Someday Baby: a proposal

 

Dunno what on earth possessed me to go down this rabbit hole today, but I saw the song Someday Baby credited, as it always is on Garcia releases, to Lightnin' (Sam) Hopkins, and something inside me snapped. I like Someday Baby. I like its sly little strut, and I like how it weaves its way periodically through Garcia's career, first as a regular thing for Garcia/Saunders, then with Reconstruction, and had brief spells with the JGB until 1991. I have probably said elsewhere that I take it as a good omen when it pops up in a JGB set, maybe a little sign that Jerry was feeling extra spritely that night (granted, this list doesn't necessarily prove that theory but, hey, um, never miss a Sunday show? whatever. I feel the same way about Money Honey).

Texas blues singer/guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins is always credited as the composer on official releases, although Deaddisc gives the composer of the song as Traditional / Sleepy John Estes / Lightning Hopkins, noting that "the song is attributed to Lightnin' Hopkins on the Garcia recordings but the origins of the song pre-date Hopkins."  But I propse that we go one step further and, for Garciacentric purposes, just credit Estes and his partner Hammie Nixon - not Hopkins at all.

Sleepy John Estes (1899-1977) first recorded Someday Baby Blues for Decca in 1935, accompanied by his longtime partner Hammie Nixon on harmonica, and both were credited as the songwriters. (note that Deaddisc lists one earlier Someday Baby by Buddy Moss, but there's almost no similarity to Estes' song). Structurally and lyrically, Estes' first version is essentially the same song that Garcia performed.  In 1938 Estes recorded an updated New Someday Baby, keeping the same structure and chorus, but changing all of the verses.  In 1962, post "rediscovery," he recorded the song with its original lyrics for his Delmark LP The Legend of Sleepy John Estes. The song was so associated with Estes that it became the epitaph on his gravestone.

Lightnin' Hopkins recorded his own Someday Baby in 1948 (this recording was reissued several times on LP by Crown, first in 1961).  His version is the same basic song as Estes' but with a new set of completely different verses and a slightly modified chorus (from "you ain't gonna worry my mind anymore" to "you ain't gonna worry my life anymore"). His unaccompanied performance is also quite different from Estes': imho, the lyrics aren't nearly as good, but Hopkins' playing itself is much more exciting: looser and more spontaneous-feeling, with two impressive guitar breaks.  Deaddisc has a handy list of further versions/variants of the song, including one that you may be familiar with: Muddy Waters' Trouble No More from 1955, which kept most of Estes' original lyrics intact, and, of course, became a staple for the Allman Brothers Band.

In 1960, B.B. King recorded Someday Baby for his My Kind of Blues LP (*see tangent below. Also, the LP was on Crown, the label that released Lightnin' Hopkins' 1948 recording in 1961). The arrangement is for a 4-piece band in King's trademark urbane style, but the song itself is the same as Estes' original 1935 recording, with nearly identical lyrics. King's record credits the songwriters as Estes/Nixon.

It is unmistakably B.B. King's version that Garcia "covered" with his own groups. Through various permutations from 1973-1991, Garcia's arrangement stayed basically the same as King's, from the opening lick, to the solo that precedes the first verse, to the way that Garcia phrases the line "you ain't gonna woorrrry my mind anymore."  The biggest difference, actually, is that Garcia often sang Estes' original line, whereas both B.B. King and Hopkins sang "worry my life."  And, if there's any doubt remaining, on 7/5/73 you can hear someone (Kahn?) say off-mic "let's do that B.B. King song" before they play it (see fileset 79032, track 1 @11:40; I'm not sure if this is edited out on the GarciaLive official release).

But every official Garcia release still credits the song to Lightnin' Hopkins. It's an understandable error, particularly given how well Garcia was connected to Hopkins' music (see here for two mentions); Garcia even said that Pigpen "picked up, just by watching and listening to me, the basic Lightnin’ Hopkins [guitar] stuff" (see here).  So it seems possible that Garcia knew Hopkins' version of Someday Baby (he may well have had the 60's Crown lp) and that he might even have referred to it as a Hopkins song, which is how it wound up being credited that way on Live at Keystone and every subsequent release. 

Authorship and attribution in the blues tradition can be a very murky issue, and I'm not saying that Estes is 100% responsible for the creation of the song. But he is absolutely responsible for the variant of it that came to Garcia via B.B. King - not Lightnin' Hopkins. So I nominate that henceforth everyone credit the song to just Estes/Nixon, not Hopkins.

* [sidenote/tangent: I can't help noticing that My Kind of Blues was released within a year of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959). The liner notes for My Kind of Blues (scans) devote a lot of space to discussing jazz, concluding that B.B. King is the exemplar of a "particular form of jazz." Genre, presentation, reception - ain't it a bitch?]

the funky funky System

In which I listen to the five known live Garcia/Saunders performances of Merl Saunders' short-lived tune "The System" and make some long-winded observations. Just what it says on the tin, folks.

Merl, 9/2/74, by Greg Gaar

"The System" was, briefly, one of the Garcia/Saunders band's long jam tunes.  Like Saunders' earlier "Man-Child" and slightly later "Merl's Tune," there are only a few known recordings, but each one is stretched to the limit and provides fertile ground for a lot of improvisation.  It was recorded for the Fire Up! lp by the band (with Tom Fogerty) sometime in Dec 72-Jan 73. The track on the album has lyrics, sung by both Saunders and the Edwin Hawkins Singers, although before the earliest live version you can hear someone in the band refer to it as a new instrumental.

[update: commenter nathan pointed out a dumb mistake I made, which I have fixed. So much for proofreading! thank you nathan!]
The song's structure is a modified blues in Bb with an unusual 20-bar form: eight bars of Bb, four of Eb, four of F, and four of Bb (I am sticking to jazz convention here and calling this 20-bar Bb/Bb/Eb/F/Bb progression a chorus).  The jam does away with the progression and just vamps on Bb with no other chord changes.  On the album, they play one 20-bar chorus instrumental, one chorus with vocals, one chorus of Merl soloing on Hammond (with the Hawkins' vocals coming in midway through), then a brief vamp on Bb with Merl soloing on ARP synthesizer before the fade at just under 4 minutes.  Fire Up! wasn't released until April 1973 (according to the mentions of it that I can find in Billboard), so all but one of these live performances are from before the record came out.  

A note about keyboards: Merl usually played a Hammond organ, an electric piano, and a clavinet. For a brief while he also had an ARP synthesizer (not sure of the model; an ARP Odyssey, I presume?), which he played sparingly, but always on The System.  Two trademark sounds of most of these performances is his electric piano upfront, with a generous helping of wahwah pedal, and his ARP coming in at some later point in the jam.

12/28/72 The Lion's Share

This entire show deserves a full write-up: it's fantastic and there's a lot worth commenting on.  The System, the final tune of the night, is missing from the second of the two circulating filesets, so double-check your copy.  Earlier in the set, Roger "Jellyroll" Troy and guitarist/singer Danny Cox sit in, replacing Kahn and Fogerty, and I am pretty sure they are both still playing on this tune. An unidentified trumpet player also makes an appearance; it's apparently not Mike Price, the previously unidentified trumpeter who sat in with G/S a couple of times in 1973-74, and attendee Dave Tamarkin recalls that the trumpeter "just walked up out of the crowd" to play.

After some off-mic banter about the tune (see below), Jerry kicks it off with a Mr. Charlie-ish riff (all later versions are started by Vitt's drums). This version stays with the 20-bar form of the tune for the longest of any of these versions: the play the full form twice (by "play the form" I mean they're just playing the the song without the lyrics, basically just playing through the changes since there's no instrumental melody to speak of), then solo over the changes: Garcia, Saunders, Garcia, trumpet (for 2 choruses), Saunders, Garcia; he keeps on soloing but @11 they stop making the changes and just stick with Bb for the duration.  As they set sail into open waters, Cox's guitar joins Garcia in the improv; the trumpet sneaks back in @11:50 but doesn't add much, and @12:30 Vitt kicks up the tempo. This is a glorious mess, all that you want from a high-energy, all-in group improv like this.  @14 they ease back and shift gears into a new groove, and it sounds like Garcia is proposing a key change to someplace else; but Troy isn't leaving the Bb vamp, so no dice.  They groove along.  After @16ish, it again sounds like Garcia is thinking of spacier places, and Saunders and Vitt seem like they're there with him.  I detect a thread of proto-Slipknot in the fabric @16:28.  The trumpet reenters quietly while Garcia is tearing it up here. @17:45 Cox and Troy start a Bo Diddley rhythm, but Garcia is still flying high, so they don't push it until he comes back down around 19 min.  Troy steps upfront to play a little lead bass, with that trumpet still quietly percolating away.  @19:45 Saunders starts raining down some cool cosmic-sounding ARP stuff, as Garcia hangs in the back with Troy and Cox. Go Merl!  @21 Troy starts playing a distinctive bassline (he's still in Bb), then starts playing more busy/actively, with Saunders still going crazy on the ARP, and Cox and Garcia both going off (haven't heard the trumpet for a while).  Wow.  @22:30 Jerry starts playing a repeated little melodic fragment that Cox picks up on -- this sounds a little Allmansy or maybe AWBYGN-ish (it's not either) -- it sounds like he's trying to rally everyone and bring this all back to earth?  He and Cox toss this figure back and forth between them as everyone slowly comes in for a landing.  24:10 total.  This jam is bananas and, in many ways, the most exciting of these five performances: lightning strikes and catches fire.  Great, great stuff.

beforehand:
As Troy and Cox come onstage a few songs earlier, it sounds like Cox says "don't play no jazz" and Jerry replies that they'll play some blues.  Before The System, there's an off-mic exchange, of which I could make out the following:

Troy(?): Merl, what do you wanna do, brother? wanna do something? ...let's do one of your instrumentals.
Cox(?): Something not too hard.
?: Let's do that new one... How does that new one go?
Jer: What's that?
? The new one of Merl's.
Jer: the one in - ah, you mean the System? Wanna try that? B flat. The System?
? How does it go?
Jer: It's a B flat (someone else: I-IV-V) Kind of like a boogaloo, like a New Orleans boogaloo, something like that... it goes Bb, then it does it a second time, then a third time, it does the same thing [this doesn't make sense and is barely audible]
?: you mean the 5th comes after the 4th?
Jer: Ask Merl, I don't remember. I remember when I play it. I don't really understand it.

"I remember when I play it. I don't really understand it."  Jerry Garcia, ladies and gentlemen. If you don't know, I-IV-V refers to the chord progression: I-IV-V in the key of Bb is the shorthand way to say that the chords are Bb, Eb (the 4th), and F (the 5th) (edit: thank you again, nathan). This is one of the basic building blocks of most blues and bluegrass music, so I'm not sure why Jerry says, "I don't really understand it" --  or why nobody just says it's basically a blues in Bb, just play the first Bb for an extra 4 bars. But whatever.

Then we have three versions played close together.  Given the patchy documentation of early Garcia/Saunders, it's remarkable that we have five shows from January 1973.  Evidently all of Betty's tapes from this month are labeled the "Merl Saunders Experience," which could just be a short lived in-joke, or could signify something else -- I won't speculate here.  Sarah Fulcher was singing with the band for this brief period.

1/19/73 Keystone

I wrote up the full show here, and now have a slightly more charitable opinion of this jam. Bill Vitt's drums kick off this and all subsequent versions, at a slightly brisker tempo than 12/28.  Marty David is playing bass tonight, and after some inaudible off-mic chat about the tune, he picks up on the riff that Garcia is playing and doubles it.  They play the form through once, Saunders solos (2 choruses), Garcia, Fulcher sings (1 chorus; she's not singing anything audibly related to the original lyrics), and then as Garcia starts to solo again they move off into the Bb jam.  The groove is leaner and tighter here.  Garcia solos first, Fulcher sings, @7ish min Saunders moves to the ARP and starts opening the music up underneath her. Marty David holds it down for all it's worth and sounds excellent. Fulcher and Garcia trade the spotlight back and forth and back again.  @15:30 it feels like a change in direction is imminent, but nope, Fulcher moves back in and the jam defaults back to the groove. This happens again around 18 min: Fulcher seems like she's down for where Garcia wants to go, but they never seem to fully detach. The groove is building in intensity, though, working up to a peak @20 min with Garcia trilling a single climatic note. Pretty hot!  Afterwards, Garcia again finds a distinct figure that he repeats a few times to bring everyone back down, and Marty David is right there with him.  But they're not done yet: the two of them hook up for that original bassline/riff as Saunders soloing on wah'ed elec piano - yeah Merl! - this is all pretty nasty funk here.  Fulcher sings over this, and they slowly bring down the intensity while riffing away underneath, and bring things to a gentle stop at 27:43.  Then Fulcher asks for coffee, cream and sugar for Jerry.

1/23/73 The Boarding House (GarciaLive Vol. 12)

This is the first known version with John Kahn back in his regular place.  Immediately a difference is clear: Garcia plays the same funky riff from the other versions, but Kahn's bassline is much simpler and sparser than either Troy's or David's, and leaves a huge amount of space.  This gives Bill Vitt more space to just be the amazing Bill Vitt, and gives Kahn more room/flexibility to ad-lib during the more open jamming; I don't think Kahn's approach is necessarily better or worse than Troy's or David's, but it's a difference.  

They play the form for 2 choruses, Garcia solos, Saunders solo (he's low in the mix!), and then it's off into the Bb vamp.  The tune itself, what little of it there is, seems to be atrophying with each successive version.  Saunders solos first over the vamp, then Garcia steps up.  Kahn is playing a nice rolling, descending bassline in here.  When Saunders moves to the Hammond @6:40 he gets even lower in the mix! What's that about?  Fulcher makes her entrance @7:25 and it seems like everyone makes plenty of room for her.  Speaking of mixes, her vocals are much more present here than 1/19.  Saunders adds a little ARP as she starts singing, similar to the cool descending thing he does on 12/28/72 (@19:50). They turn up the intensity as she sings on.  @10:40 Garcia starts soloing as she continues to bop along, but he backs off quickly and the intensity goes down within a minute.  This seems like the moment in every version when a direction change is being considered.  Fulcher continues free-associating here, Garcia plays a bit more, but the energy feels a little tentative, everyone's waiting for something to launch.  Kahn's playing here is relatively minimal compared with Troy or David.  They don't find a new way to go, so they build the energy back up, Fulcher and Garcia again taking turns leading the band.  After @17 min, the energy changes for real and the vibe gets weirder: Fulcher trucks on, Saunders on ARP, Kahn mostly just sitting on Bb, and Garcia delicately doodling.  And then @18:46 Garcia starts playing, out of the blue, the descending 4-chord progression that we all know as the Mind Left Body Jam.  

Saunders picks up on it quickly, Kahn finds it and perks up (he puts on his Motown hat), and they all start building back up.  The GarciaLive release changes tracks @20:04 when Fulcher starts singing Honey Chile, but everyone else just digs harder into that MLB jam, with Garcia starting to play over this @1:45 (in the Honey Chile track) as he would with the Dead on future MLB jams. Fulcher is singing freely as is her wont, but finds her way back to Honey Chile and @3:40 Garcia makes the shift to the Honey Chile chord progression (which, if I were in charge, is where I would have started the track).

Um, what now?  Where did that come from?  The Dead toyed with this idea a little bit in 1972, but it didn't become a fully-formed thing until fall 1973.  Earlier in the month, Garcia had been in the studio working on Baron Von Tollbooth with Kantner, Slick, et al, but I've never fully invested in the idea that "Your Mind Has Left Your Body" was the primary origin of this jam (more on MLB). A magical little mystery, anyway, and the clear highlight of this jam, which is otherwise the least inspired one so far.  Also, if these tapes were 16-track, why is Saunders mixed so damn low? Fulcher gets more love (mix-wise) on this release than on the older Bettyboards.


1/25/73 The Boarding House

Vitt kicks it off again, but this one is the slowest yet, substantially slower than the previous ones.  There's a cut @1:36 so we can't know how much of the "tune" they play: they all play the form once, then Garcia solos over the form at least one time, but the cut is in the middle of this solo, so it's unclear how much is missing.  After the cut, he wraps up his solo over the form and off into Bb they go.  There's some float time, Garcia solos, Saunders starts on electric piano then moves to Hammond (the stereo image seems reversed on this tape, btw), and Kahn is a little busier compared with 1/23.  The overall feel here is looser, almost laconic, but it's still a groove.  @6:35 Garcia starts cutting the lines and getting a little spacier. Nice mellow flow to all this.  They build it back up, Garcia brings it to a solid peak, then back down into the jazzier/mellower flow.  @10:29 Saunders hits the ARP suddenly with a trumpet-like blast, with some jazzy Garcia comping below.  Nice ARP situation happening here until @12:45ish when Garcia meanders back into the center of things. The tension is slowly building here, but they still stay in that liminal space until @14 min when everything seems to quickly slide downhill into Space and the groove drops out completely.  Spikier, typically "spacey" stuff.  The intensity doesn't hit full-on Tiger or Insect Fear, but goes up and down, up and down, ending with Garcia starting to form some of the Georgia On My Mind chords as everyone splashes about, and @19:13 Garcia nudges them all into Georgia.  Fulcher only comes out now -- she was totally MIA for all of the System.  

That was easily the weirdest and most laid back version so far.  Given the cut, it's hard to say for sure about what's left of the form of the song itself, but I would bet that they took even less time in getting to the Bb vamp on this one.
 

7/5/73 The Lion's Share (GarciaLive Vol. 6) 

One final version pops up five months later (the only one performed after the album was released). Fulcher wasn't at this show, and trumpeter Mike Price sat in for a good part of the night, but not for the System.  Given how the song itself seemed to have been disintegrating throughout January, I wondered what would be left by July.  But Saunders sings his lyrics here!  Pretty tentatively, but there they are.  Another mystery.  His electric piano, which had been a distinctive feature of earlier versions, is missing here completely.  He sings the first chorus, then they play one round of the form, Garcia solos for one round, and then as Saunders takes over they stay on the Bb.  Another big difference here is Bill Vitt: he starts the song off at a peppier tempo than in January, and then keeps turning up the heat, steadily increasing the tempo as they go, from around 80 to almost 100bpm. He's got some fire under him tonight!  Saunders solos for a while, Garcia takes over, the intensity keeps rising, so much so that by @7 min Vitt has doubled up and is playing more of a 4-on-the-floor beat than a funky backbeat. Okay, Bill Vitt, we see you!  @9:15 Saunders cuts some of the heat, and drives for a while on both Hammond and ARP, with a nice airier feel even as Vitt keeps his foot on the gas.  This is pretty cool!  @13:20ish, Garcia steps in to joust with Saunders a bit, and then takes over.  Saunders moves to the clavinet (not something I recall hearing in earlier versions) and @14:35 is playing these chiming whole notes below Garcia, which sounds pretty sweet to me.  As Saunders starts soloing more, he and Garcia find a nice conversational space, both adding equal weight to the jam.  Vitt doesn't let up, Garcia finds a tasty little melodic figure that he locks into, Kahn finds his way into a brief ascending 3-chord progression near the end. At 18 min it comes apart and ends fairly quickly at 18:35.  Wow!  That was an unexpected shot in the arm, but heck yes.  Great stuff.


OK, so what does it all mean?  I guess I can see why the song itself didn't stick: the 20-bar form was a little odd, not rocket science but maybe just odd enough to make it more trouble than it was worth?  Otherwise it's a funky jam on a mostly a one-chord vamp.  The core group, unsurprisingly, seem more comfortable going in different directions, where the first two versions with guests keep it more grounded.  They're all very satisfying performances, the first and last versions sticking with me as particularly inspired, but Garcia/Saunders wasn't lacking for material that could take them to similar places, so maybe this just drifted off the radar.  I dunno.  But this was a fun little rabbit hole to go down. 

1/19/73 Jerry wants cream and sugar

I hadn't listened to 1/19/73 at the Keystone in years, but a little discussion about bass players and musicians who subbed with Garcia/Saunders led me to circle back to it, one of the rare recordings of "solo Jerry" without John Kahn.  Bassist Marty David was holding it down tonight instead.  So, here are some listening notes, made with an ear tilted more towards the bass.  I'm sure we'll never know why Kahn missed this particular night, but Marty David does a fantastic job: he seems familiar with nearly every tune, and has a slightly lighter and cleaner touch than Kahn, favoring a slightly busier approach, though never to the point of overdoing it, and it all comes together quite nice.

Sarah Fulcher, by Jim Needham

• I am not weighing in on Sarah Fulcher's contributions to this lineup, and if you are reading this, chances are good that you already have an opinion. Jesse Jarnow's interview explains the situation; in her defense, she says she "did the best I could under pretty much the worst circumstances in the universe" for a singer.  I did notice that, late in the show, a guy in the audience asks who she is and Jerry introduces her; it sounds like the guy yells, "Sarah sings nice!" and Jerry replies, "yeah."
  
• There were several tunes that were practically unique to this lineup, and this show kicks off with the only known recording of a peppy and most certainly off-the-cuff arrangement of King Harvest's fun, goofy 1972 hit Dancing in the Moonlight (written by Sherman Kelly; quite a story), as Betty gets the mix settled. It's a good time!
• Can't ever go wrong with Lonely Avenue.  This one doesn't have the imperial heaviness of 2/6/72 or 5/4/73, but is nevertheless nearly 18 1/2 minutes of Jerry throwing around blues licks and playing some serious guitar.  Notably, this is significantly longer than the versions played on 1/15/73 and 1/25/73, which are each a little over 12 minutes long.  Here my ears perked up around 8:15ish at a flurry of pinched harmonics (ala Roy Buchanan or Robbie Robertson), some Buchanan-esque volume swelling @11:20, and Jer piling on the intensity around 13-14 min for some climactic energy.  Merl gets a little space to say his piece, but this is pretty much all Jerry. It also caught my ear that Merl spends more time on electric piano (heavy wahwah) than Hammond organ here, giving this a more spacious feel, but maybe at the cost of some melodrama.  A couple songs later, Jimmy Reed's It's a Sin gets a similarly fine performance: it was a good blues night for Jerry!
• Expressway - I am hearing Marty David as being a tad more on top of the beat than Kahn usually was, giving this one a nice crisp pop.  Kahn tended to lean back and lumber a bit on this tune.  Sarah sings intermittently, and they've all achieved liftoff by 7 min in -- this is pretty cooking.  During Sarah's "solos," I appreciate how the rest of the band is attentive to slowly bringing up the energy, which then gives Jerry a nice place to blast off from when it's his turn.  I hear a tiny bit of synthesizer from Merl towards the end (17:40ish) and it's all over at just under 20 min. 
• Before The System, it sounds like Jerry is maybe explaining something about the tune to Marty David?  Oh man, Merl's electric piano sounds tasty at the start of this.  This sure is funky, but it's also nearly 28 minutes long, and the jamming is all on one chord -- my only issue with this is that Marty David holds down that bassline for all its worth (completely understandable) and isn't hearing where Jerry or Merl seem like they're ready to cut loose and stretch a little further afield.  A couple times they do slip out of the groove, but never for long.  Merl gets to flex a bit more on all three keyboards, Sarah has a few moments but nothing too intrusive, and Jerry sounds happy to just ride it out.  And so they do.  Afterwards, Sarah asks for a cup of coffee; "oh, two cups of coffee. Jerry wants cream and sugar, and I'd like to have mine with just cream, please."  Priceless.
• I always like hearing them play Honey Chile, and Jerry sounds great, but I couldn't help but feel like they're running that same I-IV-ii-I progression forever.  Gimme a bridge already!  Jer can certainly handle it, but yeah, I can see why he eventually moved away from this being a primary focus of his side projects.  He then announces the break and Betty lets the tape roll for a minute longer, catching some jazz-flutey ambiance from the PA music, always a nice touch.  That was a long set at least an hour 45 minutes!  And pretty damn fine, I would say.

• The second set is shorter (just over an hour) and less remarkable to my ears.  Sarah seems more like the "featured singer" on more material here, which all sounds well done to me.  She steps upfront for two of her original(?) tunes plus Georgia On My Mind, which is a fantastic version.  Someone from the crowd asks Jerry who the chick singer is (groan) and Jerry introduces her just as Sarah.
• Again, Marty David sounds excellent on everything.  Before Soul Roach, it sounds like Jerry asks him if he knows the tune -- which he evidently does, since he's nailing all the hits at the beginning of it.  I wonder if he had also played with Merl before?  And notice him during the closing How Sweet It Is, another fine place to hear how he differs from John Kahn.

So who was Marty David anyway? All I know about him is that he went on to be a session musician, but was working at the time with Van Morrison and Jesse Colin Young. Most immediately relevant to our purposes, he was also in Sarah Fulcher's own local group with Bill Vitt (who had brought her to the Garcia/Saunders group) and future-JGB keyboardist Ozzie Ahlers (per Corry) -- so he was probably the most obvious choice as a sub for this gig. You can also hear him playing on two tracks on Hard Nose the Highway and with Van on 2/15/73 at the Lion's Share (broadcast on KPFA and bootlegged), although not on the subsequent tour that was documented on It's Too Late to Stop Now.  Later that year he also toured with Jesse Colin Young: you can hear 10/?/73 Paul's Mall in Boston (etree), 10/31/73 Portland ME (Wolfgang's), 11/19/73 Ultrasonic Studios in Hempstead, NY (etree),  and 12/15/73 Winterland (video + audio at Wolfgang's) (this was the same show, incidentally, where Jerry sat in with the NRPS on a Telecaster), and also played on Young's 1974 album Light Shine (again with Ozzie Ahlers).  He was from Brownsville in Brooklyn, and had also previously been a New York-based band called Holy Moses!! that released one album in 1971, which provides the one picture of Marty David that I could find:

but which of these men is Marty David?

12/6/73 at 50: ideal silences

 

There's a quote somewhere (I told the intern to go look it up; dunno where he got to, though) where Jerry says that a song ideally has a moment of pure silence in it. I'm pretty sure he was talking about Stella Blue, but this is a good one to file away next to other nuggets about the musical value of not playing anything.  Silence in Dark Star, or "Space" jams in general, isn't exactly a rare thing, so I don't want to make too much of it: but there are two very small ones in this Dark Star that are perfect, like pinholes into infinity, and I would like to acknowledge them.  It is the 50th anniversary of this behemoth piece of music, and almost 15 years ago I banged out an appreciation about it that needs no revision to sum up my feelings -- but in the years that followed, I have come to love one additional specific thing about it.  

In that original write-up, I mentioned a CD copy of this show that I was fortunate to get sometime between 1999-2001 that tracked the "tuning" and "intro" separate from the main Dark Star.  On that copy, Dark Star itself was tracked when Billy slides into his swinging cymbal beat as Jerry trickles in (@3:10 on the current fileset), but the "intro" began at 1:28 -- the moment where, to my ears, the tuning ends and the gentle but wholly intentional playing commences.  This magical little black dot of silence is what always bring to mind Tom Constanten's words about Dark Star being a thing that you enter, not a thing that you start playing.

The instrumental texture of Keith's Fender Rhodes and Phil's bass chord at 2 min is about a warm a sound as I've ever heard from the Dead (or, really, most anything this side of Jaco Pastorius' "Portrait of Tracy" or John Martyn's "Solid Air," but I digress)

If anything, I downplayed just how much Keith is playing in this.  I wouldn't call it overplaying (although it seems like 300% of what he usually plays), since I do feel that he is completely zoned in and doing exactly what ought to be happening.  But Bob seems a bit more reserved in this, and I suspect part of the reason is that Keith was just taking up more space than usual.  But go ahead Keith!  It sounds perfect.  After the scorched earth Phil/Jerry showdown that decimates the second half of this, who's feeling all perky and ready to get back on the road?  Keith is.

Then at 29:13, comes the second great silence: the only sound is Jerry just scraping a string very quietly, and there's another tiny pause -- debatably there are one or two more in the quiet passage that follows over the next minute.  Everyone is listening so hard and the tension is palpable.  And then things get very, very loud indeed.

Ornette meets Healy

jazz tangent: one thing that has pulled me away from more consistent GD/JG listening (besides the ebb and flow of life) is my new hobby (calling it a "practice" makes me wince) of listening slowly to entire discographies of jazz greats who I want a more comprehensive overview of (so far, since you asked: Bobby Hutcherson, Yusef Lateef, and Sun Ra). I am working on Ornette Coleman right now.

In August 1968, Ornette was in the Bay Area with his band that included, controversially, his 12-year-old son Denardo on drums. His brief spell with Impulse! Records produced two live albums, the first of which, Ornette at 12, was recorded at the Greek Theater in Berkeley on Aug 11, 1968. Working that show was the GD's soundman Dan Healy -- the LP notes credit him as engineer (misspelled Healey), so I don't know if he was also mixing the live sound or just recording it (I suspect both, since I think Ornette produced this himself and just licensed the tapes to Impulse!).  There is more from this concert that remains unheard: it was billed as Ornette Coleman & Orchestra, since part of the SF Symphony joined for his composition "Sun Suite" (unrecorded, afaik, though that's the score on the Fillmore West poster below!), as did his former bandmate, trumpeter Bobby Bradford.  But the album only features performances by the quartet, so maybe the rest didn't go as well? I would sure love to hear it anyway.

The week before the Greek concert, Ornette's quartet played at the Fillmore West on Aug 5, apparently one of Bill Graham's only single-night/single-act bookings (the poster advertises the band as a quintet with Bradford, but he has confirmed that he was not there). A month earlier, Graham had taken over the venue formerly known as the Carousel Ballroom and renamed it.  Given that his capitalist ways marked the end of the hippie dream of a communal venue, the story goes that local musicians were briefly boycotting his new venture, and Rhoney Stanley recalled in her book that Jerry Garcia broke with principle only to go see Ornette play (thank you again, Light Into Ashes, for sharing that quote), although I can't help but notice that the Dead were booked at the Fillmore West on Aug 20-22 and again on Aug 30-Sept 1.

 

Healy had been working with the Dead from mid-1966 until mid-1968.  The exact reasons for his departure are unclear, but Corry Arnold speculates that, with Owsley returning to the GD organization, Healy may have sought fresh opportunities elsewhere. He worked with Quicksilver Messenger Service (as soundman, producer, and sometimes bassist!), played with his own band (the nearly forgotten Hoffman's Bycycle; Corry ibid.), and worked as a freelance engineer with some connection to Mercury Records (Corry again, also Light Into Ashes). And he didn't really fully cut ties with the Dead: he recorded them in Los Angeles on Aug 23-24 (interestingly, Quicksilver was booked those nights at the Fillmore West), using Warner Bros' fancy 8-track equipment, which was eventually released as Two From the Vault (some info), and evidently was in and out of the studio with them until his full-time return in 1972. But could Healy have also worked the Ornette show at the Fillmore West? It's certainly possible, but we'll never know unless someone asks him.

So what? So I think that's all pretty cool. Healy gave plenty of interviews, and I have only looked at a few of them. But I am guessing no one has asked him about this Ornette concert at the Greek. As far as I know, this is his one jazz recording credit, and, of course, it sounds good.  And Healy did, of course, mix for Ornette at least twice again: when he opened for the Dead and then sat in on 2/23/93, and again on 12/9/93.

11/7/93 until he organizes his best potential

wrong show, wrong band, great pic: 9/29/93 by Robbi Cohn

 

I have alluded to loving this overlooked show before, so for its 30th anniversary (at the eleventh hour, of course), I figured I would kick myself to write about Jerry Garcia again and say a few things about it.

In his great book Every Song Ever (2016), Ben Ratliff observed that being a deadhead -- specifically, collecting and listening to all these shows -- means "to practice long stretches of suspended judgment until the group organizes its best potential."

It is listening in the long view, with a basic understanding that the band’s music only significantly changes when the body gives out; otherwise, that music represents one long discourse, all of it intrinsically valuable.

If you enjoy Garcia's music from his final years, then surely this must be true for you, whether you think of it this way or not. It is certainly true for me, but not for reasons of "I was there!" nostalgia or relativism ("I guess Jerry sounds pretty good... for a guy who could barely keep his head up and was near the end"). There are things I hear Jerry play in 1993 that hold up as being as powerful as anything he ever did, although very different from his work as a younger man. In 1993, Garcia's best potential, as Ratliff would put it, was not the same potential as 1973 or 1983. Assessing the work of artists who rely on technical ability (like musicians) as they age can be challenging, given that our terms of engagement with their work often focuses on innovation or "development" rather than consolidation and refinement. Jazz critic Stanley Crouch argues this about Louis Armstrong:

As maturity increases, the speed of perception and experience becomes denser, fewer details are needed to recognize essential meanings. While the younger person is still contemplating, the old master has moved on to the next point, digesting through the shorthand made possible by the passage of many moons. In art, that law allows the individual gesture to take on greater resonance. The best of Louis Armstrong's work after fifty proves that his expressive ideas didn't reach their peak until he was nearly sixty. (Crouch, Considering Genius)

I realize I am wandering out on the thin ice of romanticizing "old Jerry," and let's be real: his physical health was in real deterioration by 1993, and his mental/emotional well-being was not being helped by, to use another shorthand, the Burden of Being Jerry. And yet, all those shortcomings aside, the old master Jerry does make some gestures here that do take on a greater resonance for me, and hopefully for you too.   

So: Nov 7, 1993 at the newly rechristened USAir Arena (formerly the Capitol Centre) of Landover, MD.  The JGB's final east coast tour, very close to the abrupt end of the great David Kemper era, but traveling in fine style nevertheless. From what I understand, this particular venue was known then for its particularly tough security, and the two circulating audience tapes both suffer from that.  I personally prefer the earlier unknown Schoeps source which to my ears is slightly more palatable than the tape made by the usually reliable Clay Brennecke (no fault of his own; he gets busted early on, sounds like he bribes his way out of a pickle, and gets the rest of the show, albeit with a bit more discretion, I'm sure)

• Not much to say about the start of the first set, but ol' Jerry was saved more than once by the adage, "when the going gets tough, the tough slow down." And the first important thing that happens is the late-set Señor: my single favorite performance of this amazing song, thanks to its guitar solo. Find me a better one (official released included). Four choruses of perfection -- okay, then two more choruses of unnecessary but by no means bad extra stuff. Vocals have their rust spots and occasional brainfarts, but that's rarely on my rubric when he is playing so well. I suspend my judgment until the group organizes its best potential.  

• Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.  I have more to say in general about Garcia's stripped-down arrangement of this already simple song (all good things), but by fall 93 it had turned into a behemoth, a slow-rolling tribal stomp, and a thing of glory. This is not quite the best that it got -- at the moment, I would nominate 11/3/93 for that (another post) -- but this is pretty damn near the top.  14 1/2 minutes of a giant ball of energy just rolling around and around and around the stadium.

• The second set opens with another all-timer: show me a better The Way You Do the Things You Do. Another tune that warrants a more in-depth look sometime, it was performed in a straightforward Motown-goes-barband style for eight years, left the repertoire for six, then reappeared in 1990 with a reggae-ish sway, courtesy of Jahn Kahn's most memorable bassline and a gently spacey groove.  The end jam would swell and occasionally became ground for some inspiration to blossom, and this version is the epitome of that (although see also 11/18/93 for a sprawling 20+ version that is also a treasure).  Jerry grooves along, slides into some jazzy comping for a minute and a half, but never fully cedes to Melvin Seals. Instead, he builds tension by playing not much but teasingly just enough, finally eases back into more proper lead guitar, but the focus seems more rhythmic than melodic, and then finally lets all that tension boil over (@12:35ish) with some climactic fanning for about 40 seconds. This will be a very nice surprise if you primarily associate this tune with a few jammy minutes of light, bubbly grooviness.

• Money Honey. Not quite a rarity, but not a setlist staple either, and my hunch is that it was generally a good sign when Jerry felt like belting this one out.  Again, not perfect lyrically, but he delivers a few choruses of divebomb blues with his claws out.

• Knockin' On Heaven's Door. A semi-rarity; the only one of the tour, and only played three more times onstage in his life (once with the JGB, twice with the GD). You know how you feel about this song, and this version is lovely.

• Don't Let Go.  All-timer? No. But damn good, I say. Appreciate how Jerry playfully sings way down looow in the final round of "hold me tight and don't let go"s, while Melvin mimics his vocal. Then he tears the heck out of the jam, brings it up to a nice climax, then collapses into lonesome space for a few minutes, the Hammond B3 framing Jerry's moaning in the moonlight, before he brings it back home. Not too many Don't Let Go's were ending in free space anymore (list forthcoming, hopefully?), so that's a nice touch. Overall: a mighty fine Don't Let Go.

• Mississippi Moon.  A real rarity for the 90's, and the only one of the tour again. Again, there are some rust spots on the vocals and the turnarounds, but Jerry digs in for the solo, and then digs in again for a unusual(?) second solo after Melvin's featured spot (which was usually the piece's climax).

• After all that, I wish that Tangled Up in Blue came crashing into the end of this set like a missile, but it does not. It's a little slow and maybe too carefully paced at first, but he gets the truck out on the highway and invites you to ride it out with him. He might be coasting a bit during the solos, but as the jam begins, he seems to pause for a breath, braces himself, and channels some that Leo energy into a regal final jam. There's nice energy bump just before the 11 min mark that gets us across the finish line, but it all sounds pretty good to me.

Best potential organized? I would say so, yes. One long discourse, all of it intrinsically valuable. So I will end, as I ought to, with a salute to the tapers.  Midway through Tangled, there's a moment when the high frequencies drop out, when (I assume) the mics are lowered and hidden. Then @6:45, the quality increases and, with a "whoo!" of relief, one taper hollers to the other, "the things we have to go through!"  Thank goodness you did!  Thank you tapers!

scan courtesy Fate Music/JGMF

10/28/72 hello Cleveland

 

satellite view of the Dead lighting up downtown Cleveland

It is peak fall in my neck of the woods, and fall '72 feels very right right now.  So here are some scattered observations about this show, not one for the "best of 72" list but a very enjoyable one, marred by a poor quality recording, and one that caught my eye for a couple of setlist oddities.  Not to mention another big ol' Dark Star.

So, the Dead in Cleveland.  Someone help me here: there's a Cleveland Convention Center with two venues, the smaller Music Hall and the larger Public Hall.  The Dead played the Public Hall in 1972, 73, 79, and 80, but played the Music Hall in 1970, 78, and 81 -- is that right?  There are pics of 12/6/73 in a larger art deco auditorium with a huge stage, which is said to be the Public Hall.

The Rowan Brothers opened this show, according to this review.

Like a lot of later fall 72 tapes, the mix stinks.  I've seen many of these fall 72 sbds referred to as "monitor mixes" and I have repeated that myself, but I don't think that's accurate: from what I understand now, the band didn't have a separate monitor feed in 1972, let alone individual monitor mixes for different bandmembers.  So my guess is that this tape (made by Bear) is a straight sbd feed.  Vocals and drums are the loudest, Lesh's bass is the lowest, and the guitars and piano move around.  It's what we've got.

Weir picks the opener for the show, but Garcia's first two choices this evening are Friend of the Devil and China>Rider.  I have opined elsewhere that 9/21/72 has perhaps Garcia's most inspired opening gambit (Bird Song and China>Rider), but this sure ain't a bad way to get the ball rolling.  As far as I can tell, this was the earliest placement in a show that FOTD ever had (with the Dead at any rate; dunno about JGB).  

Another first set highlight is a spirited Box of Rain.  I like how Weir screams loudly as Lesh counts it off.  Weir screams a lot during this show.

Weir's mic craps out during Bobby McGee, prompting a pause for a replacement.  Garcia noodles Teddy Bear's Picnic.  Evidently someone from the crowd is throwing marshmellows onstage, which nobody in the band seems particular fazed about.

They play Candyman for the first time in just over a year.

Playing in the Band is, no surprise, another late '72 monster, nothing too unusual for the period, but whoa.  Hard to fully assess what's happening here since the bass is so low, but Garcia and Kreutzmann are locked in like Coltrane and Elvin Jones, and the peak they hit @15:45 is wonderful (hear Weir holler in delight, yet again).  There's a long, luscious swim back to the reprise that's marred by a small cut, but this one is still a keeper.

Opening the second set with He's Gone seems like the move of a supremely confident band.  It wasn't actually that unusual a move in fall 72, but it happened rarely after that.

Greatest Story Ever Told is a freakin' rager!  I mean they all are, but this one is extra hot.  Jerrrry.

Attics of My Life!  This was the second of only two played that year, and the last one in front of an audience until 1989!  Oh woe.  It sounds so good.

This Big River is not a particularly noteworthy one, but it does inaugurate a brief and unexpected tradition of Big River preceding a really heavy duty Dark Star (see also 2/15/73, 10/19/73, 10/30/73, 11/11/73, 12/6/73, 9/10/74 - weird, right?)

Roadmap to this monster Dark Star: This initial jam feels like I'm lost in a dark forest, groping towards bright lights in the distance.  Lesh's bass is audible, but still lower than everything else.  After 5 minutes, they smoothly pick up the tempo, Garcia sizzling away as Godchaux skips stones behind him; they're mostly cruising along in good ol' A mixolydian, and Garcia builds to a beautiful peak at 9:30ish, then settles thing down as he glides into the first verse a couple minutes later.  Things proceed as usual as they ease back and Lesh takes center stage... he doodles around, Garcia and Kreutzmann join in, but just when things seem like they're about to tip over into darkness, Lesh begins strumming the chords of the theme that's now known for posterity as the "Philo Stomp" jam.  Not a fan of that name, but oh well.  It's an incongruously perky little thing, but everyone joins in and Garcia pulls back into the Dark star mode, and this just sounds triumphant.  Check out him trilling @19:30!  Oh man.  By 22 min, Garcia has twisted off in a weirder direction and they start building to a Tiger, albeit via the scenic route.  It boils over at 24:45, rages hard for a minute, then abruptly stops.  They splash around for the final two minutes; I hear no piano here at all; and then Bob boots 'em into Sugar Magnolia.  I wouldn't call this a Dark Star for the ages, nor even one in the top tier of 1972, but we're still talking about a full 3-course meal here; just stunning that something like this is second-level for the year.

This Dark Star, for me, will forever be associated with Dick Latvala's epic introduction from the Grateful Dead Hour, which was once upon a time the only source for this jam.  Treat yourself to a listen.  Dick sounds like he just snorked down a bongwater martini and would have been in no shape whatsoever to deliver a lengthy seaside chat.  "My armpit left the universe."  God bless ya, Dick.

Nice touch in Sugar Magnolia: during the pause before Sunshine Daydream, you can hear Bob jokingly tell Donna as she walks out, "take your time, take your time."

Casey Jones shuts things down with a classic drawn-out, hellraising ending.  It sounds like Weir is telling someone down front to be careful and take it easy.  He also keeps screaming his head off.  Shoot the moon, Bobby, shoot the moon.