Merl Saunders 1934-2008

Merl Saunders, photo by Bob Minkin.

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I haven't had a chance to write a formal obituary... but wanted to acknowledge the Deadhead family's loss of Merl. A friend called me at work to tell me over the weekend.

Also see Annie's wonderful post.

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Merl Saunders dies at age 74

Merl Saunders, a keyboardist best known for his collaborations with Grateful Dead front man Jerry Garcia, died Friday at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco of complications from a stroke he had several years ago. Saunders was 74.

A musician who worked in a variety of genres in a long and varied career, Saunders played piano and keyboard but favored the Hammond B3 organ. He led his own bands and worked with an array of musicians, including the blues-oriented Bonnie Raitt and B.B. King, jazz legend Miles Davis and the jam band Phish.

He played on the Grateful Dead's 1971 album "Grateful Dead," but it was his collaborations with Garcia away from the group that earned him lasting notice. Starting in the 1970s, they worked on a variety of projects and recorded several albums together, including "Heavy Turbulence," "Fire Up" and "Live at the Keystone." Years later they released the popular New Age album "Blues From the Rainforest." Saunders later released a video chronicling his journey to the Amazon.

Garcia credited Saunders with teaching him the Great American Songbook and expanding his knowledge of harmony.

"He taught me music," Garcia said.

Saunders said their association had a "charisma and chemistry you couldn't question."

"We wouldn't play together for a couple of years, then we'd walk onstage and sound like we'd been playing together every day," Saunders told the Los Angeles Times shortly after Garcia's death in 1995. "That's called knowing. Sometimes I still play off him; I hear what he's doing, the notes he'd be playing, even though he's gone."

Resquiat in Pace, dear friend.

More at Dead.net.

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Listening to: Grateful Dead - I Know You Rider
via FoxyTunes

Martin Fierro 1942-2008

Left: Martin Fierro, photo by Robert Minkin, from Dead.net.

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Music fans and Deadheads everywhere have suffered a great loss, with the passing of mighty saxophonist Martin Fierro. He died of cancer yesterday, surrounded by family and friends in Marin County, California.

Martin is known to Deadheads primarily for playing flute and saxophone on the 1973 Grateful Dead album Wake of the Flood. He also played with several of Jerry Garcia's side projects, including the Legion of Mary.

Martin was born in Mexico and moved to El Paso, Texas, at the age of 10, where he played saxophone in his high school marching band. Then he heard music by Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and others, changing and rearranging his world, as the music did for so many other young people of the era. Martin's music took him to new places and new syncretic combinations; a new musical synthesis. He was a fixture in the Bay Area jam band scene of the late 60s/early 70s, sitting in with bands like Mother Earth, Sir Douglas Quintet and Quicksilver Messenger Service.


Left: Jerry Garcia birthday concert poster, from Honest Tunes. (2006)

Dead.net reports on Martin after the breakup of The Legion of Mary:

Martin had no trouble finding work following the dissolution of the Legion of Mary; indeed his tenure with Garcia was like a springboard to an expanded fan base and many new opportunities. He continued to play on and off with Merl Saunders—a lifelong friend—and he also played often with various groups led by John Cipollina, including a marathon stint in the great Bay Area jam band Zero. His association with Zero also led to an enduring musical partnership with Steve Kimock, as well. In fact, the last time I saw Martin play was with a re-formed Zero (with Kimock) at Wavy Gravy’s birthday benefit at the Regency Ballroom in SF in 2007. Over the years Martin also sat in with many other jam bands, from String Cheese Incident to Dark Star Orchestra. “I just love to play, man,” he told me, “I’ll show up and it’s, ‘Oh, Martin, you gonna play with us, right?’ And I say, ‘Well, I do happen to have a horn with me…’” he laughed.

When we spoke, he joked about how he had cheated death on numerous occasions: “The worst was a surfing accident in Hawaii [in the late ’90s]. I broke my neck and my back, man. I was dead for close to ten minutes and they brought me back, and then they thought I was brain damaged or I’d be paralyzed. The next day I played a gig with Zero!” He laughed heartily—as he often did. And whether there was a touch of exaggeration in the tale or not doesn’t matter. (He did, in fact, carry a lot of physical pain with him, from that and other episodes) But it shows his zest for life, which he retained until his final days on earth.

Another one gone too soon.

Yes.

Our prayers and Deadhead love go out to Martin and his family.

**You can share memories and leave messages and memorials at martinfierromusic.com.