June 20-22, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Sons Of Champlin/Congress Of Wonders/Elvin Bishop Group (FDGH '69 II)

 

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. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

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 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 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."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (June 13-15, 1969 w/Jefferson Airplane) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

June 20-22, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Sons Of Champlin/Elvin Bishop/Congress Of Wonders (Friday-Sunday)
After the very successful opening weekend with the Jefferson Airplane, the Family Dog settled back to more conventional fare. Unlike the Avalon or the Fillmore West, the Family Dog on the Great Highway did not have posters for each show. I believe some hand-drawn flyers have circulated, but I have not been able to find very many examples. In any case, to my knowledge they were neither large nor artistically interesting, so they didn't get tacked up on dormitory walls. Truthfully, the rock market had changed, and by 1969 posters were more about what we now call "Branding." Most Fillmore and Avalon posters had been immediately pulled off telephone poles and shop windows as soon as they were put up. Both Graham and Helms made good money selling reprints of the posters, which was fine, but other than in the early days, the posters weren't really intended to directly entice patrons to the next show.

In 1969 San Francisco, live music was mainstream enough that fans expected to see upcoming shows listed in the two daily papers, the morning San Francisco Chronicle and the afternoon Examiner (as well as the Oakland Tribune). Rock fans also looked in the weekly Berkeley Barb, and when colleges were in session, there would be ads or notices in the student papers. The role of a promoter was to make sure that all the papers had notice of upcoming shows, since the papers in turn wanted the events listed--without charge--in the entertainment section. Publishers knew that young people would read a paper to see who was playing live (as well as for movie times, tv schedules and sports events), so advertising was only necessary for bigger events. Helms almost never advertised the FDGH shows, partially out of shrewd recognition that it wasn't required, and partially because the venue was run on a shoestring.

The key to live success for a rock band in San Francisco, or any city, was radio airplay. KSAN-fm was the dominant music station in the Bay Area, and djs could play what they wanted. If the djs liked the bands, and played the records, people would come. Every night, certainly every weekend, KSAN djs would announce who was playing at the different venues. One reason that posters for big rock shows dropped away after the Fillmore and Avalon was that they were a needless expense that did not improve attendance. Radio ads and announcements were critical, with newspaper listings and ads a close second. I don't know if Helms ever advertised the FDGH on KSAN. My guess is not (any insights or Comments welcome).

The Sons Of Champlin had played the Avalon for Chet Helms many times, going back to 1966. In the intervening years, they had been signed by Capitol Records. Their debut, the double album Loosen Up Naturally, had been released in May 1969. The Sons were finally looking to get the reward for having played all over the Bay Area for the previous three years. They were a great live band, and they had built a solid local following. Their current lineup was

• Bill Champlin-Hammond organ, guitar, lead vocals
• Terry Haggerty-lead guitar
• Tim Cain-tenor sax
• Geoff Palmer-piano, Hammond organ, vibes, baritone sax
• Al Strong-bass
• Bill Bowen-drums
  

All of the members, save for Palmer, had been in the Sons since the band had formed in mid-66. Palmer had joined in 1967, so he was a band veteran by this time as well. Trumpeter Jim Beem had been a member of the band, and still may have had some involvement, but he had some health issues. During the 1969 period, the Sons also had a second drummer (John "Fuzzy" Oxendine), but he only lasted about 4 gigs, and no one quite recalls which ones they were.

At this time, the Sons live set was pretty much the contents of Loosen Up Naturally, along with a few choice covers. The Sons had played so many dances that they knew all the classic James Brown songs, and "Turn On Your Lovelight, " and so on. There's every reason to think that the Sons Of Champlin put on great shows on the second weekend at the Family Dog, but we don't have any accounts. 

Elvin Bishop, from Tulsa by way of Chicago, had joined the Butterfield Blues Band in the early 60s. Bishop had initially shared guitar duties with Michael Bloomfield on the bands' first album. Bishop had graduated from wingman to lead soloist for the next two Butterfield albums (1967's Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw and '68's In My Own Dream), and then left the band to move to San Francisco in 1968. He had been leading his own group in the Bay Area since early 1969. The likely lineup of the Elvin Bishop Group at the time was

• Elvin Bishop-lead guitar, vocals
• Applejack (Jack Walroth)-harmonica, vocals
  
• (Stephen Miller-organ, vocals) when available
  
• Art Stavro-bass
• John Chambers-drums, vocals
  

Organist Stephen Miller (not the more famous guitarist) was a full time member of the band Linn County, who had relocated to the Bay Area from Cedar Rapids, IA. Linn County recorded for Mercury, but Miller played gigs with Bishop when he could (he would join the Elvin Bishop Group permanently when Linn County broke up in 1970). On this weekend, Linn County was playing the Poppycock in Palo Alto on Friday and Saturday, so Miller probably only sat in on Sunday night. Bishop was signed to Bill Graham's new Fillmore Records label, distributed by Columbia. Bishop would release his own debut album Elvin Bishop Group sometime later in 1969.

Congress of Wonders were a comedy trio from Berkeley, initially from the UC Berkeley drama department and later part of Berkeley’s Open Theater on College Avenue, a prime spot for what were called “Happenings” (now ‘Performance Art’).  The group performed at the Avalon and other rock venues.

Ultimately a duo, Karl Truckload (Howard Kerr) and Winslow Thrill (Richard Rollins) created two Congress of Wonders albums on Fantasy Records (Revolting and Sophomoric). Their pieces “Pigeon Park” and “Star Trip”, although charmingly dated now, were staples of San Francisco underground radio at the time ("Pigeon Park" is from their 1970 debut album Revolting). The duo was one of a number of comedy troupes to take advantage of the recording studio, overdubbing voices and sound effects in stereo, to enhance the comedy.

For some photos of The Congress of Wonders, see here (Earl Pillow (actually Wesley Hind) was the original third member) and here.  

 

For the next post in the series (June 27-29, 1969), see here.