Dave Torbert
Cleoma
attack and died. Heard this from David Nelson sometime in mid-late 80's.
Apparently the heart attack came totally without warning.
T JABS
Seth Jackson
: Dave Torbert died several years back!! :-(
Wow, that really is bad news. I used to think that Torbert was the
closest thing to Phil other than Phil.
--
Seth Jackson
Kent Stewart
Dave died of a heart attack back in the early eighties. I think he
was about 34 or so.
A couple of years before he died he tired of the bay area and
moved with his family up to Chico, CA, where I was living at the
time. He sat in for a while in one of the local bands, and I
got a chance to talk to him once or twice about his Kingfish
days (only band I'd ever seen him play in.) Nice guy.
But with only rare exceptions, bar bands *were* the music scene in
Chico. Very few real concerts. However, for some reason the Jerry
Garcia Band scheduled to play there in 1982, I think on St. Patrick's
day.
Big deal for us. We were psyched. But at the venue it slowly became
apparent that something was wrong--the show was later than usual in
starting.
Eventually somebody came out and confessed that there was a problem:
for some reason John Kahn had spaced on leaving the Bay Area on time,
and was still on I5 somewhere, running at least 90 minutes late.
However, (the announcement continued) old buddy Dave Torbert was in
the crowd, and was even now huddling with Jerry backstage going over
the chord changes for a number of songs.
Dave played the entire first set with Jerry, stumbling only once or
twice. Did a great job and was very warmly received. Kahn showed
up sometime during the break and played the 2nd set.
But that first set was something kind of special.
I believe it was only a year or two later that he passed on. RIP, Dave.
cheers,
--bongo
"ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em
down the mississippi to the gulf of Mexico!"