My Season with Kingfish Part Three

After giving my phone number to Tim Hovey at the Keystone Berkeley, I don’t think I really expected to hear from him. Imagine my surprise a couple of weeks later when I got a phone call from Richard Hundgen, Kingfish’s manager at the time. Richard there at the beginning of the in the Haight Ashbury music scene, a member of the original inner circle of Big Brother and the Holding Company and a good friend of Janis Joplin’s.  Turns out he had an open date, and we actually began talking about bringing Kingfish to UCSC on March 7. Since it was already early February, that didn’t provide a lot of lead time.

At the time, I was a member of Gotterdammerung, the group at UCSC’s Crown College that screened films in the college’s dining hall every Saturday night. As such, getting access to the dining hall wasn’t too big a problem. A bigger problem was how to sell tickets and deal with expenses, principally paying the band. Because it was technically a university function, all of the funds had to flow through the events office, which also sold tickets for the event, and they would only issue a check for the performers – a situation that understandably did not sit well with the band. It took a lot of finagling, and at least one promoter-to-manager phone shouting match, to get everything settled, but amazingly, it all came together. My colleagues in the film group were amazing, working out details like lighting, security, and publicity.  The event poster was drawn by Judy, by then my fiancé, and copies were put up mainly just on campus.

Crown College Dining Hall entrance today.
The dining hall proper is to the left

During this period, we saw several other Kingfish shows, including a second one at the Keystone Berkeley where I met up with Richard face to face after the show. He invited me back to the Keystone Green Room, which looked exactly like it does in the inside gatefold of the Garcia-Saunders live album, minus the nun, and with a different cast of characters. 

As the date of the show approached, tickets were selling briskly, and things were looking up. In talking with Richard, we had broached the idea of hosting a dinner for the band before the show. He initially declined, saying that the band usually ate by themselves, but later accepted the invitation on behalf of the band and crew. At that time, Crown College had a small conference facility near its parking lot in a secluded building that now houses radio station KZSC.  We ended up serving dinner to the band and crew down there. People came and went as they set up for the show in the dining hall up the hill. The crew that night was Tim Hovey and Rex Jackson, and Richard was there to tend to business.

If memory serves, we served them baked chicken, rice, and some dolmas that Judy scared up in downtown Santa Cruz. Although there was plenty to do, we managed some face time with the band during dinner. Oddly enough, the main topic of conversation among the group was the Karen Black TV movie “Trilogy of Terror,” which had aired earlier that week. The most significant music related bit of information I gleaned from the session was a confirmation by Weir that the Dead had indeed plotted to do a free show at UCSC’s gorgeous quarry amphitheatre in the late sixties. They ultimately abandoned the plan when it became apparent that it would be pretty much impossible to make the logistics work without ending up with a Santa Cruz version of Altamont. Still, it was nice to have that urban legend confirmed firsthand.

Quarry Amphitheater UCSC

The band, who had been playing several nights a week in clubs, had a relatively minimal setup, although they did bring their own PA. We handled the lights from the projection booth near the top of the dining hall’s elevated ceiling. As the show approached, I was tasked with doing a lot that glamorous promoter stuff – finding Mr. Kelly some decongestant, guiding Mr. Weir to a secluded restroom, cleaning up after dinner… you get the drift.

With little more than on-campus publicity, the show handily sold out, and there were a few people listening outside, but the numbers were completely manageable. If I remember correctly, the show started more or less on time, and the band played the three one-hour sets specified in the contract. As I noted in the previous entries, Kingfish was a stellar live act in 1975, and their show that night did not disappoint, although promoter duties distracted me from giving it my full attention. The audience, mostly UCSC students who had not yet heard Kingfish, gave the band a rousing reception.

I did get some significant karma payback that night. The previous year, I had been part of a group of Crown students that smuggled a large number of marshmallows into Winterland for the 2/23/74 Dead show. This was inspired by tales from Bob R., the preceptor of our dorm, who had first seen the Dead on 4/14/71 when they played at his undergraduate alma mater, Bucknell College in Lewisburg, PA. Apparently a group of Bucknell students had similarly smuggled in marshmallows, and Bob and his friends were participants in a ferocious marshmallow fight. He waxed poetic about how much fun it was to throw the marshmallows around, and how it was harmless and good clean fun.

Doing the same thing in the spacious confines of Winterland proved fun, but certainly not clean and, unfortunately, a good number of the squishy missiles made their way onto the stage, prompting Phil Lesh to admonish the crowd to “share the marshmallows with your friends rather than throwing them up on stage.”

At any rate, some of the same miscreants decided it would be fun to recreate this event one more time,

Ticket stub from the 3/7/75 show

at the UCSC Kingfish show. A marshmallow war did occur, brief in duration but lasting in impact, as I and my colleagues learned as we spent well over an hour scrubbing the sticky dining hall floor after the show. Meanwhile, the band packed up their gear and prepared to hit the road. I got surprisingly warm thanks from the band, and especially from Hovey and Jackson.

After the Kingfish show, I got a call from John McIntire, who was managing Keith and Donna at the time, asking if we wanted to promote a show with them a few weeks later. At that point, though, I was looking at a wedding in May, and had a round of chemistry and biology classes to finish up before graduating in June. That show did go on, but with a different group of student promoters and at the somewhat roomier Kresge Town Hall.  All in all, I am glad I had the experience of promoting a show, and it gives me a great appreciation of all that goes into making such events run smoothly. Furthermore, I believe this was still the only time that any of the original core members of the Dead have performed on the campus that now houses the Grateful Dead’s Archive.

I saw Kingfish a number of times after the UCSC show, but the frequency dropped as other commitments (graduating, marriage, graduate school) took more and more of my time.  The last really memorable shows I can think of were in June, 1975. On June 8, Kingfish preceded Garcia and Saunders on a warm Sunday afternoon in Palo Alto’s El Camino Park, where I had attended a couple of Midpeninsula Free University Be-Ins several years earlier. Kingfish played their usual tight set. After the show, Judy and I walked back across the street to Stanford Shopping Center’s parking lot with Dave Torbert and his partner Patty. Nine days later, Kingfish played a two set show at the sprawling Winterland benefit for poster artist Bob Fried that culminated in an epic “Garcia and Friends” set that was actually the Dead’s first full show since their hiatus from touring the previous October.

Kingfish in its original incarnation carried on for about another year, at which point Bob Weir chose to devote his energies once again to touring with the Dead. Kingfish carried on, but the original lineup splintered, leaving Torbert and Kelly with a changing crew of guitarists and drummers over the next several years.  Torbert passed away, way too early, in 1982, but Kelly carried on with the Kingfish name until well into the 1990s, occasionally reuniting with Weir, most notably during a 1986 tour that also featured Steve Kimock on lead guitar. 

My Season with Kingfish Part 2

After their first show at the Chateau, Kingfish started gigging relatively regularly around the Bay Area, but more or less established a weekend residency back at the Chateau for much of the winter.  Confirmed dates were December 13,14; January 3,4; and 1/26; but I believe they played some other dates in the intervening weeks as well. I went to at least one night of each run with Judy, and got to hear the group developing their sound and their repertoire. One novelty during the mid-December run was a single version of Johnny B. Goode, which failed to make it into the band’s regular repertoire. 

I also started seeing the group at the Keystone Berkeley. The first show of theirs I attended there was Sunday December 29, which was notable for a couple of reasons. First, it was the first time I saw the group change up their instrumental lineup for a few songs. Torbert switched to guitar and Kelly took up the bass for a trio of tunes, all sung by Torbert. “California Day” was one of Torbert’s most memorable originals from his days in the New Riders, a gorgeous ballad evoking the mystique of the northern California coastline. He also sang “Lonesome Fugitive,” one of Merl Haggard’s many songs about outlaws. The third tune in this mini-set was a bouncy, uptempo version of Hank Cochran’s honky tonk lament “A-11,” which was best known from Buck Owens’ 1964 version. Another notable aspect of the show was that Weir’s bandmate Phil Lesh was in attendance, and actually watched part of the show from a chair on the side of the relatively tiny Keystone stage, but did not play.  Incidentally, contrary to the Lost Live Dead tour history, James and the Mercedes did not open this particular show, although they appeared with Kingfish a few times in early 1975.  

By the mid seventies New Year’s Eve was already a big night for music in the bay area. Although the Dead themselves had not played a show that night since 12/31/72, Garcia and Bill Kreutzmann had brought in the previous new years jamming with the Allman Brothers at the Cow Palace. Thus it was a welcome surprise to learn that Kingfish had been booked to play a show near most of the band’s old stomping grounds, at the Stanford movie theatre in downtown Palo Alto.

I had been going to the Stanford theatre since our family moved to Palo Alto at the end of 1960. I remember going to summer double features there for a dime in my pre-teen years and had seen many a movie there in subsequent years. By the mid-seventies, the movie palace had fallen on hard times, and the Kingfish show was an early attempt to transform the theatre to a venue for live performances. The theatre’s heyday as a live venue is chronicled in  one-time promoter Andrew Bernstein’s immensely entertaining memoir California Slim: The Music, the Madness, and the Magic. Miraculously, the increasingly decrepit theatre was rescued from giving way to another franchise store by the generosity of film buff David Packard Jr., who  convinced the David and Lucille Packard Foundation to spare no expense in restoring the theatre, now an archival film showcase, to its former glory. 

Back at the close of 1974, the theatre was not in great shape, but it was a fine, relatively intimate place to spend New Year’s Eve with Weir, Torbert, and friends.  You can find an extensive discussion of this show here.

Opening the evening was another band with a strong Dead connection. Osiris was a Palo Alto based blues-rock band whose keyboard player, Kevin McKernan, was the younger brother of the Dead’s late singer and keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. Their lineup was very  Dead-like with two guitars, bass, keyboards, and two drummers, and I believe they used some equipment salvaged from the Wall of Sound.  The most vivid memory of their set was an amazing version of “Hard to Handle” with Kevin McKernan, who bore an eerie physical resemblance to his sibling, channeling Pigpen’s trademark delivery of the song.

           Kingfish played two sets, with no real surprises to those of us who had already seen them a few times. They had started to work a number of other tunes into their repertoire by this time. Weir’s contributions included a really nice uptempo version of Dolly Parton’s “My Blue Tears” and a snazzy arrangement of “Saturday Night” with some twin lead guitar from Weir and Hoddinott. Over the next several weeks, they worked in a number of other tunes – classic soul tunes including “Shop Around,” “Roadrunner,” a rock arrangement of Bill Monroe’s “Muleskinner Blues” that was often paired with Torbert’s version of “Mystery Train,” Bo Diddley’s “Mona” and the blues standard “C.C. Rider” (these latter two found their way into the Dead’s post-hiatus repertoires).  Torbert added “I Hear You Knocking,” “Carol” and a few cover tunes he did with the New Riders, including “School Days,” “Willie and the Hand Jive” and “Sea Cruise,” as well as his own “Groupie.”

Because Kingfish had been playing such small venues, and spending considerable time in the Santa Cruz mountains, I got it in my head that it might be possible to convince them to come play at UC Santa Cruz. Having never promoted a show in my life, I nonetheless thought it was something worth pursuing. I was a member of Gotterdammerung, a student group that showed films every Saturday night in the Crown College Dining Hall, so I figured we could get use of the Dining Hall for a show if we could pull it off.   So, at the next Kingfish show we attended,  January 25 at the Keystone Berkeley,  I approached Kingfish sound man Tim Hovey during the break to float the idea of their coming to UCSC. Since, as noted above, I had no promotion experience, and they knew nothing of the venue,  he seemed somewhat dubious, but he took my name and number and said they might be in touch. I didn’t really expect much to come of it.

Tim Hovey has a significant role in Kingfish/Horses history. He was co-writer, with Torbert, of “Important Exporting Man” on the third New Riders album, and “Wild Northland” on the first Kingfish album, and the pair wrote another Kingfish mainstay, “Goodbye Yer Honor” with Matthew Kelly. Earlier, he had collaborated with John Carter, Scott Quigley, and Tim Gilbert on “Jump for Joy” which had appeared on the Horses album and became a mainstay of the Kingfish repertoire. Earlier, Hovey had been a child actor who appeared in a number of 1950s television shows. Hovey was a friendly chap, and seemingly a good soundman, as I recall all of the Kingfish shows of that era having a bright, clear mix.

Opening that Keystone show was another interesting band with Dead connections. On the 1970

Festival Express tour, the band members met up with a Canadian folk-rock ensemble called James and the Good Brothers, comprising singer-songwriter James Ackroyd and .twins Bruce and Brian Good.  James and the Good Brothers subsequently made it out to California, and eventually recorded a fine eponymous album for Columbia that was produced by Betty Cantor and included contributions by Bill Kreutzmann and an uncredited Jerry Garcia. There has been much speculation at Lost Live Dead and Jerry Garcia’s Middle Finger about the politics and economics of some of the Dead-related signings by other labels. Columbia, then run by Clive Davis, seem to have signed several loss leaders from other labels during the early seventies, including the Rowan Brothers, James and the Good Brothers and even the original incarnation of the New Riders of the Purple Sage.  In Davis’ recently published autobiography, he indicates that he was courting the Dead as early as 1969, and these signings could have been part of that effort, which ultimately resulted in the Dead signing with Davis’s subsequent label. Arista, after Grateful Dead records folded in 1976.  At any rate, James and the Good Brothers splintered after their album failed to generate much interest, with the Goods split back to Canada, where they recruited younger sibling Larry and became (and remain) one of Canada’s more popular country acts. As an aside, Bruce Good’s sons Travis and Dallas are mainstays of Toronto’s remarkable alt-country ensemble the Sadies.

Back in California, Ackroyd had assembled a rock group, which he dubbed James and the Mercedes that comprised a second guitarist, bass player, drummer, and two female vocalists, one of whom was Frankie Weir, Bob’s partner at the time. We saw this group on two consecutive nights, at the Keystone and then the Chateau, and they were enjoyable if not particularly memorable.  These were the only bookings I remember for this particular ensemble, whch probably broke up after a rather public separation of the Weirs shortly after the two shows with Kingfish. Ackroyd seems to vanish from the musical radar around this time, and the Good Brothers website indicates that he has passed away.

Kingfish Chateau Liberte 1/26/75 From left to right:
Hoddinott, Weir, Herold, Kelly, Torbert
Photo: M. Parrish

The next night, Kingfish was back at the Chateau, and I believe this was their last gig there. I took some photos at that show, but the very dark ambience of the good ol’ Chateau rendered them pretty sketchy, even with the assistance of photoshop. As noted, James and the Mercedes opened, and about the only person visible in the shots of that group is Ms. Weir. That show was memorable because I did speak with Hovey again and, more significantly, was introduced to the group’s imposing road manager, Rex Jackson. Jackson, a tall, muscular fellow who clearly could take on any of the Chateau’s bikers, was a bit brusque on our first meeting, but turned out to be a really nice guy. 

James and the Mercedes Chateau Liberte 1/26/75
Frankie Weir in spotlight. Photo: M. Parrish

I did not keep Kingfish set lists, but I think this may have been the first show at which I heard Weir sing “All I Need is Time,” the  Bud Reneau ballad that had previously been a hit for both Gladys Knight and the Pips and Roy Orbison. Kingfish’s arrangement was one of the highlights of their shows during that era, with Weir doing his best crooning and the band, especially Hoddinott displaying a beautiful combination of chops and restraint.

Well, this has gone on long enough. I will wrap this up in Part 3, hopefully more quickly than I got this piece done. 

Cryptical Reviews

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. I'm working on a long one that I hope to have up soon. In the meantime, I have started a second music blog focusing on reviews of recordings, books, and shows:
www.crypt-rev.blogspot.com. I hope to add to this weekly.

The Chateau Liberte and a Season with Kingfish and Garcia/Saunders– Part One

The retirement of the Grateful Dead from touring in October 1974 came as a blow to fans who had gotten used to seeing them several times a year, particularly in their bay area home base. Other than Jerry Garcia, who performed regularly with Merl Saunders, the remaining band members kept a low profile – rarely, if ever, venturing out as performers outside of the context of the Dead.  Even Garcia’s solo ventures had, up to that point, mostly focused on San Francisco, Berkeley, and Marin, which presented a conundrum for me as a student at UC Santa Cruz without ready access to transportation. To add insult to figurative injury, almost all of Garcia’s performances at the time were in bars that weren’t accessible to me as a 20 year old. Thus, it was a miracle of timing and geography that the Dead’s two guitarists discovered the legendary Chateau Liberté, located back in the woods of the Santa Cruz mountains not far from the summit of Highway 17. The Chateau, easily a two hour drive from Marin County, was a favored hangout for some of the alums of Moby Grape (notably Skip Spence, who played a pivotal role in the formation of Chateau regulars the Doobie Brothers), and Hot Tuna had also used the club for woodshedding, and recorded their second album, First Pull Up and Then Pull Down, at the club.

The first Dead related performance at the Chateau that I am aware was also my first visit there, for a Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders performance on October 11. Why Jerry was playing at a tiny club in the Santa Cruz mountains five days before beginning the farewell Dead shows at Winterland that became the Grateful Dead movie speaks volumes about his attitude towards playing and the music business. Don H., one of my college dorm friends, a fine musician himself, had a large van, and a bunch of us piled in the back for the trip up the mountain to the Chateau. Traveling Hwy 17 in the back of a Dodge van can be a disorienting experience, but it was even more eerie pulling off onto Summit Road and then Old Santa Cruz Highway in pitch blackness. Fortunately, Don had been to the Chateau before, so he had no trouble finding the way. Out of the darkness, a jumble of cars, motorcycles and people appeared surrounding a small shack-like structure that seemed impossibly small to be hosting a Garcia show. We paid our three bucks to the formidable doorman and made our way into the dimly lit club. Close to showtime, the Chateau was comfortably full but not so crowded that a fire marshall would be concerned (assuming s/he could find his way there).

Not having accurate figures of capacity, I would venture that the Chateau held at most half the people that could fit in the Keystones in Berkeley or Palo Alto. The main concert room was the size of a large living room, and the building was divided in half by a two sided bar parallel to the stage. On the other side of the bar was another, smaller room that held the pool tables, which were always in use, even when the musicians were onstage.

Although this was the fourth time I had seen Jerry and Merl, it was really the first full two set show I heard them play, and it was one of the most memorable of the many shows I heard them play over the next eight months. The ensemble was rounded out by John Kahn on bass, Martin Fierro on sax, flute and percussion, and LA session veteran Paul Humphrey on drums. At this stage in their musical partnership, Fierro played much more of a support role than he did during the Legion of Mary era in 1975, when his continued full bodied roar on sax could get overwhelming. Instead, this was a delicately played, very jazzy show, full of subtle nuances that could be seen as well as heard by the rapt and attentive audience (at least those of us in the front room). I attribute some of the magic of this iteration of Garcia and Saunders’ band to the presence of Humphrey, whose tasteful playing was more restrained than that of the group’s more rock-oriented drummers of the era such as Bill Kreutzmann, Bill Vitt, and Ron Tutt. All of those guys could certainly swing in a jazzy vein, but Humphrey brought something unique to the mix that took the band’s sound in a different, more understated direction that was unique to the shows during his tenure in the group.

My friends and I positioned ourselves by the soundboard, which, although in the back of the room, probably wasn’t more than 20 feet from the stage. I wasn’t keeping setlists at that time, and the Garcia-Saunders songbook of the day was sufficiently eclectic and often obscure that the names of many of the tunes were not pinned down by Garcia researchers until the last few years. Although rockers like “I’m a Road Runner” and “Mystery Train” were played, the bulk of the show was lush instrumentals and mood pieces like Saunders’ take on “Wondering Why,” which featured some beautiful flute work from Fierro. The transcendent point of the show for me occurred late in the second set, with a long, gorgeous version of Jimmy Cliff’s “Sitting in Limbo,” which had just entered the group’s repertoire a couple of months previously. All in all, I couldn’t have hoped for a better initiation into seeing Dead related ensembles in clubs.

Another opportunity was afforded just three weeks later, when a tiny ad appeared in the pre-Thanksgiving edition of Santa Cruz weekly Sundaz announcing back to back shows by Garcia and Saunders on Saturday and, on the preceding evening, a hitherto-unknown group called Kingfish that featured Bob Weir and bassist David Torbert, who had left the New Riders of the Purple Sage a few months previously.  For reasons that elude me now, the second Garcia show wasn’t workable for me, but I did end up going to the Kingfish show, curious to see what this new group had to offer.

The early history of Kingfish has been detailed in depth elsewhere, but the players other than Weir and lead guitarist Robbie Hoddinott that comprised this lineup had intertwining histories that went back to the mid-sixties. Torbert, drummer Chris Herold, and New Riders guitarist David Nelson were core members of the legendary New Delhi River Band,who played regularly in the Santa Cruz mountains and the south bay from 1966-69. Late in the band’s tenure, Kingfish harmonica and guitar player Matthew Kelly, who had led another group (St. Matthew’s Blues Band) that often opened for the NDRB, apparently joined the group as a full time member following Nelson’s departure (For a comprehensive history of the NDRB, go here). Kelly, Torbert, and Kelly subsequently moved into another band, named Shango, and ultimately to a recording 1969 recording project released under the name Horses, which was the brainchild of the Los Angeles songwriting team of Tim Gilbert and John Carter, and which included future TV star Don Johnson as lead singer-guitarist. Whether this group displaced Shango or was solely a recording project is unclear. Regardless, Kelly, Torbert, and Herold went their separate ways by early 1970, with Torbert becoming permanent bassist for the New Riders when they began touring regularly with the Dead and Kelly moving to the UK to play with blues rock band Gospel Oak.  By 1973, Kelly was back in the US and began playing with Herold and pianist Mick Ward in a primarily instrumental group called Lonesome Janet, back in the South Bay-Santa Cruz mountains axis. When Torbert quit the New Riders in near the end of 1973, he hooked up with his old cronies and hot young guitarist Robbie Hoddinott to form the first version of Kingfish. Ward died in a car accident in mid-1974, leaving a void that Weir stepped into when the Dead’s hiatus began.

I was home in Palo Alto for Thanksgiving, but ended up going to the show with a few friends from school who lived on the peninsula, including my roommate Chuck and his sister Judy. Strangely, the Chateau seemed more packed than it had been for the Garcia show a few weeks earlier, possibly because this show was promoted more broadly. Nonetheless, we had no trouble getting in, and finding a good vantage point near the stage. Any doubts that this Kingfish thing was a scam evaporated when we saw Bob Weir onstage a few feet away fiddling with his equipment.

However, before Kingfish was to take the stage, an opening set was provided by Santa Cruz Mountains stalwarts Timbercreek, a five piece psychedelic country rock band that owed more than a passing debt to the Dead, the New Riders and their ilk. I had heard Timbercreek several months earlier at the Boulder Creek Theater, co-billed with one of the earliest public screenings of Sunshine Daydream, a professionally shot (and still officially unreleased) film of the Dead’s 8/27/72 performance at the Springfield, Oregon Creamery. Timbercreek released one album, Hellbound Highway, in 1975, and played the Chateau frequently, but rarely ventured out of the Santa Cruz mountains. I remember them sounding good on both occasions, tight instrumentally and with some good originals, but can’t provide a lot of additional detail about their sets. A few decades ahead of their time, Timbercreek would have found a comfortable niche in today’s jam band scene.

Kingfish’s gig at the Chateau appears to have been their third or fourth show with the new lineup, and Bob Weir was still finding space within the band’s instrumental mix and repertoire. Weir had really never played outside of the context of the Dead (other than a handful of appearances as Bobby Ace doing C&W and folk covers in 69-70), so the audience literally had no idea of what material the band would play.

What they delivered was two fine sets of surprisingly polished music that showed them realizing their potential right at the outset. Torbert took the lion’s share of the lead vocals, opening with a slow, funky version of “Next Time You See Me,” the Junior Parker blues tune that was a mainstay of Ron “Pigpen” McKernan’s repertoire with the Dead. Torbert’s slippery, melodic bass work was a key element of Kingfish’s sound. Equally distinctive was the truly remarkable telecaster picking by twentysomething lead guitarist Robbie Hoddinott, who had seemingly come out of nowhere as a fully formed Danny Gatton-style guitar hero. Matthew Kelly alternated between rhythm guitar and gritty blues harmonica. Weir initially played more rhythm than lead, but gradually worked more of his trademark arpeggiated embellishments into the band’s sound as his time in the band progressed.

The Horses Circa 1969 Torbert (l) and Herold (r)
in the second row, and Kelly back row (l)

Many of the other Torbert-sung tunes that were the core of the Kingfish repertoire came from the Carter-Gilbert tunes penned for the Horses album, where they were sung by Johnson. However, they were by and large a great fit for the Kingfish bassist, and the band quickly made them their own. These included the soaring “Jump for Joy” (titled “Run Rabbit Run” on Horses, and the oddly syncopated and exotic “Asia Minor,” which was written by the duo in conjunction with Quigley and Tim Hovey, who had a long association with the Kingfish core and we’ll get to in part 2.  A couple of tunes faked us out as potential Dead covers. Torbert and Kelly’s “Hypnotize begins with an AM7 riff that sounded just like the intro to “Eyes of the World” and Kingfish’s funky take on “Battle of New Orleans” started out with a slow shuffle that sounded like the intro to “Sugar Magnolia” on quaaludes. The group’s sole instrumental was a cover of Little Walter’s “Juke” which had shown up on the Horses album with the unlikely title Horseradish (and a Carter-Gilbert writing credit). For most of the band’s career, Hoddinott sang a single tune – a cover of Junior Walker’s hit “Shake and Fingerpop” (Hoddinott also sang another Walker single “Peace and Understanding” with Kingfish on occasion).

For most of the first year of his tenure in the band, Weir sang only covers (except for his own "One More Saturday Night"), and only a very small number of tunes he did with the Dead – initially only two Chuck Berry tunes – Promised Land and Around and Around, which closed the first set and the show, respectively. For his other tunes, Weir went back to El Paso composer Marty Robbins for another gunfighter ballad, “Big Iron,” referenced Bill Monroe with “Muleskinner Blues,” Bobby Womack with “It’s All Over Now,” and Bo Diddley with “Mona.” Although Weir would later add these latter two tunes to the Dead’s repertoire, this was the first place he played them, at least in a rock band context. Torbert dug deep into the R&B repertoire for Rufus Thomas’ “Jump Back,” the Lieber and Stoller classic “Young Blood,” Dave Bartholomew’s “I Hear You Knockin’” and Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train.”

Kingfish at the Chateau Liberte 2/24/75
Photo: M. Parrish

Thus Kingfish’s repertoire, at the outset, was fundamentally different than those of the famous bands the two lead singers hailed from. They clearly dug deep into their mutual love of all kinds of roots music to fashion a repertoire that established Kingfish as its own entity. Although they added a number of other covers and originals throughout the 1974-76 tenure of the original band, the songs they played that night at the Chateau remained the lion’s share of Kingfish’s repertoire during their time together, and in the several reunions that followed later in the century.

From the outset, Kingfish was a ferocious live ensemble that had clearly spent a lot of time woodshedding before playing out. Torbert, whose skills and prominence as a lead vocalist and songwriter had increased dramatically the last two years he was in the New Riders, seemed confident and relaxed as putative leader of Kingfish, and Weir clearly relished the challenge of moving into a more traditional rock/R&B ensemble. The band dug deep into their collective musical tastes to develop a distinctive repertoire that drew little from either the Dead or NRPS songbooks. The group also never took on the Dead’s penchants for extended improvisation, focusing instead on vocals and tight instrumental arrangements that gave Hoddinott plenty of leash to display his flashy and virtuosic licks. The assembled throng of mountain folks and Deadheads enthusiastically embraced the group’s style and repertoire. Over the next couple of months, the Chateau became somewhat of a home away from home for the quintet as they continued to hone their chops, and I will delve more into their residency there in a subsequent post.