Free Dark Star by Robert Greenfield

the Brown County Jamboree at Bean Blossom, just outside Bloomington, Indiana, on the first weekend of the season to watch Bill Monroe play. Before the show, Monroe was signing autographs and talking to people out in front of this barn door. We positioned ourselves right in his line of vision, about eight or ten feet away. We had our instrument cases standing upright and we were sort of leaning on them. We were too scared to say anything. We thought he was going to just take pity on us and come over and talk to us. But he never did.
    Sara Ruppenthal Garcia: They came back. Around that time, jug band music started coming in. The Lovin’ Spoonful became a national phenomenon. We went to see them. Some of those people knew some of our people. They’d heard of each other and they were like rival gangs checking each other out. Zal Yanovksy looking Jerry over, Jerry acting cool.
    Sandy Rothman: Jerry decided he wanted to get back to Sara. Recently, I asked Sara whether he ever called her in that approximately two-month period. She said, “Are you kidding?” But when he got ready to go back, I remember him talking about Sara all the time. “I gotta get back. I want to see Sara.” He told me later that he drove back without stopping except for gas. He didn’t sleep at all.
    Sara Ruppenthal Garcia: They started getting interested in jug band music. Jug band music was wonderful. A major step towards rock ’n’ roll. Bluegrass is very heady. It’s very mathematical in its virtuosity. Jug band music is gutsy. Earthy. Jerry started playing it with David Nelson and Pigpen.
    Sandy Rothman: After Jerry went back, I was at Bean Blossom again and Bill Monroe did come over and talk to me. He asked me what I was doing around there and he said he remembered me from California. A couple of weeks later, I ended up playing with him for the rest of that summer. Jerry and I never really talked about it. By the time I got back to the West Coast and checked in with Jerry, the jug band was reactivated.

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    Peter Albin: I can’t remember all the names of the various bands they had. In ’63 or ’64, there was some change when he went into the jug band music. I know that they played in what they called the Gallery Lounge at S.F. State as Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Band.
    David Nelson: We went over and saw the Jim Kweskin Jug Band live and then Dave Parker learned the real pattern stroke on the washboard. It was like the first time you learn three-finger picking. Where you’re picking up the beat with your thumb and you play the syncopated notes with your fingers. It’s something you have to walk through the first few times. You can’t know and understand it and just do it. He learned that and that turned the trick. We sounded like a jug band then.
    Sara Ruppenthal Garcia: Jerry loved to get up there on stage and play but it was a challenge. Can you pull this one off? He’d get an idea and pick up something. He’d want to give it a try. Would they be able to follow? But it was really a shared virtuosity. He was the king in some way. He couldn’t help it. He was a triple Leo. But really modest and self-effacing. Willing to share always but getting so pissed if he couldn’t get something right. That winter, he got hold of a record of Scott Joplin rags, which weren’t known in those days. They’d been lost but they were found and he listened to one. I think it was “Maple Leaf Rag.” He picked it out on the banjo. Can you imagine? Listening to it phrase by phrase and going over it and over it and over it again. What I’m aware of now is his incredible single-minded drive. My goal then was to just make him his coffee and see that he had his cigarettes and not bother him because he had this work he had to do. He would work on a single phrase for two days. Three days. Until he got it exactly right. I would love it when he got it right because he’d be