Dear Harry,
It was in the summer of '65 when we moved
to the house on Waverly. Jerry was there for 4 or 5 months I think,
maybe a little longer, before moving to the Ashbury house in SF. I
stayed on at Waverly for a couple months after he moved. I had the lease
on the place. Robert Hunter lived in the attic. David Nelson lived
there, as did Dave Parker and his wife, Bonnie.
There
was some occasional playing around the house, of course. Any playing
Jerry and I did (which was not a lot) would have been on two banjos,
prompted by talking about some tune, or some technique. This was during
the time when the Warlocks changed their name to the Dead. I had done
the artwork for Bill's drum head, a colorful rendering of "Warlocks"
that was then obsolete.
I've been doing a bit
of writing lately about some of my early memories. I'll steer my
thinking toward this particular time period, and see what I can jog
loose from my memory to share with you. I can think of a few things
offhand, but I need a bit of time to write them down properly.
...Rick
Just to puncture the myth about unsuccessful banjo players, Rick Shubb invented a revolutionary capo (fretting device) that sold over a million units, and became a legend of a different kind.
The purple house is long gone, turrets and all. It's a condo development now. The address is 653-681 Waverley.
Jerry rehearsed here in
Summer 1965 Rick Shubb, Robert Hunter, David Nelson, Dave and Bonnie Parker
Rick Shubb lived in at least two houses in Palo Alto in 1964-66. One was on Hamilton (I think 436) long since torn down. The Waverley Street house was purple with turrets--I remember it clearly. It was still intact in 1969 when we moved nearby, but it was torn down in subsequent years. It was on the corner of Waverley and Channing. The current addresses of the condos there are 653-681 Waverley.
ReplyDeleteI reliable source says that Garcia didn't actually live at the Waverley street house, although she is cagey about where Garcia might have actually lived. In any case, Garcia hung out there with the likes of Shubb and other familiar faces (Nelson lived across the street, on Channing).
I think Rick Shubb is the one who gave John Dawson the name 'Marmaduke.'
I've emailed Rick and hope he can answer these questions definitively.
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