“The Haight-Ashbury of 1967 was a place of endless possibility: new ways of living, an influx of ideas, and political and cultural revolution were in the air. And yet amidst this “anything goes” scene, one band still stuck out as an anomaly.”
(Kelly Whalen. “Meet the Ace of Cups, the Haight’s (almost) forgotten all-girl band.” PBS. September 06, 2017.)
This is one of the most remarkable stories about rock music that I have ever read. It is about arguably the first all-female rock band of importance. Let me share some information about the Ace of Cups and their dream deferred.
The five-member Ace of Cups was based in San Francisco at the height of the Haight, when the neighborhood in the ’60s was known for its outsider art and hippie culture.
The five original Cups – Denise Kaufman, Mary Ellen Simpson, Diane Vitalich, Mary Gannon and Marla Hunt (Hunt is not involved now) – met amid the haze of Haight-Ashbury on New Year’s Eve in 1966. Then in their late teens or early 20s, they were in school or held clerical day jobs.
Long-time journalist Michele Willens writes …
“Gannon, a former Miss Monterey, was working in an all-night doughnut shop, Simpson was studying art at a city college and Kaufman was employed at Fantasy Records, the label famous for its association with Creedence Clearwater Revival. But their passion was making music, and once they merged, they would often practice in Fantasy’s upstairs studio. Eventually, they landed a manager and started getting gigs in venues like the Avalon and the Fillmore.”
(Michele Willens. “A dream deferred: Pioneering all-female rock band Ace of Cups is finally having its moment.” Los Angeles Times. November 27, 2018.)
Thus, the scene’s first and only all-female act was born. The music this openly-feminist group made was phenomenal. The Cups music was raucous, rebellious, funny and loud. The band naturally fell into five-part harmonies, sharing lead vocals, and played the music that they wrote. Their messages of equal rights, decommodification (standard of living). and female empowerment were in line with the major social issues of the era. If you were around in their heyday, the Ace of Cups were already legends.
Katie Bain of The Guardian explains …
“They’re the band that opened for Jimi Hendrix in Golden Gate Park in the summer of 1967, just days after Hendrix burned his name into history at the Monterey Pop Festival. They’re the band that opened for the Band during the latter group’s three-night run at Winterland Ballroom in 1968. They’re the band that was friends with and peers of Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and other icons of the mythically heady and musically prolific 1960s San Francisco scene.”
(Katie Bain. “Ace of Cups: the 1960s all-female band finally record their first album.” The Guardian. August 27, 2018.)
But the summers of love eventually ended, and by 1972, the Ace of Cups’ moment had passed. And, the band went their separate ways.
Willens shares their individual stories. She writes ...
“None more so than Kaufman, who dropped out of UC Berkeley (where she was arrested in the free-speech protests) at 18, and temporarily hopped on Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters bus. At various points, she was apparently the focus of many a famous male’s life. (Hint: Check out the current biographies of Paul Simon and Jann Wenner)
“Simpson moved to northern California, returned to school, and eventually became a substance abuse and mental health specialist. Gannon also went back to college and became a music teacher. Vitalich stayed in Marin, cleaned houses three days a week, and became a practitioner of shiatsu massage, and Kaufman moved part time to Kauai, where she started an organic farm, which is still operating, and with six local women opened a private school for kindergartners to 12th graders. She later became a Bikram yoga instructor, and her celebrity clientele has included Madonna, Quincy Jones. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Jane Fonda.”
(Michele Willens. “A dream deferred: Pioneering all-female rock band Ace of Cups is finally having its moment.” Los Angeles Times. November 27, 2018.)
The women were also having babies, and with families to care for there was greater concern that the Ace of Cups as a commercial enterprise was never going to take off.
“In order to play and tour, you have to be able to have childcare, and we just couldn’t figure out how to handle it all,” Kaufman says. While men in the scene were starting families and still touring freely, the women didn’t have this luxury and, by 1972, the Ace of Cups had splintered.
Here comes the kicker. Are you ready?
The Ace of Cups never scored a record deal. Despite their impact in San Francisco, in the intervening years the Ace of Cups were relegated to footnote status, all but written out of history books … until now.
Kaufman believes was due to the fact that label execs didn’t know how to market a rock band made up of five female lead singers in top hats and paisley.
“We were hippie girls,” she says. “I don’t know what that looked like to these guys that came in their suits from Los Angeles and New York.”
But now, with each of the women of Ace of Cups in her 70s, the band has been re-discovered thanks largely to George Wallace, the founder of the New York-based label High Moon Records.
“I kept seeing the words ‘Ace of Cups’ (on posters) and wondered what that meant,” Wallace recalls. “I truly thought it might be a catering company.”
Alec Palao, a writer, archivist and ’60s music aficionado (Ace Records' “Man on the West Coast) who has worked with various record labels on reissues from the era, in 2003 tracked down some Ace of Cups private recordings and started promoting them. He eventually caught the attention of Wallace.
Always obsessed with the San Francisco scene, Wallace finally heard It’s Bad For You But Buy It, a compilation of Ace of Cups bootlegs released by Big Beat Records in 2003.
While he was launching his label, Wallace planned a trip out west to look for musical buried treasure that High Moon might re-release. At the time, the Ace of Cups were getting together to play the 75th birthday of counterculture figure Wavy Gravy, and when Wallace saw them rock this event, he knew he had struck gold.
“The discussion shifted to, ‘Wait a minute, you guys are starting to play and rehearse, why don’t we make the album that should have been made 50 years ago?’’ Wallace says.
(Katie Bain. “Ace of Cups: the 1960s all-female band finally record their first album.” The Guardian. August 27, 2018.)
So, Wallace agreed to release an album and set out to find the right studio producer. The Cups lobbied for a woman but were satisfied when Dan Shea was enlisted. He had worked successfully with female artists like Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Jennifer Lopez, and had Northern California roots.
Shea and Wallace knew instinctively that an album just for nostalgic purposes would not be enough: that the songs – most have their beginnings in the ’60s, though a few are new – had to stand alone.
“Some of the songs are virtually unchanged from the way they played them in the late ’60s,” says Shea, “and others went through some major rewrites. That can be a difficult thing if people have lived with a song for 50 years and then suddenly some guy says, ‘OK, the verse should actually be the chorus, this one verse should be the bridge, and the introduction should be the verse.’”
(Michele Willens. “A dream deferred: Pioneering all-female rock band Ace of Cups is finally having its moment.” Los Angeles Times. November 27, 2018.)
The result is a double album with 21 tracks and contributions from some old friends – and fans – like Bob Weir, Taj Mahal and Buffy St. Marie. The final sound is a combination of rock, folk and blues with a garage-band sensibility. “I like to say it’s trans-genre,” says Kaufman. The recordings go a long way toward correcting the history of rock.
“This is a dream deferred,” says Denise Kaufman, who plays guitar, bass and harmonica and has written much of the group’s material. Adds longtime fan Jackson Browne, “I’ve been waiting 45 years for the debut.”
For Kaufman, it's kismet, with the group’s anti-war and higher consciousness themes as relevant today as they were when the Ace of Cups were playing for tripping hippies in the park. To see four gray-haired women, a sort of Ya-Ya Sisterhood of the Haight, rocking together certainly feels like an extension of the female empowerment ideals that guided their work.
Ace of Cups members always prided themselves on refusing to go softer or sexier or to be backed up by men. Now, of course, they face another potential enemy: ageism.
All are proudly gray, and as Vitalich says, “We just want to look the best we can for our age, and we are finding it empowering to not try to be what we used to be.”
The goals now are to sell some records, perhaps have their music used in film and television, and even find new young listeners. Or maybe even a Grammy.
Conclusion
I am a student of rock history and an avid music collector, especially in tune to the genre's offerings of the 1960s. As someone turning 71 in February, it is inconceivably to me how the Ace of Cups escaped my attention. Why in the world did I never hear their music until the last couple of years? I hope this blog entry explains that omission to some degree.
If you, like me, love 60s rock, you simply have to buy the recent offerings of the Ace of Cups.
The band ROCKS! And, I mean this with all of my musical heart and brain. Listening to their music is both a trip backward and a look forward – a delightful journey in sound through genuine musicianship. This band is not a “girl group” or simply a pure harmony act. They are a solid, rocking band that plays a wide variety of styles – rock, blues, folk, and, as Janis Joplin said before launching into “Mercedes Benz,” – “songs of great social and political import.”
The Ace of Cups music honors femininity, love, and sensuality. But don't get bogged down in descriptions of themes. Find their music and listen. The three offerings below feature great songs and beautiful production. How in the world didn't these ladies burst onto the recording scene in the 60s with music like this? This band gives the Runaways, Joan Jett, and the Bangles stiff competition. And, they preceded all of those iconic female rock acts.
Here is their brief discography:
It’s Bad For You But Buy It! (2003)
Ace of Cups (2018)
Here is the Ace of Cups website: https://www.aceofcups.com/
Music critic, author of the bestselling Summer of Love, and award-winning journalist Joel Selvin says the talent and energy that set the band apart 50 years ago still shines through. "Ace of Cups today are this vibrant, exciting time capsule that lives in the contemporary world" he says
(Allyson McCabe. “Ace Of Cups Gets A First Chance At An Overdue Debut.” NPR. January 09, 2019.)
“Music”
Music, music, music
Everything will be all right
I call my baby on the telephone,
Just to let him know that hes not alone
We got no money and so many bills to pay,
I wonder will we make another day
And then my baby says,
He says "Girl
All you've got to do in this whole world is play
Music, prettiest that you can
Music, snap your fingers clap your hand
Music, laugh and let your heart feel glad,
Everything will be all right”
Now we got no money to pay the rent,
And what we earn tonight, well it's already spent
My baby says Don't worry if times get hard,
Just before the dawn it always gets this dark (don't ya know)”
And when it gets so black you think the end is near,
Well that's when all the stars appear
Just like music, they light up the land,
Music, snap your fingers clap your hand,
Music, laugh and let your heart feel glad,
Everything will be all right (I can believe it)
Everything will be all right
(Just have faith that) everything will be all right,
Everything will be all right
By the Ace of Cups
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