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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 (November 7-9, 1969 Velvet Underground) see here
- For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here
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)
The Family Dog on The Great Highway had struggled since the day after its glorious opening. By November, according to an article in the Berkeley Barb, the Dog had $50,000 in debts, including $5000 owed to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS debt stemmed from the Avalon's most lucrative year, 1967. This was real money. At the time, a new Ford or Chevy sedan cost about $2500 and a three-bed/two-bath suburban home was around $30,000, so adjust for inflation accordingly. The Family Dog had tried to separate itself from the more commercial Fillmore West by mostly booking San Francisco bands and acting as a community center during the week, but they had nothing to show for it. The Dog was hard to get to, and for all that hippies complained that Bill Graham was all about the money and that rock was getting too big, when major rock bands like the Rolling Stones played the Oakland Coliseum, tickets couldn't be sold fast enough. Bill Graham and Chet Helms had been competitors at the Fillmore and the Avalon, and Graham had won that battle decisively. Now the Fillmore West was winning out over the Dog on the Highway.
So it came to pass that the Family Dog held a fund-raising benefit at the Fillmore West. Initially, in fact, the benefit had been booked at the larger Winterland (official capacity: 5400), also controlled by Graham. The move over to the smaller Fillmore West (official capacity: 2500) was a sign that the Benefit wasn't so big after all. Still, it was ironic--why was Bill Graham helping to bail out his most famous rival?
The Bill Graham story is the perfect example of Winston Churchill's adage, "history will exonerate me because I will write that history." Graham gave endless interviews, for decades, telling the story of San Francisco rock according to Bill Graham. Now, he didn't lie--he's too smart--but Graham told the story he wanted told. Graham's version of events was that he was a businessman, and Chet Helms was a hippie. Chet let all his friends in for free, while Bill insisted that bills had to be paid. The Fillmore made it, enough to expand to the Fillmores West and East. Helms' Avalon expansion to Denver and Portland went very poorly, and he ended up in poor financial straits due to hippie mismanagement. Now, this isn't untrue--Helms himself wouldn't have disagreed with this assessment. But there were other sides to the story.
In early 1966, Bill Graham had a business degree (the equivalent of a Junior College accounting certificate), was a failed actor, and was a business manager for a struggling political theater outfit (the Mime Troupe). Graham was from New York, and he knew about Borscht Belt comedy and Latin music, by his own admission, and pretty much nothing about rock, blues or folk. Besides his determination and attention to detail, one of Graham's great strengths was that he sought out the expertise of others, and actually listened. To take a famous example, he was interested in booking blues artists, but knew nothing about the music, so he asked Mike Bloomfield and listened to what he had to say. Graham, by his own admission was no hippie and wasn't really a rock fan, even though he came to appreciate the music.
Chet Helms, in contrast, was a hippie, one of the first, and a huge music fan. Helms' was completely tapped in to the Haight-Ashbury zeitgeist from the beginning. It was Helms who grasped that the Trips Festival in January 1966 made a template for a rock concert for an all-encompassing environment with music, dance and lights. It was Helms who initiated the most imaginative of posters to capture the interest of fans for bands whose music they had never heard. Helms and Graham were originally partners at the Fillmore, but they split up within a few months (by April 1966). It's not unfair to say that Helms figured out how to put on the modern rock concert, and then Bill Graham just did a better job of it. In 1967 and '68, Chet Helms booked the coolest new bands at the Avalon, because he was tuned in. If they scored, Graham would book them for more money at the Fillmore.
Chet Helms had to close the Avalon in December 1968 because he was more poorly capitalized than Bill Graham, managed the details less efficiently and was less ruthless. Graham was a first class businessman, inventing an industry where there wasn't one. His skills went far beyond that of a "good rock promoter." So criticizing Chet Helms for not being his equal isn't really fair to Chet. No one else was Bill's equal either. For all that, however, it's my contention that Bill Graham was very anxious about having Chet Helms as a competitor, so anxious that he much preferred to support a weakened Helms' operation on the other side of San Francisco.
In late 1969, Bill Graham's authority as a rock promoter was his relative financial standing--he paid his bills, and most didn't--his experience and his relationships to the bands. Although everyone has passed away and I cannot marshal any evidence, I believe Graham's big fear was that a well-capitalized entertainment company would invade San Francisco and hire Chet Helms. If an experienced Hollywood or New York promoter backed Helms, they could have hired a bean counter to keep the wheels turning. Helms, however, would not have had to to ask anyone what was hip, since he already knew, and he knew all the bands personally from the Avalon. Helms was a threat to Bill Graham if he was capitalized. On the Great Highway, however, the Family Dog was never going to compete directly with Bill Graham Presents. So it was in Graham's interest to keep the Family Dog going, paradoxical as it may seem.
A special, if somewhat unreadable, poster was created for the Family Dog benefit (November 19 '69) once it moved to Fillmore West
Friends Of Chet
A sign of Chet Helms' status, and an implicit sign of why Bill Graham found him to be an implicit threat, was the quality of bands who showed up to play for nothing on a Wednesday night. Back in December 1966, Chet Helms had been the first promoter to book the brand new Steve Miller Blues Band out of Berkeley. The $500 he guaranteed Miller allowed the guitarist to move out of his VW van and into an apartment. Since that time the Steve Miller Band had signed a lucrative contract on Capitol Records and released 4 albums. They weren't as big as they would become in the next decade, but they were a local band with a substantial following.
Ironically, the Steve Miller Band had not yet played the Family Dog on The Great Highway, almost certainly because the gig wouldn't have been rewarding enough. But Steve Miller hadn't forgotten who booked him in 1966, and here he was playing for nothing. Miller band drummer Tim Davis, who had come out from Wisconsin to join Miller, had also played the Avalon with the band back in '66 (Boz Scaggs had joined Miller in '67, too, but had left by '69). By late ‘69, the Steve Miller Band was now a trio, rounded out by bassist Lonnie Turner, who had also played the Avalon many times, as he had joined in January 1967.
Back in '66, Chet Helms had also been the manager of Big Brother and The Holding Company. Indeed, he was there at their founding at 1090 Page Street, and he helped pick the name. The quartet had been ragged yet intriguing, and they had needed a lead singer. So Chet sent an emissary to Texas to retrieve singer Janis Joplin, whom he had befriended when she was a folksinger in San Francisco in 1963 and '64. Janis changed everything, and Big Brother went from underground-cool to underground-huge to becoming huge rock stars, thanks to their powerful 1968 release Cheap Thrills on Columbia. By that time, Janis and Big Brother had abandoned Chet Helms as manager for the all-powerful Albert Grossman. Still, Janis and Big Brother remained friends with Chet--it was San Francisco--and had played the Avalon the last night it was open, November 30, 1968.
When Janis Joplin left Big Brother at the end of 1968, the band had disintegrated. Yet Big Brother had been a band before Janis, and they turned out to have a life after her as well. The members of the band had been hanging out, and for the Family Dog benefit, the original quartet reformed. They were billed as "Humble, Fumble, Mumble and Dumble (formerly Big Brother and The Holding Company)." The band was billed on top of Steve Miller, since the Big Brother reunion was a local event.
Also billed was The Old Riders Of The Purple Sage, which was already known as a vehicle for Jerry Garcia to play pedal steel guitar. The Riders had been one of the few groups to regularly play weeknight shows at the Family Dog, and Garcia clearly liked playing there. So Garcia joined Steve Miller and Big Brother to help out the Family Dog. Also on the bill was Barry McGuire and The Doctor (guitarist Eric Hord). McGuire had scored a big hit with "Eve Of Destruction" back in 1965, and while he was hardly hip anymore, for an opening act he had some status. McGuire and The Doctor had played the Family Dog recently (I reviewed their history in some detail in a prior post).
But what happened at the Fillmore West? As is typical of Family Dog shows, we don't know. We can infer that ticket sales weren't great, since the show moved from Winterland to Fillmore West, but how many people actually came to the show? Was any money raised for the Family Dog? We don't really know. The Family Dog on The Great Highway stayed open into 1970, however, so maybe it did all right and pushed them a little cash.
November 14-16, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Apple Jam/Osceola/Canterbury Fair (Friday-Sunday)
In the weeks preceding and following the Fillmore West benefit, the Family Dog on The Great Highway had its typical series of events, rarely enough to cause a ripple on the San Francisco rock entertainment spectrum. On the weekend before, the three bands were local groups that we might expect a weeknight jam, but hardly worth a weekend gig. In retrospect, we know that the members of Osceola were transplants from Florida (featuring guitarist Bill Ande). I think Canterbury Fair may have been from Palo Alto, and Apple Jam is only known to me from other Family Dog listings. These groups wouldn't have even headlined a weekend at a suburban club like the Poppycock or Mandrake's, much less a San Francisco ballroom.
November 18, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Tuesday)
Jerry Garcia and the New Riders of The Purple Sage (billed as The New Riders of The Old Purple Sage) returned on Tuesday. The New Riders had already played several weeknights at the Family Dog, and clearly Garcia felt he was developing something. The frequency with which the Riders played weeknights implicitly tells us that there bookings were among the few success stories of the Family Dog.
November 19, 1969 Fillmore West Benefit (booked at Winterland--moved to Fillmore West)--see above
Phil Elwood's brief write-up of the Dog's dilemma in the Wednesday Examiner summed up the venue's problems, under the header "Fillmore Aids Family Dog":
"Everyone seems to like the Family Dog on the Great Highway," sighed Top Dog Chet Helms, "but they don't come around often enough to give us a steady income."
So tonight, Bill Graham has turned over his Fillmore West premises for a Family Dog benefit show. "We're pretty far in debt," admitted another Family Dog spokesman, "what we really need now is money to keep Internal Revenue from shutting us down."
A number of times in 1967-68, when the Family Dog operated out of the Avalon Ballroom, there were fund-raising events to keep it open. The Dog moved out to the Great Highway last June and entered into a full-week operation, including "commune meetings," lectures, religious activities, movies and various contemporary musical presentations.
Within the next three weeks, Helms plans to curtail all but the weekend concerts, hoping to gain financial solvency by the end of the year.
November 20, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: It's A Beautiful Day/Richmond Symphony/New Tranquility String Band (Thursday)
On Thursday night, the Dog had an unexpectedly high-profile headliner: It's A Beautiful Day. It's A Beautiful Day had released their debut album on Columbia in June 1969. Unlike the first albums of many groups, the music was fully realized. LaFlamme had been in an odd group called Orkustra in 1967 that played around the Haight, so he had learned some lessons from that. It's A Beautiful Day had originally been sent to Seattle by their manager, Matthew Katz, so they had "gotten it together" before they reappeared in San Francisco. The band played the Avalon many times before they were signed.
The debut album of It's A Beautiful Day had some great songs, and they got heavily played on FM radio. The most popular was "White Bird," which would go on to become a huge AM hit as well, and a sort of 60s classic. It's A Beautiful Day had already played a number of shows on the Great Highway: one of the fundraisers for the Wild West, back on July 7, and then a Wild West makeup show on August 24, and the weekend of September 12-14 had been the band's first time headlining a paying gig at the Dog.
By October, however, It's A Beautiful Day were a genuinely happening rock band. So much so, that they had headlined the Fillmore West over Halloween weekend (October 30-November 2) above Ike and Tina Turner (it would have been tough to follow "Proud Mary" with 'White Bird," yeah?). All of Bill Graham's contracts, like any rock promoter, would have had a "proximity clause": no show could be advertised within three weeks and fifty miles. So a few weeks later, and with less fanfare, IABD was headlining a Thursday night at the Dog. I believe the band had management issues at the time (David LaFlamme ended up having a bitter lawsuit against Matthew Katz), so the band may have needed the cash. Because It's A Beautiful Day was a really good band with a hit album, they probably drew a good crowd, even out in the neighborhood on a Thursday night.
As for the Richmond Symphony, the Richmond District was the San Francisco neighborhood just to the East of the Family Dog, running all the way along Golden Gate Park. The Richmond Symphony was likely some sort of neighborhood orchestra, although it could just as well have been a jazz ensemble or something. The Symphony had played an earlier Thursday night at the Family Dog (on September 18). "Richmond Symphony" is hard to Google, so any insight is welcome in the Comments.
The New Tranquility String Band were from Berkeley. Initially they had been known as Dr Humbead's New Tranquility Sting Band. "Dr. Humbead" was their soundman, Earl Crabb (creator of "Dr. Humbead's Map Of The World" with artist Rick Shubb). The group played mostly traditional "old-timey" (pre-bluegrass) music, but since they were based out of Berkeley's Freight And Salvage folk club, the band played as many rock venues as folk ones (I had a more detailed write-up of the band when they played the Family Dog back on October 30). At this time, the group was likely a quartet, featuring fiddler Sue Draheim (1949-2013) banjoist Mac Benford (1940-2020) and guitarist Jim Bamford (1939-73). I'm pretty sure Will Spires had joined by this time, as well.
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)
The weekend booking doesn't make much sense unless you realize that Jerry Garcia was one of the few musicians interested in booking shows at the Family Dog, and not only did he have to adjust the New Riders schedule around the Grateful Dead, the Dead's bookings were very strange. On Friday, November 21, the Grateful Dead had a show booked at the California State Fairgrounds (Cal Expo) in Sacramento. On Sunday, November 23 the Dead were booked at the Boston Music Hall--yes, Boston, MA--with Country Joe and The Fish. Why manager Lenny Hart booked this show isn't clear, but then Hart would go on to steal $150,000 from the Dead, so draw your own conclusions. In any case, the Dead were replaced in Boston by the Youngbloods. That freed up Garcia, at least, for the balance of the weekend. So the New Riders of The Purple Sage played Saturday and Sunday nights.
The Anonymous Artists of America were regular performers at the Family Dog at this point. The band was part of a commune located in Novato. Soon they would all move to Pueblo, CO. Devil's Kitchen were also regular performers at the Family Dog. They were a bluesy quartet from Carbondale, IL, and at this time they were kind of a "house band" at the Dog, by their own description.
November 25, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Conspiracy Of Media (Tuesday)
Your guess is as good as mine about "Conspiracy Of Media."
November 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Film Orgy (Wednesday)
It's easy to forget that in the era when their were no VCRs and only 4 TV stations, seeing old monster movies or the like on a big screen was actually kind of a treat. Certainly worth a dollar if you lived near the Dog.
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/Pitschel Players/Morning Glory Theater Free City Puppet Ball (Thursday)
The New Riders of The Purple Sage returned again on a Thursday night I have no idea what "Puppet Ball" or "Puppet Bash" (ads varied) was actually supposed to mean. Clearly, Garcia liked playing the Family Dog, so in retrospect it's not surprising to find out that there were plans afoot in 1970 to merge the Grateful Dead and Family Dog operations.
Cleveland Wrecking Company was a 7-piece band with a horn section and a female singer. They played original material, but also played a lot of lucrative dances, and weren't apparently that interested in getting a recording contract, in contrast to every other San Francisco band. Deacon And The Suprelles were a white East Bay R&B band, not really significant, but with one too-incredible-to-believe saga to their name (search "Deacon" on the link--trust me). East Bay Sharks and Pitschel Players were both satirical comedy troupes. I have no idea what the organizing principle of this event might have been.
November 28-30, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Friday)/Floating Bridge (Saturday)/Dr. Humbead's New Tranquility String Band/Vern & Ray (Friday-Sunday)
Dan Hicks had been around the San Francisco scene as long as there had been one. He had been the drummer in the Charlatans, the band that started the psychedelic ballroom revolution in Virginia City, NV. Later Hicks had switched to guitar, so he could sing more. The Charlatans had also helped open the Family Dog on The Great Highway in June 1969, just as they had shared a stage with the Airplane at Longshoreman's Hall for the original (pre-Helms) Family Dog, back on October 16, 1965.
The Charlatans played loud, psychedelic blues, however, and Hicks had other interests. By 1968. he formed a "side group" with local violinist David LaFlamme to play a sort of modified swing music. LaFlamme had left to form It's A Beautiful Day, and by mid-69 Hicks had left the Charlatans to play full-time with Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks. The band had released an album in 1969 on Epic, Original Recordings.
The group wore Edwardian clothes, and it looked like a repackage of an old album. While the band played acoustic swing music, kind of, Hicks' wry, cynical lyrics were a striking contrast to the music itself. The album included future Hicks' classics like "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away" and "I Scare Myself." Nobody sounded like Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. The band at this time was probably Hicks on lead vocals and guitar, Jon Weber on lead guitar, Sid Page on violin and Jaime Leopold on bass. "The Hot Licks" personnel varied sometimes, but at this time I believe the singers were Sherry Snow and Christine Gancher.
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were newly arrived in Berkeley, from Ann Arbor, MI, but they had taken to playing the Family Dog regularly. Their hip modified version of stoned Western Swing music was way ahead of its time. They played Friday night (and according to the Chronicle's Ralph Gleason, on Sunday as well). Saturday had Floating Bridge, the twin guitar band from Seattle.
Floating Bridge, playing on Saturday night, were from Seattle. They were a “heavy” band featuring the twin guitar leads of Rich Dangel and Joe Johansen. They had been an established band in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest since about early 1968, but were probably touring California in support of their album on Vault Records. Dangel had been the lead guitarist for Northwest legends The Wailers (today mostly known as The Fabulous Wailers, to distinguish them from Bob Marley) and Dangel was widely regarded as one of the best guitarists in Seattle (not least by his former roommate, Larry Coryell). At various junctures, Floating Bridge also featured an electric cellist (who doubled on saxophone), setting them apart from most contemporaries. The Floating Bridge had been booked at the Family Dog back on the weekend of September 24, but it's uncertain whether that weekend's shows actually took place.
The Wailers, from Tacoma, WA had hit it big nationally with the song “Tall Cool One.” The Wailers and The Sonics had been the anchors of the early 60s Tacoma/Seattle scene, particularly a place called The Spanish Castle (memorialized by Jimi Hendrix in “Spanish Castle Magic”). Dangel had left around 1965 (The Wailers continued on, as they do to this day) and moved to California. After briefly forming a band called The Rooks, he ended up in The Time Machine, in San Diego. When the Time Machine broke up, Dangel and another member (bassist Joe Johnson) moved back to Seattle and formed The Floating Bridge.
The Floating Bridge were fondly remembered by those who saw them live. Their 1969 debut album on Vault Records featured a lengthy jam on a medley of “Eight Miles High” and “Paint It Black.” Dangel continued to be a highly regarded guitarist on the Seattle scene until his death in 2002.
Rounding out the country vibe--well, except for the very heavy Floating Bridge--was the bluegrass team of Vern & Ray. Vern Williams (mandolin) and Ray Park (guitar, fiddle) were both from
Arkansas, but they met in Stockton, California and started playing
bluegrass as the Carroll County Boys in 1959. Younger Bay Area musicians
admired not only their driving style but also the fact that they had
not learned bluegrass just from records. Vern and Ray moved to Nashville
around 1967, but after two years, stardom did not beckon and they both
gave up full time music careers. They returned to California, but they
continued to perform for a number of years.
In 2006 Arhoolie Records released a cd of Vern & Ray’s performance at the 1968 San Francisco State Folk Festival (where Herb Pedersen was part of their
quartet, along with bassist Howard Courtney), which gives a good idea of
their sound.
For the next post in this series (December 12-28 '69, various acts), see here
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