Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia’s ‘Live at Keystone’ to Be Reissued in Six-LP Box Set

In 1973, selections from two concerts that Jerry Garcia performed with jazz keyboardist Merl Saunders at Berkeley, Calif.’s Keystone club were released as Live at Keystone. On Oct. 28, they will release both shows in their entirety in a six-disc vinyl box set called Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings.

Embedded above, you can see a teaser video of them giving their rendition of “That’s All Right, Mama,” the Arthur Crudup song that became Elvis Presley’s first single. Among the 24 tracks are covers of Bob Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” and “Positively Fourth Street,” Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come,” the Motown classics “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” and “I Second That Emotion” and two side-long takes on the standard “My Funny Valentine.”

The shows, performed on July 10-11, 1973, came two-and-a-half years after Saunders, Garcia, John Kahn (bass), and Bill Vitt (drums) began jamming regularly at the Matrix, a club in San Francisco. Although this quartet broke up two years later, in 1979, Garcia joined up with Saunders and Kahn in Reconstruction, where they played more than 50 shows.

The music is pressed onto six 180-gram vinyl discs, and housed in a box that includes a booklet with never-before-seen photos and an essay by Grateful Dead expert David Gans, and a poster of the original LP’s gatefold. You can pre-order the set at Amazon.

Merl Saunders/Jerry Garcia, ‘Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings’ Track Listing

Disc One

Side A

1. “Hi–Heel Sneakers”
2. “Keepers”

Side B

1. “The Harder They Come”
2. “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”
3. “It’s Too Late (She’s Gone)”

Disc Two

Side A

1. “My Funny Valentine”

Side B

1. “Mystery Train”
2. “I Second That Emotion”

Disc Three