Jorma Kaukonen was the lead guitarist of the Jefferson Airplane. Together with bassist Jack Casady — they have been friends and musical partners since they were teenagers — he formed Hot Tuna as a side venture to pursue other interests, originally in acoustic blues with Will Scarlett on harmonica. Jorma has had a long, varied, and interesting career in music deep in the American grain. He tells his story in the 2018 memoir Been So Long: My Life and Music. Although I saw him perform live for the first time in 2009, I’ve been a fan for more than 50 years. He turns 82 this week. I wanted to take the occasion to post a few videos of music from which I have derived great pleasure over the years.
Smart and funny, Jorma is an encyclopedia of traditional American music as well as an engaging performer and songwriter. In 2015 Jorma was touring in support of his new recording Ain’t In No Hurry, released on St. Paul’s own Red House Records (now a part of Compass Records Group). The disc leads off with “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” one of the songs on which Jorma accompanied Janis Joplin on a homemade tape in San Francisco in 1964 while Jorma’s wife pounded out something on the typewriter in the background (below). Kind of amazing. “The first time I met Janis, I realized I was in the presence of greatness,” he writes in the book.
Jorma was a founding members of Jefferson Airplane. He was there when the Airplane took off and he wrote several lesser known songs that made it on to Airplane albums. “She Has Funny Cars” was the opening number on Surrealistic Pillow (vocalist Marty Balin wrote the lyrics). It’s a little dated, but it still sounds good to me.
“Good Shepherd” is the second track on Volunteers, this one arranged by Kaukonen. He recalls learning it backstage from a pair of folksingers in 1963. “I had never heard anything so cool and in a most profound way, this moment of musical synchronicity would change my life!” He didn’t know where it came from. “I just wanted to play it and that’s what I did.” (In the Appendix of Lyrics he explains: “This is an old-time spiritual/rock song. It was collected from the aging blind blues player Jimmie Strothers as ‘The Blood-Strained Banders,’ by Alan Lomax and Harold Spivacke on behalf of the Library of Congress in 1936.”)
Jorma also contributed “Turn My Life Down” to Volunteers. Balin turned in a great vocal. That is Stephen Stills on the Hammond organ. I love this track.
Kaukonen and Casady split off to form Hot Tuna in 1969. Their first album, recorded live in Berkeley, seems to me a classic. The heart of the album consists of traditional blues songs with updated arrangements and numbers by gospel blues singer Reverend Gary Davis, Kaukonen’s first musical hero. “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” is one of them.
They close out the album with the instrumental “Mann’s Fate,” written by Kaukonen. It sounds to me like something important is under discussion here. It could be man’s fate. Jack Casady is an incredible musical partner on bass. He plays it like a lead guitar. In fact, I learned from Jorma’s memoir that Jack played lead guitar in their first DC teenage group. Jorma played rhythm.
Hot Tuna went electric on First Pull Up, Then Pull Down and Burgers. Jorma adapted “True Religion” from a traditional spiritual. As I say, this music is deep in the American grain. Papa John Creach is on the fiddle and Sammy Piazza on drums.
“Water Song” is another Kaukonen instrumental, also from the Burgers album. In his memoir he writes: “A simple series of chord changes could move me to tears at any given moment.” That’s the way I feel about this song. Hearing him play it live with Jack is a peak experience.
He titled his memoir Been So Long. This is the song, from the First Pull Up album.
I’ve seen Kaukonen perform mostly with Jack Casady as a duo, but also once in a trio with Casady and Barry Mittelhoff and once by himself. In the six or seven times I have seen him, he performed this song precisely once. Listening to it I thought it sounded vaguely familiar. I could almost sing along with it, yet I just couldn’t place it. When I got home and looked it up I thought Jorma is one genuine music nut.
“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” is an old Bessie Smith song written by Jimmie Cox. How old is it? It’s nearly 100 years old. Jorma backed Janis Joplin on it in 1964 and returned to it on his Ain’t In No Hurry disc 50-some years later.
“Hesitation Blues” is one of the Reverend Gary Davis numbers from the first Hot Tuna album. Jorma and Jack went into the studio of Minnesota Public Radio to perform it when they came through town with Barry Mittelhoff in 2009. I caught up with them over at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. Query whether it is right to make the blues so beautiful. Played so lovingly, the music speaks for itself.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.