Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-3-1971, Part 2: Hot Tuna

Here's the second set from the fourth day out of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set features the band Hot Tuna.

If there's one band that should have taken part in this series of concerts but didn't, it's Jefferson Airplane. They were one of the most iconic bands performing many times at the Fillmore West. But the band was in the middle of falling apart in 1971. According to setlist.fm, they only performed four concerts that year. So, while that band is missing, at least we get Hot Tuna. It started as a side project for Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, the lead guitarist and bassist for Jefferson Airplane respectively, but ending up dominating the rest of their music careers.

Here's the Wikipedia introduction for the band:

"Hot Tuna is an American blues rock band formed in 1969 by former Jefferson Airplane members Jorma Kaukonen (guitar/vocals) and Jack Casady (bass). Although it has always been a fluid aggregation, with musicians coming and going over the years, the band's center has always been Kaukonen and Casady's ongoing collaboration." 

And here's the link to the full article: 

Hot Tuna - Wikipedia  

Sometimes, Hot Tuna played in acoustic mode, usually just Kaukonen and Casady, and sometimes they played in electric, full band mode. For this concert, they played as a full band, with fiddler Papa John Creach and drummer Sammy Piazza.

One song here, "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning," was released on the "Fillmore - The Last Days" album. Eventually, all of it was released as "Live at the Fillmore West, 3rd July 1971." But that's a "grey market" release. Meaning even though it's often sold in stores, the band didn't approve it and they don't get any royalties from it. 

This album is an hour and 40 minutes long. 

01 talk by Bill Graham (Hot Tuna)
02 That'll Never Happen No More (Hot Tuna)
03 talk (Hot Tuna)
04 How Long Blues (Hot Tuna)
05 Candy Man (Hot Tuna)
06 New Song [For the Morning] (Hot Tuna)
07 talk (Hot Tuna)
08 Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (Hot Tuna)
09 Uncle Sam's Blues (Hot Tuna)
10 talk (Hot Tuna)
11 John's Other [Instrumental] (Hot Tuna)
12 Rock Me Baby (Hot Tuna)
13 I Want You to Know (Hot Tuna)
14 I Know You Rider (Hot Tuna)
15 Been So Long (Hot Tuna)
16 Come Back Baby (Hot Tuna)
17 Feel So Good (Hot Tuna) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TsyTRqqz

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/gzMujewRy9pf2J9/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took from the "Fillmore" movie. It shows Jorma Kaukonen holding a guitar, and Jack Casady, the bassist, with his back to the camera.

Jorma Kaukonen - Shelter Coffee House, San Jose, CA, 6-25-1964

Occasionally, I'm amazed that a bootleg of a concert from a certain era of an artist's career exists at all, then I'm doubly amazed that the sound quality is so good. The 1963 Jackie deShannon concert I've posted here is one example, and the 1967 Grass Roots concert I've posted here is another. This concert also falls into that category.

I mean, who would expect to find a Jorma Kaukonen concert bootleg from all way back to 1964?! I didn't even know what he was doing musically prior to joining Jefferson Airplane in 1965. It turns out he played acoustic blues in folk clubs for a few years, starting in 1962 or earlier. He doesn't seem to have been very popular at that time. I found a couple of playbills with his name on it from those pre-Jefferson Airplane years on a Hot Tuna website. His name was way down in importance, in small letters. (By the way, at that time he was going by the name Jerry Kaukonen.) 

Yet here we have a full concert recording from him, an apparent soundboard in excellent sound quality! I just happened to stumble across it a couple of days ago. I consider myself quite lucky, because it's an extremely obscure bootleg. I literally only found three or four Google search results, but one of them had a link to download the full show. Hopefully by posting this, I'll help to give it more prominence. I figure few Jorma/ Hot Tuna fans have ever even thought to search for bootlegs from before his Jefferson Airplane days.

What I find most interesting about this is how fully formed his musical vision was then. Many of these songs were later done by him as part of Hot Tuna or as a solo artist, often in very similar versions. You also get the future Jefferson Airplane song "Good Shepherd." He already had an obsession with the music of the Reverend Gary Davis, something that's continued for the rest of his career. Virtually all of the song are blues or gospel covers ("Mann's Fate" is an original), and a handful were written by Davis.

The bootleg I took this from is over half an hour longer. This comes from two sets, and I removed all the duplicates: "Hesitation Blues," "San Francisco Bay Blues," "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Death Don't Have No Mercy," and two versions of "Candy Man." I also cut out most of the guitar tuning between songs, of which there was quite a lot.

Unlike many bootlegs from the 1960s where the tape recorder was turned off between songs to save tape, this appears to be the full show of two sets. The best evidence of that is all the guitar tuning (that I often removed). So although there isn't much banter between songs, I think it's safe to say that's because he simply didn't talk much instead of those bits getting lost. Whenever he did talk, his voice was rather quiet, so I boosted the volume on those parts to help you hear what he was saying.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long. If you're a fan of his music, I highly recommend you get this. It's interesting to hear the early versions of songs he would often play later. But I think it's even more interesting that about half of these songs are ones he apparently permanently dropped from his repertoire once he joined Jefferson Airplane.

01 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Come Back Baby (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Move to Kansas City (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 Worry No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Follow the Drinking Gourd (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Keep On Truckin' (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Always (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 Nine Pound Hammer (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 Search My Heart (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 Mann's Fate [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 Good Shepherd (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 That'll Never Happen No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Death Don't Have No Mercy (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 San Francisco Bay Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 Lullaby [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Late in the Evening Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 Hesitation Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 True Religion (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 Candy Man (Jorma Kaukonen)
27 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
28 Trouble in Mind (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292183/JormaK_1964_SheltrCoffeeHouseSnJoseCA__6-25-1964_atse.zip.html

When I decided to make this an album I would post on my blog, I went looking for a photo of Kaukonen from 1964. I must say I thought the odds of actually finding one were between slim and none, but I felt I had to at least look. To my surprise, I actually found a photo of him playing in a club in 1964! The only snag was that it was in black and white, so I colorized it.

Between this music and the photo, I'm quite amazed at what one can find on the Internet these days. :)

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 4, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 5-23-2020 to 11-21-2020

I still have quite a backlog of home concerts from 2020 to post. So here's one more. 

This is the last one of Jorma Kaukonen. Unfortunately, even though he's been playing home concerts pretty much every week from the start of the pandemic until now (sometimes alone and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna), he tends to play the same songs over and over again. For the three previous volumes, I avoided repeating songs. With this one, the unique songs basically ran out. These are the songs he didn't play in a few months of previous home concerts, so they're generally his rarities. As such, I find this volume the most interesting one.

There isn't much else to say. He's been very consistent with playing at the same place using the same set up for all his home concerts, so the sound quality is uniformly excellent. Also, as I did with previous volumes, I've cut out most of the between song banter except for the bits that are directly relevant to the songs he played. He's typically done long question and answer sessions with questions sent in by fans, so if I included that it would be a totally different thing, with tons more talking.

I don't know why, but I've made the albums in this series rather long, at over an hour apiece. This one is especially long, at an hour and forty minutes. If he ends up doing a handful of unique songs in 2021 home concerts, I'll probably add those and break this in two. But, for now, it is what it is.

I've added one song as a bonus track, "Yes Blues." This cover of the Beatles song was done for a John Lennon tribute concert in October 2020, so it doesn't exactly fit the home concert format. But it's a performance in the same solo acoustic blues style as most of the other songs, so I figure it fits enough to be a bonus track.

01 Broken Highway (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 A Walk with Friends [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Corners without Exits (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Roads and Roads and (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Izze's Lullaby [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Ode for Billy Dean (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 Song from the Stainless Cymbal (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 What Are They Doing in Heaven Today (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 Blues Stay Away from Me (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Follow the Drinking Gourd [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 That'll Never Happen No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Folsom Prison Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 Great Divide Revisited (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 Soliloquy for 2 (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 Uncle Sam Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 Serpent of Dreams (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 Second Chances (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 Blue Railroad Train (Jorma Kaukonen)
27 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
28 West Coast Blues [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
29 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
30 I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now (Jorma Kaukonen)
31 You and My Old Guitar (Jorma Kaukonen)
32 Vampire Women (Jorma Kaukonen)
33 Yer Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Lxoqo4H2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1kfsUUnjrQTSGAz/file

The cover art photo is a screen shot from one of the home concerts during this time period. I don't recall which one.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 3, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 5-2-2020 to 5-16-2020

It's already 2021 as I write this, but I still have some 2020 home concerts to post. So here's another from Jorma Kaukonen of both Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fame. Since the pandemic began, he's been holding a concert at his home once a week, sometimes solo and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna. He continues to do that most weeks.

I think Kaukonen is underrated as a songwriter. I also think he relies too much on a small number of blues songs by others that he plays over and over again, especially those by Rev. Gary Davis. So this contains the songs he hadn't played in previous home concerts up till this point, minus those overplayed blues covers. The result is mostly originals, though there are a few covers here, such as "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "Nine Pound Hammer."

Also, note that his home concerts have often had as much talking as music. Typically, his wife has asked him questions from fans, and he would answer them at length. I've removed pretty much all of that. However, I've kept the comments he made that are relevant to the songs he's playing, so there's still a decent amount of between song banter.

I think the songs here are particularly interesting, because the songs he plays the most generally appeared on the first two albums in this series. These are the lesser known ones. But in my opinion they're generally very good just the same.

01 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Letter to the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Do Not Go Gentle [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 From the Land of Heroes (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Mann's Fate [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 In My Dreams (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 River of Time (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Living Just for You (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 Song for the High Mountain (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Trial by Fire (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Song for the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 Another Man Done a Full Go Round (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 A Life Well Lived (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Day to Day Out the Window Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 I'll Let You Know Before I Leave [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 Hamar Promenade (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 Nine Pound Hammer (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292229/JormaK_2020_HomeConcrts3FurPeaceRanch_5-2-2020_to_5-16-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot taken from one of the YouTube videos of the songs on this album.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 2, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 4-18-2020 to 4-25-2020

As I posted yesterday, I had a hard drive crash and a lot of data I had is now permanently lost. Thankfully, my music collection is stored on a different hard drive. This close call has given me a new appreciation for my music blog. If I did have a disaster and lose my music collection, at least a good portion of the unique parts of it would be here on this blog. So I'm going to focus even more on trying to post the music that hasn't been collected in the way I've collected it elsewhere.

This album is a case in point. Jorma Kaukonen has done a ton of home concerts since the pandemic began, usually once a week, sometimes solo and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna. He's still at it. But those concerts have included long question and answer sessions, as well as guest spotlights, neither of which I'm interested in. Plus, he tends to play a lot of the same songs. So this blog is probably the only place were you can find his home concerts boiled down to just the essential music and banter, without song repeats.

As a personal quirk, I've gotten bored with many of the covers he does, especially his covers of religious Rev. Gary Davis songs. So I've cut way down on those, and focused more on his original songs. I think he's underappreciated as a songwriter. There is the occasional cover song here, such as "Parchman Farm" and "I Know You Rider," but the vast majority are originals.

I have a few more in this series to post, especially if he continues to play more home concerts. This album is an hour and nine minutes long. I'm not sure why I made all the albums in this series over an hour long, but I did. It's been months since I made these albums, so I forget my reasoning, but I must have had some reason for it. ;)

01 Too Many Years (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Parchman Farm (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 The Terrible Operation (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Flying Clouds (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Watch the North Wind Rise (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 Reenlistment Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 New Song [For the Morning] (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 I See the Light (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Ain't in No Hurry (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Third Week in the Chelsea (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Bar Room Crystal Ball (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 Wolves and Lambs (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 Things That Might Have Been (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 I Know You Rider (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292182/JormaK_2020_HomeConcrts2FurPeaceRanch_4-18-2020_to_4-25-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from one of the YouTube videos of the home concerts contained here.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 1, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 4-4-2020 to 4-11-2020

Some musician have been quiet in terms of public musical activity during the coronavirus lockdown, and others have been very active. Jorma Kaukonen has definitely been one of the active ones, putting on one lengthy home concert a week since the lockdown began. In case you don't know who he is, he was the lead guitarist for Jefferson Airplane in the 1960s, then has been part of the blues-based duo Hot Tuna ever since then, along with bassist Jack Cassady, also formerly of Jefferson Airplane. Since the 1970s, he's put out a mix of solo albums and Hot Tuna. Frankly, they don't sound that different to me, because he's the sole songwriter and lead vocalist on both.

Ever since leaving Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen's recordings have been heavily influenced by the blues, most especially the acoustic blues of the Reverend Gary Davis. Since that time, he's done a lot of covers of blues classics, especially Gary Davis songs. But he's also written many of his own songs. And although they're informed by the blues, they have a distinctive style of their own.

This is the first of several albums of his 2020 home concerts that I plan on posting here. But I have to admit I've done something you might consider unexpected, if you're familiar with his music. To be frank, I'm kind of burned out on his covers of blues classics, especially his covers of Gary Davis songs. I feel like I've heard him do songs like "Death Don't Have No Mercy," "Candy Man," and "True Religion" a million times. I much more interested in his original songs. So, for these albums, I've pretty much just selected his originals (with occasional exceptions).

I've made some other significant omissions. For his home concerts, he typically has his wife select questions that have been asked by fans, and then he answers them between songs. I cut all of that out, and lots of talking besides. If I didn't, it would be nearly as much talking as music, and it's not the kind that lends itself to repeated listenings. If you want to hear all that, check out the YouTube videos of the full concerts. I did keep some between song banter, but generally just the bits that relate to the songs being played.

Furthermore, for each of his concerts, he typically has some guest musicians who sing their own songs. They're usually Myron Hart and/or John Hurlbut, neither of whom I'd heard of before. I'm not really interested in their stuff, and I want to keep the focus on Kaukonen and his original songs, so I've cut all their songs out as well, even though Kaukonen joins them on guitar.

Because I've cut out a bunch of stuff, this comes from two concerts instead of just one. It's an hour and seven minutes long. I hope this helps people appreciate what a talented songwriter he is, as well as being well known for his guitar playing. I could be wrong, but I think the only songs here he didn't write are "Good Shepherd" (which he did with Jefferson Airplane) and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime."

01 Heart Temporary (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Been So Long (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 Barbeque King (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Sea Child (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 In the Kingdom (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 Good Shepherd (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Water Song [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Ice Age (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Living in the Moment [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 Sleep Song (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 Genesis (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 What Are They Doing in Heaven Today (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Embryonic Journey [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292176/JormaK_2020_HomeConcrts1FurPeaceRanch_4-4-2020_to_4-11-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot from the first concert featured here.