Dana Morgan

[ianzimbra]

Does anyone know what became of this bass player? I wonder if he ever ruminates over what might have been?

[tigerstrat]

He went on to form a power trio with Pete Best and Jeff Holdsworth

[kevo]

In the space of a year, the Jug Champions had become the Warlocks and Dana Morgan Jr. was playing bass. The Warlocks borrowed their instruments from Dana Morgan Sr. and practiced in the store.

Soon, though, Morgan was out and Phil Lesh was in. With his son out of the band, Morgan Sr. was getting tired of the Warlocks practicing in his store. Besides, he was worried they were starting to smoke marijuana, he said in a 1988 interview.

"I decided I just hated the noise they were making," Morgan said in the same interview. "I can't understand why they're famous today. I put them out in the carport (to practice), but they kept sneaking back in. Finally, I got so tired of them, I sold the instruments." (Dana Morgan closed his shop in the early 1980s and retired. He died about three years ago.)




http://kazart.com/bus_stop/p_alto.htm

[Unkle Buck]

My first contact with Dana Morgan Jr. was in 1961 , at his dad's cramped, over-packed music/instrument repair shop in downtown Palo Alto CA, That was where my father bought a trumpet for me from a rather 'greaser' looking dude. That store for sure triggered the aspirations of many local youths to peruse a life in 'music'. Over the next few years, Dana's image change from that slick-back ducktail to longer and longer hair. In 1964, He sold me my first electric guitar and later 'loaned' me his Gibson Thunderbird Bass and Atlas amp for my first 'band gig'. I DO remember that a LOUD band rehearsed at the smallish shop all the time and 'after-hours' and that his Hawg was in the ally carport always....my friends and I were in and out of the shop all the time; drooling-over guitars, amps and such; watching odd-looking people flowing through the narrow hall leading back to the lesson rooms; always a constant din of wind and string instruments. As the '60's closed and as a few of us turned into some sort of 'hipsters', Dana was less and less a presence at the shop. Into the '70's, some of my friends now 'taught' new youths in the shop's lesson rooms....Dana would be seen now and again on this ever louder Hawg on the streets of Palo Alto, Redwood City, La Honda, and the roads up and over to the Coast. Those of us who grew-up around 'The Scene' there on the Mid-Peninsula,SF, Marin, and Santa Cruz, were LUCKY to be part of what today is taken as in-grained 'Merikan Culture of raves and rock concerts. As for Dana Morgan....????....just one of the many folks who open many doors for many peoples...and just faded away....

[mttourpro]

Unkle Buck, thanks for posting. Very cool nuggets of history there. I'm hoping you might have some other interesting antedotes or stories you'd be willing to share.

Maybe you had a chance to meet Pigpen or Janis??

Perhaps some other Bay-area bands?

I'm guessing others would be interested as well.