Huey plus Jerry equals ?

Image from Dead.net

“This time there was no Grateful Dead to confuse the Party’s supporters...”

In popular media mythology the 1960s was a decade-long political and cultural confrontation between the Woodstock generation and what Nixon would come to call “the silent majority.” What is presented is basically one mass of people versus another. But like all myths that image is an extreme oversimplification, perhaps no more apparent than in regards to those who are grouped as “radicals.” Whether we want to talk about the internal divisions within the main civil rights organizations, the disagreements between counter-culturalists and political radicals over how to change society, or the battles between insurgent feminists and the male-dominated leftist organizations of the day, you don’t have to read too far in the history of the period to notice how much conflict existed within those not belonging to that so-called silent majority. In his history of the period, There’s A Riot Going On, Peter Doggett does a good job of tracking these differences as they relate to the more general politics of Rock and Roll in the late 60s and early 70s.

One of the more amusing, yet instructive, instances of culture clash that Doggett recounts concerns the March 5th, 1971 benefit concert for the Black Panther Party that the Grateful Dead headlined. During a plane trip to New York City on September, 16, 1970 (2 days before Hendrix’s death), the Dead had a long, enjoyable conversation with BPP leader Huey Newton -- of which the FBI filed a report on a few days later. (Huey and Jerry and the boys conversed while in another section of the plane Ray Charles beat the Dead’s tour manager, Sam Cutler, at chess.) The Dead were not known as a revolutionary political group, but they liked Newton and The Panthers’ concrete, everyday efforts to feed and clothe the poor in the Oakland community were just the sort of DIY social work (like the Diggers’ similar efforts) they supported. So when Newton later asked them to play the benefit concert the band agreed. They were to share the stage with two BPP-affiliated revolutionary groups, The Lumpen and The Vanguard. I haven’t been able to locate any information about The Vanguard, but you can read about and listen to The Lumpen’s 45rpm blast of R&B revolutionary-rhetoric, “Free Bobby Now,” over at the excellent GarageHangover (which includes comments from some original band members). As for the Dead’s set, well, as Doggett writes “even with an abridged set built around the mid-60s R&B hit “Turn on Your Lovelight,” [the Dead] made little impact on the predominantly black crowd.” (One song! Shortest Dead show ever?) This one-song-show isn’t listed on Archive.Org, but you can get a feeling for what the Dead were sounding like at the time from their February 1971 run at Capital Theatre -- the second night of which is conveniently released as Three From the Vault.

Grateful Dead - Bertha
Grateful Dead - Easy Wind