For five years in the early '70s
Jerry Garcia
and
Merl Saunders
headed up a loose-knit club band in the San Francisco area (the group never had an official name) specializing in a graceful mix of
jazz
,
R&B
blues
gospel
, and light
funk
with hints of
bop
fusion
, and even
reggae
. Aside from the two-volume
Live at Keystone
(1973), most of the group's recorded output appeared on various
Saunders
releases on
Fantasy Records
, and this remarkably cohesive compilation picks key tracks from all of these, with roughly half of the set coming from the
Keystone
LPs.
Garcia
is in full flight here as a guitarist, with
'
soul-jazz
organ giving things a wonderfully fluid feel, and the end result is a kind of laid-back West Coast
jazz-rock
that is very much the sum of its parts. Among the highlights in what is a very strong sequence are the nearly 12-minute version of
"Mystery Train"
that opens things here, the floating elegance of the instrumental
"Merl's Tune,"
the
-feel
"Welcome to the Basement"
with a guest shot from
the Tower of Power Horns
, and an interesting take on
Jimmy Cliff
's
"The Harder They Come,"
which was still a relatively unknown tune when this version was recorded in 1973.
Grateful Dead
fans will no doubt appreciate all of this, but
Well-Matched
also functions as a kind of introduction to
as well, whose good-natured and
pop
-inflected approach to
deserves to be better known. ~ Steve Leggett