Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders Band
Pure Jerry 4: Keystone Berkeley
[September 1, 1974]
(Jerry Made)
First Appeared in The Music Box, February 2005, Volume 12, #2
Written by John Metzger
In the early-to-mid-’70s, whenever the Grateful Dead wasn’t on
tour, Jerry Garcia’s restless muse frequently led him to one of two places: his
acoustic-oriented, folk- and bluegrass-tinged excursions with David Grisman, and
his electric, jazz- and soul-tinted explorations with Merl Saunders. Although
these disparate locales stood in polar opposition to one another, they also
touched upon the fringes of his primary outfit’s tangled tapestry of styles,
allowing the guitarist to take a vacation from his day job, while continuing to
develop new theories and ideas to further improve its endeavors. Of course, the
Grateful Dead’s ever-changing stylistic jumble already has been documented quite
extensively through a variety of concert recordings — not the least of which is
the masterful, 34-volume (and counting) Dick’s Picks collection — but
until recently, Garcia’s solo enterprises were known only to the tape collectors
among his most diehard fans. Yet, if 2004 saw the floodgates of the guitarist’s
vast archive of solo material swing open, 2005 finds its keepers getting serious
about preserving his legacy. Quietly released just prior to Christmas, the
fourth installment of the Pure Jerry series contains a complete show from
Garcia’s stint with the Merl Saunders Band, and not only is it by far the finest
edition of the set, but it also establishes a nearly insurmountable precedent
for the future. Recorded on September 1, 1974 at their regular Bay Area haunt of
Keystone Berkeley, the three-disc collection magically captures the duo of
Garcia and Saunders along with bass player John Kahn, drummer Paul Humphrey,
saxophonist Martin Fierro, and an unidentified trumpeter as they deliver an epic
Granted, the set lists employed by any of the Garcia-Saunders projects didn’t vary tremendously from one show to the next, and each was peppered with an organic blend of Bob Dylan-penned, Motown-germinated, jazz, blues, funk, reggae, and rock selections. Indeed, this particular 19-song event found the band playfully making a mishmash of these styles while rummaging through standards such as Dylan’s Tough Mama, Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Someday Baby, Jimmy Cliff’s The Harder They Come, Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Favela, and a handful of original compositions, such as Saunders’ Soul Roach and Fierro’s La La. Much like the group’s countless other performances, each song was ripped from its moorings only to be stretched and reshaped by the collective into something fresh, exciting, and new. Not surprisingly, the end result of such improvisational mayhem could be a hit-and-miss affair, but for whatever reason, September 1, 1974 yielded a truly awesome, mind-blowing experience, one that rivaled the Grateful Dead’s own astonishing sojourns.
While nearly a year earlier the Grateful Dead had made an attempt to tour
with a horn section, the resulting shows were wildly erratic affairs, and the
concept quickly was abandoned. Still, Miles Davis’ jazz-fusion experiments
increasingly were fueling the band’s repertoire, and so too did they weigh quite
heavily upon Garcia and Saunders’ own musical ruminations. During the Keystone
Berkeley show, this, of course, is most noticeable on instrumental outings such
as the molten mayhem of La La and the probing, improvisational fury of Keystone Jam, but even songs like the sweetly supernal Sitting in Limbo
and the hard-driving Mystery Train featured taut rhythms around which the
soloists darted, danced, and swayed. Elsewhere, the ensemble mutated Roadrunner into a blistering, funk-fueled workout; unearthed the gospel core
of Dylan’s Going, Going, Gone and utilized it to construct a radiant R&B
masterpiece; slipped into Philly soul for a brief romp through People Make
the World Go Round — and, yes, that’s the same song that propelled The
Stylistics into public purview — and settled comfortably into the roots-rock
strains of Robbie Robertson’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. In
essence, the fourth chapter in the Pure Jerry series amounts to being a
whirlwind tour de force that far and away surpasses not only the entirety of
Jerry Garcia’s solo canon, but also many of the Grateful Dead’s own releases. 
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2005 The Music Box