Chet Helms
He was a producer and organizer, helping to stage free concerts and other cultural events at Golden Gate Park, the backdrop of San Francisco's Summer of Love in 1967, as well as at other venues, including the Avalon Ballroom.
He was the first producer of psychedelic light-show concerts at the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom and was instrumental in helping to develop bands that had the distinctive San Francisco Sound.
[5] After arriving in San Francisco in 1962, he scrounged a living in various ways, including selling marijuana, an occupation that caused him to go to a boardinghouse at 1090 Page Street.
They included: Helms presented top blues performers including Country Joe and The Fish; Howlin' Wolf; Bo Diddley; Muddy Waters; Little Walter; Buddy Guy; Junior Wells; the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; Buddy Miles; James Cotton Blues Band; John Mayall; Big Mama Thornton; Albert Collins; Steve Miller; Son House; Mike Bloomfield; Elvin Bishop; Blues Project, with Al Kooper; John Hammond; Charlie Musselwhite; Siegel-Schwall Band; rock bands like The Doors; Buffalo Springfield; the Byrds; Bill Haley & His Comets; The Kinks;The Edwin Hawkins Singers; the Animals' Eric Burdon & War; The Mothers of Invention; Lovin' Spoonful; The Carlos Santana Blues Band; Sir Douglas Quintet; the Soul Survivors; the Fugs; Blood, Sweat & Tears; The Association; Shorty Featuring Georgie Fame; Grateful Dead; Iron Butterfly; the Youngbloods, with Jesse Colin Young; Vanilla Fudge; Steppenwolf; Poco; Love, with Arthur Lee; sarode-player and Indian music teacher, Ali Akbar Khan; Sandy Bull; Blue Cheer; the Leaves; New Riders of the Purple Sage; Barry McGuire; Flamin' Groovies; the Loading Zone; It's a Beautiful Day; Joy of Cooking; the Grass Roots; the Sons of Adam; Sons of Champlin; Captain Beefheart; the Electric Flag; Velvet Underground; Pacific Gas and Electric; Moby Grape; the Sopwith Camel; 13th Floor Elevators; The Charlatans; Allmen Joy (see Wings West Concrete Pools Perth); Mother Earth; Southern Comfort; The Ace of Cups; Tyrannosaurus Rex; Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band; Flying Burrito Brothers; Congress of Love; Notes From the Underground; Chrome Circus; Initial Shock; Oxford Circle; Daily Flash; Electric Train; Sparrow; the Orchestra; Hourglass; Kaleidoscope; Mt.
Skhy; Frumious Bandersnatch; Eighth Penny Matter; Jimmerfield Legend; South Side Sound; Super Ball; Solid Muldoon; Box Top; and jazz artists Sun Ra and San Francisco's own John Handy; Charles Lloyd; the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood; and folksters Joan Baez; Dave Van Ronk; Jim Kweskin Jug Band; Taj Mahal; Tim Buckley and Flatt & Scruggs.
Sometimes Helms cast the music promoter role aside and the Family Dog would feature speakers, including Alan Watts, Dr. Timothy Leary, Stephen Gaskin, poet Allen Ginsberg, and other counterculture gurus.
Helms is linked in San Francisco lore with Bill Graham, the Diggers, Emmett Grogan, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Neal Cassady, Kenneth Rexroth, Ralph J. Gleason, and others.
In 1967, Helms and budding rock promotor Barry Fey agreed to open a Family Dog Productions concert dance hall in Denver, Colorado.
They called it The Family Dog Denver, and brought in acts like The Doors, the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, Chuck Berry, and many others.
[25] To promote their concerts in both San Francisco and Denver, Family Dog published a series of innovative psychedelic posters, handbills and other ephemera, created by a group of prominent young San Francisco artists including Wes Wilson, Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse (Mouse Studios), Rick Griffin, Steve Renick and Victor Moscoso.
The posters of Griffin, Mouse and Kelly, in particular, were known for the intricate and highly stylized hand-lettering in which the concert details were written out, which sometimes took considerable time and effort to decipher.
It was not the money he was after, that was the by-product of artistic talent; it was the creative unity of new emerging music sounds that enriched Helms and the community he was talking to, which spread worldwide.
While the war raged in Vietnam and the nation coped with racial clashes and assassinations, the anti-war, anti-establishment youth thrived in the throes of a social revolution.
Graham did covertly help Helms financially at various times during the 1970s, keeping San Francisco in the fore as the West Coast Music mecca.
The core San Francisco rock bands, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, and Quicksilver Messenger Service (including pre-Dino Valenti), would play for both Graham's concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium, and the Family Dog at Helms' Avalon dances.
[32][33] In his career Helms used other locations like ventures in Denver,[34][35][36] Portland, and joint productions/promotions at the Fillmore, Longshoreman's Hall, and Haight Street's Straight Theater (not all formal Family Dog Dance-Concerts), etc.
Helms left the concert business in 1970,[37][38] except for managing a few later events: Tribal Stomp[39] at Berkeley's Greek Theater (1978), Tribal Stomp II at the Monterey County Fairgrounds (1979), a concert series at San Francisco's Maritime Hall in 1995 under the Family Dog name, and a 30th Anniversary celebration[27] of the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park (1997),[40] a free event attended by 60,000 people.
The concert was highly successful and featured such artists as: T Bone Burnett, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, David Nelson, Country Joe McDonald, Leigh Stephens, Bobby Vega, Joli Valenti & Friends, and the Flying Other Brothers.
On October 30, 2005, San Francisco celebrated Helms' life with a free[57] nine-hour Sunday rock concert[58] in Golden Gate Park,[59] named the "Tribal Stomp"[60] attended by tens of thousands, and featuring a full lineup of bands, including the old core San Francisco rock bands, and others including: The Turtles, Canned Heat, Dan Hicks (singer), the Charlatans, Country Joe McDonald, Barry Melton, Blue Cheer, Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner, "It's a Beautiful Day'"s David LaFlamme, Quicksilver Gold (derived from Quicksilver Messenger Service), Lee Michaels, Lydia Pense Cold Blood, Pete Sears, Nick Gravenites (Electric Flag), Harvey Mandel, Jorge Santana, Narada Michael Walden, Merl Saunders, Moby Grape Jerry Miller, and Wavy Gravy (from Ken Kesey's "Merry Pranksters" fame).
