January 30-31, 1970: Grateful Dead/Family Dog Merger (Not To Be) [FDGH VI]

 

 

Chet Helms, late 60s (also: some guy)

From the very beginning, the Grateful Dead had always tried to become a self-contained organism. One of their goals was to have some sort of permanent venue, where they could rehearse and perform at will. In the earliest days, the band even strove to live in such a place, although they only achieved it briefly at Rancho Olompali in Marin in the early Summer of 1966. Even though the band members' expanded personal lives pushed against communal living, the band was still looking for a room of its own. In old 1967 interviews, you can read about a mythical "Deadpatch." In 1968 the Dead took over the Carousel. These ideas persisted, and after 1995 the plan was resuscitated with "Terrapin Station," a permanent installation in San Francisco proper. 

In early 1970, however, it nearly happened. The Grateful Dead office nearly merged with Chet Helms and the Family Dog on The Great Highway. The Dead and the New Riders had played the beautiful old ballroom on 660 Great Highway (near 48th and Balboa) many times in 1969, and they always played well. Why not make it home? The Family Dog would have had a "House Band" that ensured some financial security, and Jerry Garcia, Owsley and the Grateful Dead could have the run of the place. If they had released Workingman's Dead and had been anchored at a home base, the arc of their career might have been different.

Dennis McNally wrote about it, but it mostly gets forgotten. The very weekend that manager Lenny Hart was moving the offices, the Grateful Dead were getting busted down on Bourbon Street. On top of that, while Lenny Hart was moving, he wasn't showing Chet Helms the books, and Helms realized that Lenny's management was bent. Helms called off the merger. Calling it off was a sad but shrewd decision, since Hart was stealing from the Dead and would have stolen from Helms. Helms was counting on the Dead's capital infusion, and all they had was debt. 

The Grateful Dead/Family Dog merger never reached fruition. Nor could it have worked, really, given the financial realities. But let's consider it anyway, as a path not taken. 

The Grateful Dead, 1970: State Of Play
The Grateful Dead had been underground rock legends since their inception. More people had probably heard of them, however, than actually heard them. Their first three albums had not been successful. Aoxomoxoa, their third album, had cost over $100,000 and gone way over budget, so even if record sales were adequate, they wouldn't see any money from it for some time. The double album Live/Dead, however, constructed in parallel, had been released in November of 1969. It got spectacular reviews, probably got some FM airplay at new stations around the country, and probably sold a little bit.

Grateful Dead manager Lenny Hart had renewed the Grateful Dead's contract with Warner Brothers in 1969. Their initial 4-album deal would have expired with Live/Dead, but Lenny had extended it. The band didn't even know they were up for renegotiation. Hart probably pocketed the advance, since after he was fired it was revealed that he had stolen over $150,000. Meanwhile, the Dead were touring hard, winning fans everywhere they went, but without any strategy. Hart took gigs for the band as they were offered, and the Dead's touring schedule was not efficient, so they probably wasted money traveling unnecessarily to make gigs.

Meanwhile, the ambitious Jerry Garcia had numerous other plans. He was learning pedal steel guitar, and backing songwriter John Dawson in the New Riders of The Purple Sage. There was also a nascent plan to have some sort of country "Revue," seemingly called Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck. An ensemble that included Garcia, Bob Weir, the New Riders, Peter Grant and possibly others would play honky-tonk music and perhaps some originals, broadly in the style of the Porter Wagoner Show, which Weir and Garcia regularly watched on syndicated television. There was a lot going on in Deadland, and I'm not even counting soundman Owsley Stanley's mad experiments and Alembic Engineering's newly modified electric instruments.

In the end, the Family Dog benefit was moved from Winterland to the smaller Fillmore West

Family Dog, 1970: Plans and Portents
In 1969, the Family Dog on The Great Highway had mostly featured San Francisco bands as weekend headliners, while also open many nights of the week for a variety of community and entertainment events. Economically, the Dog had been a dismal failure. Undercapitalized to start with, the organization also had to get out from under a $5000 IRS tax lien, a substantial sum in 1969. By year's end, the Dog told the San Francisco Examiner that they were $50,000 in debt. A benefit concert, held at the Fillmore West of all places, had helped to keep the Great Highway operation afloat. At the time Helms promised, albeit vaguely, to have a new plan for the next year that focused on larger weekend events. The New Year had opened with some modest bookings the first two weekends (January 2-3 and 9-10), and then the Family Dog was dormant until month's end.

All the evidence we have for the first part of 1970 points to an ambitious, sensible plan by the Family Dog on the Great Highway. Helms was never explicit about these plans, however, for reasons that will become clear. I have had to piece together the outlines of the Family Dog's new arrangement from external evidence and a few after-the-fact reminisces, some of them from anonymous sources on Comments Threads (@anoldsoundguy, always hoping you can weigh in). I am providing my best guess, always subject to modification, and I should add that even if I am largely correct, Chet Helms and the Family Dog may not have used the modern terminology with which I describe the approach. Nonetheless, here's what all the evidence points to for the Family Dog's planned road to stability, even if they never got very far.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In June, 1969, Chet Helms had opened the new Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway in San Francisco. It was on rocky Ocean Beach at the edge of the city--indeed, the edge of North America--far from downtown, far from Marin and Berkeley, and not even that accessible to the Peninsula by freeway. The former Edgewater Ballroom, built 1926, was a wonderful little venue. The official capacity was under 1500, though no doubt more people were crammed in on occasion, and it was smaller than the old Fillmore. Bill Graham, meanwhile, had moved out of the old Fillmore into the larger, more freeway-friendly Fillmore West, and he still dominated the rock market. Helms had opened the Family Dog on The Great Highway on June 13, 1969, with a sold-out Jefferson Airplane show, but the going had been rocky for the balance of the year.

 

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

Step 1: Weekends Only
From January 30, 1970 onward, the Family Dog on The Great Highway only booked weekend shows, and the headliners were established bands with albums. It was a fact of San Francisco that just about all the headliners were Bay Area bands, as San Francisco was at the center of rock music at the time. So the Family Dog was in a unique position to feature largely local acts while still having headline bands with albums. In many cases, the albums were successful, too. So it wasn't exactly a "local" venue, but definitely home-grown. San Francisco is an insular place, so this was a potentially viable strategy. The Dog wasn't opposed to hiring touring bands, but they were more expensive, and in any case preferred the higher-profile Fillmore West.

Here and there the Family Dog was used on weekdays for a few events, but it stopped trying to be a community center. Weekend ticket prices were typically $3.50. That was high, but not excessive. The shows were booked in order to make a profit for the bands and the venue. The headliners in February and March read like it was 1967 again: Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, Steve Miller, Big Brother, the Grateful Dead, Lee Michaels and Country Joe and The Fish. All those bands were from the Avalon days, but they all had record contracts and current or forthcoming albums, too. The first weekend booking was Jefferson Airplane, on January 30-31, 1970.

Step 2: New Finance
Clearly, the Family Dog was recapitalized by the end of January. Although Chet Helms had loyal support from the local bands that had played the Avalon, they were all working bands as well. Helms could not have booked the bands that he did from February through April without some cash on hand. It is the source of the new finance that has never really been explained, and that I have had to infer. Anyone who has insights or knowledge into this area, please Comment or email me. I am noting in advance that these are my most plausible guesses, and I am open to substantial corrections.

As near as I can tell, Helms collected contributions from local hippie entrepreneurs. My guess is that most of them sold products that were--shall we say--not subject to taxation, nor available in stores. Similarly, these same entrepreneurs did not want their names publicly identified as a source of cash.  

Step 3: A New Implied Business Model
Chet Helms is often unfairly criticized as a poor businessman, because he has always been compared with Bill Graham. Pretty much anyone wasn't as good a businessman as Graham, certainly not in the rock and roll business. Helms had his flaws as a business operator, but he was very innovative, and in many ways I believe his approach to the Family Dog on The Great Highway was innovative as well. For simplicity's sake, I will use modern terminology to explain what appear to have been the outlines of his plan. I'm sure that Helms himself would have used different terms, but I'm not aware of a public or written statement. 

The traditional criticism of Helms' business practices vis-a-vis Graham was that Bill charged everybody for tickets, and Chet let all of his friends in for free. By 1970, I do not believe that was the case. Based on Comment Threads, it appears that the Family Dog doorman had a Rolodex (address card file), and if your name was in that Rolodex, you got let in for free. Many of the names on that Rolodex were the hippie entrepreneurs that had laid out cash to keep the Dog going. In return, they got in for free whenever they wanted.

Was this a new model? Not really. It's how every museum in America was run, and largely still is. It's true that museums are not-for-profit and donations are tax-deductible, but Chet may have got to that over time. Certain people in the hippie community had money, and they contributed more of it in return for guaranteed admission. Today, the venerable Freight And Salvage club in Berkeley runs on this model. It's a very sound plan that could have worked.

SF Examiner columnist Jack Rosenbaum mentioned on Wednesday, February 25, that the Grateful Dead had taken over the Family Dog on the Great Highway (although in fact Chet Helms had backed out already, and the deal was off)

Step 4: A High Profile Partnership
It seems that Helms wasn't going to do this alone. He had a partnership lined up, and his partners were going to be no less than the Grateful Dead. The Dead were going to move their operation from Novato to the Family Dog on The Great Highway. It some ways this may have been designed as a replay of the Carousel Ballroom, but with an experienced producer like Helms as part of the team. The New Riders of The Purple Sage had played numerous dates at the Family Dog in 1969, so Jerry Garcia clearly liked the place. Remember, there were only a few, tiny rock clubs to play in the Bay Area at the time, so the 1000>1500 capacity Dog left room for the Riders to consider building their own audience.

Of course, the Dead and the Family Dog did not merge. The merger was scheduled for early February  1970, and that is precisely when everything fell apart for the Grateful Dead. The band was busted in New Orleans, putting the freedom of soundman Owsley Stanley in great jeopardy, due to a prior LSD arrest. More critically, the Dead discovered that manager Lenny Hart (drummer Mickey Hart's father) was an outright crook, and had ripped the band off for $150,000, an enormous sum at the time. The Grateful Dead were dead broke, without a manager and without a soundman. Dennis McNally mentions the abandoned merger in his epic Dead history A Long Strange Trip, but it is remarked on almost in passing amidst all the other tumult. McNally:

As the Dead had been busted in New Orleans [January 31], [Lenny Hart] had been in the process of moving their office from Novato to the Family Dog on the Great Highway, with Lenny to become manager of the FDGH as well as the Dead, and with Gail Turner to be the FDGH secretary as well as Lenny's. The idea of sharing space with the Dead appealed to Chet Helms, but became evident to him and Gail that the numbers weren't adding up and that there had to be at least two sets of books. Before anyone in the band even knew, Lenny moved the office back to Novato. [p.360-361].

So just as Jefferson Airplane are re-opening the Family Dog, the Grateful Dead office is relocating to merge their businesses. Helms, while not Bill Graham, was neither a sucker nor a crook. Lenny Hart would have stolen from him, too, so he canceled the merger. The Grateful Dead themselves were probably unclear about what was happening, in between recording Workingman's Dead, worrying about Owsley and constantly performing.  But the planned merger can't have been a secret in the local rock community. On Wednesday, February 25, Examiner columnist Jack Rosenbaum (the Ex's Herb Caen, if you will), had an item (posted above):

Love Generation: to help the Grateful Dead rock group build a defense fund for their pot-bust in New Orleans, Bill Graham staged a benefit Monday night [Feb 23] at Winterland, raising a tidy $15,000. So-0, the Grateful Dead have taken over the Family Dog rock-dance auditorium on the Great Highway--in competition with Graham.

Rosenbaum was wired to local gossip, but not the freshest of rock news. Now, thanks to McNally (writing in 2003), we know that by late February the Dead-Dog deal was off. Still, the point here was that the word was around and had gotten to a city paper columnist, even if it was already a stale item.

1

Kleiner Perkins HQ on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, a mile or so from the former site of Perry Lane

A Brief Reflection
It's world-changing to imagine Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead with their own performance venue doubling as a rehearsal hall, on the beach in San Francisco. It's important to remember that it could not have happened. Lenny Hart had organized the deal, Helms had seen through the scam, and both entities were fairly broke. It's ironic that the local dealers probably loved the idea of supporting a partnership with the Dead, but could not publicly acknowledge themselves. The Dead/Dog merger could never have worked in the form in which it was conceived.

But let's take a moment to respect Helms for his forward thinking. The Edgewater Ballroom, which evolved into the Family Dog on The Great Highway, was torn down in 1973. But, just for a moment, let's say there was still an elegant 1500-capacity dance hall at Ocean Beach. What does the funding structure look like in 2022?

Proposition:

• A Jam Band palace at Ocean Beach, on the edge of San Francisco
• The Great Highway converted to pedestrian only access (or nearly so)
• Cannabis entrepreneurs providing capital, and now able to publicly sponsor the hall
• For a membership fee, you would be guaranteed entrance without needing a ticket (within the confines of safety laws, of course)
• Participation and partnership from and with the Grateful Dead organization

Ocean Beach is near Interstate 280. You could head South and turn off at the Sand Hill Road exit into Menlo Park, where Kleiner Perkins and all the other Venture Capitalists started the tech boom. Kleiner Perkins helped found Amazon, Google and Twitter, among many other companies. You could arrange infinite financing on your iPhone before you even got to Sand Hill Road--before Crystal Springs, honestly--and just sign the deal when you got out of the car. Helms was just ahead of his time by 50 years or so.

It wasn't to be. Jefferson Airplane re-opened the Family Dog on Friday, January 30, but the plan was already crumbling around the Dog.

Appendix
Grateful Dead and The New Riders of The Purple Sage at the Family Dog on The Great Highway
The Grateful Dead and the New Riders of The Purple Sage played many shows at the Family Dog. The band and particularly Garcia must have enjoyed playing there, or Lenny Hart wouldn't have made the proposition to merge the operations. 

August 1, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Light Show Strike [Grateful Dead canceled] (Friday)

August 2-3, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Albert Collins/Ballet Afro-Haiti (Saturday-Sunday)

August 12 or 13, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Lost City Ramblers/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Tuesday or Wednesday)
There is some uncertainty as to whether the Riders played on Tuesday (12th) or Wednesday (13th). Garcia and Nelson jammed with Mike Seeger and the New Lost City Ramblers for the encores. There was also an August 14 jam with the New Lost City Ramblers and Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats. It's not clear if that was a public event, or just a musicians jam.

August 19, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Tuesday)
For New Riders setlists during this period, see here.

August 28, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Thursday)

August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Rubber Duck (Friday-Saturday)

September 6, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead (Saturday)

September 7, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: jam (Sunday)
Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and others had some kind of jam on Sunday, September 7. It's unclear if other bands played.   

September 11, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Purple Earthquake/Johnny Mars Blues Band/Wisdom Fingers/Osceola (Thursday)
There is a Grateful Dead tape fragment dated September 11. There is no other evidence that the Dead played the Family Dog, but it was "New Band Night" so maybe they showed up.  

October 22, 1969 Family Dog on the Great Highway, San Francisco, CA New Riders of the Purple Sage/Lazarus  (Wednesday) Ecological Ball

November 1-2, 1969, Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Danny Cox/Golden Toad (Saturday-Sunday)

November 18, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Tuesday)

November 19, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Family Dog Benefit with Steve Miller Band/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Barry McGuire and The Doctor/Humble, Mumble, Fumble and Dumble (formerly Big Brother and The Holding Company) (Wednesday)

November 22-23, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage/Anonymous Artists of America/Devil's Kitchen (Saturday-Sunday)

November 27, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Cleveland Wrecking Company/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Lamb/Deacon and The Suprelles/East Bay Sharks/Pitschell Players/Morning Glory Theater Free City Puppet Ball (Thursday)

February 4, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Santana/Kimberly "A Night At The Family Dog" (Wednesday)
There was also a rehearsal/soundcheck on Tuesday, February 3.

February 27-March 1, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Friday-Sunday)

March 18, 1970 Family Dog on the Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Rolling Thunder (Shoshone Medicine Man)/Hot Tuna/New Riders of the Purple Sage  [Benefit for the Sons of Thunder] (Thursday)

April 17-19, 1970 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats/Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck/Charlie Musselwhite/New Riders Of The Purple Sage (Friday-Sunday)

[For current links to all the listed Garcia and Dead shows at the Family Dog on The Great Highway, see the Tracker here]

Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog November 1969 (Lost Owsley-FDGH III)

 

1960s Folksinger Danny Cox was hardly a major figure, but he did have a career in music, which is every musician's goal. Cox was born in Cincinnati, and had released a few albums in the early 1960s. Around 1967, he moved to Kansas City. Cox released a few albums in the late 60s and early 70s. In the narrow universe of Grateful Dead history, Cox's place is that during 1970 demo sessions at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco, John Kahn and Merl Saunders played on the recordings. During the sessions, Kahn introduced Jerry Garcia--recording in another room at Heider's--to Merl Saunders, and an important partnership was born. 

Cox's fifth album, Live At The Family Dog was released in 1970. Recording details are scant. If, in fact, the album really was recorded at the Family Dog, then the odds are very high that the source tape for the album was recorded by Owsley Stanley himself. Cox only played Chet Helms' Family Dog on The Great Highway on two consecutive weekends. On one of those weekends, Danny Cox opened for the Grateful Dead for two nights, and Owsley made his usual excellent tapes of the Dead. So the odds seem pretty reasonable that Cox was recorded by Owsley on one or both of those nights, and those tapes might have been turned into the 1970 Live At The Family Dog lp. So we may have a secret lost Owsley tape. Or maybe not. Let's review. 

[update: we have a definitive answer that Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog was not recorded by Owsley, delicious as that theory was. See below]

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

October 31, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Danny Cox/Alan Watts/Golden Toad/Hells Angels Own Band (Friday)
November 1-2, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Danny Cox/Golden Toad (Saturday-Sunday)
The Grateful Dead played Halloween 1969 at the tiny Student Union Ballroom at San Jose State, but they played the Saturday and Sunday of that weekend at the Family Dog. Danny Cox opened the shows at The Dog, along with the unique Golden Toad, led by Owsley pal Bob Thomas. Owsley recorded the Grateful Dead at the Family Dog on November 1 and 2.  It's fairly plausible that Owsley recorded Danny Cox, as he regularly recorded opening acts.

Update: much as I love my theory, the Owsley Stanley foundation reports that

we recently confirmed that Owsley did not record Danny Cox at the Family Dog because Cox's manager, Howard Wolf, would not let him tape any acts that Wolf managed. We learned this from the dedicated house tech at the Family Dog at the time, Lee Brenkman, currently a faculty member at the California Jazz Conservatory. Lee believes the live Danny Cox recording that was released actually came from the Hell's Angels Halloween party, and adds that it was the last calm thing that occurred that night.

[for more about Howard Wolf, see below]

November 7-9, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Velvet Underground/Danny Cox/John Adams (Sat-Sun only)/Maximum Speed Limit (Friday-Sunday)
The legendary Velvet Underground played the next weekend at the Family Dog, prior to a three-week booking at the Matrix. Law student and guitarist Robert Quine, a friend of the band, taped just about all the shows with his cassette recorder. Some of the Family Dog tapes were released on a 2001 Polydor Records box set called as The Velvet Underground Bootleg Series, Volume 1: The Quine Tapes (sadly, there never was a volume 2). While Quine recorded all the Velvet sets, there's no evidence (nor likelihood) that he would have recorded any opening acts. Also, the tapes would have been kind of crude, and not suitable for release in the 60s. I suppose it's not unthinkable that someone else recorded Cox on this weekend, but it's highly unlikely. 

Danny Cox's 3rd album was Birth Announcement, a double-LP released on Together Records in 1969 and produced by Gary Usher

Danny Cox (b. 1943) was from Cincinnati, but he had relocated to Kansas City in 1967. Cox, a large African-American man, defied rather conventional 60s expectations by singing folk music instead of blues. Danny Cox's debut album was At The Seven Cities, released in 1963. His next album, Sunny, on Pioneer Records, was not released until 1968. When Cox played at the Family Dog, his current album was his 3rd, Birth Announcement, a double-lp on Together Records produced by Gary Usher. On the album, Cox sang folk classics along with Beatles and Dylan songs, lightly backed.

Danny Cox's 1971 self-titled album on ABC/Dunhill, recorded in San Francisco with Nick Gravenites. The backing band was John Kahn, Bill Vitt, Merl Saunders, guitarist Tim Barnes and the Tower Of Power horn section

In 1970, Cox shared management with Brewer And Shipley, and like them he would record an album for ABC/Dunhill in San Francisco with producer Nick Gravenites. Recorded at Wally Heider Studios, it was released in 1971. In between 1969 Birth Announcement and his 1971 ABC/Dunhill albums, Sunflower Records released  Live At The Family Dog. We know almost nothing about the Family Dog record save for the listings in Discogs.com (linked).

Preflyte, Byrds recordings from 1965, was released on Together Records in 1969

Together Records>Sunflower Records
Back in 1969 and 1970, there was a lot of money to be made selling records. A lot. Most of it didn't go the artists or the songwriters, sure. But a lot of money was made. Why do you think there were so many albums released by bands you never heard of, who maybe played the Fillmore once, and disappeared? Because on the whole, those records made money. Outside of big cities and a few big college towns, there weren't even dedicated record-only stores. Most albums were sold at department stores, drug stores, musical instrument stores and other general merchandise places. The store would have a few hundred albums for sale, not all of them hits. If you had already bought the last Beatles album and wanted something new, you flipped through the racks until something caught your eye. Of course you hadn't heard it--radio was terrible. But if it had a cool cover and the song titles were interesting, why not? So those racks were filled up with quickie albums.

Together Records had released Danny Cox's 1969 double album, Birth Announcement. Together was a new label, started by producers Gary Usher, Curt Boettcher and Keith Olsen (yes, the future Grateful Dead producer). Usher 1938-90) had produced some surf hits (like "Go Little Honda") and some Byrds albums, like 1968's great Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. Together's best known release was Pre-Flyte, an album of Byrds recordings that pre-dated the band's signing with Columbia. Remember, in 1969, there were only a few Byrds albums, and no cassette tapes circulated, so if you wanted some more Byrds, you took what you could find in the Macy's rack. 

Vintage Dead, recorded at the Avalon Ballroom in 1966, and released on Sunflower in 1971

Usher had a good idea, though. He approached former Avalon Ballroom soundman Bob Cohen about all the tapes he had recorded there in 1966, long before the bands were signed. The idea was to make a triple album of the Dead, Quicksilver, Big Brother, Steve Miller, Moby Grape and others from the very beginning. The concept was that the album would support the Family Dog itself. I wrote about this whole complicated story earlier. The summary of the story is that Together folded its tent, and Gary Usher sold out his contracts to Sunflower Records, a subsidiary of MGM. At that point, the only band that had agreed to the triple-lp was the Dead. Ben Fong-Torres wrote about it in Rolling Stone in 1971:

With the Dead set, all Together had to do was get releases from enough of the other groups, like Big Brother, Moby Grape, Steve Miller, Quicksilver, Great Society, and Daily Flash. The idea was a three-LP package.

 But, Cohen said, "they had trouble getting those releases." Then, "all of a sudden I find out that in one day Together ceased to exist! To settle everything, Gary Usher should have told me to get my tapes; I assumed the deal was off. My tapes are sitting there. But when I try to get them, I can't. MGM bought them." 

A year later, out of the blue, there's an album on the market, Vintage Dead, on another new label, Sunflower (with MGM Records taking manufacturing and distributing credits) - not an anthology but, rather, a Dead album featuring five cuts

Sunflower had released Vintage Dead in October 1970, with the legal rights but not the explicit permission of the Grateful Dead. As a fan at the time, this was the only window into the lost world of the early Dead, but the Dead themselves weren't very happy. But that was the record biz back in the day--the handling of the rights favored the label, not the artists, and once the band had agreed to sign, Gary Usher could sell Together Records contracts to Sunflower, and the band was stuck.

Gary Usher had produced Danny Cox's album on Together in 1969. Come 1970, Sunflower Records releases a Danny Cox album, produced by Gary Usher. It sure looks like a precursor for Vintage Dead. Yet why would Sunflower be releasing an album by Danny Cox--he had a following, yes, but nothing like the Grateful Dead. What could Sunflower have been thinking?

Since Sunflower probably wasn't going out of their way to pay Danny Cox, or anyone else, they didn't need to sell that many records to make a buck. Cox looked like a cool black dude, and the Family Dog, via the Avalon, had some hip credentials around the country.  

The runout matrix (on the inner groove) suggests the album was pressed in September 1970, for release shortly thereafter. By that time, Sunflower would have known that Nick Gravenites was recording Danny Cox in San Francisco for ABC/Dunhill. So Together might have been hoping that ABC would push Cox, and that Live At The Family Dog would be the beneficiary. This was a common record company strategy in the day.

Sunflower had paid for Together's assets, and Danny Cox's recording was never going to make them any money sitting on the shelf--why not release it and hope for the best? Crooked or straight, that's what the record business was all about.

[Update]: It turns out that in 1969, Cox was managed by Howard Wolf. Wolf had been the booking agent for the Avalon Ballroom in the late 60s. Wolf was also the one who had brokered the deal between Gary Usher, Together Records and Bob Cohen (more complete details are here). So, presumably when Together Records' assets were sold to MGM/Sunflower, the Danny Cox recording went along with the material that would become Vintage Dead.

Shout!, by the Chambers Brothers, recorded ca. 1966 but released by Vault Records in 1969. The cover was shot at Frost Amphitheatre at Stanford in Summer '68. Carlos Santana (in blue) can be seen at the side of the stage (Santana Blues Band opened the show)

Did Owsley Record Danny Cox at The Family Dog?
The 1960s record business was full of strange deceptions, perpetrated by everyone involved. It was common practice in the 60s to release an outdated live album of a newly-popular artist, and slap a contemporary cover on it. The Chambers Brothers had been part of the folk circuit from the early 60s onwards. They recorded for the tiny label Vault Records. In late 1967, however, their souls got psychelicized, and the Chambers Brothers recorded the huge hit "Time Has Come Today" for Columbia. So in 1969 Vault released an earlier live recording, and called it Shout! The Chambers Brothers Live. Although it had been recorded around 1966 or so, Vault used a picture of the Chambers Brothers in concert at Frost Amphitheatre in Stanford University from Summer 1968. The album doesn't say where it was recorded, but it lets you draw the conclusion that it was a contemporary live album. Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog may be asking you to draw the same conclusion, that it was current when it was not.

If the recording is not from the Family Dog, the title may reflect another contractual issue. Artist contracts in those days controlled all their output, including live recordings. So it may have been in the commercial interests of Gary Usher and Together to represent these recordings as coming from a year when Together controlled Cox's output. Since Cox only played the Family Dog in 1969, that may have been a fig leaf to ensure that Together, and hence Sunflower, could claim that the recordings were controlled by them. If they had been recorded in 1968 or 1970, for example, the rights may have been different. But unless Cox (or ABC) could definitively prove otherwise, the release couldn't be blocked.

In 1970, the band Canned Heat, desperate for cash for various reasons, released an album called Live At Topanga Corral. The album was ostensibly recorded in 1966, back when the then-unknown band had played the tiny roadhouse in Topanga Canyon. In fact, it had been recorded in 1968 at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood, but Canned Heat wanted to hide that from their record company and cash the check. Was Liberty Records fooled? Probably not. But how would you prove to a jury that a 19-minute Canned Heat boogie was definitely recorded in 1968 rather than '66? So the Cox recording may have been purposely bereft of any relevant recording details.

Still, there's at least a 50-50 chance that Owsley did indeed record Danny Cox when he opened for the Grateful Dead. According to Hawk at the Owsley Stanley Foundation, there's no record of the Cox recording in the Owsley vaults, and Hawk is certain that Owsley would not have sold the tape at that time. Nonetheless, the tape could be in the Grateful Dead vaults, as an "add-on" to a Grateful Dead reel. Also, per Hawk, Owsley might have shared the tape with the artist if he liked the performance. Given that Together Records, via Howard Wolf, was considering working with the Family Dog and the Grateful Dead, there would have been some social connections between the Dead organization, Owsley and Cox management.

Together collapsed around 1970, and sold out their assets to Sunflower Records. Given how Sunflower acted without concern for the artist in the case of Vintage Dead, there's every reason to think they would have acted similarly with Danny Cox. If Sunflower realized they had a good sounding live tape for an artist signed to another label, they would have released it. If the tape was from Owsley and he hadn't intended it for release, Sunflower wouldn't have cared. The writing on the matrix run-out (inner groove), from the pressing plant, says "SUN 5002 MGS 2420 15 Sept. '70 Ɛ.O." This suggests a September manufacture date for a release in Fall 1970, exactly the same schedule as Vintage Dead. If that was the case, since Owsley had been in San Pedro Correctional Facility since July, he was hardly going to notice the album in his local record store. Such cynical calculation was also typical of the record industry back in the day.

Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog--Sunflower Records 50002, 1970
My curiosity was too great, so I ordered the album, and it arrived on my doorstep. I have no special knowledge, I don't have golden ears. On the other hand, I've heard plenty of Owsley recordings, both of the Grateful Dead and other groups as well. I've also heard plenty of "board tapes" of 60s acts, the usual ones that circulate. Much as I enjoy all that material, there are plenty of circulating board tapes that are awfully tinny and wouldn't make great releases.

Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog isn't like other old 60s tapes. The recording has tremendous presence, as if you are at the venue. There's a big crowd, too (for a folk artist), and the sound doesn't sound dubbed in (another 60s trick). Sure, live albums recorded in the 80s and afterwards sound really good, but not many 60s tapes sound this good.  The end of side 1 seems to be the end of a set, so probably the album is an edit of two nights, which makes sense.

Did Owsley record the tapes that were the basis of Live At The Family Dog? I have no facts or knowledge that I haven't stated here--and there aren't many--and we may never know the answer. But if you ask me to guess if the album is based on tapes recorded by Owsley, it sure seems likely to me. I don't think it was a coincidence that Sunflower Records released two Gary Usher projects in October 1970, so I have to think that Vintage Dead and Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog are intimately connected. Since we will probably never get other facts, you can decide for yourself. I'm voting for Owsley as the recording engineer.

Update: as I've pointed out above, my vote was plausible but incorrect. Since Cox manager Howard Wolf wouldn't let Owsley record his opening acts, the most likely result was that the Cox set was recorded on Halloween 1969, by some other party. With Owsley managing the soundboard for the rest of the weekend, it seems less likely that the Bear would let someone take over his board to record.

Danny Cox/Grateful Dead Summary

• Danny Cox opened two shows for the Grateful Dead on November 1 and 2, 1969 at the Family Dog on The Great Highway in San Francisco.
• It's possible that Owsley Stanley recorded Cox at the Family Dog, and his tape may have been the source for the album Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog, released on Sunflower Records in 1970
• Whether or not Owsley actually recorded Cox, Cox and the Grateful Dead had the unique experience of having a deal with Gary Usher and Together Records, only to have the material released on MGM/Sunflower. In the Dead's case (Vintage Dead) it was legal but not welcome--we know nothing about how Cox felt about the Sunflower release
• Around August 1970, Cox was recording at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco with producer Nick Gravenites, and his supporting musicians included John Kahn and Merl Saunders. Kahn took a moment to introduce Saunders to Jerry Garcia, recording in Heider's at another room. A month or two later, Saunders would join the pair at the Matrix.

Track 4, side 2 of Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog is "Me and My Uncle" (Trad.-Arr. by Danny Cox)

And finally, on the Live At The Family Dog album, Danny Cox performed his own arrangement of "Me And My Uncle," adding yet another strand to the elaborate history of the song (celebrated in both my blog and Jesse Jarnow's Deadcast episode).

The back cover to Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog

Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog

Tracklist
A1        Hang Down Blues  Written-By – Cox*  4:06
A2        Keep Your Hands Off It  Arranged By – Danny Cox  Written-By – Trad.*  3:03
        Medley    (12:01)
A3a        Universal Soldier Written-By – St. Marie*   
A3b        God Bless America Written-By – Berlin*
A3c        Aquarius / Let The Sun Shine In Written-By – Ragni*, MacDermot*, Rado*   

B1        Rake And Rambling Sailor Lad  Written-By – Cox*  3:26
B2        Just Like A Woman  Written-By – Dylan* 7:13
B3        Jelly, Jelly Arranged By – Danny Cox Written-By – Trad.* 5:32
B4        Me And My Uncle Arranged By – Danny Cox Written-By – Trad.* 3:25

    Record Company – Sunflower Enterprises
    Copyright © – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.
    Manufactured By – MGM Record Corporation
    Recorded At – The Family Dog, San Francisco
    Pressed By – MGM Custom Pressing Division
    Distributed By – TRC (2)
    Published By – Bealin Music Publ. Co.
    Published By – Woodmere Music
    Published By – Irving Berlin Music
    Published By – United Artists Music
    Published By – Dwarf Music

Credits

    Producer – Gary Usher
    Producer [Associate], Edited By, Mixed By [Remix] – Richard Delvy

 

 

 

August 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Great SF Light Show Jam (Vintage Dead: Found and Lost)

 

Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column from Monday August 25, 1969

August 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Great SF Light Show Jam (Tuesday)
The paragraph from Ralph J. Gleason's column in the August 25, 1969 San Francisco Chronicle (above) says

Tomorrow night at the Family Dog on The Great Highway there will be a lightshow spectacular--The Great SF Light Show Jam--with 13 different light shows and taped music from three years of unissued tapes from the Matrix including tapes of Big Brother, Steve Miller, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

At the beginning of August 1969, many of the Light Shows in the Bay Area rock fraternity had joined together as the "Light Artists Guild" and tried to strike rock venues by picketing and withholding their services. The sole real attempt was Friday, August 1 at the Family Dog, for a Grateful Dead concert. Jerry Garcia purposely showed up late, the Dead did not play, and the "Guild" folded. Bill Graham, meanwhile,  had simply laughed them off, threatening to do without light shows. Graham was ultimately correct, as Light Shows were no longer an important part of the attraction of rock concerts.

Light Show operators saw themselves as Artists, however, and fairly enough. This Tuesday night show at the Family Dog attempted to make Light Shows an attraction in themselves. Bill Ham had tried this at a San Francisco place called The Audium, but that hadn't really worked. The Family Dog effort would fail, too, after one more try in September. I don't actually know of an eyewitness to either event. This blog has a different interest, however.

I had seen the Great SF Light Show Jam listed on various obscure flyers and thought little about it, since Light Shows are inherently of the moment. The idea that the Light Shows were performing to years of unissued live shows recorded at the Matrix--well, that's something else entirely. In the previous week's Berkeley Tribe, in an article about The Common and the Family Dog, there was some explanation:

Next Tuesday night Howard Wolfe [sic] will be playing tapes of some of the classic San Francisco rock concerts of the past few years. Wolfe, who worked with the Family Dog for two and a half years, wants to get together a musical and pictorial history of what went down in San Francisco. Nobody is better qualified to do it, he feels, than the people who created it in the first place.

Howard Wolf, based mostly in Los Angeles, had been the Avalon's booking agent in the 60s, as well as the booking agent for the Kaleidoscope. Wolf still had some involvement with the Family Dog on the Great Highway, although I'm not sure exactly what. However, with a little sleuthing, I'm pretty confident I've figured out what tapes Wolf was playing. For Deadheads, it's pretty interesting, with the caveat that the tapes were likely destroyed later and have never been heard since.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco anywhere West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in North American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

 

Old Deadheads are familiar with Vintage Dead, a 1970 Grateful Dead album on MGM/Sunflower. The album featured Dead tapes recorded at the Avalon Ballroom in 1966, with a vintage Avalon poster (from September 16-17, 1966) on the cover. Vintage Dead was raw, but back in the pre-cassette days it was literally the only window into the lost Grateful Dead world prior to the first album, the only hint of what the original Grateful Dead sounded like. But how had early Dead ended up on MGM Records 4 years later? Ben Fong-Torres explained the story in the October 28, 1971 Rolling Stone (reproduced at the wonderful Deadsources site):

NOT-SO-GOOD OLD DEAD RECORDS
SAN FRANCISCO - All Bob Cohen knows is that he didn't mean for it to happen, and he wishes the Grateful Dead wouldn't give him such weird looks whenever he's around them.

Cohen is a sound man, and he was half-owner, with Chet Helms, of the Family Dog, back in the days of the Avalon Ballroom. As such, Cohen made, saved, and owns a pile of tapes of most of the bands that played there - the Grateful Dead among them. 

And when Cohen was approached, in spring of 1969, by a Los Angeles record company to sell some of his tapes for an anthology of circa-hippie San Francisco bands, he could see no problem. It was Howard Wolf doing the talking, and Wolf's immediate past included the two Great Society albums Columbia had issued. And he was representing Together Records, a frisky new label headed by Gary Usher, former producer of the Byrds and Firesign Theatre, among others. In fact, the Dead saw no problems either when they were asked to sign releases for nine cuts. "We didn't dig the tapes, the quality that much," said Rock Scully, "but we thought it'd be nice to have this anthology of all the bands." With the Dead set, all Together had to do was get releases from enough of the other groups, like Big Brother, Moby Grape, Steve Miller, Quicksilver, Great Society, and Daily Flash. The idea was a three-LP package.

 But, Cohen said, "they had trouble getting those releases." Then, "all of a sudden I find out that in one day Together ceased to exist! To settle everything, Gary Usher should have told me to get my tapes; I assumed the deal was off. My tapes are sitting there. But when I try to get them, I can't. MGM bought them." 

A year later, out of the blue, there's an album on the market, Vintage Dead, on another new label, Sunflower (with MGM Records taking manufacturing and distributing credits) - not an anthology but, rather, a Dead album featuring five cuts, all Cohen's, along with, strangely enough, liner notes signed by Cohen. The Dead are wondering. 

Then, three months ago, another album, Historic Dead, four cuts, two credited to Cohen, two to Peter Abram, owner and tape machine-operator at the old Matrix club. It is absolute bottom of the bag, the four songs totalling 29 minutes. Warner Bros., trying to sell contemporary Dead, are pissed. ("The Dead were freaked out because of the timing," Cohen said. 

Vintage was released in fall of 1970, just after Warners had put out Workingman's Dead. Vintage Dead has sold more than 74,000 according to the latest word from Rick Sidoti, general manager of Sunflower Records.) The Dead, not knowing what's happening and not wanting to sound like they're being milked by the phone company, are pissed. And Cohen is suffering from this persecution complex, spinning around dizzily, wondering where to point his finger [for the complete article, see below or follow this link].

With the Berkeley Tribe's mention of Howard Wolf, and the timing described here, it seems plain that the live concerts from the Avalon and the Matrix were the ones intended for Wolf's 3-album anthology. Fellow scholar runonguinmess tracked down Jerry Garcia's comment on the origins of the Vintage Dead material.

Jerry is asked about the Sunflower LPs in a KSAN interview from 1972-06-13 and comes up with a different angle. He says it was originally intended to be a fundraiser for the Family Dog on the Great Highway / The Common. Here's a transcript from fanzine "Hot Angel" No 9.

KSAN: What did you think - I don't want to get into areas of controversy but - what did you think of the live Dead? A couple of albums that were done for MGM - one I think and maybe another one in the works or something?
Jerry: There's the Historic and the Vintage.
KSAN: Bob Cohen asked for your permission I recall.
Jerry: Yeah well, see the thing was it was originally gonna be a whole different thing. It was originally gonna be - this was back in the days when there was a sort of a - an attempt to sort of communityise the Family Dog. It was after the - in the wake of that whole light show strike and all that stuff that was going on, and originally that record was gonna be made - the proceeds were gonna go toward keeping the Family Dog running at the time, and it was originally a whole different record company. But that - the record company that was originally doing it was bought up by MGM, there was some weird swindle went down and actually, as far as the music goes, well it's what we were doing in 66 and we weren't as good then of course as we are now, and - you know, but it is what it is. 

Both of these sagas make sense--a record company mining historic material, for which there was a genuine market, while the Family Dog would have been one of the beneficiaries. Since the material had all been recorded back in 1966, none of the bands would have signed contracts yet, so the music was available for licensing. Using the tapes to finance the new Family Dog venue was a very hippie San Francisco concept, and one that was clearly not to be. 

In the saga, the Dead are quick to give their consent, but no one else does. It's hardly surprising in retrospect. By Summer '69, Moby Grape was in litigation with their manager Matthew Katz--litigation that would go on throughout the balance of the 20th century--so no approval was likely there. Janis Joplin had a high-powered manager, Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan among many others, and he wasn't going to be giving away historic product to support some hippie ballroom. Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Steve Miller Band had ambitious management, too, and they weren't going to cheerily sign away any rights any quicker than Albert Grossman. So the enterprise was never going to reach fruition. 

It seems pretty clear, though, that 1966 music from the Avalon and the Matrix, recorded by the Dead, Big Brother, Steve Miller, Quicksilver, Moby Grape, Daily Flash and Great Society was blasted out over the Family Dog sound system, while the Light Shows did their thing on a Tuesday night. For those few who went, it would have been a genuine flashback to a recent era that was already long gone.

Historic Dead, released on Sunflower/MGM in 1971, and recorded at the Avalon and the Matrix in 1966

Which Dead Tapes?
All Deadheads always have the same questions: which tapes were they, and where are the reels? Vintage Dead and Historic Dead had a total of 9 tracks, if only about sixty minutes of music. The five tracks on Vintage Dead were recorded by Bob Cohen at the Avalon. Because the cover of the album is the poster from September 16-17, it has generally been presumed that represented the show on the record. Scholar LightIntoAshes looked into the subject in detail, however, and determined that the most likely date was December 23 and/or 24, 1966 (not least because Weir sings "Winter's here and the time is right/ For dancing in the streets"). Historic Dead, much more poorly recorded, seems to be a mix of material from the Matrix (Nov 29 '66) and the Avalon. The Avalon date can't really be determined.

But what of the source tapes? Deadheads should brace themselves: Fong-Torres continues his story. Bob Cohen had discovered the tapes were sold to MGM, and tried to wreck the project:

[Cohen made] one desperate attempt at sabotage. He had given Together a set of mix masters, keeping the original tapes himself. "I went to their studios," ostensibly to identify tapes for MGM. "I looked at each box, and I had a big magnet with me and erased the tapes." To no avail. "They had quarter-track dubs made, too, and they were going to release those." Still, he contributed the liner notes for the Vintage album. He said he refused to do anything on the second one, which carries no information on recording dates or places.

So Bob Cohen went and destroyed the tapes, but MGM had made safety copies and they released those. So there were some vintage Avalon tapes from 1966 played at the Family Dog in 1969, never heard before in the outside world. Some were probably played again in September (when a similar show was held on September 25). And then the tapes were destroyed, with only some dubs remaining, released on Vintage and Historic Dead. What else did the Grateful Dead play on December 23 and 24 1966? We won't ever hear.

You can hold out hope, if you want, that Cohen kept his own copies of the Grateful Dead tapes, as he implies that he had. But they have never turned up in the Grateful Dead Vault or anywhere else, and Cohen himself says he has no Grateful Dead tapes in his basement, although he has lots of other stuff. So 1966 Dead tapes, from the Avalon, were played at the Family Dog in 1969, never to be heard again. Sic transit gloria psychedelia.

Appendix: Vintage Dead article in Rolling Stone (complete transcript)

NOT-SO-GOOD OLD DEAD RECORDS-Ben Fong Torres, Rolling Stone, October 28, 1971
SAN FRANCISCO - All Bob Cohen knows is that he didn't mean for it to happen, and he wishes the Grateful Dead wouldn't give him such weird looks whenever he's around them.

Cohen is a sound man, and he was half-owner, with Chet Helms, of the Family Dog, back in the days of the Avalon Ballroom. As such, Cohen made, saved, and owns a pile of tapes of most of the bands that played there - the Grateful Dead among them. 

And when Cohen was approached, in spring of 1969, by a Los Angeles record company to sell some of his tapes for an anthology of circa-hippie San Francisco bands, he could see no problem. It was Howard Wolf doing the talking, and Wolf's immediate past included the two Great Society albums Columbia had issued. And he was representing Together Records, a frisky new label headed by Gary Usher, former producer of the Byrds and Firesign Theatre, among others. In fact, the Dead saw no problems either when they were asked to sign releases for nine cuts. "We didn't dig the tapes, the quality that much," said Rock Scully, "but we thought it'd be nice to have this anthology of all the bands." With the Dead set, all Together had to do was get releases from enough of the other groups, like Big Brother, Moby Grape, Steve Miller, Quicksilver, Great Society, and Daily Flash. The idea was a three-LP package.

 But, Cohen said, "they had trouble getting those releases." Then, "all of a sudden I find out that in one day Together ceased to exist! To settle everything, Gary Usher should have told me to get my tapes; I assumed the deal was off. My tapes are sitting there. But when I try to get them, I can't. MGM bought them." 

A year later, out of the blue, there's an album on the market, Vintage Dead, on another new label, Sunflower (with MGM Records taking manufacturing and distributing credits) - not an anthology but, rather, a Dead album featuring five cuts, all Cohen's, along with, strangely enough, liner notes signed by Cohen. The Dead are wondering.

Then, three months ago, another album, Historic Dead, four cuts, two credited to Cohen, two to Peter Abram, owner and tape machine-operator at the old Matrix club. It is absolute bottom of the bag, the four songs totaling 29 minutes. Warner Bros., trying to sell contemporary Dead, are pissed. ("The Dead were freaked out because of the timing," Cohen said. Vintage was released in fall of 1970, just after Warners had put out Workingman's Dead. Vintage Dead has sold more than 74,000 according to the latest word from Rick Sidoti, general manager of Sunflower Records.) The Dead, not knowing what's happening and not wanting to sound like they're being milked by the phone company, are pissed. And Cohen is suffering from this persecution complex, spinning around dizzily, wondering where to point his finger.

Actually, the Dead are more upset with Sunflower/MGM than with Cohen. "We feel they've perpetuated a hoax on us," said Scully, once a manager of the band. "At the very least, it was a misrepresentation." The Dead just recently got hold of copies of the contract, the original having vanished with Lenny Hart, the ex-manager they recently filed embezzlement charges against. Hart was the Dead representative in the deal, Scully said. "We found that those masters they said we'd signed for had all been penciled in," he said. "Everybody who signed swears there were three masters in there now that weren't in there before." But the fact is, they signed, and there's little, legally, that they can do.

Sunflower Records actually paid royalties to the band, $3650.51 in April for 51,683 albums sold between September 1st, 1970, and February 8th, 1971.

Another statement to Cohen, citing identical sales figures, didn't include a check, instead claiming that a $5000 advance cancelled out any money owed. Which got Cohen further upset. "I haven't got any money from them," he claimed, and when he wrote to Sunflower about it, "they called me up and said they're putting out another album. Now they've told me they're going to take both of them and put them together as a two-LP package for Christmas!" 

So Cohen was thinking about legal action. His friend and attorney, Creighton Churchill, exchanged letters with Sunflower, and he learned that the advance promised to Cohen was contingent on releases being secured from all the bands on the 37 cuts Cohen had provided, and that Sunflower, in the middle of the Together-to-MGM transaction, thought a payment had been made. "So he can get the royalties," Churchill said, "if he's lucky." Churchill also said that Cohen had in fact been paid a separate fee of $1500 for giving the tapes to Together. 

Cohen himself says Howard Wolf got the most money - "about $10,000 in fees and expenses." But Cohen did more than his share of work. After learning about Sunflower's plans for the Dead cuts, he said, "I talked them into at least making it groovy. I put together the Vintage album, because they would've put it out anyway, with or without me. They were gonna put it out as a bootleg. There was no way I could stop them."

So he joined them - after one desperate attempt at sabotage. He had given Together a set of mix masters, keeping the original tapes himself. "I went to their studios," ostensibly to identify tapes for MGM. "I looked at each box, and I had a big magnet with me and erased the tapes." To no avail. "They had quarter-track dubs made, too, and they were going to release those." Still, he contributed the liner notes for the Vintage album. He said he refused to do anything on the second one, which carries no information on recording dates or places.

"We had no liner information," Sunflower's Sidoti claimed, "because we didn't want to take away from the artwork."

Sidoti said he couldn't help Cohen point fingers. "There was nobody involved in the Dead albums from the executive standpoint," he said. "This was a deal made by Together and we just picked up the contract. When Together was disbanded or whatever, the tapes were laying around in the Transcontinental office, and Mac Davis [the veteran songwriter and president of the eight-month-old Sunflower label] bought the tapes from Transcon."

Transcontinental Investment Corporation is the holding group that formed Transcontinental Entertainment Corporation and hired young Mike Curb, now president of MGM Records, to be its head. Curb in turn, hired Gary Usher to form "an avant-garde artist-oriented record label, a division of TEC," as Usher put it. "They made a lot of promises - $1 million to work with, total autonomy, and a three-year minimum. TEC owned 40 percent of the racks in the country; they had lots of money." Usher had been successful with the Beach Boys, co-writing some tunes with Brian Wilson, as well as with the Byrds and Chad and Jeremy (as a producer). He was looking to do something different. 

"I always wanted to do a series called 'Archives.'" In fact, Together put out two interesting collections, one of the Pre-Flyte Byrds, and one of various L.A.-area artists and bands. "Pre-Flyte sold well, it got the company off, and other people started bringing me tapes - Lord Buckley and good material like that." That's when he told Howard Wolf about "Archives" and sent him off to San Francisco.

But six months into Together's existence, Usher said, "Transcon started fudging with money, saying, 'We think the San Francisco scene is bullshit and we don't know who Howard Wolf is.' [Wolf, Usher said, had been advanced $5000 on the project.] I took Howard over there, he explained it, and they bought the idea of one full album from the Grateful Dead." Transcon stock then dropped, Usher said, and Curb split. "I simply walked out of there and went to RCA. I signed all my rights and interest over to TEC, who then sold out of the record business, and MGM took over all the properties." 

So now you have MGM Records, whose president had so loudly announced a purge of all MGM artists who "advocate and exploit drugs," squeezing out every acidic second of Grateful Dead music that they can.  

Sidoti says Sunflower is "a solely-owned label owned by Mac Davis." But MGM, it says on the liners, manufactures and distributes, and even the lion head appears on the two Dead albums. "Well, it's a joint venture with MGM." Watch your choice of words. 

"Mike Curb has nothing to do with it," Sidoti continued. "There's lots of controversy surrounding whatever he does. God bless Mike Curb, whatever his thing is." 

But how do you justify putting out shit and misrepresenting a group at the same time? 

"There was no motive of hurting the Grateful Dead," Sidoti said. Earlier in our conversation - and this helps explain the motive - he had said, "Since the first one sold well, we decided to go ahead with another. We had four masters left over - they were decent tapes. There were a lot of dropouts on the tape, but we got rid of all those. I really think this helped the group. Actually the record buyer would have to be a Grateful Dead freak to be interested, and there's an X amount of people who otherwise couldn't buy the LP and compare."