Hooteroll? + 2

Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia

Douglas

A CD release of Hooeroll? that includes all tracks from the original LP (for the first time on CD) plus the additional tracks that were included on previous CD releases plus two previously unreleased bonus tracks. The live bonus tracks were recorded at the January 28, 1972 Garcia/Wales show in Providence, Rhode Island.

Tracks

• Morning In Marin (Wales)
• Da Birg Song (Wales)
• South Side Strut (Fierro / Wales)
• Up From The Desert (Wales)
• A Trip To What Next (Wales)
• DC-502 (Wales)
• One A.M. Approach (Wales)
• Uncle Martin's (Wales)
• Evening In Marin (Wales)
• She Once Lived Here (Inman)
• Sweet Cocaine (Traditional)

• Howard Wales - piano, organ
• Jerry Garcia - guitar
• John Kahn - bass
• Curly Cook - rhythm guitar
• Bill Vitt - drums
• Michael Marinelli - drums
• Ken Balzall - trumpet
• Martin Fierro - saxophone, flute

Original LP:

• Producer - Alan Douglas, Doris Dynamite
• Horn arrangements - Martin Fierro
• Recording Engineer - Russ Geary
• Mixing - Tom Bongiovi
• Cover painting - Abdul Mati
• Design - J. E. Tully

In an interview in 1991 Garcia, while discussing working with John Kahn over the years, commented on his time playing with Howard Wales;

He [John Kahn] and I have been playing together since - we started working together for Howard Wales at a little club in San Francisco called the Matrix on Monday nights, right around '68, '69, somewhere around there. When the Grateful Dead isn't working, I like to keep playing.

So they used to have this Monday night jam session, but Howard gradually sort of took it over. Howard's this amazing organ player - difficult person, but wonderful musician. And for some reason he liked our playing, John and mine. We didn't know each other, John and I. In fact we played with Howard for almost a year before we even actually started talking to each other. Really. We would just show up, plug in, and play. About half the set I'd be whispering to John, I'd be saying, 'Hey, man, what key are we in?' Howard didn't have tunings or anything, he just played. Sometimes he would do these things that were so outside that you just couldn't - unless you knew where it was going, you had no idea where to start. Sometimes they'd turn out to be just these things like four-bar blues turnarounds, relatively simple musical things, but they were so extended the way he'd play them - 'God, what is this?

Anyway, I learned a lot - both of us learned a lot about staying awake and listening to what's going on, playing with Howard. It was a real experience. We played with him for a couple of years, and then Howard went off and kinda - periodically he gets this thing of where he just can't deal with the music world any more, and he just disappears. So we were there, stuck there, and we were supposed to play Monday night, and we didn't have a player. John said, 'Well, I just did some sessions with this guy Merl Saunders.

Howard was so incredible, and we were just hanging on for dear life ... playing with Howard did more for my ears than anybody I ever played with, because he was so extended and so different.

I actually got to know Jerry because of this Monday night jam session gig at a club called the Matrix in San Francisco. This goes pretty far back, this is like 1968. It was a Monday jam session gig. It was Jerry, Howard Wales, the organ player and Bill Vitt. Bill Vitt was the drummer with the Bloomfield Band at that time, and he turned me on to the gig. I had never met Jerry, I had met Howard once before. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I just kept doing that. We played Monday nights when everybody was in town. Nobody came, there was maybe five or six people there. We'd split up maybe ten dollars amongst the four of us. It went on for a while like that, I mean nobody ever came. Then finally one night there were a lot of people out there, and Howard realized that that's not what he wanted to do, and he stopped doing it. So I got Merl Saunders, and that's when it turned into the Jerry Garcia Band, and it's been going ever since.

We played Monday nights there for a while, and for the longest time, hardly anybody would show up. We'd get ten people and split ten dollars four ways at the end of the night.

The image on the front cover of this album is part of the middle section of a series of five transformational landscapes by Abdul Mati (Abdul Mati Klarwein) entitled Saint John. The image has been clipped by different amounts on different releases of the Hooteroll? album.

The middle section of Saint Joan has also been used as the cover art on the Kaleidoscope album by Jam & Spoon.

The five images that comprise the Saint John series can be viewed on the Abdul Mati Klarwein Saint John web page.

Images from work by Abdul Mati Klarwein have also been used on the Miles Davis albums Bitches Brew and Live/Evil and the Santana album Abraxas and on albums by Earth, Wind & Fire, Reuben Wilson, Matt Egan, Eric Dolphy, The Last Poets, Jon Hassell, Osibisa, Joe Beck, Greg Allman, Buddy Miles and Jackie McLean. For more information about the artist see the Abdul Mati Klarwein website.

Related releases

The Hooteroll? LP was originally released in 1971;

• Hooteroll?, Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia, 1971, Douglas KZ 30859

A 7 inch single was released from Hooteroll?;

• South Side Strut / Uncle Martin's, Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia, January 1972, Douglas JZS7 6501

• South Side Strut / Theme Of El Topo / Peace One / Maybe, Various Artists, 1972, Douglas AS7 1008

• Douglas Sampler, Various Artists, 1998, Douglas 200

• Steal This Disc 2, Various Artists, 1987, Rykodisc

• Here It Is, The Music, Various Artists, 1988

• Side Trips, Jerry Garcia and Howard Wales, 1998, Grateful Dead Merchandising, GDCD4061

1971 LP


Pre-2009 CDs


2009 CD