Chester Leo Helms was born in Santa Maria, California, the eldest of three sons. His parents were Chester and Novella Helms. Helms' father, a manager at a local sugarbeet mill, died when he was 9. His mother took the boys to Missouri and then to Texas.
Helms spent the rest of his youth in Missouri and Texas, where he learned to organize events by helping to stage benefits for civil rights groups. He enrolled at the University of Texas and became part of the music scene there, a scene that included a very young and inexperienced Janis Joplin. Soon he dropped out of school and, inspired by the Beat Generation writers, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to travel across America in search of freedom and inspiration, he set off wearing shoulder-length hair, beard and rimless glasses hitchhiking across the country. He ended up in San Francisco in 1962.
Later he was to return to Austin with his best friend at the time, Peter Haigh, to visit his friend Janis Joplin. He thought she could make it as a singer in San Francisco. After a week of partying, they convinced Janis to drop out of school and hitchhike back to San Francisco with them. Later he would bring her to the attention of Big Brother and the Holding Company.
After arriving in San Francisco in 1962, he scrounged a living various ways, including selling marijuana, an occupation that caused him to go to a boardinghouse at 1090 Page Street. The house was in Haight-Ashbury, then a rundown, low-rent neighborhood. Having met many musicians in his trade, and appreciating the vibrant music scene in San Francisco, he instinctively recognized the need for a forum for musicians to jam. When he saw the large basement at Page Street, he began organizing jam sessions for the local bands and musicians. Helms, a gifted organizer, made those sessions popular and started charging an admission fee of 50 cents. His career as a rock concert promoter began. Big Brother and the Holding Company formed and Helms functioned as their low-key manager. He teamed up Janis Joplin with Big Brother for jam sessions in the Haight-Ashbury basement.
In February 1966 he formed a loose connection with the Family Dog, a commune of hippies living at 2125 Pine street who threw open dances and wild events. Helms was the ideal person to help this group organize their presentations and he moved into the Family Dog house. Their first formal production was a concert at Longshoremen's Hall.
In February 1966, Helms formally founded Family Dog Productions to begin promoting concerts at The Fillmore Auditorium, alternating weekends with another young promoter, Bill Graham. As the concerts became more popular, inevitable "conflicts" arose between the two promoters, based in part on the notion that public conflict and controversy could generate free publicity. Within a few months Helms secured the permits necessary to host events at the Avalon Ballroom, an old dancehall located at the corner of Sutter and Van Ness. Big Brother and the Holding Company debuted there in June 1966. Later Helms would get them the appearance that made them famous, the Monterey Pop Festival where Albert Grossman spotted Joplin and offered her a contract.
The Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street, San Francisco became the Family Dog's main venue. Here the Family Dog held a series of legendary concerts between April 1966 and November 1968. Their shows were a mix of artists, from rock to blues, soul, Indian, to rock and roll.[7] To promote their concerts, Family Dog published a series of innovative psychedelic posters, handbills and other ephemera, created by a group of prominent young San Francisco artists including Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse (Mouse Studios), Rick Griffin, Steve Renick and Victor Moscoso. Often printed using intensely colored fluorescent inks, they typically featured a mixture of found images and specially drawn artwork. The posters of Griffin, Mouse and Kelly, in particular, were known for the intricate and highly stylized hand-lettering in which the concert details were written out, which sometimes took considerable time and effort to decipher. Original Avalon posters are now collector's items.
Helms was also involved in joint productions/promotions at the Fillmore, Longshoreman's Hall, and Haight Street's Straight Theater (not all formal Family Dog Dance-Concerts).
While Graham was an aggressive businessman and professional promoter, Helms presented a folksier image. He related easily to the San Francisco hippie subculture since, in essence, he was one of them. The San Francisco Chronicle called Helms "a towering figure in the 1960s Bay Area music scene," and indeed he was a huge contributor.
Helms embraced music for music's sake and the Beat-hipster-generation-turned-hippy philosophy. While the war raged in Vietnam and the nation coped with racial problems and assassinations, the anti-war, anti-establishment youth thrived in the throes of a social revolution. Meanwhile, Helms was cranking out bands and musicians espousing the same lifestyle as this new audience, while giving the very distinct impression that he was uninterested in financial gain.
To concertgoers, Helms' contributions to the music world, like introducing a singer he knew in Texas, Janis Joplin, to the San Francisco music scene, were not always well publicized, but witnessing the final product of Joplin, with her powerful performances was a spectacle. First introduced as a new bandmember of Big Brother, she brought what the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver, and Big Brother did not seem at that point to have - a lead singer to match Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin and Grace Slick. Joplin later left Big Brother to record solo albums and to rapidly grow in fame, accelerated by her performance at the Monterey Pop Festival.
With Joplin as the lead singer, Helms became the group's manager and introduced them on stage when they made their crucial appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, a performance that marked Joplin's elevation to national prominence.
Creativity was the essence, borrowed from (while re-popularizing) a vast spectrum of musical idioms, including R&B, East Indian, pop, country, bluegrass, and, to an extent, jazz. Music that featured long solos suited the audiences, and was soon used by bands everywhere, in performance and recordings, later becoming a major vehicle for helping launch what would become a new FM radio station music format - the less-commercial "Album-Oriented Rock," in the form of "underground" stations that sprang up coast-to-coast. Exposure on these airwaves further helped the popularity of concert-oriented rock and bands that would play for hours without stopping, as the two-minute hit temporarily was no longer the objective. Songs with long, art-centric solos gained reaffirmation with the increasing commercial success of the radio stations that became part of the new "movement" genre.
Sometimes Helms cast the music promoter role aside and the Family Dog would feature speakers Alan Watts, Dr. Timothy Leary, Stephen Gaskin, poet Allen Ginsberg, and other counter-culter gurus. Helms is linked in San Francisco lore with Graham, the Diggers founder Emmett Grogan, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Neal Cassady, Kenneth Rexroth, Ralph J. Gleason, and others.
Bill Graham Presents shows evolved more into high-power, professional lineups of better-known headline bands that made him known as the can-do guy that he was, while Helms, although managing to produce top-flight bands, still showcased bands that tended to be hipper and local. Helms didn't seem to have the need to hire zealous uniformed security guards, so teenagers found it easier to sneak into his dances. Helms ultimately allowed free admission after midnight. The San Francisco Family Dog dances later re-emerged in a new location, the former Ocean Beach Pavilion turned Slot car track that was right next door to the old skating rink and "Bull Pup Enchiladas" at Ocean Beach, at 660 The Great Highway in San Francisco's Richmond district.
In his career Helms used other locations like ventures in Denver, Portland, and joint productions/promotions at the Fillmore, Longshoreman's Hall, and Haight Street's Straight Theater (not all formal Family Dog Dance-Concerts), etc.
^ "Joplin Manager Chet Helms Dies". Billboard. June 27 2005. Retrieved 2006-05-20.
^ Albert, Stew (June 29 2006). "Another Victim of Hep C: Chet Helms, a Rock and Roll Hero". Counterpunch. Retrieved 2006-05-28.
^ a b Laing, David (June 27 2005). "Obituary: Chet Helms Promoter of Janis Joplin". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2006-05-28.
^ Amburn, Ellis (1993). Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin. Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-39506-4.
^ Selvin, Joel (1995). Summer of Love. Plume/Penguin.
^ Heart, S.F.. "The Dog House". Retrieved 2006-05-28.
^ Heart, S.F.. "The Avalon Ballroom". S. F. Heart. Retrieved 2006-05-28.
^ Aidin Vaziri and Jim Herron Zamora, "Chet Helms -- legendary S.F. rock music producer," San Francisco Chronicle, June 26, 2005. [1]
^ SF Chronicle, July 25, 2010. "Where to Find Celebrities' Resting Places" by Charlie Wells
^ Chet Helms Memorial Concert Golden Gate Park FREE Rock Concert October 30th
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