Betty Cantor-Jackson (born 1948) is an American
audio engineer
An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduction, ...
and producer. She is best known for her work recording live concerts for the
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...
from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, including the ''
Cornell 5/8/77'' album.
She is noted for her ear for recording and her long tenure with the band.
Early life
Growing up in
Martinez, California
Martinez (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Martínez'') is a city and the county seat of Contra Costa County, California, United States, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the southern shore of the Carquinez Strait, t ...
, Cantor-Jackson developed an interest in electronics, saying "I used to take things like radios, other little electronic devices if they didn't work, open them up, mess with them, put them back together and they worked." She started booking shows for her high school, which led her to promote and help with shows across the bay in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
. Through this, she met people in the underground music scene who taught her how to do sound engineering. Her involvement in the music scene and interest in
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
led her to meet and subsequently start working with the Grateful Dead.
Grateful Dead era
In 1968, she landed an apprenticeship recording live sound with Bob Matthews at
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
venue the Carousel, which would later become the
Fillmore West
The Fillmore West was a historic rock and roll music venue in San Francisco, California, US which became famous under the direction of concert promoter Bill Graham from 1968 to 1971. Named after The Fillmore at the intersection of Fillmore Stre ...
. The two worked together on the Dead's second studio album, ''
Anthem of the Sun
''Anthem of the Sun'' is the second album by rock band the Grateful Dead, released in 1968 on Warner Bros/Seven Arts. It is the first album to feature second drummer Mickey Hart. The band was also joined by Tom Constanten, who contributed avan ...
'', in the same year.
After this, the two regularly mixed and taped the band's live recordings and became known as "Bob and Betty."
A few years later, she married tour manager Rex Jackson, and they continued to record the band's live shows with their own tapes and equipment. After Jackson's death in a car crash in 1976, she was put on the band's payroll in 1977 and 1978 to record and help stage setup. Later, she began dating the Grateful Dead's new keyboardist,
Brent Mydland
Brent Mydland (October 21, 1952 – July 26, 1990) was an American keyboardist and singer. He was a member of the rock band The Grateful Dead from 1979 to 1990, a longer tenure than any other keyboardist in the band.
Growing up in Concord, ...
. She did not feel welcome working with the band after the two broke up, saying, "Brent and I split up after a few years, with the last year spent in the studio working on his solo project. This put me in the category of the dreaded 'ex.' I didn't think that could apply to me, but he was a band member. Everyone was paranoid of me being around, so I no longer had access to my studio or the vault."
Her last work for the Grateful Dead during this period was the 1981 live album ''
Dead Set
''Dead Set'' is a British zombie horror miniseries written and created by Charlie Brooker and directed by Yann Demange. The show takes place primarily on the set of a fictional series of the real television show '' Big Brother''. The five epi ...
''.
The "Betty Boards"
Since Cantor-Jackson often used her own tapes and equipment when recording shows, they were in her possession unless bought by the Grateful Dead for their own releases. In the mid-80s, she was forced to foreclose on her home and moved to Oregon with her in-laws to be a nursing assistant. After struggling to pay storage fees for her belongings in California, her storage spaces were auctioned in 1986.
These included the over 1000 tapes from her career as a live audio engineer, which became known as the "Betty Boards."
They were mostly recordings of the Grateful Dead, but included bands such as
Legion of Mary
The Legion of Mary ( la, Legio Mariae, postnominal abbreviation L.O.M.) is an international association of members of the Catholic Church who serve it on a voluntary basis. It was founded in Dublin, as a Marian movement by the layman and civi ...
,
Kingfish, the
Jerry Garcia Band
The Jerry Garcia Band was a San Francisco Bay Area rock band led by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Garcia founded the band in 1975; it remained the most important of his various side projects until his death in 1995. The band regularly tour ...
,
Old & In the Way
Old & In the Way was a bluegrass group formed in 1973. It was composed of Peter Rowan (guitar, vocals), Vassar Clements (fiddle), Jerry Garcia (banjo, vocals), David Grisman (mandolin, vocals), and John Kahn (string bass). When the group was fo ...
, and the
New Riders of the Purple Sage
New Riders of the Purple Sage is an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco in 1969 and its original lineup included several members of the Grateful Dead. The band is sometimes referred ...
.
The Grateful Dead declined to bid,
leading to the storage lots being auctioned to the public. Three separate parties ended up in possession of the tapes; none of them were Grateful Dead fans. One party has held them in a storage locker since purchasing. The second party, an unnamed couple, got a friend to record the tapes to cassette from reel-to-reel in order to distribute them.
The last, a high school teacher, kept them in his barn for years where they decayed, before he enlisted
Rob Eaton
Rob Eaton is an American guitarist. He is best known for his work with the renowned Grateful Dead tribute band, Dark Star Orchestra, of which he has been a member since 2001.
Career
Rob Eaton grew up in Vermont and was inspired to start playin ...
, guitarist for the Grateful Dead tribute band
Dark Star Orchestra
Dark Star Orchestra is a Grateful Dead cover band formed in Chicago, Illinois. They serve as a tribute band to the rock group the Grateful Dead. Since 1997, the band has been "celebrating the Grateful Dead concert experience."
Overview
Dark Sta ...
, to help restore them. Over 200 tapes were restored and digitally archived, a total of almost 100 hours of music. The Grateful Dead offered the owner $100,000 for the tapes, but he refused to sell them for anything less than $1 million.
Eaton went on to contact other owners to restore their tapes as well, reaching agreements with one of the other primary owners in 2014.
However, several of these tapes have since been commercially released. The most notable of these is ''
Cornell 5/8/77'', a concert at
Cornell University's Barton Hall
Barton Hall is an on-campus field house on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It is the site of the school's indoor track facilities, ROTC offices and classes, and Cornell Police. For a long time, Barton Hall was the largest ...
. It is widely regarded as one of the Grateful Dead's best shows and one of the best live recordings of the band. In 2012 it was added to the
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservati ...
of the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States."
Post Grateful Dead career
Cantor-Jackson quit taping shows until 2011, when she was asked to stage manage for
Wavy Gravy
Hugh Nanton Romney Jr. (born May 15, 1936), known as Wavy Gravy, is an American entertainer and peace activism, activist best known for his role at Woodstock, as well as for his hippie persona and counterculture of the 1960s, countercultural be ...
's 70th birthday party and benefit concert. Playing the show was former
Black Crowes
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption of visible spectrum, visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or fi ...
' frontman
Chris Robinson's new band,
Chris Robinson Brotherhood
Chris Robinson Brotherhood was an American blues rock band formed in 2011 by Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson while the Crowes were on hiatus. The original lineup consisted of Robinson (vocals, guitar), Neal Casal (lead guitar, backing vocal ...
. Cantor-Jackson loved the group and insisted on taping their future shows. These recordings turned into a series of live albums called ''
Betty's Blends''.
She also mixed and mastered for the Americana band
Midnight North in 2015.
As of August 2019, she is the engineer and production and road manager for the band and for the choir of
Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. She still talks to some of the Grateful Dead's band members and crew
and went to a show in
Santa Clara during their highly publicized 50th anniversary tour.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cantor-Jackson, Betty
1944 births
Living people
People from Martinez, California
American audio engineers
Record producers from California
Grateful Dead