Another view of the Annex

I continue to marvel at the manner in which the Internet allows access to — and contact with — other historians and fans who pursue the same subjects from slightly different angles. If the blogosphere is any indication, quite a few music buffs have become absorbed by the San Francisco scene from the 1950s through the '70s, and some are devoted enough to seek out and interview Those Who Were There, occasionally with radio broadcasts or podcasts in mind. I love to learn about such efforts; there's always the possibility of fresh nuggets to be mined, even from musicians I've interviewed (exhaustively!) myself. You never know when a familiar question, perhaps worded in a slightly different manner, might trigger a long-buried, previously unshared memory.

My colleague Corry Arnold — who writes the marvelous Grateful Dead blog, Lost Live Dead — called my attention to Jake Feinberg, an unabashed music fan on a mission to immerse himself in the aforementioned music scene to the best of his ability, at this decades-long remove. I appreciate Jake's enthusiasm and dedication; I also share his devotion to vinyl ... although I fear that's a battle we're destined to lose.

Jake has interviewed all sorts of musicians, with the resulting hour-length installments of KJLL's The Jake Feinberg Show archived at his website. (KJLL is an AM station out of South Tucson, Arizona.) The impressive roster includes several of Guaraldi's former sidemen, each of whom discusses Vince at least in passing, and in some cases in considerable detail.

I also enjoy the archive photos that Jake has managed to dig up, granting us a glimpse of what these cats looked like, back in the day.

Vince Lateano

Drummer Vince Lateano was interviewed on September 24, 2011. He mentions working with Guaraldi on some of the later Peanuts soundtracks, and also spending six to eight months — alongside bassist Seward McCain — as part of Guaraldi's regular trio at Butterfield's. 

Nothing new there, but I was intrigued to learn that Lateano recalled first hearing Guaraldi perform in the late 1950s, while the latter was a member of Cal Tjader's Quintet, alongside Al McKibbon (bass), Willie Bobo (drums and percussion) and Mongo Santamaria (congas). Lateano was in his mid-20s when he moved to San Francisco from Sacramento in the mid-'60s, so he would have been a teenager during that initial exposure to Guaraldi, perhaps during a jazz-laden night in the City.

(Wouldn't it have been nice to tag along!)

Jerry Granelli (foreground)

Drummer Jerry Granelli, interviewed on November 26, 2012, discusses his gig with Guaraldi at some length. Granelli gives Guaraldi credit for introducing him to the bossa nova and samba sound that inspired the jazz pianist so strongly in the late 1950s. Granelli also recalls how quickly guitarist Bola Sete was added to their trio, which included bassist Fred Marshall: "We rehearsed a couple of tunes with Bola," Granelli explains, "and then just started playing!"

Albums were knocked out quickly at Fantasy, Granelli recalls, because the studio time would be booked — and paid for — in three-hour blocks. That corresponds to what I've heard from many of Guaraldi's former sidemen, who explained that arrangements and solos would be perfected during the nightly club gigs; no surprise then, when it came time to make a record, that the tracks could be laid down in just a few takes.

Champlin at the bit

Wheels within wheels within wheels. Researchers love this phenomenon.


Corry, one of my many colleagues (co-conspirators?) in the realm of meticulous fact-finding, recently forwarded what he hoped might be a helpful tidbit of information. Corry focuses on the greater San Francisco rock 'n' roll scene, with a particular emphasis on the activities of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. You'll lose happy hours (days? weeks?) at Corry's blog, Lost Live Dead, and I recommend it highly. He shares my passion for attempting the impossible: Just as I hope to eventually nail down every club, concert and studio date Guaraldi ever had, Corry hopes to do the same with Garcia and the Dead.

So, while pursuing a lead involving Garcia's possible participation with the Sons of Champlin in August 1969, Corry came across a brief quote from Bill Champlin, who once had been asked about this very possibility. As it turned out, Champlin didn't remember Garcia sitting in during the performance in question, but then he (Champlin) added an additional comment, which is what Corry passed along to me:


I jammed with Jerry's band with Bill Vitt and John Khan at the Matrix once, with Vince Guaraldi.


Now, that was tantalizing. Readers of this blog know that I'm always after fresh evidence of "Vince and Jerry" collaborations, particularly at the Matrix. (See the May 11, 2012, blog entry.) My Guaraldi timeline already included quite a few of his verified appearances at the Matrix, and it's known that he and Garcia occasionally played together at that club, particularly during the regular "Monday jams" that took place for a few years. But I didn't have any listings that found Guaraldi alongside Garcia, Bill Vitt, John Khan and Bill Champlin. Clearly, this bore further investigation.


Happily, Champlin was easy to reach, and he responded quickly:


I couldn't remember a date of that jam, but I'll try to recall the stuff for you. Bill Vitt called and asked me to come play rhythm guitar, because Jerry was so busy fooling around with some kind of effects unit, very cool but not kickin'. So, being a friend of Bills', I brought a guitar and amp and set up. I didn't know that Vince was gonna play 'til I got there. Cool stuff for me; I'd been a fan since the red plastic Fantasy album with "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" on it. Anyway, we played, and it was very cool. Vince was way cool. Damn, what a great musician. At one point I was looking down, and suddenly I heard this beautiful soprano sax wafting across the band; I looked up, and there was Vince Denham playing, beautifully as always, after having just played with Don Ellis at Fillmore West. I found out that he and Vince had hit it off. Curley Cooke came up and jammed on my Gibson for awhile also, and then the night was over and I went home. Looking back, it was a rare night, but back then it was never a surprise to find great players coming together, even in spite of themselves and their careers. 


That's all I remember, but between then and now there's been a lotta water under the bridge, and I could very easily have lost a few details of the night. I'm writing to you from backstage in Osaka, Japan, which means that I'm still out there makin' noise, so I look back on those rare jams with a lot of respect for the players. Vince Guaraldi was one of the big ones for me. Anyway, there it is. Be good, Bill.


Wow! Suddenly we're talking about Guaraldi, Garcia, Bill Vitt, Bill Champlin, John Khan, Curley Cooke and Vince Denham. And Champlin's narrative contained one big, fat clue: Don Ellis and Fillmore West.


Ellis and his band were at Fillmore West June 18-21, 1970; the magnificent double-LP set Don Ellis at Fillmore was recorded during those four memorable evenings. Now, Vince Denham wasn't yet an official member of Ellis' band — he joined a bit later, with the 1972 release of Connection — but Denham certainly could have been "hanging around" during one or more of those Fillmore sets.


After sharing this newest data with Corry, he cross-matched with some additional details:


The Grateful Dead played the Pauley Ballroom in Berkeley on Sunday, June 21, 1970 (two nights after Memphis, and three days before New York). Jerry Garcia and Howard Wales were booked for the Matrix on Monday, June 22, so that fits Champlin's timeline. It sounds like Howard Wales was booked, but Guaraldi actually played the gig.


I [also] know a lot about the Don Ellis Orchestra. Among many other things, it was sort of a session man's side project, so Vince Denham and every other working jazz musician would have had numerous friends in the Ellis band — there were 23 guys in it; Denham had to have known somebody — so whether he jammed or not, Denham must have been at Fillmore West to hang out.


And, just for good measure, Corry forwarded a clipping that ran in the entertainment section of the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, June 22, 1970 (on Page 44, if you insist on full disclosure). You can see that at right.


So, there we have it: Thanks to Bill Champlin, I'm satisfied that we can identify June 22, 1970 — a date which, until this moment, had remained empty on my Guaraldi timeline — as the memorable evening that featured Guaraldi, Garcia, Vitt, Champlin, Khan, Cooke and Denham.


As Corry said, "Yeah, I'd go!"


No kidding. Me, too!


If all this seems like a lot of effort just to nail a single gig out of so many, well ... yes, of course it is! But that's the name of the game. I want to have the world's most accurate and informative timeline of Guaraldi's activities, and such a goal requires this level of dedication and perseverance.


Besides: If Corry and I — and other tireless investigators like us — don't do this stuff, who else will?

Guaraldi and the Grateful Dead: Yes, no, maybe?

One of the most enduring and tantalizing mysteries regarding Guaraldi's career is whether he performed with the Grateful Dead: an actual concert, at a public venue.

Plenty of folks insist that yes, it happened; a few photographs suggest as much ... but the person in question cannot positively be identified as Guaraldi. It's known that Guaraldi occasionally played with Jerry Garcia at the Matrix's Monday night jam sessions during the late 1960s; Guaraldi and Garcia also fronted a quartet -- with bassist Seward McCain and drummer Mike Clark -- during the summer of 1972 (venue unknown, alas!). But those were gigs with Garcia, not the Dead ... and despite all the tapes available, and all the archive material carefully saved by Deadheads, smoking-gun proof of Guaraldi's participation with the Dead has yet to be found.


All of which makes the ongoing debate even more enticing. I'll turn the rest of this post over to my colleage and Dead historian Corey, who runs his own blog, which you'll want to investigate.

************

Congratulations on the new book. What's a better place than a blog to speculate on the unknown? Let me pose a question, and anyone who has any information, insights or recovered memories (real or imagined) is encouraged to respond.

Any idea what Vince Guaraldi was doing on New Year's Eve 1968-69? Because jamming with the Grateful Dead fits a number of timelines. Various parties--Jerry Garcia, Dead road manager Bill Belmont and Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten, among others--all agree that Vince sat in on stage with the Dead, but no one can recall exactly when. So let me take a stab at proposing that at least one of those times was New Year's Eve 68'/69 at Winterland.

Some points:

1) During this period, the Dead were booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency. The band had borrowed $12000 from Graham, and they paid it back by making Graham (Millard) their booking agent. Bill Belmont went on tour with them to collect Graham's money (to be fair, he was a friend and ally, but he was on tour at Graham's behest). The Millard period for the Dead was roughly Fall '68 to Summer '69, so that brackets Belmont's time as an eyewitness to a Guaraldi/Dead jam.

2) NYE '68 at Winterland featured 3 Millard bands (GD, Santana, Its A Beautiful Day, along with Quicksilver), and it must have been a staff party as well as an event. Gretchen (Vince's girlfriend, and BGP employee) would have been there, right, regardless of which Graham entity she worked for at the time? So that makes Vince's presence plausible. Also, the show went on until dawn, so Vince could have done something with his family, put them to bed, drove over to Winterland and still had 5 hours left to hang out.

3) No one remembers a thing about this show except that it was "legendary." I have a blog post about this subject:

http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/12/december-31-1968-winterland-grateful.html

Interestingly, a few commenters dredge up a flashback or two--Quicksilver seems to have played at midnight, not the Dead, for example. So the Dead's second set would have been at 3 am or something. If Vince played with the Dead on their second set on New Year's Eve, sometime between 3 and 6am, this would explain a few things. Jerry Garcia, Tom Constanten and Bill Belmont are sure that Vince played with the Dead, but can't remember when, there were no eyewitness accounts because all witnesses auto-deleted (the person who comments on my blog concedes that he remembers nothing after midnight). 

Belmont is confident that Vince jammed, but can't remember when. Since Belmon't job was to collect money for Graham, he wasn't going to get wrecked in Chicago or Texas, but at what was in effect a BGP house party in San Francisco? Batter up.

If Constanten suffered "electrical damage" in the wee hours, whose to say that Vince didn't sit down and let it fly? As I said, I had been under the impression that Vince would have played melodic jazz on a Fender Rhodes. Now I realize he wanted to hammer down the organ stops so he could hear it through a Leslie magnified by a dozen souped up MacIntosh amps. New Year's Eve as dawn approached would be a fine opportunity for Vince to have some fun with the Dead, apparently fondly but fuzzily remembered by anyone there. Much of the audience would have had no idea who Vince was--for that matter, they wouldnt have known who Constanten was either.

Just a thought. Don't know who's around who would still know, and of course if they were there they forgot. Still, maybe someone remembers something, and it would be nice to nail down the mysterious Dead/Guaraldi jams for certain.