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.