Eugene "ED" Denson[a] was an American music group manager, producer, record label owner, and, later, lawyer, who made notable contributions to folk, blues, and early San Francisco rock.
While attending the University of Maryland, in College Park, intending to study physics, he became interested in folk music and learned much from the record collector Dick Spottswood.
In 1972, Denson and Stefan Grossman founded and managed Kicking Mule Records, which at first released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature and later branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn, Michael Bloomfield, and Charlie Musselwhite.
Since 1982, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows, first on station KERG, in Redway, California, and then briefly on KHSU at Humboldt State University in Arcata, and, since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD, in Garberville.
During the 1970s, Denson spent several summers as a volunteer river guide with Bill McGinnis's Whitewater Voyages, primarily working with inflatable kayaks.
He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years,[vague] and became a nonviolence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG).
In that capacity he travelled extensively in southern Humboldt County, training over 200 people in nonviolent techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids.
In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the advocacy of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston.
In 2006, he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program and gave lectures on the American legal system to university students in Xi'an.