San Francisco Sessions, 1969

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17 responses to “San Francisco Sessions, 1969”

1. 

   Light Into Ashes

   August 5, 2015

   Interesting stuff! A few questions:

   – Garcia on the 'Eskimo Blue Day' session is quite a find. I don't suppose the paperwork lists his instrument or the session duration, or if things like that weren't included on union contracts?
   – Assuming you mean to continue this into the '70s, are you including other Garcia sessions? I notice no CSNY here, for instance.
   – Within the context of this paperwork, what does "leader" mean? I notice that some bands (Airplane, Brewer & Shipley) rotate the "leader" spot between different members, and others (QMS, Hot Tuna) don't.

   I was wondering if the 10/8/69 Jorma/Jack TV appearance was known about – and lo and behold, this appears to be some of it on youtube, "from the KQED produced NET broadcast "Folk Guitar" hosted by Laura Weber" –
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ0onxQIY_w
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77-vQJtbFas

   Reply
2. 

   Fate Music

   August 5, 2015

   Sometimes this stuff does list instrument and so forth, but not here. Garcia's address is given as 710 Ashbury, which wouldn't have been true for a year or something like that. Interestingly, to me, none of the Jeffersons is listed at Fulton Street.

   The 5/27/69 session is listed 7-10 pm, and EBD is the only tune listed. The papers show a master number, which one presumes references tape in the RCA Vaults.

   Right about the leader rotations. Some bands rotate, some do not, more or less as you identified. I tried to be accurate with that stuff, though this project has involved frequent copying and pasting and, since this isn't straight up the fairway of my own interests, the occasional sloppy elision.

   I have a bunch of other Garcia stuff. These postings are supposed to be non-Garcia, but 5/27/69 had evaded my attention until this exercise. I don't think there are any 1969 CSNY contracts in the San Francisco paperwork, none that I found. I think they were in LA, which would be archived down there (local 47, maybe, can't recall), not at AFM local 6 in SF. For sure by 1970, there is evidence of PERRO type sessions at Heider's involving Jeffersons, Deads, and CSNs.

   I have all the Garcia stuff in my own Garcia data, but it might be fun, as you suggested in another thread, to pull it out and lay it out this way. It gives a different perspective.

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3. 

   Light Into Ashes

   August 6, 2015

   So CSNY union contracts would be archived in LA… They recorded much of Deja Vu in Wally Heider's in San Francisco (for instance, Garcia recorded his 'Teach Your Children' track there on 10/24/69).

   Record-company paperwork (RCA, Atlantic & so forth) could be much more revealing about these sessions, but I suppose those are a lot harder to access.

   Looks like we still don't know just when Garcia recorded 'The Farm,' unless it was at the 5/27/69 session.

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4. 

   Light Into Ashes

   August 6, 2015

   By the way….aside from Garcia, there is a Dead-sized hole in these listings. Were they union members, and if so were their session contracts archived?
   I seem to remember somewhere you covered the dates of Garcia's union membership, but couldn't find where…

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5. 

   Fate Music

   August 6, 2015

   I have intentionally *not* included the GD and Garcia stuff in these lists. These are the peripheral listings. The core ones are in amongst my data.

   That said, you are right that there is a Dead-sized hole in the union archives. I found literally nothing for GD sessions before 1974, I believe, and it's generally really spotty until they get on board with Arista. I would guess the union archives shed information on ca. 10% of the Dead's known, record-company-funded studio work.

   One thing to keep in mind is that once they had in-house operations (record company, Club Front), it made it easier to do studio work without having to file the papers. If you rented Heider's or His Master's Wheels, or if you were working for Arista, that made paperwork more likely. That doesn't explain why various WB sessions (such as Workingman's and American Beauty at Heider's in 1970) are missing, of course, but it might have been part of it.

   Where did it all go? I don't know. Some of it surely never existed. (money money money money.) Maybe some Deadhead collector went and stole it, or maybe it was destroyed in a flood, I dunno. But it's not there. And that's really unfortunate.

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6. 

   Fate Music

   August 6, 2015

   "So CSNY union contracts would be archived in LA… They recorded much of Deja Vu in Wally Heider's in San Francisco (for instance, Garcia recorded his 'Teach Your Children' track there on 10/24/69).

   I looked for this, could not find it. Now, note that it should have been in SF, even if it was recorded in LA. That's the nature of the 'F' in the American Federation of Musicians structure. If Garcia went to LA, that union (I think that's local no. 47) would have had to send the paperwork back to local no. 6 and it would get the pension money in its coffers. But, again, I looked for the 10/24/69 Teach Your Children session and came up empty.

   "Record-company paperwork (RCA, Atlantic & so forth) could be much more revealing about these sessions, but I suppose those are a lot harder to access."

   Oh yeah. If you look at Tamarkin's Got A Revolution, it seems clear to me that he was inside RCA's session logs, and didn't have to rely on less reliable sources, like the union.

   "Looks like we still don't know just when Garcia recorded 'The Farm,' unless it was at the 5/27/69 session.

   I have looked for this stuff, but I don't think I have found it, no. Some mixing work on "The Farm" is among these 1969 listings I have posted, sometime in April, but I'd have to go back to see which session. I understood Garcia's steel track to have been overdubbed, and he is not listed on the April session for the song, and so I have always figured that, despite looking for it, the date he did that work is lost.

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7. 

   Fate Music

   August 6, 2015

   Volunteers sessions, JA:

   3/28/69: Moon Eyes, Spencer's Country Song, Grace's Song #1
   3/31/69: Paul's Tune
   4/1/69: Jorma's Tune
   4/2/69: Paul's Tune
   4/7/69: Paul's Tune
   4/8/69: Paul's Tune
   4/9/69: Paul's Tune
   4/10/69: Paul's Tune
   4/11/69: Paul's Tune
   4/14/69: Wooden Ships (tracking)
   4/16/69: The Farm, Revolution (presumably became "Volunteers")
   4/17/69: Good Shepherd
   4/22/69: Wooden Ships, J.P.P. McStep
   4/23/69: Good Shepherd

   NB that 4/16/69 "The Farm" I presume Garcia was on the road.

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8. 

   Fate Music

   August 6, 2015

   This is just what's listed on the paperwork. Who knows what they actually did.

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9. 

   hanno

   August 6, 2015

   Fascinating. So much new information.
   A bit off topic, but all this reminds me of a book, "The Beatles Diary" (Badman/Miles), which pretty much says what any Beatle was doing on any given day in the '60s. It's extraordinary and almost creepy to read.

   .hanno

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10. 

    Light Into Ashes

    August 7, 2015

    They did Paul's Tune a lot, apparently!
    I suppose that was We Can Be Together….maybe the lyrics weren't written yet.
    It's apparent just from this list that some of the session contracts must have vanished. Nice to have some firm dating….though it would be even nicer to have the equivalent for, say, Aoxomoxoa!

    Reply
11. 

    Nick

    August 7, 2015

    Thank you for all this! I appreciate that the Wales sighting is only a few days before the 8/28/69 Family Dog jam. Les Brown Jr. was the son of Les Brown, the big band leader, and seems to have gotten around the music biz, but I found that in 1969 he was involved in a rock band called Rockin' Foo with many of these same musicians: http://badcatrecords.com/BadCat/ROCKINfoo.htm

    Reply
12. 

    Fate Music

    August 7, 2015

    Yeah, there's a lot of granular detail on those guys, for sure. I could do that book for Garcia, more or less. Heh heh.

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13. 

    Fate Music

    August 7, 2015

    Yeah, I noticed the temporal proximity to the Wales thing at the Dog, cool to have at least one more little point around that one.

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14. 

    Steve D.

    May 16, 2019

    One of my other interests is breweriana. We would love to have the Country Club Malt Liquor commercial recorded on 16 January 1969. (A similar search turned up a Cream advertisement for Falstaff, which owned Country Club by then. That one has been found and archived.)
    Anywhere we can get that?

    Reply
15. 

    Fate Music

    May 16, 2019

    Not that I know of, but I'd love if it would!

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16. 

    philcycles

    August 7, 2020

    I used to buy weed from Howard.

    Reply
17. 

    Fate Music

    August 8, 2020

    Please say more! Apparently he was quite the importin' man.

    Reply