Friday, June 3, 2011

Who Was Curly Jim? (Me And My Uncle)

Curly Jim on the steps of 710 Ashbury
"Me And My Uncle" was the most-performed song in the history of the Grateful Dead, as they performed it over 600 times. They first performed the song in 1966, and performed it through 1995. This post will contemplate the odd symmetry between the odd history of the song itself and the accidental way that Bob Weir learned the song.

"Me And My Uncle"
"Me And My Uncle" was written by John Phillips, best known as the head songwriter and Svengali of the huge hit group The Mamas And The Papas. Phillips wrote, arranged  and performed such classic sixties hits for the Mamas and The Papas as "Monday, Monday" and "California Dreamin.'"  Phillips also wrote the infamously bad "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)." Phillips, along with his producer Lou Adler, was instrumental in organizing the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, so whether or not you liked his hits he was an important 60s pop star. So no one was more surprised than me to see the songwriting credit on "Me And My Uncle" for John Phillips on the 1972 "Skull And Roses" Grateful Dead live album, and I can't have been alone. Many years later, in the liner notes to one of his solo albums, the strange saga of how John Phillips wrote a cowboy song was recalled (referenced here)
John often used to tell the story behind "Me And My Uncle." Years ago he began receiving publishing royalties from a song on a Judy Collins record [The Judy Collins Concert, released October 1964] with which he was unfamiliar. It was titled "Me And My Uncle." He called Judy to let her know of the mistake because he hadn't written any such song. She laughed and told him that about a year before, in Arizona after one of her concerts, they had a 'Tequila' night back at the hotel with Stephen Stills, Neil Young and a few others. They were running a blank cassette and John proceeded to write "Me And My Uncle" on the spot. The next day, John woke up to the tequila sunrise with no recollection of the songwriting incident. Judy kept the cassette from that evening and then, without informing John, recorded the song for her own record. Over the years the song was recorded by several people, and eventually became a standard of the Grateful Dead. John used to joke that, little by little, with each royalty check, the memory of writing the song would come back to him. 
In one sense, "Me And My Uncle" is no different than many other Grateful Dead cover versions, like "Going Down The Road" or "Deep Elem Blues," songs with misty beginnings that have been learned and passed on by a variety of musicians over time. The only difference appears to be that the author of "Me And My Uncle" was a well-known pop star whose career was well documented, so the provenance of the song could be properly unraveled after a while.

Curly Jim
In Blair Jackson's groundbreaking 80s magazine The Golden Road, he published a number of fine articles about the sources of Grateful Dead cover versions. Blair uncovered the basics of the John Phillips>Judy Collins connection, and included the interesting detail that Bob Weir said he "learned the song from a hippie named Curly Jim." Blair assumed, and I certainly concurred, that Curly Jim had to be James "Curley" Cooke, a Madison, WI musician who had moved to San Francisco in late 1966 to join the initial incarnation of The Steve Miller Band. Presumably, Curley Cooke had learned the song off the Judy Collins album and taught it to Weir. This tiny piece of the Grateful Dead puzzle appeared to have been solved, and the Curley Cooke>Bob Weir connection became a settled piece of Grateful Dead lore (Cooke, now a popular player in the Puget Sound, WA area, recently passed away at the age of 66).

Recently, however, while researching another slice of 60s Bay Area rock history, I had a lengthy email exchange with a knowledgeable person who had known Curley Cooke as well as members of the extended Grateful Dead family. When I mentioned in passing that Weir had probably learned "Me And My Uncle" from "a hippie named Curly Jim," and that I assumed it to be Curley Cooke, she in turn let me in on a remarkable fact, namely that "Curly Jim" and "Curley Cooke" were different people. She emailed Curley Cooke, who denied having taught Weir the song, so that left the "other" Curly Jim. Even more remarkably, my correspondent recognized Curly Jim in a well-known photo of the Grateful Dead's "family" on the steps of 710 Ashbury (I believe taken by Gene Sculati), and stripped his photo out for me.

I have included the crop of Curly Jim, whoever he was, at the top of the post. He seems to have been the hippie who taught Bob Weir "Me And My Uncle." Presumably he learned it from the 1964 Judy Collins album, but he could have learned it from someone else, in the folk tradition. Who was he? What was his last name? Since he was a musician, did he ever record or was he in a band? Did he teach Bob Weir any other songs? Yet another piece of 'settled' Grateful Dead history has become unsettled on closer inspection.

Update: thanks to an intrepid Commenter, I am now pretty sure that "Curly Jim" was someone from Texas or thereabouts named James Staralow. Among other things, Staralow was the first manager of those other pioneers of psychedelia, Austin, TX's own 13th Floor Elevators. I think Staralow was their manager in late '65 or so, and it seems he ended up in San Francisco in mid-66. I had no idea that there was just one degree of separation between the Dead and the Elevators. I wonder if Staralow had any contact with the Elevators when they moved to the Bay Area for a few months in late 1966?

On top of that, Staralow also apparently co-wrote the song "Blind John," which appeared on Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder album. He used the Nom Du Rock of C.J. Stetson. I had always assumed that C.J. Stetson was a pseudonym for a group effort, but I was incorrect. It does appear that Staralow went on to open a club outside of Santa Fe in the early 70s, but I think he is no longer with us. Still, "Curly Jim", aka Jim Staralow, aka CJ Stetson, seems to have been the one who taught Bob Weir the song that the Grateful Dead played the most.

23 comments:

  1. with all due respect, that guy looks like richard simmons.

    I-) ihor

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    1. CJ was a lot more like Fat Freddy of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers than Richard Freakin' Simmons. He always claimed Garcia gave him the name Curly Jim.

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  2. Hey--what if it WAS Richard Simmons? Think about how different Grateful Dead history might have been.

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  3. My mother in law insists that it was her husband - backed up by my wife. Curly Jim was James Stalarow - damn hippies. He's dead now so can't confirm it first hand. Thats how legends go huh ?

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    1. The pic of the fellow holding the pillar in the pic was indeed James 'CJ' Stalarow. He told me he indeed did teach this song to a member of greatful dead. He said he got small royalties from his days writing, i thought he said from GD. I knew him in mid to late 90's. He had that genuine singing abilitt and guitar chops right up to the end. Keep on rockin.

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  4. Anon, thank you so much for this fascinating piece of information. James Staralow certainly fits: it turns out he was the first manager for Austin's 13th Floor Elevators, then he moved to San Francisco. He was definitely part of the scene, and he even wrote a song that appeared on Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder album. He used the name CJ Stetson.

    I've gotta think that your Mother-In-Law and wife are correct: James Staralow seems to have been "Curly Jim". Thank you so much.

    is the internet great or what?

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    1. Here is a little more info. I met Jim Stalarow (aka Curley Jim) in the mid 70's. We played music in Houston and wrote a few songs together. He had just gotten out of prison in Mexico from a drug bust. He told me he was at the party where Me and My Uncle was written and had provided some of the lyrics himself. He said Philips never credited him for his part but he didn't really mind. And yes he was an early Elevators manager and brought Roky around for a living room jam session once. He was definitely a character and a lot thinner than what you see in that picture, at least he was in the 70's.

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    2. Anon, thanks so much for the additional details. The idea that Curley Jim was at the Tequila Party fits perfectly. The untimely drug bust also explains why Jim was out of the scene for a few years.

      I love the idea that Roky Erikson sat around 710 and jammed with the Dead in late '66, however casually.

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    3. Sorry, I wasn't clear about Roky. Jim brought him in the mid 70's to jam with us in Houston, not the Dead. It was soon after Roky had written Two Headed Dog. Years ago I found several online mentions of Jim in relation to The Great Society and Quicksilver. You might still be able to find them. While Jim was in prison, Joe Smith from Warner Brothers sent him a (fairly new at the time) cassette recorder so he could write music. I still have the original lyric sheets in a closet somewhere.

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    4. Hi! CJ is my dad. You know so much about him! Who are you? Do you have more stories? I didn't know him very well growing up because every time he came to Houston he got into trouble (his words). I have heard stories from my aunts and mother but no one else. I can prove I'm his daughter if need be, but I would love to talk to you!
      Brisa

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    5. Brisa, thanks so much for writing in. Your father seemed like quite a character. Just about everything I know about him--whic isn't much--is in the blog post or on the Comments thread.

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  5. I have a slightly trivial comment regarding the Judy Collins' tequila evening with John Phillips, Stephen Still and Neil Young in 1963. In my view, his seems way too early for Neil Young.

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    1. Yeah, I just read the Neil Young book--very interesting, in that it was actually written by Neil rather than with a ghostwriter--and he says he didn't meet Stills until '65, when he (Stills) was playing with a band called The Company.

      I assume that instead of Stills and Young, it was Stills and Furay, and the story just got converted.

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  6. Robert Hunter actually mentioned this guy in his April 1980 interview with the UK magazine Dark Star - they ask him, "Who is C.J. Stetson?"
    RH: "Ah, Curly Jim - he's a guitar player and singer."
    DS: "Oh, he is a real person - people have often wondered if it was a pseudonym for Barry Melton..."
    RH: "Where did this come from?"
    DS: "He's on Rolling Thunder. He's credited with Peter Monk."
    RH: "That'll be Curly Jim then."

    It's interesting that Hunter identifies this pseudonymous guy with his other pseudonym! I wonder if Hunter or Weir would even have remembered (or known) his real name....

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    1. It's a fascinating little exchange. In the 60s there were a lot of people who were only known by a "street name," like Sunshine, Superspade or Pigpen. Many of them were avoiding the draft board or the cops, and others were just trying to get away from their parents or their boring suburban upbringing. Nonetheless it was generally not in everybody's interest to inquire too closely as to real identities.

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  7. This is from an email I got and quoted in the page for "Blind John" on my site:

    "C.J. Stetson is not a pseudonym that the performers used, but is a real person. His real name is "Texas" Jim Stalarow. He was a regular in the San Francisco music scene in the late 60s/early 70s, and prior to that briefly managed The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. I know this because his sister was, until quite recently, my landlady. One day we got to talking about Roky Erikson and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators when she brought up her brother Jim and asked if I had ever heard the Mickey Hart album "Rolling Thunder". She let me borrow an old dog-eared copy she had on vinyl, saying that "he was going by the name C.J. Stetson at the time". Then she showed me the photo montage on the album cover and pointed him out, and I knew she wasn't lying. They look very much alike. His headshot is in the lower right hand corner of the montage--- the person with the fu-manchu beard to the immediate right of the guy in the striped shirt. She said he had passed away, but she didn't tell me when."

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  8. Here's a 1967 photo of Curly Jim and George Hunter (Charlatans) outside of the Print Mint; http://www.myrecordjournal.com/Archive/2017/08/SummerOfLove-RJ-080417.aspx#gallery-4

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    1. Hello, i was friends with cj he had me drive dawson to a local small gig in pdx in 90'. He passed soon after from bone cancer and his last days were in a care facility which i visited frequently. He oppo passed anonymously which was sad for someome at that level of music connection and accomplishment. A friend of mine introduced me to him. I didnt believe him that he was an inner circle grateful dead guy until he sang and played his acoustic in front of me in his bedroom. It was clear he was an expery of this song. Then he showed me this picture in a greatful dead book and thar was him. Grey Curley Jim. I only knew him for a short time, not all great, but i miss him. He influenced my child on guitar who went on to be rock band musician. As C.J use to say..Keep on Rockin!'

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    2. Yep, that is Jim in the photo with Hunter. By the I have previously shared my information about Jim Stalarow anonymously but not the anonymous above. I had forgotten, but Jim shared many stories with me about the Festival Express train tour through Canada in 1970 with the Dead, Janis Joplin and many more.
      Corry put me in touch with Jim's daughter Brisa many years ago so I could tell her about her father but she never decided she was ready to hear what I had to say. Yes, Jim had a colorful past with the law but I had plenty to tell her that was positive. The times I saw him in a questionable light were few and fairly minor. But he was definitely a character.

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  9. Anonymous seems in the know...

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  10. I'm fairly certain CJ Laing, the infamous star of Porn's Golden Age, took her first name/initials from Curly Jim.

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    1. From the RialtoReport.com:

      How did you eventually come up with the name ‘C.J. Laing’?

      ‘C.J.’ was the name of a Grateful Dead roadie that I knew. ‘Laing’ was a famous Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing. (laughs).

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    2. I won't put in more links, but it's easy to Google. The great tidbit in this interview is that CJ Laing was hanging out (her words) with Sam Cutler, which is how she got to San Francisco. Also how she would have known Curly Jim.

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