July 11-13, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Youngbloods/Lamb/Rubber Duck/Mother Bear (FDGH '69 VI)

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 had 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 (July 7, 1969 w/Joan Baez) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

The July 7, 1969 SF Examiner lists the three bands at the Family Dog for the weekend

July 11-13, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Youngbloods/Lamb/Rubber Duck/Mother Bear (Friday-Sunday)
The Youngbloods were regarded as an "Avalon band," for good reason, so it's no surprise they were headlining a weekend for Chet Helms at the Family Dog. As it happened, in July 1969 the Youngbloods ship was about to come in. Their third album, Elephant Mountain, had just been released in April, and songs like "Darkness, Darkness" were getting good airplay on FM radio. More importantly, in spring, 1969 the National Council of Christians and Jews created a Public Service Announcement that used the Youngbloods' version of “Get Together.” The band had recorded the old Dino Valenti song on their February 1967 debut album, when it was already somewhat of a chestnut, having been recorded by the Jefferson Airplane and others. Yet the PSA had caused RCA to release the song again as a single, and by August '69 it would enter the Top 40 chart on Billboard.

The Youngbloods were happening, and they were playing for Chet Helms rather than Bill Graham. For one weekend, at least, Helms' connections were paying off.

 

The Youngbloods had formed in Cambridge, MA in 1966 when Jesse Colin Young (b. Perry Miller, Queens, NY) and Jerry Corbitt decided to expand their folk duo to play "Folk-Rock." Corbitt and Young shared the vocals, Corbitt played lead guitar, Young took up the bass, and they added drummer Joe Bauer and the versatile Lowell "Banana" Levinger, who could play dobro, slide guitar, piano, banjo and a lot more. The band had a little more bluesy feel, and a lot more flexibility, than contemporary folk-rock outfits. Their RCA debut, released in February of 1967, was produced by Felix Pappalardi (later the producer of Cream and a founding member of Mountain). 

The Youngbloods had toured around the country in 1967, but they found a home when they came to San Francisco. The band played a weekend at the Avalon in June (June 15-18, 1967 with the Siegal/Schwall Band), and spent the next six weeks playing shows all around the Bay Area. The band realized they had found where they needed to be. They were booked for a return weekend at the Avalon on the weekend of September 15 (Sep 15-17, 1967 with the Other Half and Mad River), but by that time they had decided to move. They threw all their gear and belongings into their cars, and drove across country to move to Marin County (then a largely agricultural place). 

From Fall '67 onwards, the Youngbloods were seen as a San Francisco band--and proud of it--and played all over the West Coast. In November, RCA released their follow-up album, Earth Music. The band kept up a steady regimen of live shows. Sometime around August 1968, guitarist Jerry Corbitt dropped out of the band. Although the Youngbloods were just a trio, they leaned on Banana's phenomenal versatility and the willingness of ballroom audiences to accept lengthy jams. The Youngbloods on stage probably didn't sound much like their records by 1968, but they were still popular.

In April of 1969, the Youngbloods finally released their third album on RCA. Elephant Mountain was produced by veteran Nashville session man  Charlie Daniels, later to become famous in his own right as a performer. The Youngbloods were just a trio, but the studio gave them ample opportunity to overdub. There were also some timely guest appearances, like fiddler David Lindley (then in Kaleidoscope) on "Darkness, Darkness." That song, as well as "Sunlight," became familiar on FM radio. 

Remarkably, however, the National Council of Christians and Jews created a Public Service Announcement that used The Youngbloods version of “Get Together.” The band's version was 2 years old by this time, a lifetime in the 60s, and the song had been recorded by numerous other artists. Yet somehow the record caught on, and RCA re-released it as a single. "Get Together" would enter the Top 40 charts in August, and stay there for 12 weeks, peaking at #5. Between their hit single and a solid new album, the Youngbloods managed to sign with Warner Brothers for good money. As part of their Warners' deal, the band was given their own record label (or "Imprint") to release whatever they wanted. Raccoon Records would actually put out some interesting music (like albums by High Country and Banana and The Bunch), but they weren't particularly successful. In any case, the Youngbloods had been a hard-working road band since 1966, and their ship finally came in in the Summer of '69.

Lamb was the songwriting duo of pianist Barbara Mauritz and guitarist Bob Swanson. Mauritz was the primary vocalist, but they were a writing partnership. By 1970, the pair would add a rhythm section and record some rock-oriented albums for Bill Graham's Fillmore Records label. In Summer '69, however, Lamb was just a duo.

Rubber Duck featured mime Joe McCord, backed by musicians who improvised behind him. McCord's backing band fluctuated, and on occasion even included Jerry Garcia and Tom Constanten, but since the Dead were out of town we know they weren't involved.

Mother Bear had a complicated history. Their first album had been released in 1968 on Cadet Concept Records, a subsidiary of the Chess label in Chicago. At the time, the band was called Salloom Sinclair and Mother Bear, as it featured Texas-to-Chicago transplants Roger Salloom (guitar) and Robin Sinclair (vocals). The duo would go on to record a country-oriented album for Cadet Concept in Nashville. Meanwhile, Mother Bear had relocated to the Bay Area in early 1969. I think that Saloom and Sinclair had left the band by this time--hence the name modification--and that the band was led by guitarist Tom Davis.

For the next post in the series (July 18-20, 1969 Sir Douglas Quintet), see here