Chet Helms was a producer and organizer, helping to stage free concerts and other cultural events at Golden Gate Park, the backdrop of San Francisco's Summer of Love in 1967, as well as at other venues, including the Avalon Ballroom.
29 Facts About Chet Helms
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Chet Helms was the first producer of psychedelic light-show concerts at the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom and was instrumental in helping to develop bands that had the distinctive San Francisco Sound.
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Chet Helms died June 25,2005, of complications of a stroke.
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Chester Leo Chet Helms was born in Santa Maria, California, the eldest of three sons.
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Chet Helms taught four grades in one room and the other four grades were taught by another teacher in the other room.
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Chet 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.
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Chet Helms 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.
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Chet Helms thought she could make it as a singer in San Francisco.
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Big Brother and the Holding Company formed and Chet Helms functioned as their informal manager.
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Chet Helms teamed up Janis Joplin with Big Brother for music sessions in the Haight-Ashbury basement.
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Chet Helms was the ideal person to help this group organize their presentations and he moved into the Family Dog house.
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In February 1966, Chet Helms formally founded Family Dog Productions to begin promoting concerts at The Fillmore Auditorium, alternating weekends with another young promoter, Bill Graham.
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Chet Helms was nurturing when Graham caught wind of the excitement Chet Helms was creating and promoting.
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Later Chet Helms would get them the appearance that made them famous, the Monterey Pop Festival, where Albert Grossman spotted Joplin and offered her a contract.
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Sometimes Chet Helms cast the music promoter role aside and the Family Dog would feature speakers, including Alan Watts, Dr Timothy Leary, Stephen Gaskin, poet Allen Ginsberg, and other counterculture gurus.
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In 1967, Chet Helms and budding rock promotor Barry Fey agreed to open a Family Dog Productions concert dance hall in Denver, Colorado.
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The San Francisco psychedelic poster artists were commissioned by Chet Helms to do posters for the shows.
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Chet Helms related easily to the San Francisco hippie subculture since, in essence, he was one of them.
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The San Francisco Chronicle called Chet Helms "a towering figure in the 1960s Bay Area music scene,".
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Chet Helms embraced music for music's sake and the Beat-hipster-generation-turned-hippie philosophy.
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Meanwhile, Chet Helms was cranking out bands and musicians espousing the same lifestyle as this new audience, while giving the very distinct impression that he was indifferent to money and commercial success.
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Chet Helms had a reputation at the Avalon of being a rather authoritarian stage manager, once famously unplugging the Grateful Dead's stage amps when they played beyond their allotted hour, forcing them to complete Viola Lee Blues a capella.
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Chet Helms' shows were always more relaxed and offered a pleasant alternative to Bill Graham Presents dances, at a more reasonable admission, and with more room for the stoned, arm-waving type of solo dancing that personified the era.
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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 Chet Helms, although managing to produce top-flight bands, still showcased bands that tended to be hipper and local.
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Chet Helms didn't seem to have the need to hire zealous uniformed security guards, so teenagers found it easier to sneak into his dances.
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Chet Helms left the concert business in 1970, except for managing a few later events: Tribal Stomp at Berkeley's Greek Theater, Tribal Stomp II at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, a concert series at San Francisco's Maritime Hall in 1995 under the Family Dog name, and a 30th Anniversary celebration of the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park, a free event attended by 60,000 people.
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Chet Helms became an accomplished art dealer, selling American and European paintings and sculpture at his Atelier Dore art gallery on Bush Street in San Francisco, from 1980 until 2004.
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Chet Helms is memorialized in a "bright niche decorated with photographs and memorabilia" at the Neptune Society Columbarium.
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On July 24,2005, a fundraiser and tribute concert to Chet Helms was held at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.