Julius Karpen was a hard-boiled, Chicago newspaperman before he headed west and became a Merry Prankster. He went on the lam with Ken Kesey to Mexico and shortly after his return, he became the manager of Big Brother and The Holding Comany, post-Chet Helms and pre-Albert Grossman.
This is Julius’s business card from his Prankster days.
Threadgill’s, the coverted gas station/roadhouse in Austin where Janis Joplin performed every Wednesday night with The Waller Creek Boys (Powell St. John and Lanny Wiggins) beginning in the summer of ‘62. In January 1963, Chet Helms rolled into town for a visit and heard Janis for the first time. A few weeks later, Chet and Janis headed for San Francisco and their respective destinies.
This is what Ms Joplin was doing two days before the first Family Dog dance/concert at Longshoreman’s Hall and less than eight months before Mr. Helms coaxed her back to San Francisco to join a band.
The orginal “Dog House” on July 28,1965. This is where Chet Helms met James Gurley, who was a tenant, and later took him to 1090 Page Street to meet Peter Albin, Sam Andrew and Chuck Jones.
This is the Bindweed Press invoice for printing 2,000 posters, handbills and tickets for the September 16-17 Grateful Dead and Oxford Circle shows at the Avalon Ballroom. The poster, which is designated FD-26, is Mouse and Kelley’s “Skeleton and Roses.”
(Above) The checks, signed by Chester Helms, that were paid to Alton Kelley and Mouse Studios for creating FD-26. (Below) The financial ledger sheet for the September 16-17 shows. Family Dog Productions Net Profit for the weekend was $119. 57.
In 1961, 1090Page Street was a boarding house for young Irish workingmen. The house was pictured in the March 17, 1961 issue of Life magazine, accompanying an article entitled “The Irish in America.”
A detail from a flyer for the 2nd Annual Folk Music Festival at San Francisco State College on May 23, 1963. Rodney Albin, a San Francisco State student, was one of the primary organizers of the event. (NOTE: Although Janet (sic) Joplin is listed on the bill, she didn’t show up.)
A detail of perhaps the earliest Family Dog financial records under the stewardship of Chet Helms and John Carpenter. These particular numbers are recorded on the back of the poster for Family Dog’s first show, “Tribal Stomp,” at Fillmore Auditorium on February 19, 1966.
During the past few days I’ve had another in a long line of very interesting experiences while writing the biography of Chet Helms and I am going to tell you about it. Of course you, my faithful reader and you, my periodic one, will ultimately determine if it was, in fact, an interesting experience or something not worth writing home (or a blog posting) about.
To wit: I am currently working on the long, complicated and ugly story of the time Chet and his partner, Bob Cohen, decided to open a Family Dog franchise in Denver, Colorado, my old stomping grounds. The Denver Dog debuted in September 1967 and immediately began having problems, courtesy of a particular police detective who had publicly vowed to rid the city of each and every hippie who dared to set foot in Denver. Consequently, a concerted, ongoing campaign of harassment against the Denver Dog was launched. I won’t go into the details here, because I sort of want you to buy the Chet book, but I will say that Chet and Bob ended up filing a lawsuit against the police department and the city. I should probably mention at this point that The Mile High City had, a few years earlier, rightfully earned the designation as ”The crooked cop capital of the United States.”
So, there I was, writing about this period, buttressed by a thick file of contemporary Denver newspaper clippings and interviews with Bob Cohen and several former Denver Dog employees, when I encountered something I felt needed a bit of clarification. Naturally I did what we all do in such situations – I sought help from Google. I typed in my search terms and, as usual, got a gazillion results which I began to sift through because that’s what we do with our Google search results. Such fun.
Then a funny thing happened. A name caught my eye and I was instantly transported back to 3254 South Holly Street in Denver in 1959 when I was 12-years-old. The name that caused this time-travel episode was Art Winstanley. My family had been residing on Holly Street in a middle-class neighborhood of ranch houses for a couple of years when a new family moved in a few doors down the block. The new family consisted of a young Denver policeman, his young wife and their young child. Despite the fact the policeman and his wife were, in my eyes, practically ancient, being in their mid-’20s and all, I quickly developed a massive adolescent crush on the latter, a crush I attribute to a case of, not exactly raging, but gently stirring hormones. I distinctly remember dallying like some sort of minor-league stalker in front of their house, hoping to catch a glimpse of the blond goddess, while on my way to play wiffle ball with my friend, Gary Moore, who lived next door to the Winstanleys. I never spoke to the goddess and she never spoke to me. I never spoke to her husband either, but I admired their shiny boat parked in the driveway and the fact that he occassionally dropped by in his police cruiser.
Then one day the shiny boat was gone, the shiny, new car was gone, the blond goddess was gone and their house, along with my heart, was empty. I soon found out why.
Art Winstanley was the first of 45 Denver cops to be arrested, convicted of burglary and sentenced to state prison during the next two years. He was nabbed when, after breaking into a business, he loaded a safe he was unable to crack into the trunk of his car from which it sort of tumbled out at a most inopportune moment. Turns out that he had, like many of his fellow officers, participated in dozens of on-duty burglaries.
Google further informed me that in 2008 Art Winstanley had published a book about his life and nefarious escapades. It is called “Burglars in Blue” and is available from, amongst other sources, Amazon.com. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m going to when it arrives on my doorstep.
But here’s the best part: Yesterday I did a Facebook search and sure enough, Art Winstanley is a FB member. I sent him a ‘friend’ request to which he graciously reponded and we have since exchanged a few emails. I even told him about my crush on his first wife.
I also asked him if he had any objection to me telling the story of how, while researching an old hippie, I found an old neighbor. He didn’t and so here it is.
I never know where following the trail of Chet Helms is going to take me, but I ain’t jumping off this train any time soon.
Sometimes, despite my best efforts to avoid doing so, I think about things.
One of the things I’ve thought about recently is the significance of the number 27 during a certain period a long ago time. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, 27 somehow became the expiration date, in years, for several prominent rock musicians.
Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones died in 1969. He was 27.
Jimi Hendrix died in 1970. He was 27.
Janis Joplin died in 1970. She was 27.
Al Wilson of Canned Heat died in 1970. He was 27.
Jim Morrison of The Doors died in 1971. He was 27.
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of The Grateful Dead died in 1973. He was 27.
Then it stopped. Not the passing away of rock musicians, but the passing away of rock musicians at the age of 27.
Until…
Kurt Cobain of Nirvana died in 1994. He was 27.
I wonder what I’ll think about next. Something more upbeat, I hope.
Not too long ago I mentioned a couple of interesting coincidences I have noticed while researching Chet’s biography: that his elementary school in Fort Worth was on Page Street, and that one of his grandmothers and one of his great grandmothers had been born in Joplin, MO.
Well, here are two more semi-coincidences:
1) Chet’s fraternal Great-great grandmother was Sally Ann Dungan; his maternal Great grandmother was Mary Elizabeth Dugan.
2) Chet’s fraternal grandmother was Golda Mae Thomas; his maternal grandmother was Mineola Thomason.
And so it goes…
Today is the fourth anniversary of Chet’s passing.
He left at 12:34 a.m. on June 25, 2005.
Chet was born in summer and Chet died in summer. And along the way, he became known as “The Father of The Summer of Love.”
“The hearts that love will know never winter’s frost and chill. Summer’s warmth is in them still.”
– Eben Eugene Rexford
Chet was, and always will be, Summer’s Child.
