Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for September 22nd

Before the Airplane, there was...? Plus you got a genuine American masterpiece that was made by...Canadians? Then there's Willie Nelson who is, frankly, always cool...

9/22/1965 (50 years ago today) - She's gonna become a Sixties Icon, we just don't know it yet: Grace Slick makes her live performance debut (with her then-husband Tom Slick on drums) at the small Coffee Gallery club in North Beach, California: the band known as The Great Society would release only one single with Grace, the classic "Somebody To Love", which Grace absolutely nails in her trademark vocal style. (Grace also writes "White Rabbit" while she's in The Great Society, but they never get around to recording it.) When original Jefferson Airplane singer Signe Anderson quits the band, Grace is brought in and she takes her two Great Society showcase pieces with her -- ta-daaaa!! The San Francisco acid rock scene is on the rise...

9/22/1969 (46 years ago today) - It's a perfect album, start-to-finish: The Band release their self-titled LP (it's actually their second record, sometimes called "The Brown Album"). You'd think The Band's previous recording, their also-perfect debut "Music From Big Pink", would be an incredibly/ridiculously hard act to follow...but they do! "Up On Cripple Creek", "Rag Mama Rag", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)", "Across The Great Divide" -- no wonder then, in 2009, the album was preserved into the National Recording Registry because it was "culturally, historically and aesthetically important, and reflects life in the United States". They were from the Great White North and they taught us a thing or two, yessir...

9/22/1985 (30 years ago today) - Earlier in the year, Bob Dylan commented during his Live Aid performance that he hoped some of the $$$ raised would go to American farmers -- enter Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young who organize the first Farm Aid Benefit Concert, held on this date for 80,000 fans at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. The line-up is a classic mix of country's best: Alabama, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, The Charlie Daniels Band, John Denver, Vince Gill, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Kenny Rogers, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan...a remarkable night indeed.

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"Now there's one thing in the whole wide world/I sure would like to see/That's when that little love of mine/Dips her doughnut in my tea...", xoxo!