Sunday, the following JGMS Keystone gigs are all live candidates:
Wed March 8
Thurs March 9
Wed March 15
Thurs March 16
Like the New Monk dates, there is no tape of any of this, alas. All other things being equal, I'd say I favor a Wednesday night over a Thursday.
In Sum
Well, this is about the end of the line for this little mystery. When did the Dead play at "a small place" in Berkeley, in lieu of Garcia - Saunders, for Charlies Reich to witness, either during the RSI or the SSR periods?
If JGMS unbillbed:
anytime ca. June-October 1971 or March 1-20, 1972.
If JGMS billed:
June 3-4, 1971. This feels least likely to me.
June 27, 1971. Possible, but it's a Saturday and no-one remembers?
July 3-4, 1971. If they weren't at Fillmore West, totally possible.
March 8-9, 1972.
March 15-16, 1972.
Narrative Favorites:
Of all of these possibilities, here are my favorites, for narrative reasons:
Sunday, 7/4/71: This would be fitting for our young Americans, who seemed to like playing on Independence Day, celebrate Jerry's independence as he heads to Heider's (with Bill Kreutzmann) to lay down Garcia.
I have just finished transcribing the parts of particular interest to me from Signpost to a New Space and the Stoned Sunday Rap (Garcia, Reich and Wenner 2003 [1972]), and I have now posted reading notes.
Me being me, I have always wondered about the dates of these sessions.
Here is the timeline for what went into the Rolling Stone Interview (RS 100, 1/20/1972), summarizing my own reconstruction.
Summer 1970: Charles Reich visits Jann Wenner, urges him to interview Garcia
Spring 1971: Jann called Jerry
July 1971: Reich is ready to go. The "next Saturday", Reich and Wenner go up to Sans Souci, where Garcia and MG had only been living a few months (papers May 1971). We learn that Garcia had to be in Berkeley for a gig that evening.
July 1971: Garcia is making his record, in the present tense
I have concluded that the above, constituting the first five hours of the RSI, took place
Saturday, July 24, 1971, ca. all afternoon and into the evening (dinner
time), consistent with it being a Saturday and Jerry has to leave for a gig with the NRPS.
Note: an Anonymous DeadEssays commenter did some great sleuthing on this and reported September 5, 2012,
getting us some of these time points, noted in comments by LIA. I am
not sure how much that informed my own thinking, or if we truly have
multiple independent progress on the question. Either way, the key
dating seems very likely.
ca. August 1971: Reich did two more hours "A few weeks later" [from 7/24/71], which we can only pin to ca. first half of August 1971;
undated: the GD are mixing Skullfuck at some point;
ca. October 15-16, 1971: Reich
came back "a few months later". This could be either
October 15 or October 16, 1971, based on Jerry seeing Mickey Hart at the
Croz-Nash concert "last night";
ca. October 1971, Wenner did four more hours.
Here is the timeline for the SSR:
March 1972: Reich dates his introduction to spring 1972, tagging the SSR
to a "Sunday morning, a foggy, quiet day in March" (Reich 2003, xx).
Garcia has to do some mixing work on Ace that night.
ca. March 20 - May 27, 1972: Garcia in NYC and Europe.
That leaves March 5, March 12, or March 19 as the dates of the SSR.
Note Wenner's misrembrance: writing in May 1972, he says SSR took place "almost half a year after publication", which was 1/20/72. It looks more like two months to me, unless I am missing something.
I'll post some pretty voluminous reading notes, not sure how to format since I have way more tags than Blogger will allow. The RSI sessions are far more informative than the Rap, which indeed has all the hallmarks of really high people being high together, in highness. There's some great color - Mountain Girl is incredible, I would love to meet her some day, and Annabelle makes some cute appearances - but not much content of interest to me.
REFERENCES
! ref: Garcia, Jerry, Charles Reich, and Jann Wenner. 2003 [1972].
Garcia: A Signpost to New Space. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
! JGMF: "NRPS: July 24-25, 1971, New Monk - New to The List,"
This has been in my paper files and, looking for something for Corry, I found something else he might be interested in, as we all must be: an ad for a previously unregistered Jerry Garcia - Merle [sic] Saunders - Tom Fogerty - Bill Vitt - and Friends (John Kahn must have counted as two) gig at the Town & Country in Ben Lomond, Wednesday, July 12, 1972.
"Mickey
Hart: Off the Road and Into His Head," Circular
4, 36 (September 11, 1972), 2 pp.
Warner Brothers pimped Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder (BS 2635) in its "weekly news device" Circular for its September 1972 release. As I found with an earlier edition of Circular ("Keith. And, Modernity"), this one holds various pieces of interest to me.
First, the admen twice characterize the record as "finally done", in high "LA Passive Aggressive" style. Just gave me a chuckle.
Second, some early bio:
I was born in Brooklyn and went to Lawrence High
School ... I had this groovy music teacher, Mr. Jones ... I pleaded with him to let
me in the band, it was a turning point ... (He sat up, suddenly remembering the
intensity.) I would have given up if I hadn't gotten in the band that day. But there weren't any openings in the band, so he let me
pull the bass drum. Yeah, I had a harness and the drum sat on little wheels,
see ... (he jumped up). I'd strap up in this ricksha thing and pull the drum
while some other cat played it. I was the mule. (He ran around in circles
pulling the invisible drum.) I did that for half a year, but I practiced and
started actually playing. (He sat down, serious again.) My school had the
best drummers in the state. I looked over a list of state champion drummers
once (he held an imaginary list)-hey, they're all from my school. (Shrugged.) I don't know why, but Lawrence was the school to
go to if you wanted to play drums.
Not sure I knew that story, but I don't really pay much attention to Mickey.
Third, more bio, especially interesting in view of the recent discovery of some Spanish Joe and the Jaguars records, featuring a sharp-looking Mickey Hart on drums, we find discussion of his time "in the Air Force Band" (see Corry's "Pre August 1967 Mickey Hart"). "It was called the Airmen of
Note," Hart said, "but it was really the old Glenn Miller band." Mickey spent 3 1/2 years in Europe, also traveling to Africa: "I was just cruisin'. I loved it. No war, it was friendly, not
like the Marines or the Army. I was a judo instructor, combative measures they called
it, but (slyly) my cover was the band". So, "by day in Europe Mickey taught combative measures, but by night
in places like Paris he'd hang out and play with Gerry Mulligan and Count Basie
and whoever else was in whatever city."
I don't claim to know Hart's bio, so I am mostly just putting this out there. Did he really play in the Air Force Band, was that really basically the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and did he really play with Count Basie? I fear this latter might be a garbling of the Count Basie connection in the "when-Mickey-joined-the-Dead" story.
Anyway, Circular is fun. I think I have another Dead-related one around here somewhere, I'll try to check it out.
