My last summer in Santa Cruz before leaving for graduate school in Chicago was an eventful one in CSNY lore. Most notable was Neil Young’s summer-long residence in town, during which he played 18 shows with an ad-hoc supergroup called the Ducks, mostly in small, funky watering holes. Although unofficial tapes of a few of these shows have circulated for years, this month (April 2023) marks the first official release of the band’s music on a two-disc compilation entitled High Flyin’ that does a good job of providing an audio document of the band’s energetic live sound and its diverse catalog of original and cover material.
In addition to Young, the Ducks comprised bassist Bob Mosley, guitarist Jeff Blackburn, and drummer Johnny Craviotto. All had deep musical roots that allowed them to easily stand toe-to-toe with Young creating a raw energy that blended their California roots with a bar band energy that paralleled the emerging ethos of punk rock (Indeed, Young and Blackburn crafted “Out of the Blue and Into the Black” either during the summer or shortly thereafter).
Mosley was the bassist and the most commanding vocalist in the original lineup of legendary San Francisco group Moby Grape. After recording two albums with the group’s original lineup, they famously started to fragment with the defection and mental breakdown of Skip Spence, the band’s vibrant and charismatic front man. Although they filled out their Columbia contract with two fine additional albums, they never recaptured the financial and critical success of their initial heyday in 1966-68. In 1971, the original band (plus cellist Gordon Stevens) relocated to Santa Cruz and recorded a fine album, 20 Granite Creek, named after the address of the sprawling mountain house they lived in at the time. The band did a few dates in support of the album, including an infamous gig at the Fillmore East, but Spence soon quit again and the group broke up once more. Most of the band members remained in the Santa Cruz mountains, and a new version of the group existed from about 1973-75, with original members Mosley, Peter Lewis, and Jerry Miller augmented by Blackburn on guitar and vocals and Craviotto on drums and vocals. This group was a live powerhouse on good nights, and Blackburn contributed quite a bit of original material, including the driving anthem “Silver Wings” which was later a mainstay of the Ducks shows, with two versions showcased on “High Flyin’.
Young knew both Mosley and Blackburn since the 60s, as the Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape connected early in their careers, and Blackburn, then partnered with vocalist Sherry Snow, was also part of the early SF Ballroom scene. Blackburn had moved to the Santa Cruz area in the late 1960s, and stayed there until his untimely passing earlier this year.
As Ducks tour manager Frank Mazzeo recounted the band’s origins in an a 2002 interview with writer Ben Marcus, he was drawn to Santa Cruz when he heard that the Jeff Blackburn Band (which then comprised Blackburn, Mosley, and Craviotto) had lost their lead guitarist, so the enigmatic Young decided that a summer in Santa Cruz playing in a superior bar band would be a great thing to do. Renting two bungalows on the cliff above Seabright Beach, Young and Mazzeo settled in for the summer.
Young was no stranger to Santa Cruz, having first performed at the Civic Auditorium in 1973, and subsequently made a few guerilla performances with Crazy Horse at county venues like Margarita’s and the Catalyst in 1975 and 1976 (a practice he continued into the 1990s). His first appearance of the Santa Cruz summer was not a Ducks show per se, but rather a guest shot at a birthday celebration for another Moby Grape member, lead guitarist Jerry Miller, at the Backroom, a concert space behind beloved but long-defunct Szechwan restaurant the New Riverside. Young only guested on a few songs near the show’s end, but the Ducks were revealed publicly a few days later through a cover article/interview in Santa Cruz weekly Good Times, announcing their debut at the Crossroads, a tiny watering hole that was located in the Sash Mill shopping center just north of downtown.
In pre-Internet days, news of the band’s creation traveled slowly, so I was lucky enough to get into the packed Crossroads for their first show. I had seen Young several times previously, with CSNY, the Stray Gators, at the 1975 SNACK benefit, and a memorable 1976 Berkeley Community Theater show with Crazy Horse, but seeing him in such an intimate setting was an unexpected treat. A large equipment/recording truck outside was out of character for a small bar gig, and the number of roadies/technicians outnumbered the band members. Despite the front page Good Times article, it was a remarkably low-key gig, and the Crossroads was not oversold, nor did there seem to be a lot of people shut out from the show.
Despite this being the first official Ducks gig, the two strong sets of music the band played indicated a lot of rehearsal had preceded the live show. Since Blackburn, Mosley, and Carviotto had been performing together for some time, they had already developed a strong onstage chemistry, particularly the rhythm section. In addition to being a commanding vocalist, Mosley remains one of the most powerful straight-ahead bass players to come out of the San Francisco ballroom scene, and he and Craviotto meshed powerfully with Blackburn’s chunky rhythm guitar, a synchrony that reflected the many hours they shared together on stage in Moby Grape and Blackburn’s band. Young’s sizzling lead guitar and raunchy harmonies fit right into the band’s well developed bar band persona.
All four band members shared lead vocals, roughly alternating turns throughout the show. Young performed a rousing “Mr. Soul” at just about every gig, but otherwise focused on a relatively short list of mid-seventies originals each night, including versions of “Little Wing” (recorded the previous year for the only recently released Homegrown), “Human Highway,” “Are You Ready for the Country,” “Long May You Run,” “Comes a Time,” “Cryin’ Eyes,” and “Sail Away” (the one Ducks song he apparently penned during his summer in Santa Cruz). On any given night, Young sang less than a quarter of the tunes performed over what was usually two sets. This reflected either his reluctance to hog the spotlight after joining an existing band or, equally probably, the fact that the band already had a strong repertoire of road-tested material featuring the other three musicians.
Mosley’s vocals included a couple of mid to late period Grape Tunes: “Gypsy Wedding” from 20 Granite Creek and “Truckin’ Man” from Moby Grape 69. He also performed a number of other originals, most of which have not ended up on subsequent Moby Grape or Mosley solo albums.
Craviotto’s vocal slots mostly comprised renditions of classic rock and country anthems like “I’m Ready,” “Honky Tonk Man,” and “Bye Bye Johnny.” A smooth, supple vocalist, he also took lead on a breakneck cover of Jack Nitzsche’s “Gone Dead Train.”
The deepest catalog of Ducks tunes belonged to Blackburn, and they were a diverse bunch of tunes ranging from wistful country rockers like “This Old Car,” the mystical anthem “Two Riders,” the surf-rock raveup “Hey Now, and the elegant instrumental “Windward Passage,” which they introduced at later Ducks shows.
All in all, that first show was an amazingly energetic and entertaining night of music that belied the fact that the quartet had only been working together a few days. After another night at the Crossroads, the Ducks regularly played several times a week at watering holes throughout the Santa Cruz city limits. They would approach a venue in the afternoon, buy out the band scheduled to play there, and put out another night of high-energy rock and roll. As the word spread through Santa Cruz County and beyond, hunting for the elusive Ducks gigs became a pastime for more and more people. I was working in Palo Alto at the time and also preparing to move to Chicago for grad school in a few weeks, so I did not join the hunt, but a tip from a friend got me into a second gig at the Crossroads a few weeks later, which found the band in even finer form. That show, on August 5, is represented by seven tracks on “Flyin’ High.”
During prime Duck season, I also got to see a Moby Grape show on July 29 (I think) at the Crossroads, with the lineup that recorded the 1978 Live Grape album: Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, Skip Spence (back after a long absence), and newcomers Cornelius Bumpus, Christian Powell and, from the Rhythm Dukes, drummer “Fuzzy” John Oxendine. Spence was definitely in his own orbit, and the addition of Bumpus’ songs and vocals lend a new R&B flair to the band’s sound. Although the Ducks did not play that night, no band members were in attendance at the Grape show, and Mosley was not part of the band again until sometime in the 1980s.
The other show I saw with Young in attendance that summer was a sublime acoustic benefit for the United Farmworkers at the SC Civic, billed as a David Crosby solo show. Following a great set by the original David Grisman Quintet (the first of many times I saw them), Crosby appeared alone for the first few songs, opening with a killer triptych of “The Lee Shore,” “Page 43,” and “Triad” after a few more songs, he brought out Graham Nash, and they performed five songs as a duo, most notably a gripping version of Nash’s “Cathedral.” After Crosby’s “Low Down Payment,” the duo were joined onstage by ‘local boy” Neil Young, who stayed for the remainder of the show, with the trio performing Young’s “Human Highway,” “New Mama” and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” along with CSN/CSNY favorites “Déjà vu,” “Our House,” “Wooden Ships” and “Teach Your Children,” concluding the impromptu reunion with “Sugar Mountain.” This was a warm, intimate performance that showed the trio in good spirits and enjoying one another’s company.
By the end of July, word had spread about the Ducks and all of the shows had lines of would-be patrons from the rest of the bay area and beyond that far exceeded the capacity of clubs like the Crossroads and the Backroom. The Ducks moved to playing larger venues like the Catalyst and the Santa Cruz Veteran’s Auditorium, but a lot of the magic had slipped away. Near the end of August, some of Young’s guitars were stolen from his summer rental, and the Ducks era ended with their biggest show, at the Santa Cruz Civic. Young returned to his ranch in the mountains and, although the remaining Ducks continued to perform for a while without Neil, the band lost much of its mojo, and soon disbanded. Blackburn continued to be an important part of the Santa Cruz music scene until his passing last year, whereas Craviotto switched gears and became a well-respected manufacturer of high-end wooden drums. Sadly, he also passed in 2016, leaving Young and Mosley (who seems to have retired from the music business) as the last Ducks standing. It’s been a long time coming, but High Flyin’ does a fine job of capturing the magic created during those few weeks in Santa Cruz nearly a half-century ago.
