Bill Graham Presents

06/05/2026

Legendary Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, now 85, remains a bridge between the chaotic hope of the 1960s and today’s reality.

As a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Grammy winner, and one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists,” his identity matured in a world far from the Summer of Love.

His life changed forever at Antioch College when he met Ian Buchanan, a fingerstyle guitarist and friend of Reverend Gary Davis. Mesmerized by the sound of a complete band on one acoustic guitar, Kaukonen begged Buchanan to teach him, though the method was brutal.

“He’d play it for me, and I’d try to mimic it in the corner,” Jorma recalls. “He’d say, ‘You suck,’ but he kept at it. I didn’t suck as much.”

His career is defined by his doggedness and humility. In 1962, he arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area as a country-blues purist, but he was open-minded.

A fellow student suggested he meet Paul Kantner, a dropout. Kantner and Marty Balin were looking for a lead guitarist. Paul remembered Jorma from Santa Clara.

“I drove up,” Jorma says. “The rest is history.” When the band needed a name, Jorma suggested “Jefferson Airplane.” Paul loved it.

The Airplane was a chemical accident of talent.

“Everyone was extremely talented,” Jorma reflects, “but the chemistry worked.”

Jorma kept his blues project, Hot Tuna, alive with bassist Jack Casady. While the Airplane was volatile, Hot Tuna was a conversation between two musicians who’ve played together for over 55 years.

Jorma lives at the Fur Peace Ranch in southeastern Ohio, a music camp he and Vanessa founded. It’s a hub of creativity where he teaches traditions passed down to him.

Jorma remains stubbornly himself: a man who loves his family, community, motorcycle, coffee, and playing the guitar. He’s a relic of a more connected time, but he’s not living in the past. He’s here, now, playing, teaching, and processing the weirdness of it all—one song at a time.

Catch the stream at k-zap.org, on the k-zap apps or at 93.3 FM in the metro Sacramento area.

06/05/2026

06/05/2026

06/05/2026

In the early 1970s, if you asked the musicians who were making the music that defined that era which of their peers they found genuinely intimidating, a significant number of them gave the same answer.

Lowell George.

Keith Richards said it. Mick Jagger said it. Jimmy Page said it. The Eagles said it. Linda Ronstadt, who recorded with him, said he was the most gifted person she had ever worked with. Jackson Browne said similar things. The testimony was consistent and came from people who were not given to generosity about their competition.

George was the founder and primary creative force of Little Feat — a band that formed in Los Angeles in 1969 and spent the following decade making music that critics loved, other musicians loved, and the general public appreciated without ever fully embracing at the commercial scale the talent warranted.

The music Little Feat made was genuinely difficult to categorize in ways that confused radio programmers and record label marketing departments simultaneously. It was rock but it had a deep pocket borrowed from New Orleans R&B. It was country-influenced but too funky for country radio. It had jazz harmonic sophistication but too much grit for jazz audiences. The people who loved it loved it with an intensity that bordered on evangelical — they pressed copies on friends with the urgency of people sharing something they were afraid might disappear.

George was the guitarist, singer, primary songwriter, and slide guitar player. His slide technique was, by the testimony of other slide players, in a category that resisted comparison. Ry Cooder — himself widely considered one of the greatest slide guitarists alive — has spoken about George's playing with a reverence he rarely directs at peers. The specific quality of George's slide work was not just technical. It was emotional in a way that was completely specific to him — expressive in the manner of a voice rather than an instrument.

He was also, by the late 1970s, eating himself to death.

The food consumption was compulsive and severe in ways that the people around him recognized as a serious problem and found impossible to address. His weight increased dramatically. His health deteriorated. The band around him fragmented partly because the personal dynamics had become untenable and partly because watching someone you care about destroy themselves in slow motion is not something most people can sustain indefinitely.

He went solo. He recorded Thanks I'll Eat It Here in 1979 — an album that contains some of his finest work and that was released while he was visibly in poor health.

He died on June 29, 1979, in a hotel room in Arlington, Virginia, of a heart attack. He was thirty-four years old. He had been on tour supporting the solo album. He had checked into the hotel after a show, gone to his room, and died.

The tributes that followed were extensive and came from the people best positioned to assess what had been lost. The general public, which had never fully found Little Feat during the years they were making their best music, expressed polite condolence.

Bonnie Raitt, who had been his close friend and who had absorbed his slide guitar approach into her own playing, has spoken about his death across forty-five years with a grief that doesn't diminish. She dedicated her career renaissance in the early 1990s — the Nick of Time album, the multiple Grammys, the commercial success that finally matched what people who knew her work had always understood was there — to his memory.

He was thirty-four. He was the most talented musician of his generation according to the most talented musicians of his generation. He is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He died in a hotel room after a show.

The slide guitar part on "Willin'" will make you understand everything the words can't convey about what was lost. Play it loud. It deserves that.

06/05/2026

I mean stairway to Heaven and free bird immediately come to mind.

06/05/2026

On June 2, 1978, Thin Lizzy released Live and Dangerous, an album widely regarded as one of the greatest live recordings in rock history.

The album was recorded primarily during the band's 1977 performances at London's Hammersmith Odeon, along with additional shows across North America.

At the time, Thin Lizzy was operating at its peak, powered by the twin-guitar partnership of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson and the commanding presence of Phil Lynott.

Live and Dangerous captured the band's powerful stage energy and the connection they shared with audiences throughout the 1970s.

The record featured memorable live performances of fan favorites including "Jailbreak," "The Boys Are Back in Town," "Emerald," and "Rosalie."

Source/Credit: Thin Lizzy – Live and Dangerous (1978)

Shared for informational/Educational purpose only

06/03/2026

China Cat

06/03/2026

3rd of June 1972,Jethro Tull were at number one on the U.S.Album chart with "Thick as a Brick".