Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia - 2006 - Well-Matched

 

Fantasy – FCD-30019-2  464.94MB FLAC

Well-Matched: The Best of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia is a 2006 compilation built from recordings made between 1971 and 1974, gathering material from the period when Saunders and Garcia were working together around the Bay Area in a loose, highly flexible group that could move between jazz, R&B, blues, gospel, funk, reggae and rock without making a big show of crossing genres. The collection pulls from Heavy Turbulence, Fire Up, Live at Keystone, the later Keystone Encores volumes and Keepers, and includes one previously unreleased track. What holds it together is not a single studio sound or even one fixed band lineup, but the musical conversation between Saunders’ keyboards and Garcia’s guitar. Saunders gives the music a warm, rolling center while Garcia keeps moving around it, sometimes lyrical, sometimes almost conversational, sometimes stretching a phrase until it seems to forget where the song originally began. 

The packaging is unusually important here because the whole thing is designed as a worn matchbook. The title Well-Matched becomes a visual joke before the disc is even removed. The outside cover shows Saunders and Garcia close together, photographed casually rather than posed as heroic rock figures, while the edges are rounded, scuffed and battered to imitate something that has spent time in a pocket. The interior continues the idea with rows of printed matchsticks, and the black flap reads WELL-MATCHED / CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING. It is one of those designs where the physical package is not merely carrying the compilation. It is performing the title. A contemporary review singled out the matchbook styling immediately, and that is understandable because it is almost impossible to separate the visual concept from the album name once you have handled the object. 

This Oakland Public Library copy has taken that already simulated wear and added the real thing. The cardboard is crushed at the corners, edges have frayed, the black surface is scratched, library labels have been taped across the front, and a large circulation barcode covers part of the back. The Montclair Branch sticker sits directly over Saunders’ forehead while another classification label reads CD / ROCK / SAUNDERS. On the back, old due-date stamps remain visible under layers of tape and paper, including dates from 2009, 2010 and 2011. The object was designed to look used and then spent years actually being used. That collision is especially good. Fake wear has gradually become indistinguishable from real wear.

“Mystery Train” opens the collection at more than eleven minutes and immediately establishes the basic method. The old Junior Parker/Sam Phillips song is treated less as a fixed composition than as a large open area for interaction. Garcia sings, but the real action is instrumental. Guitar phrases keep curling around Saunders’ organ and electric piano while John Kahn and Bill Vitt hold a groove sturdy enough to let the upper instruments roam. The performance comes from the 1973 Keystone period, and it has the relaxed elasticity that made those shows so different from a conventional rock set. Nothing feels hurried, yet the playing never feels idle.

“Lonely Avenue” moves more directly into blues and R&B territory. Saunders’ electric piano and organ become especially important here, giving the track a churchy, soul-jazz weight while Garcia approaches the vocal with none of the exaggerated blues mannerisms that could have made it sound like costume. The musicians do not seem particularly concerned with announcing which genre they are playing at any given moment. That ease is one of the strongest things about this compilation. Blues becomes jazz, jazz becomes rock, gospel slips into funk, reggae appears later, and the transitions rarely feel like exercises in eclecticism. The players simply know how to inhabit all of it.

“Merl’s Tune,” running well past thirteen minutes, gives Saunders more obvious room to define the atmosphere. The track is less about destination than texture and motion. Saunders can push the harmony forward with organ, then leave space for Garcia to answer, while the rhythm section keeps the whole thing moving with a kind of patient confidence. David Grisman appears on mandolin in some of the material collected here, another indication of how porous Garcia’s musical world already was during this period. These recordings sit beside the Grateful Dead chronologically, but they do not sound like leftovers from that band. They reveal another working environment entirely.

The version of Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” is one of the compilation’s emotional centers. Instead of reproducing Dylan’s clipped bitterness, Garcia stretches the song to nearly eight minutes and sings it with a wounded calm that changes the emotional temperature completely. Saunders, Kahn, Vitt and Grisman support him without crowding the lyric. Garcia has always been especially effective with Dylan because he tends to treat the songs as material to inhabit rather than monuments to imitate. Here the sarcasm remains, but sadness starts leaking through it. :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}

“After Midnight” compresses things back toward five minutes. J.J. Cale’s song is a natural Garcia vehicle because its loose groove leaves plenty of room without demanding virtuoso display. Tom Fogerty appears on rhythm guitar, adding another Bay Area connection to a record already thick with regional history. “Welcome to the Basement” follows with a funkier, more instrumental emphasis, then “That’s Alright” returns to blues-based material. By this point the collection has moved through several musical languages without ever sounding like a sampler assembled to prove versatility.

“Space” is where the structure loosens almost completely. The track is extracted from a 1973 performance of “Merl’s Tune,” essentially isolating a section of free improvisation and allowing it to stand independently. Garcia, Saunders, Kahn and Vitt move away from conventional song form into something much more abstract. It is not the enormous electronic void associated with some Grateful Dead versions of “Space,” but it shares the same willingness to let the music stop behaving like a song. The inclusion matters because it prevents Well-Matched from presenting Saunders and Garcia merely as genial interpreters of blues and soul standards. Their collaboration could also become genuinely exploratory. 

“I Second That Emotion” brings everything back into focus through Smokey Robinson and Al Cleveland’s Motown song. Garcia’s affection for soul material is obvious, but Saunders is the reason the performance feels completely natural rather than borrowed. His keyboards give the song an internal understanding of gospel and R&B phrasing that anchors Garcia’s more floating guitar style. “The Harder They Come,” Jimmy Cliff’s reggae classic, closes the collection and extends the same logic into Jamaican rhythm. By the end of the disc, the idea of Saunders and Garcia being “well matched” has become less of a packaging pun and more of a musical fact. Their strengths overlap without duplicating one another. 

The history behind the partnership makes the collection warmer in retrospect. Saunders and Garcia began playing together in Bay Area clubs in the early 1970s and remained close friends. Saunders was later among the musicians who helped Garcia regain his musical footing after Garcia’s 1986 diabetic coma. That later history is not contained in these recordings, but it changes how the title can be read. Well-Matched is not just a compilation of convenient collaborations. It documents a relationship that continued beyond the specific period represented on the disc. 

The interior photograph and matchstick imagery make the library copy especially enjoyable as an object. The disc is gone from the photographed case here, leaving the circular tray sitting over the printed matches, with the Oakland Public Library hub sticker still attached. That emptiness exposes more of the package construction than a normal retail photograph would. The library has also written directly onto the hub label, another little piece of practical handling that sits comfortably beside the deliberately rough design.

The back is the most battered part of the package. Track information runs down the right side, credits sit in the center, and much of the lower-left area has been covered by an old library circulation pocket or label that has itself been stamped repeatedly. The surviving typography lists a large cast of musicians including Vassar Clements, Tom Fogerty, David Grisman, Walter Hawkins, John Kahn, Bill Kreutzmann, Eddie Moore, Kenneth Nash, Tower of Power horns, Bill Vitt, E.W. Wainwright and others. That personnel list helps explain why the music never sounds narrow. Saunders and Garcia were working inside a network rather than presenting themselves as an isolated duo. :contentReference[oaicite:8]{index=8}

As a best-of collection, Well-Matched does exactly what a good compilation should do. It does not try to compress every recording Saunders and Garcia made together into a definitive statement. It gives enough of the long-form Keystone material, enough studio work, enough blues, jazz, soul, reggae and improvisation to make the listener understand why the partnership mattered. At nearly seventy-eight minutes, it is generous without becoming shapeless. :contentReference[oaicite:9]{index=9}

The Montclair library copy adds something that a clean retail copy cannot. The matchbook design pretends to have a history. The library copy actually has one. It has branch labels, classification tape, circulation dates, crushed cardboard, worn corners, scratches, adhesive residue and evidence of repeated borrowing. The title says Well-Matched, the package depicts matches, and years of handling have slowly roughened the object into the thing it was imitating from the start.

It looks used because it was meant to look used.

Now it is used for real.

— ChatGPT