I was fortunate enough to work several shows with the great Doc Watson. The first of which was when his son Merle was still alive, at the Keystone Palo Alto (California) in 1979. The last was at Reno’s Hawkins Amphitheater in October of 2005. There was never a show where he didn’t put the magic in magnificent. Watching him perform and mixing sound for him was always very special, but just sitting across the table from him eating lunch, I always felt I was in the presence of true greatness. And such a true gentleman with a great sense of humor to boot.

I recorded many of the shows and two of his best engagements were at the 140-seat Hacienda del Sol in Reno. Much thanks to Hacienda owner Barry Rivlin for helping me present the man, the icon, Doc Watson. We’re starting out with one of them on our new Doc page here:

LISTEN

Only a mere 30 years ago, the David Grisman Quintet graced the humble stage at Cotton’s Rancho Nevada, a roadhouse on interstate 80 in Verdi Nevada that was decidedly ahead of, or behind it’s time. Here’s your chance to relive a couple of evenings of great music with the progenitor of “Dawg”, a genre all to itself: https://jiveradio.org/david-grisman/

Well, right after posting the note below I got a post from a good friend in radio I refer to as “David G Ross”, alternately known as “The Punmaster”, aka David Gross, who has his own slick show on Saturday nights, “Big Dave’s Rockabilly Roadhouse” on KRSH-FM in Sonoma California.  Check it out sometime.

Anyway, he publishes the “Punmaster Music Wire” (when he wants to) and always does a great job on obits and obscure music history of those artists from the genres we love. He just did a great job with the passing of Country Joe McDonald and one of my idols Augie Meyers HERE. We will be posting links any time he coughs up another Jive-relevant retrospective.

Nope. We’re just not gonna do it. The recent passing of Country Joe brought up the usual thoughts of posting an obit and reminiscing about how I worked with him there or there or then. But after posting a short note on John Hammond only two days before, it occurred to me that these things are just going to keep increasing in frequency and all you folks out there in the Jive-O-sphere have myriad ways to glean information about the latest dead musician.

I’m going to trust our faithful boss jocks to actually play the music of these artists (that we have been playing all along) and leave the click-bait and obit chatter about billboard rankings and popularity and industry horseshit to the social media swamp.
We’ll play the music. That’s just what we do. ~jeff

John Hammond Jr.

November 13, 1942 – February 28, 2026