was unreliable. A student would knock, Garcia would call out, “I’ll be with you in a minute,” and half an hour later the student’s mother would be there, and he’d still be enthusiastically describing something new to his first student.
Morgan’s led him to another musical diversion, his first foray into rock and roll since the Chords. Dana Morgan’s store manager was Troy Weidenheimer, an electric guitarist whom Jerry had known since the Boar’s Head. Troy had a band called the Zodiacs, and that summer he invited Garcia to join it—as the bass player. It was great fun, Jerry would say, despite the fact that he was “out of my idiom” playing rock and out of his instrument with the bass. But “Troy taught me the principle of ‘hey— stomp your foot and get on it.’ He was a great one for the instant arrangement . . . fearless for that thing of ‘get your friends and do it,’ and ‘fuck it if it ain’t slick, it’s supposed to be fun.’ He had a wide-open style of playing that was very, very loose, like when we went to play gigs at the Stanford parties, we didn’t have songs or anything, and he would just say play B-flat, you know, and I’d play bass, and we’d just play along and he’d jam over the top of it, so a lot of my conceptions of the freedom available to your playing really came from him. He would like take chorus after chorus, but he directed the band like right in the now . . . we never rehearsed or anything ever, we would just go to the shows and play—and he was so loose about it, he didn’t care, he just wanted it cookin’ so he could play his solos, and he was just a wonderful, inventive, and fun, goodhumored guitar player. One of the first guys I ever heard who exhibited a real sense of humor on the guitar. He was quite accomplished. I mean, in those days he was certainly the hot-rod guitar player of P.A., as far as electric guitar was concerned. While I was a folkie and all that . . .” The band also included a young local drummer named Bill Kreutzmann, and Jerry’s old friend Ron McKernan, on harmonica.
Rock and roll was only a passing fancy, however, and Garcia remained serious about bluegrass. In September the Wildwood Boys evolved into the Black Mountain Boys, at a cost. One day at the house on Hamilton Street, Hunter came to a rehearsal and realized that everyone was looking at him in a guiltily embarrassed way. It gradually dawned on him that he’d been dropped from the band, although no one could bring himself to tell him directly. It wasn’t an unreasonable decision, because his replacement, Eric Thompson, was a far better instrumentalist, but it hurt. Hunter wasn’t a devoted picker, but he loved playing bluegrass, and of course he enjoyed being part of the band. Shortly after, he moved to Los Angeles.
Originally called Elves, Gnomes, Leprochauns
(sic)
and Little People’s Chowder and Marching Society Volunteer Fire Brigade and Ladies Auxiliary String Band, the Black Mountain Boys was fun for all, and it produced high-quality bluegrass. The players even had vague professional hopes. One of the Tangent bands, the Westport Singers, was now managed by Dave and Stu, the Tangent’s doctor owners, and had won a hoot in Los Angeles. They were cutting a record before joining a package tour that would play Carnegie Hall. Jerry kept asking Dave and Stu why they wouldn’t work with the Black Mountain Boys, but the answer was obvious. His purist bluegrass was not commercial, and Garcia was, said Dave with a smile, “resistant to suggestions.”
In November, the Black Mountain Boys briefly flirted with commerce when they met an agent and promoter named Stan Leed. He had an idea for a tour called the Bay City Minstrels, which would include the Black Mountain Boys and David [Freiberg] and Michaela, a folk duo, bound for schools in the Northwest. Sara wrote to Stu, by now away in the military, that Stan was “sort of a weasel, and much disliked. However, he’s doing good
Morgan’s led him to another musical diversion, his first foray into rock and roll since the Chords. Dana Morgan’s store manager was Troy Weidenheimer, an electric guitarist whom Jerry had known since the Boar’s Head. Troy had a band called the Zodiacs, and that summer he invited Garcia to join it—as the bass player. It was great fun, Jerry would say, despite the fact that he was “out of my idiom” playing rock and out of his instrument with the bass. But “Troy taught me the principle of ‘hey— stomp your foot and get on it.’ He was a great one for the instant arrangement . . . fearless for that thing of ‘get your friends and do it,’ and ‘fuck it if it ain’t slick, it’s supposed to be fun.’ He had a wide-open style of playing that was very, very loose, like when we went to play gigs at the Stanford parties, we didn’t have songs or anything, and he would just say play B-flat, you know, and I’d play bass, and we’d just play along and he’d jam over the top of it, so a lot of my conceptions of the freedom available to your playing really came from him. He would like take chorus after chorus, but he directed the band like right in the now . . . we never rehearsed or anything ever, we would just go to the shows and play—and he was so loose about it, he didn’t care, he just wanted it cookin’ so he could play his solos, and he was just a wonderful, inventive, and fun, goodhumored guitar player. One of the first guys I ever heard who exhibited a real sense of humor on the guitar. He was quite accomplished. I mean, in those days he was certainly the hot-rod guitar player of P.A., as far as electric guitar was concerned. While I was a folkie and all that . . .” The band also included a young local drummer named Bill Kreutzmann, and Jerry’s old friend Ron McKernan, on harmonica.
Rock and roll was only a passing fancy, however, and Garcia remained serious about bluegrass. In September the Wildwood Boys evolved into the Black Mountain Boys, at a cost. One day at the house on Hamilton Street, Hunter came to a rehearsal and realized that everyone was looking at him in a guiltily embarrassed way. It gradually dawned on him that he’d been dropped from the band, although no one could bring himself to tell him directly. It wasn’t an unreasonable decision, because his replacement, Eric Thompson, was a far better instrumentalist, but it hurt. Hunter wasn’t a devoted picker, but he loved playing bluegrass, and of course he enjoyed being part of the band. Shortly after, he moved to Los Angeles.
Originally called Elves, Gnomes, Leprochauns
(sic)
and Little People’s Chowder and Marching Society Volunteer Fire Brigade and Ladies Auxiliary String Band, the Black Mountain Boys was fun for all, and it produced high-quality bluegrass. The players even had vague professional hopes. One of the Tangent bands, the Westport Singers, was now managed by Dave and Stu, the Tangent’s doctor owners, and had won a hoot in Los Angeles. They were cutting a record before joining a package tour that would play Carnegie Hall. Jerry kept asking Dave and Stu why they wouldn’t work with the Black Mountain Boys, but the answer was obvious. His purist bluegrass was not commercial, and Garcia was, said Dave with a smile, “resistant to suggestions.”
In November, the Black Mountain Boys briefly flirted with commerce when they met an agent and promoter named Stan Leed. He had an idea for a tour called the Bay City Minstrels, which would include the Black Mountain Boys and David [Freiberg] and Michaela, a folk duo, bound for schools in the Northwest. Sara wrote to Stu, by now away in the military, that Stan was “sort of a weasel, and much disliked. However, he’s doing good
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