Remembering Chet Helms

Recently I received a letter from a woman named Carmen. “Don’t know if you remember me,” she wrote, “but you came up in my mind as I was reviewing my association with Chet Helms, who recently passed. To refesh your memory, an encounter that stays fresh in my mind is when you interviewed Chet and me while we were making love in San Francisco -- maybe that’ll spark your memory! I was 16 at the time, a runaway from New York -- it was 1963. It was an interesting experience as you, even with the other recreational activities of the time, maintained a journalistic stance.”

That was as good a way as any for me to remember Chet, who died from a stroke. Mainly recalled for his influence on the Bay Area music scene, Chet had dropped out of the University of Texas in 1961, and ended up hosting jam sessions in the basement of a house in Haight-Ashbury. Big Brother & the Holding Company emerged from those parties, and Chet, the band’s manager, managed to bring his old college buddy Janis Joplin up from Texas to be their singer.

An obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart: “He was like [rock impresario] Bill Graham, but he was the soft side; he was sweet as sugar. His business sense wasn’t as keen as Bill’s, but he really believed in the music.” Barry Melton, lead guitarist for Country Joe & the Fish, was quoted: “Chet was the antithesis of Bill Graham. Chet didn’t really care about money. The music always came first.”

Julius Karpen, who later managed Big Brother, was present when Hart phoned Melton. To Karpen, it sounded like “bitching between friends.” He asked Melton, “Did Mickey call you to complain about that quote?” Melton replied, “Oh, that’s Mickey. If you’re friends with Mickey, you’re always sparring with Mickey.”

The most poetic eulogy for Chet was written by Allen Cohen, who had been the editor of the first psychedelic underground paper, the San Francisco Oracle: “...There were darkened skied and a storm about to strike. The women cried and danced in the streets while the good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye down by the dock of the Bay. The day Chet Helms died Golden Gate Park was filled with mourners all with flowers in their hair. Big Brother played on all seven hills while Janis smiled from the clouds singing you got a piece of my heart....”

Only, Cohen himself was already dead. He had written that eulogy in January 2000, when there was a false report in the Chronicle that Chet had died. Chet decided to have a combination wake and resurrection. He hired a hearse and a coffin and invited 200 guests. He was driven up to the Gold Coast Restaurant. The coffin was rolled into the restaurant and opened. Chet lay there with flowers and a cell phone on his chest. All of a sudden, the phone rang. Chet rose to answer it, then walked through the crowd, toasting the mourners and greeting the cameras.