Chet Helms and the Family Dog
I first met Chet on the backstairs of a huge warehouse party in Downtown San Francisco through a photographer friend Victoria. Chet was from Texas, a gentleman bent geek kind of Texas. We sat and chatted and smoked and afterwards kept running into each other backstage at various events and backstairs of other parties. It’s where all the smokers hung out, also where celebs don’t have so many people in their faces. Chet is an interesting person and inspiration to thousands of promoters and artists of all kinds and minds. Impresario and industry commentator Chet’s memory in the industry should not be forgotten. A rock and roll history for HaightAshburyFestival.com
The following are assorted reportage, articles, and stories about Chet from other writers… it’s a long page, so bookmark it so you can relax with it again ….
The Family Dog
In 1966, a free-spirited rock promoter named Chet Helms teamed up with a bunch of hippies and started putting on some of the greatest rock events of all time. They called their commune/promotions company, The Family Dog.
The Family Dog’s weekly dance hall revues gave the local bands a forum to perform their groundbreaking music. It was here in places like the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom where the philosophies and ideals of a counterculture revolution found their voice.
To spread the word about its live events, The Family Dog hand-picked a small army of graphic artists to design promotional posters and handbills. The most influential of the group became known as the “San Francisco Five.” This extremely creative crew was comprised of Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson. They would go on to produce some of the most iconic and memorable imagery in the history of rock and roll.
The art of The Family Dog captures the spirit of free expression. It reflects the bold experimental freedom of the era, and it serves as a guidepost for future generations who long for peace, love and understanding.
http://www.familydog.com/history.html
Chester Leo "Chet" Helms,
Often called the father of San Francisco's 1967 "Summer of Love," was a music promoter and a counterculture figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the mid- to-late 1960s. Wikipedia
Born: August 2, 1942, Santa Maria, CA
Died: June 25, 2005, San Francisco, CA
Spouse: Judy Davis (m. ?–2005)
Education: The University of Texas at Austin
Place of burial: San Francisco, CA
Wikipedia
Chet Helms (1942 - 2005)
Chet Helms was always a showman. From an early age he had a knack for being able to organize big events. He was the kid behind the scenes at the school plays and local fundraisers who put all the pieces together and made sure the acts started on time. After high school he enrolled in the University of Texas and immersed himself in Austin's vibrant music scene.
Soon Chet would find himself being pulled westward. Inspired by the writings of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Chet dropped out of school and hitchhiked to San Francisco. He arrived in 1962 and immediately made connections in the music community.
There was an amazing array of talent, but not enough places to showcase the bands. Chet saw an opportunity and quickly found a basement on Page Street where he could stage live events. The gigs were wildly successful and soon Chet was branching out into much bigger venues.
It was Chet who talked his old friend Janis Joplin into coming out west to sing in Big Brother and the Holding Company. As the popularity of the San Francisco bands grew, so did Chet's reputation as a rock promoter. In 1966 he teamed up with a commune of hippies called Family Dog and started putting together a series of legendary shows at the Fillmore Auditorium. Family Dog would host events every other weekend, and his rival Bill Graham would promote acts on the alternating weekends. The two promoters would lock horns many times over the years, and it was always a contrast in styles. Bill Graham had a reputation as an aggressive, no-nonsense business man, whereas Chet was seen as a more down-to-earth guy who was less interested in money and more focused on throwing a great party. His lack of business skills is one of the reasons Chet never made a huge fortune in the music business, but he was never short on ideas.
Chet’s visionary use of psychedelic posters to promote Family Dog events helped popularize the counterculture aesthetic that would symbolize the era. But Chet's greatest achievement was in putting on some of the greatest rock and roll events of all time. The list of performers is who's who of music legends like Blood, Sweat & Tears, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, The Charlatans, The Doors, Grateful Dead, The Kinks, Love, Lovin' Spoonful, Moby Grape, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Carlos Santana Blues Band, Steppenwolf, Velvet Underground and many, many more.
In his later years, Chet began to focus more and more on the art world. He ran a small gallery on Bush Street for over 20 years. He retired in 2004 and passed away a year later from a stroke.
To celebrate Chet's life and the enormous impact he had on the culture of San Francisco, a massive memorial concert was held in Golden Gate Park, where tens of thousands of music lovers were treated to an all-star lineup featuring many of the Family Dog bands. Chet’s creative legacy lives on in their music and in the art he helped inspire.
http://www.familydog.com/content/chet-helms.html
Artist Biography
by Jason Ankeny
Widely hailed as "the Father of the Summer of Love," Chet Helms was the nexus of San Francisco counterculture. The first producer to mount psychedelic light shows at the famed Fillmore Auditorium, he later operated his own concert venue, the equally renowned Avalon Ballroom, in addition to serving as manager of Big Brother & the Holding Company. Born August 2, 1942, in Santa Maria, CA, Helms and his family relocated to Austin, TX, following the 1951 death of his father. Raised by his fundamentalist preacher grandfather, he later attended the University of Texas, along the way befriending an aspiring singer named Janis Joplin.
Helms dropped out of school in 1961 and gradually migrated to San Francisco. A Rolling Stones performance at the Civic Auditorium was his gateway into the world of rock & roll, and in time he began hosting jam sessions in the boarding house he occupied in the city's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. These jam sessions would ultimately give birth to Big Brother & the Holding Company, one of San Francisco's earliest and most successful psychedelic bands, and when Helms agreed to become the group's manager, he encouraged Joplin to relocate from Texas to serve as their lead singer, effectively launching the career of one of the greatest vocalists in rock history.
Helms was in many respects a Zelig-type figure, a collaborator or confidante of figures like Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead, and while he never enjoyed the fame or status of so many of his contemporaries, he was nevertheless present at virtually every major event in the Haight-Ashbury counterculture's evolution, more often than not masterminding the events in question. In February 1966, he formed Family Dog Productions to begin promoting concerts at the Fillmore, alternating weekends with rival producer Bill Graham. Two months later, Helms secured the permits necessary to host events at the Avalon Ballroom, an old dancehall located at the corner of Sutter and Van Nuys.
Over the next three years, the Family Dog organized many of the most critical events in Bay Area rock history, including a series of free concerts at Golden Gate Park throughout 1966 and 1967. Helms and his Family Dog associates redefined the scope and impact of rock shows at these events, introducing mind-warping light shows that presaged the elaborate multimedia interactivity of latter-day tours. Equally important, Helms advertised his productions via posters and handbills featuring original artwork by many of San Francisco's most visionary underground artists, essentially creating the psychedelic imagery that virtually defines the counterculture aesthetic.
Helms went on to open Family Dog venues in Denver and Portland, but in late 1968 the San Francisco City Council revoked the Avalon's sound permits, and in short order he consolidated all of his holdings into one new venue: Family Dog on the Great Highway, headquartered in an aging ballroom located next to an old slot-car raceway near San Francisco's Ocean Beach. This new venture went belly-up within a year, however, and Helms quit the concert business in 1970. He did not return until 1978, producing the first annual Tribal Stomp at Berkeley's Greek Theatre. Its 1979 sequel boasted the first-ever California appearance of the Clash, but was otherwise a financial disaster.
The following year, Helms opened a small art gallery, Atelier Dore, which specialized in American and European art of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1995 he lent the Family Dog name to a short-lived concert series at San Francisco's Maritime Hall, and in 1997 mounted a free concert in Golden Gate Park celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Three years later, amidst erroneous reports of his death, Helms staged an elaborate "funeral" in his own honor. A few years later, however, he contracted hepatitis C, a viral disease that seriously affected his seemingly boundless energy, and in mid-2005 he suffered a mild stroke that ultimately resulted in his death on June 25 at the age of 62.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/chet-helms-mn0001232037
The Legend of Chet and Janis – Excerpt I
(Several months ago I wrote in these pages that I was going to periodically post brief excerpts from the Chet Helms biography. This is the first installment.)
On Saturday, January 19, 1963, Janis celebrated her 20th birthday at Threadgill’s. It was also a going-away party because she had decided to leave The Waller Creek Boys and go to San Francisco with Chet.
On Wednesday, January 23, the couple hitched to Fort Worth and presented themselves at 3510 Avenue D on the east side of town, the home of Chet’s mother and stepfather. That is the moment the enduring legend of Chet and Janis, peppered with a healthy dose of mythology, began.
Ellis Amburn in Pearl: “Chet’s mother was appalled when Janis came stomping into her house in her funky blue jeans, the first three buttons of her blue work shirt undone, and wearing no bra. Says Chet, ‘Janis sat around swearing like a trooper, right in front of my mother.’”
Amburn goes on to recount how when Chet’s mother refused to let the couple spend the night “there were screams and tears.” Alice Echols in her Scars of Sweet Paradise more or less repeats this story.
But it strains credulity to believe that Janis, who could indeed be loud, course and vulgar with her friends, would behave that badly in the home of a friend’s parents, a home in which she was seeking temporary shelter. She simply hadn’t been raised that way. It also strains credulity that Chet, despite his periodic disagreements with his mother, would allow her to be so disrespected by someone he’d brought into her home.
Almost two decades before Amburn’s book and almost three before Echol’s, a far more sedate version of the incident appeared in Myra Friedman’s Janis biography, Buried Alive. She writes that although Chet’s mother was shocked by Janis’ mannish attire, she was far more distressed that her son was traveling with a person of the opposite sex. Friedman quotes Chet as saying, “It created a crisis in my mother’s religion.”
Chet’s younger brother, John, who was in the house that night, agrees. John was flabbergasted that Chet would show up with a female companion, expecting to be put up for a night or two, aware of his mother’s religious beliefs, not to mention the social mores of the day, but he insists that Janis neither stomped around nor swore in front of his mother.
“That is 100 percent wrong,” John says. “Make that a thousand percent wrong. When my mother answered the door, Janis was standing next to Chet, strumming her autoharp and softly humming a tune. Janis was very sweet and polite with my mother.”
But neither Janis’ demeanor, nor Chet’s assurances that they were just friends convinced Novella that they should spend the night under her roof. So after dinner, John drove Chet and Janis out to the Fort Worth stockyards on the edge of town and dropped them off to begin the next leg of their journey. When John returned home, his distressed mother told him that having to turn Chet away had broken her heart.
And thus began Phase II of the legend of Chet and Janis.
The story Chet told countless times over the years is that he and Janis hitchhiked from Fort Worth straight through to San Francisco in 50 hours and went directly to North Beach where Janis sang a few songs at the former The Fox and The Hound, which, under new ownership, had recently changed its name to Coffee and Confusion. Despite a strict policy against passing the hat, the club’s crusty owner, Sylvia Fennell, was so impressed by Janis’ performance, she waived that rule, which resulted in a $50-$60 windfall for the newly-arrived Texans.
It’s a terrific story and it’s almost true.
Chet and Janis didn’t travel straight through from Fort Worth to San Francisco; they stopped in Santa Maria, Chet’s birthplace, to visit his favorite aunt, Ruth Helms Vallance, whose husband, Frank, had recently passed away. Ruth was temporarily living in an apartment with her youngest daughter, Goldie, while waiting for a new house to be completed. Her other three daughters were out of the house, but living in the area.
The Helms side of the family was considerably more liberal than the Dearmore side and Aunt Ruth had no qualms about allowing Chet and Janis to bunk at her place. During their brief stay in Santa Maria, Chet and Janis made the short side trip to Betteravia, the company town where Chet had spent his first nine years. They visited the general store where several employees and patrons told them stories about Chester Sr., who was fondly remembered more than a decade after his death. They also went to The Santa Maria Inn, which featured a display of some of the Native American artifacts Chester Sr. had spent his short lifetime collecting.
After spending a night in Santa Maria, Aunt Ruth and Goldie drove Chet and Janis to the Greyhound bus station. Ruth bought the couple bus tickets for the 250-mile jaunt north to San Francisco and lent them $20. Two weeks later, Aunt Ruth received a card from Janis, thanking her for her generosity and hospitality. A $20 bill was tucked inside the card.
It is true that Janis sang at Coffee and Confusion soon after arriving in San Francisco and it is true that the hat was passed for her that night. Despite that initial success, Chet and Janis soon mostly went their separate ways, not because they had any personal conflicts, but because they had different agendas and separate circles of friends.
https://chethelmsbio.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/the-legend-of-chet-and-janis-excerpt-i/
Chet Helms Promoter of Janis Joplin
Dave Laing
Sun 26 Jun 2005 19.02 EDT
In 1966 Janis Joplin received a phone call in Port Arthur, Texas, summoning her to the audition in San Francisco that was to launch her brief but spectacular career as one of the most iconic rock singers of the 1960s. That call was from concert promoter and hippy activist Chet Helms, who has died aged 62, following a stroke.
He was born in Texas and as a teenager was inspired by the beat generation writers, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, to travel across America in search of freedom and inspiration. His shoulder-length hair, beard and rimless glasses were enough to cause him to be detained by police in Laredo, Texas, in the aftermath of the assassination of president John F Kennedy.
By 1962 Helms had made San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury area his base, and on a 1963 trip he heard Joplin sing at the University of Texas in Austin. Helms persuaded her to hitchhike to the west coast with him and introduced her to the coffeehouse music scene.
Joplin failed to make an impact and returned to Texas, while Helms and his Family Dog organisation promoted events for the burgeoning hippy community, first at the Longshoremen's Hall and later at the Avalon Ballroom. He chose as the Family Dog logo a sepia portrait of a native American in stovepipe hat with a cigarette drooping from his mouth.
Helms remembered Joplin when he was assisting a new rock group to establish itself in 1966. He had already christened the group by combining two ideas from a list of potential names - the Orwellian tag Big Brother plus the vaguely drug-related Holding Company. With Joplin as the lead singer, Helms became the group's manager and introduced them on stage when they made their crucial appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, a performance that marked Joplin's elevation to national prominence. The same year Helms was a guest of honour at the opening of London's first hippy venue, Middle Earth in Covent Garden.
In addition to Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company, the Family Dog concerts featured the leading groups of the psychedelic era: the Grateful Dead, Country Joe And The Fish and Jefferson Airplane. The low stage of the Avalon brought the musicians close to the audience. However, Helm's hippy ideals were no match for the sharper business instincts of rival promoter Bill Graham and student journalist Jann Wenner. The Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart said of Helms that he hated to charge people to attend his events while Bill Graham hated to promote "free" concerts. "We were more about cultural revolution than we were about money," Helms told Graham's biographer in 1991.
In 1967, Helms told Jann Wenner of an idea to create an underground paper to be called Straight Arrow. While Helms and his confederates held a series of rambling meetings to discuss the project, Wenner prepared his own magazine Rolling Stone, and named its publishing company Straight Arrow.
Unable to withstand the fierce competition from Bill Graham, Family Dog wound up its San Francisco activities in 1969. Helms briefly recreated the company in Denver before retiring from the concert business in the early 1970s until he and others revived the Family Dog concept in the mid 1990s. He remained a well-known figure in San Francisco's bohemian and artistic circles and opened an art gallery Atelier Dore in the 1980s. He took up photography and several exhibitions of his work were held in the city.
A report of his death in 2001 produced numerous tributes and a mock funeral was held with Helms rising from his "coffin" when his mobile phone rang.
He is survived by his wife Judy Davis.
· Chester (Chet) Leo Helms, music promoter, born August 2 1942; died June 25 2005
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jun/27/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries
Chet Helms - Rolling Stone
Born in Santa Maria, California, Helms was the oldest of three boys. After his father died when Helms was nine, the family moved to Texas. Helms remained in Texas for the next decade, enrolling in and dropping out of the University of Texas before moving to San Francisco in 1962. His beginnings as a music promoter were modest, as Helms served as a host of jam sessions in his Haight-Ashbury district home. Big Brother and the Holding Company was one of the groups that played, and while serving as their manager, Helms dramatically altered the course of the band by recruiting an old college acquaintance by the name of Janis Joplin to be their singer.
Helms was an early partner of legendary promoter Bill Graham, with the two putting on several shows at the Fillmore before parting ways. Graham continued to promote shows at the Fillmore, while Helms and his Family Dog production company moved to the Avalon Ballroom, with the Grateful Dead a mainstay, and everyone from the Doors to Bo Diddley passing through.
Country Joe and the Fish honed their chops underneath the Avalon’s psychedelic light shows, and the band’s guitarist Barry Melton credits Helms with fostering the kind of nurturing environment that helped bands progress. “There was an ethic unique to the time and place of San Francisco in the Sixties, an extraordinary ethic of tolerance and acceptance,” he says. “Chet was the living embodiment of that tolerance and acceptance and openness that made it all happen. That element was very much a reflection of who he was.”
After the scene dissipated, Helms took a hiatus from concert promotion in 1970, returning to the business off and on in 1978. In 1980 he began running Atelier Dore, an art gallery in San Francisco, and became passionate about digital photography in recent years.
“He was so tough that it’s a surprise,” says his widow Judy Davis. “This last year he was having a lot of problems with hepatitis C, and by the time he had his stroke he was weakened. He had a beautiful death. There were about ten people around the bed.”
Helms is survived by his wife, a stepdaughter and three grandchildren.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/promoter-chet-helms-dies-121369/
