[ed: Corry sent me an email about Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix, which turned into a rather elaborate exchange on the subject. One piece of our correspondence involved the tape traveling as 5/20/71. This is some of Garcia’s finest playing on tape in any context. I highly recommend that you check it out. I have done a little metadata analysis of the tape and reckon that there’s no reason to doubt the David Lemieux-inspired conclusion that it is what it purports to be, and plenty of reason to concur in it.
Corry was stunned at how “out” this material is, sounding more like Howard Wales than Merl Saunders on keys, unmooring totally, in quasi-free jazz style, from the songs. I agreed with him, but, if my metadata analysis is right –and we both think it is– then it is indeed Merl, and we may need, in my words (pace Bayes), to update our priors.
With Corry’s permission, I am posting it more or less as we have it in email, with a few tweaks here and there. I originally planned that Corry would be in black and I would be in blue (“Tasty hemlock!”), but the quoting arrangement seems to work all right. Don’t want too much formatting else Blogger will up and walk away on me.
Dialogue below the fold.]
Assumptions
The conventional distinction for most Garcia fans between Garcia/Wales and Garcia/Saunders is Hooteroll? (1971) vs Live At Keystone (1973).
Jerry and Howard just jammed, often in the most far out way possible,
while Jerry and Merl anchored their still-considerable improvisations
into conventional popular song structures, in the tradition of R&B
nightclub music.
I’d just note that, since its 1998 release, I’d consider Side Trips, recorded May 1970, to be a better anchor.
Garcia and Wales played intermittently from Spring ’70
until January 72, and Garcia/Saunders from September ’70 until July ’75,
with some crossover. The first tape I hard of Garcia/Saunders was Feb 6
’72, and since it was a KSAN broadcast it was a widely circulated
Garcia/Saunders tape from early days. In my mind, Garcia/Saunders at The
Matrix from September ’70 until May ’71 (when it closed) was a nascent
version of Garcia/Saunders in February 72–some Dylan, some R&aB,
some blues, some jammed out Merl instrumentals.
In fact, that’s
just an assumption, based on nothing. There are no tapes of JGMS from the Matrix (save the fragment reputedly from May 71), no reviews,
no detailed eyewitness accounts beyond foggy memories. I always assumed
that Jerry and Merl were doing “High Heeled Sneakers” and “One Kind
Favor” from the beginning, but I never reflected on why I thought that. I
can’t be the only one who made that assumption.
what we believe to be true derives from our assumptions, which is, to
say the least, problematic. But it is what it is. More importantly for
me, is the sharpness of your distinction between jazz and r&b. You
know I have this “musics” (plural being important) theme, and especially
indigenous American musical forms. So sharpening this distinction, and
mapping it onto Howard and Merl, is fascinating and important. It
doesn’t map to race, interestingly. That’s another layer that I am
trying to sort through, it all refracts in weird ways, like how Howard
soaked in black music in Cinci or wherever that was, just as Vitt did in
Sacto. And Merl at various points probably played to mostly white
listeners. He obviously has his jazz influences in the more staid Jimmy
Smith tradition. But I think you are right: in the sense that you are
describing, i.e., being able to play “out”, Howard > Merl
My assumptions about how 5/20/71 “didn’t sound like
Merl” were just my assumptions about how I thought Merl Saunders was
“supposed” to sound when he played with Garcia. Listening to the
Keystone Companion set, there are enough jamming sections that I can
hear how Merl did sound at least some of the time, when it suited him.
What’s different about the May 20 ’71 tape is that its Merl playing the
Howard Wales role, all jazz, all the time. He never goes to Mars, the
way Howard did, but it’s far more jazz than R&B.
at a few places. I have listening notes to compile and post.
With all that being said, I looked at my assumptions, and while they
turn out to be wrong, I think my assumptions are widely shared by Garcia
fans, so that means I’m not likely the only one who has made faulty
assumptions. If we accept your very plausible argument that the tape in
question is May 20 ’71 at the Keystone Korner, confirmed by Lemieux’s
knowledge of another tape, what do we know and not know?
What Do We Not Know?We don’t seem to have a single recording of Garcia and Saunders at the Matrix, not one, not even a fragment.
We
don’t have a meaningful eyewitness account of a Garcia/Saunders show
until October 3, 1971, when Paul Grushkin reviewed the band for the
Stanford Daily (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/06/jgms-october-3-1971- frost-ampitheater.html).
Here and there a few people have said they recall seeing
Garcia/Saunders at the Matrix or Keystone Korner, but their accounts are
so vague that they are not historically useful.
6/26/71 to be very meaningful: it says they were playing songs that
Garcia was singing and so forth. Having nothing else to do on a Saturday, they narrate,
we went to the New Monk. … And who do you think we see, but Tom Fogerty, Jerry Garcia, Merle [sic]
Saunders and Bill Vitt getting together to jam. … The New Monk was
SRO, and when they began playing, the crowd couldn’t sit still. Garcia
also did some singing. They got together some bluegrass (which Garcia is
known for), gospel and rock (Staska-Mangrum 1971).
You hypothesize below that
the arrival of Fogerty coincides with the arrival of songs to sing. I
think that’s exactly what the Staska-Mangrum piece confirms.* Further, your
hypothesis that Jerry needed to focus on singing arrangements, and so
wanted a rhythm guitarist, is spot-on. I have even more to say, below.
Other
than the May ’71 Garcia tapes listed here, we don’t seem to have much
from Keystone Korner. My casual searching revealed just two Garcia shows
(Jan 15
and Jun 30 ’72). On top of that, I don’t even think there is a tape by
anyone else from the Keystone Korner in 1971-72. Nor do I recall a
detailed eyewitness review from a Garcia Keystone Korner show, not in an
analytically useful way. I can’t recall a review or blog post that has
any details. Since Kidd (or whoever recorded it) at least casually
edited the tape, at least cutting out tuning breaks and “we’re going to
take a short break” comments, we don’t have any feel for what a Keystone
Korner show was like. Do we even have a photo of the room and the stage
of the Keystone Korner in its rock days? (I realize the KK is better
documented in its jazz incarnation).
As
a result of the things that we lack, listed above, we don’t have the
slightest idea of what Garcia/Saunders played at The Matrix.
similarities of the room feel, the tape could very well be from Keystone
Korner, as 5/20/71 turned out to be. It’s perfectly plausible that
someone along the way just guessed Matrix along the way, and with good
reason. But we do know what Jerry and Merl sounded like in May 1971, and
Staska-Mangrum tell us what Jerry-Merl-Tom sounded like a month later.
As
a result of the things that we lack, listed above, we don’t have the
slightest idea of what Garcia/Saunders played at The Matrix. We don’t
know how long they played, we don’t know if they jammed off familiar
tunes or just let it rip. I think any assertions by anyone to the
contrary would be supported on no foundation at all. I realize that they
probably played two sets of about an hour’s lengths, but my point is
that we just assume that. On the May 20 ’71 tape, “cut 4” (at about
44:00) is very definitely some sort of R&B instrumental, with an
actual arrangement. “Cut 5” (around 52:00) begins with a very familiar
melody that I couldn’t quite put my finger on–a Van Morrison song or
something like that, although obviously it gets far afield.
Garcia/Saunders may have had a somewhat different repertoire in their
first year of existence, but we have no real way to be sure at this
time.
I used to assume. This is how I understand them to have been, and I
always figured that their debut on ca. September 7, 1970 was some kind of B3 heavy HowardMerl stuff, but only based on a linear
interpolation between Side Trips (May 1970) and “5/11/71 Matrix”. Then I see a qualitative change with the addition of Fogerty.
When
did Garcia start doing vocal numbers with Merl? If we want to make an
argument that he sang songs back at the Matrix, what would we be basing
the assertion on?
songs at the Matrix, unless they did “It’s a Sin” or something. I didn’t have them doing “High Heel Sneakers” in my mind until later.
But it’s in the spirit of our correspondence that I scrutinize that –
it’s my own pure assumption, 180 degrees turned around from yours, I
think! I based it on its absence from the 100 minutes of tape I know
(5/11/71 + 5/20/71), and on the above-mentioned linear interpolation.
Yet, be careful our assumptions … HHS could easily have been in the
repertoire. Garcia played that song with Howard (8/29/69) and we know
that Garcia-Saunders-Kahn-Vitt would play it. Should the goose’s linear
interpolation be the gander’s waving away? I dunno. But at least it’s
there to see.
Same goes for “One Kind Favor”, BTW: we know Garcia played it in 1966 and in 1973, so why not 1971? Again, I have probably committed the error of putting the weight of too much inference on the thin shoulders of 100 minutes of tape.
What Do We Know?After the May KK tape, the first Garcia/Saunders tape we have is September 24 ’71 at The Lion’s Share. It’s typical in many ways of what would follow for the next few years:
some “top 40” instrumentals, some Merl jams, some blues and R&B
covers and some contemporary covers (in this case, two Jesse Winchester
songs). However, Tom Fogerty has joined the band. Did Garcia start
singing before Tom Fogerty joined the band? We don’t actually know. It’s
worth considering, however, that Fogerty joined the band because Garcia
didn’t have confidence singing and playing guitar without another
player. Obviously, by early ’72 he’s past that–Garcia was a quick
learner–but if I had any question for a reliable eyewitness from the
JGMS Matrix shows, it would be “did Jerry sing?”
Fogerty expands the repertoire to more white music (bluegrass, country,
rockabilly, etc.). Fogerty provides rhythm guitar support, important as
Garcia is figuring out vocal arrangements. Fogerty can sing a few
numbers and add harmony vocals.
singing started with Tom, which was the advent of singable songs in the JGMS as far as we know. Garcia never regularly
sang in any side outfit, as far as we know, before Tom Fogerty arrived. update: well, not exactly. He was singing songs in Garcia-Saunders at least a few days before Tom showed up, i.e., 5/21/71. There may still be a link b/w Tom’s arrival and a repertorial change, but the sequence may run the other way, if only by a little bit.
Garcia
used his own bands to play music that the Dead weren’t playing. The
Dead could do anything, more or less, but they couldn’t do everything.
Although Garcia did his own music for many reasons, one of the
attractions to him was a chance to do whatever the Dead weren’t doing at
the time. Thus Old And In The Way thrived during the period when the
Dead were farthest from their acoustic roots; the Jerry Garcia Band took
over interpreting popular songs once the Dead largely dropped cover
versions.
My current typology is three musics: “out” (Howard, Ned), white roots
(bluegrass, country, rockabilly, white gospel), black roots (jazz, soul,
r&b, funk, disco, church). The GD covers all of this terrain in
different mixes at different times. GD+extra-GD is Jerry breathing
around and through all of these musics over the course of his life.
Most
Dead fans would say that the Fall ’70-Summer ’71 Grateful Dead lineups
was one of the less spacey configurations. Yes, there were some great
“Dark Star” and “Other One” performances on occasion, but it was neither
1969 nor 1973 in that respect. So it would follow that Garcia would be
interested in doing some pretty spacey jams with his own band.
IMO this was absolutely the Dead’s least jammed-out period until late 1986-early 1987.
For you, “it would follow that Garcia would be interested in doing some pretty
spacey jams with his own band: this is the strongest statement of the GD-GOTS complementarity hypothesis.
It’s a pretty big jump. I have a few pretty choice quotes from Garcia
in which he describes them in these terms. “It’s like your wife and your
girlfriend, folks,” he quipped to legendary New York DJ Scott Muni,
with the Groucho cigar and brow, tipsy over a St. Patty’s Day whiskey,
1978.
It took him a while to get all of this stuff into some kind of
equilibrium, mostly on the GOTS side, of course, and especially once the
Dead formulized the 2-set routine from 1980. You could say he had the
mix he wanted from 1983-1994, the JGB 21b period. We can think of the
various ebbs and flows as a kind of musical equilibration (around the
admittedly moving target of the changing moods of Garcia’s Muse).
The
same periodization also reflects relatively sensible
institutionalization of everything. That’s at least partly a tautology,
since I operationalize both musical equilibrium and institutionalization
in terms of stable band membership. They go partly hand-in-glove, but
I’d also argue that institutions created all kinds of useful
efficiencies, creating space for Garcia to work his craft while
accountants accounted and lawyers conjured and then tortured the law
until it yielded. Checks got cashed, stuff happened that he really
wanted to have happen, but that he couldn’t keep on top of for himself,
or just really didn’t want to deal with (which are often very much the
same thing). Institutions serve uses. As handy as a shovel, if sometimes a
little bit harder to grasp, they are technologies, “very useful engines”
that we manifest and manipulate, that help us manage some of the churn,
tame some of the chaos.
and Jerry at the Matrix were playing jazz and probably some R&B, “black music”; Merl and Jerry and Tom at the New Monk (and
the Inn, and the Share) were playing some of that together, as well, but
the repertoire suddenly –and, yes, I do think it’s a discontinuity, a
“historical rupture”– took on a healthy dose of white Americana –
rockabilly, rock, country, Dylan.
We
also know that Keith Godchaux had joined the Dead. Space came back to
the Grateful Dead, but “new” (to the Dead) cover versions started to
slip away. So it does seem that Garcia/Saunders responded by being less
spacey and more cover oriented, and even added a new member (Tom
Fogerty) to facilitate that (I realize I am simplifying a discussion of
the Dead’s repertoire in 1971-72, but I am speaking about general
trends).
originals (from Garcia, and Ace, and all of the material from Hunter’s Rambling Rose trilogy) insofar as they were singing songs. More true for Garcia than
for Weir, who kept the cowboy songs, but I care more about the first
guy.
From
that point of view, there is another thing to consider with respect to
the Dead’s repertoire, namely the declining role of Pigpen. If I
understand correctly, he had a serious health scare in Summer ’71 and
missed a tour, and surprised everyone by coming back in December, but no
one seems to have had much doubt that his role would at best be
diminished. Now, he was their friend, and the Dead members probably
hoped that Pigpen could remain a sort of “Special Guest” for many years,
but I don’t think anyone thought that Pig was going to be a regular,
full time member of the band after mid-1972. And, lo and behold, in Fall
of ’71, Garcia starts playing Jimmy Reed tunes and the like with Merl.
There’s nothing sinister about this–Jerry just liked playing that kind
of R&B guitar, and without Pigpen he had to sing it himself.
Garcia
also left the New Riders in Fall ’71–his participation in the October
tour was just to accommodate Columbia and the release of the album–so
the extent he enjoyed interpreting rock songs as an instrumentalist, as
opposed to jamming like a jazz man, that was another outlet that was
ending. Garcia played different instruments in NRPS and JGMS, and the
songs were different, but JGMS wasn’t a “songs” band until Garcia was
out the door with the New Riders.
New AssumptionsGarcia/Saunders
just played instrumental jams at the Matrix, similar to Garcia and
Wales. Some of the jams were based on familiar R&B or rock tunes,
but they jammed off them like a jazz band.
Yes, but I am happy to say that I think that now, after dissecting
5/20/71 and setting it along side 5/11/71, and this discussion, this
feels more like inference than assumption to me. update: again, 5/21/71 shows it wasn’t all instrumental pre-Tom, even if that show was at the Keystone Korner.
While
the odds suggest Garcia must have sung a tune once in a while at The
Matrix, he didn’t make vocals a regular part of JGMS shows until Tom
Fogerty joined the band.
Yes.
Garcia’s
vocals made Fogerty’s arrival attractive to Jerry. At exactly this
time, the Dead got Keith Godchaux and Pigpen’s role was (at best)
greatly reduced. As the Grateful Dead evolved, JGMS evolved as their
mirror image and played the sort of material that Jerry would no longer
get to do with the Dead.
Of
course, I don’t have any more evidence than anyone else have about
Matrix or Keystone Korner shows, but I think my new assumptions are
easier to defend than my prior ones.
[ed: That’s the dialogue. Then I went on to say a few more things …]
What we have just put together is a repertorial analysis, which is fine
because you wanted to figure out what Jerry and Merl played at the
Matrix, and that’s a good definition of a repertoire. I feel good about
our analysis here. But let me talk about Fantasy Records.
you already have a million ways to map that into the above
conversation, I’ll try to add a few pieces you might not know. Did you
know that the same Staska-Mangrum column also mentions that Tom Fogerty
is cutting a single, and that Merl is playing on it? update: I think this was “Goodbye Media Man”, which holds importance of its own. I haven’t pinned it
all down, but there were also at least 1 or 2 mentions in the SFC about
Fantasy recording sessions involving these guys, Tom and Merl and Jerry
and others, right around this same time, mentioned on the same (or at
least proximate) page as a Garcia-Saunders-Fogerty gig listing? There’s a
relationship between live and vinyl that had never previously existed
in the Garciaverse. And it’s interesting that Garcia didn’t play
anything from Garcia, but played stuff from the various Fantasy
records. 1972 would see the following Fantasy LPs with Garcia
contributions, per deaddisc:
Excalibur, Tom Fogerty, 1972 ( 1973?)
Heavy Turbulence, Merl Saunders, 1972
Fire Up, Merl Saunders, 1973
Live at the Keystone, Saunders/Garcia/Kahn/Vitt, 1973
And a few singles:
Save Mother Earth Pt 1 / Save Mother Earth Pt 2, Merl Saunders, 1972
My Problems Got Problems / Welcome To The Basement, Merl Saunders, 1972
Faces Places People / Forty Years, Tom Fogerty, 1972
All of this looks an awful lot like a business arrangement with at least two dimensions, live and vinyl.
into focus. Tom lived in Berkeley, and by revealed preferences we’d see
that the venue worked just fine for Garcia-Saunders-Kahn-Vitt. I have a
million new New Monk and Keystone Korner listings for this period in
our spreadsheets, and I am working toward figuring out when (like,
exactly) Freddie took it over. But I do wonder it especially in terms of
the Fantasy nexus. I am not sure where money might have moved between
the House The Creedence built and 2119 University – maybe none at all.
Maybe Fantasy just paid to promote their records, Freddie paid to
promote his gigs, and the two things worked well together.
NOTES:
! see also: Arnold, Corry. 2012. Excalibur-Tom Fogerty (Jerry Garcia-guitar). Hooterollin’ Around, March 2, 2012, URL http://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2012/03/excalibur-tom-fogerty-jerry-garcia.html,accessed 9/24/2014;
! see also: listening notes at http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders-at_26.html.
REFERENCES:
Instruments, singers help sets. Hayward
Daily Review, July 1, 1971, p. 12.
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