Dark Star by Robert Greenfield Page A

picking.
    David Nelson: The thing about Jerry was that you could come up to him and ask him how to do something and he would show you, which was an incredible thing when you think back about those times. There wasn’t this free atmosphere of exchange. I remember asking him a few questions and he came and showed me in detail how to do certain finger-style things.
    Peter Albin: The musicians respected him and the audience at the College of San Mateo show thought he was good. But God, he took so long to tune. It was like he went for like some sort of philosophical tuning. I remember my father who always came to these gigs said, “When is that guy going to stop tuning?” That was his major complaint after the gig. He said, “God, that guy Garcia. When is he going to learn how to tune that damn thing? He spent about like a half hour on that goddamn banjo tuning that fucking thing.” The audience would be getting restless and Jerry would be going, “Just a second, folks. You want me to play good here, I got to be in tune, blah, blah, blah.” He’d make some more clever remarks. “And now a Chinese song. ‘Too-Ning.’” That was the classic line during the sixties. Named after a city in China.

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    Sara Ruppenthal Garcia: There was a folk music festival in Monterey in the summer of ’63. Chris Strachwitz, who still owns Arhoolie Records, brought in old-timey people, the original guys who were still alive. I don’t know if Doc Watson was there but I think he brought Clarence Ashley. Clarence White may have come. I don’t know how we afforded the gas to get down there. I know that we didn’t have any food. We didn’t have any place to stay. We slept in the car. I was pregnant. It was just peanut butter and bread if we were lucky. Bob Dylan played there. Lots of things had been going on. Small performances and workshops. Connecting with some of the real seminal American folk music. Dylan did more of a performance in a big space. He came out by himself on stage and brought a little amplifier and plugged in his guitar. We were so outraged by the amp that we got up, walked down the center aisle to the stage, and marched off. It was like, “We are not going to be a part of this.” Amplified guitar? This wasn’t pure. For money, Jerry had played in a rock ’n’ roll band with Troy Weidenheimer. They played fraternity parties. What they had to put up with was awful. And in high school, Jerry had played on Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Wanna Dance?” But he didn’t consider that exactly worthy. What he really wanted was to play with Bill Monroe. That would be the pinnacle of success.
    David Nelson: Hunter wasn’t really as dedicated as we were. He wasn’t ready to die for it like we were. We were insane. We were nuts for bluegrass. Back then, you couldn’t get this music in record stores. You had to know some real big-time collector. One lived up at Stanford. I think his father was a professor. We would go over there and pester him to play tapes for us because he had a collection like the Dead tape system now. People would give us copies and we’d trade tapes of different blue-grass gigs. So we’d actually get to hear the real thing. Not a studio slicked-up version. I remember going over there lots of times, sitting on that couch and listening to stuff. I would just never get tired of it. All these other guys were older than me. So when they decided that was enough, we had to go. I’d always be saying, “Oh, can we hear some more?” Jerry would say, “No. Don’t make him mad. Don’t piss him off, Nelson. Don’t wear out our welcome.” Because we wanted to be able to do that most any time. That was where I first heard the Stanley Brothers live and Flatt and Scruggs live and Clarence White, the guitar player. It was amazing.
    Peter Albin: Garcia and Nelson and Hunter concentrated on