Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders
July 8, 1973 · Record Plant Sausalito
Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, John Kahn, and Bill Vitt had been playing together since 1970, holding down a weekly residency at the Matrix club in San Francisco. On July 8, 1973, they brought that same loose, exploratory chemistry to the Record Plant for a KSAN broadcast. Two days later the group played the Keystone Berkeley, a run later released as the acclaimed Live at Keystone album. The Plant broadcast sits directly alongside that moment, an informal, warm-up-adjacent document of one of the era's most respected small-group jazz-blues collaborations outside Garcia's work with the Grateful Dead.
- Type
- Live Broadcast
- Date Recorded
- July 8, 1973
- Date Broadcast
- July 8, 1973
KSAN 95 FM broadcast. | CENSUS 2026-05-30, enriched 2026-05-31: Recording CONFIRMED. Best source (URL1): Internet Archive full FM broadcast w/ Tom Donahue intro. Alt (URL2): Aquarium Drunkard feature writeup. Also official CD 'Record Plant, Sausalito, July 8 1973, KSAN Broadcast' (Code 7/Teatro, 2021) and KSAN FM/FLAC collector tree (Beanstalk 1). Personnel: Jerry Garcia (gtr/vcl), Merl Saunders (organ), John Kahn (bass), Bill Vitt (drums). FULL SETLIST: Intro (Donahue) / Someday Baby / My Funny Valentine / That's Alright Mama / It's Too Late (She's Gone) / Finders Keepers / Second That Emotion / Georgia On My Mind / Positively 4th Street / How Sweet It Is. CONTEXT: the Garcia/Saunders/Kahn/Vitt quartet had a weekly Matrix jam from 1970; played Record Plant 7/08, then the famous Keystone Berkeley shows 7/10-11/73 (Live at Keystone). OFFICIAL CROSSOVER: one previously-unreleased track from this 7/08 KSAN broadcast appears on 'Well-Matched: The Best Of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia' (Concord, 2006). Recording Type: FM Broadcast. Quality: Lossless avail. Audio: Yes / Setlist: Yes. Confidence: High. ARTICLE: see Articles table (Researching).
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