Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals
John Kahn - electric bass
James Booker - keyboards, vocals
Ron Tutt - drums, vocals
Set 1:
All By Myself , Classified [1] > Right Place Wrong Time [2] > United Our Thing Will Stand [1] > You Are My Sunshine [2] , Junco Partner [2] , Drown In My Own Tears [2] , Tore Up Over You
Set 2:
It Takes A Lot To Laugh It Takes A Train To Cry , Goodnight Irene [3] , Let It Rock , Slowly But Surely [1] , (I'm A) Road Runner
[1] Final known performance
[2] Only known performance
[3] Final known performance (by JGB) next performance on 1982-04-21
- Diligent scholars of Jerry Garcia know that Jerry Garcia, John Kahn and Ron Tutt played two shows at Sophie's in Palo Alto with keyboardist James Booker on January 9 and 10, 1976. Tapes endure of both shows, along with rehearsal at Club Front two days earlier. The music on the tapes is ragged, and James Booker is fairly obscure, so most Deadheads have paid little attention to the shows. However, I have reflected for some time on the fact that the two Palo Alto shows with Booker were between Nicky Hopkins' departure from the Jerry Garcia Band and the beginning of Keith and Donna Godchaux's tenure with the band. Having heard and learned a little more about James Booker, I now think the brief experiment with Booker was a critical turning point in Garcia's solo career.
- Booker was a certifiable musical genius, one of the few keyboard players who could transcend the great Nicky Hopkins, and so he would have seemed to be an ideal replacement. Yet after a brief fling with Booker, Garcia and Kahn took the prudent road with the talented but safe Keith Godchaux on piano, and the path for the Garcia Band was set for the next two decades. The reasons were probably as much commercial as musical, but the two shows with James Booker illustrate the ways in which Jerry Garcia's professional priorities had evolved by 1976.
- With James Booker. Nicky Hopkins was listed on the AFM contract, dated 1/8/76. Band gets $500 guarantee or 90% of gross. Venue signed by Ken Rominger, with an address at 30 S. Central Avenue in Campbell, i.e., The Bodega.