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Pigpen Grateful Dead Im A Lovin Man
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=6uSgXFlEt5Y
~ Circa 1969 - Pacific High Recording - San Francisco, CA • Following info from http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2011/0... • Mystery studio tape from ’69 where Pigpen dabbles in country! • I’m a Lovin’ Man is a slickly produced country song sung by Pigpen and Weir. Garcia plays pedal steel, and John Tenney plays fiddle. Also circulating on tape was an instrumental version of Buck Owens’ song I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me) - named “Buckeye’s Theme” in the Taping Compendium - again with Garcia on pedal steel and Tenney on fiddle. • John Tenney, whose memory is fortunately very good, gave an account of the session. (I’ve edited for clarity.) “In late 1969 I played fiddle on a song called ‘I'm a Lovin' Man’ for a proposed Pigpen solo album. Jerry, Pigpen and Weir were playing. The bass player was Dennis Parker (on my recommendation), then with a SF band called Allmen Joy. The drummer was Scott Morris. The song was written by Clancy Carlile, a novelist, songwriter and honkytonk guitarist/singer with whom I was playing in a country band. (He was involved in the production.) The session was at Pacific High Recording. My recollection is that Pigpen's album was maybe going to come out on Mercury or its subsidiary Smash. Mercury had a strong presence in San Francisco at the time, with its own studio. The producer I think was one Bob Serempa, a local A R man with Mercury. I don't know why he used Pacific High for the recording, except that the Mercury studio was very busy with people like the Sir Douglas Quintet at the time. I also recall a guy named Bill Freeman (whose exact involvement I forget) being at the session in some sort of executive capacity.” • There are a couple things to note here. One, Bob Serempa was not just an A R man – he had been the director of West Coast operations for Mercury Records, and in ’69 he was the head of the newly built Mercury Studios on Mission Street. So this seems to indicate a more than casual interest from Mercury Records. Also, the Dead were regulars at Pacific High Recording. They had finished recording Aoxomoxoa there earlier that year; and in 1970 they would record Workingman’s Dead there. (Garcia would fall into the habit of anonymously doing work on other people’s albums, so possibly this was intended to be a ‘stealth’ recording session.) • The big question here is, why would Mercury Records want an album of country songs done by members of the Warner Bros. psychedelic group the Grateful Dead? Why, for that matter, would Pigpen sing an album of country songs? (You can be pretty sure doing a Buck Owens tune wasn’t his idea.) And where was the rest of the band? • Though these questions are unanswerable, I looked for another connection, and amazingly, found a mid-1969 event in which Garcia, Serempa, Carlile, and Freeman were all involved. • From Billboard’s 4/19/69 issue: • “Two weeks of seminars and workshops on contemporary music begin June 8… The 50 free seminars, which range from rock guitar technique (taught by Jerry Garcia) to creation of a commercial sound (Bob Sarempa of Mercury Records), are the pilot project of the San Francisco College of Contemporary Music. The seminars will be held at Mills College in Oakland… Teachers, to be paid $100 a week, also include John Handy, Elvin Bishop, Harvey Mandel, Big Black, Roland Kirk, and Phil Lesh. The College of Contemporary Music was founded (at least as a full-time venture) last December by Leonard Sheftman (half-owner of the Both/And jazz club); Clancy Carlile, a songwriter and producer; and Bill Freeman, band manager and producer. As yet there is no permanent site for the college, and no classes will be scheduled until [the workshops] are over, but the college has commitments from artists to do the teaching. The school hopes to solicit funds from the music industry and foundations. Bill Graham has already donated $1000, which went for office equipment…” • As far as we know, these seminars never actually happened, and plans for the college fell through as it never actually came into existence! (You can imagine the disappointment of those hoping to be taught “rock guitar technique” by Jerry Garcia…) It is striking, though, that not only did members of the Dead agree to teach classes for the college, but they also participated in a country-music session produced by a couple founders of the college (and another one of the teachers) later that year. Coincidence? I feel there has to be an untold story here….but for the moment, unless someone asks Weir about it, that’s all we know. If this ’69 session was the first step towards a Pigpen solo album, it was premature – the next we hear about solo Pigpen is in 1971. • ~ Thanks very much to deadessays.blogspot.com for all their work ~ • I do not own this. All rights reserved by the original owners. ~ For the love of music only ~
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