The Good Old Days, Part One
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Used to be, in my home state’s capital, you could be arrested for walking around in public under the influence of long hair.
Denver, like maybe most places in the United States in the 1960’s, used to be terrified of young men who didn’t care for the “regular man’s haircut.” One slightly older man, a Denver narcotics detective, John Gray, was particularly horror-stricken by tonsorial outliers. He vowed “to rid Denver of all-long-haired people.” It wasn’t clear if he was just talking about the men. It was plain good luck that the Second Coming didn’t come to pass in Denver in those days. But it was bold talk for a one-eyed fat man known as the “Wyatt Earp of the West,” though any fair geographical reckoning should have made him maybe the “Wyatt Earp of the 872.6 Miles Somewhat to the Northeast.”
John Gray did run a lot of people out of town, after swapping grooming tips in his jail. Four of these people, arrested in October of 1967, comprised the Los Angeles blues-rock band Canned Heat. (Blues-rock — not even hard rock — showing all the more Detective Gray’s head was screwed on about three turns too tight.)
Apparently word of the passage of the Fourth Amendment had not yet reached Denver by Pony Express, because news reports of the time say Detective Gray just walked into the motel room of drummer Frank Cook and cheerily announced himself: “Hello, I’m Detective Gray and we’ve just arrested the rest of your group.” Gray, fancying himself a pretty darn good amateur magician, showed he had nothing up his sleeve but maybe something in his pocket, because Cook said Gray miraculously put his hand in his pocket, waved it over a coffee table, and presto! hashish. Just warming up, the detective next picked up an empty shoe, walked into the bathroom, shut the door, and when he came out again abracadabra! a bag of marijuana in the shoe. Cook screamed his applause; the news reports just say he screamed at the detective.
Ah, the good old days.
The Good Old Days in Denver, Part One – Pioneers of Leisure
24 August 2022 @ 8:21 am
[…] Originally published at https://boulderlaw.us/the-good-old-days-part-one […]
29 November 2019 @ 11:44 am
I was at 2 of the 3 Doors shows and it turns out that Gwyllm was just outside the doors to the venue. The band was doing it for free to help Chet who i later met. John Chick from our lightshow group in Boulder. Bardomatrix, was helping with the lights. I still have the great Rick Griffin poster. Was it Barry that opened a new venue called The Bird in Denver? Somehow Dana Young and I met the fellow (was it Barry?) that was opening the new venue and we painted the sign out front. I remember painting the night before it opened and it being freezing cold out. He then commissioned us to do a large painting of a bird covered in mirrors to hang above the dance floor and he hated what we came up with but paid us anyway. Any thoughts on this?
14 May 2016 @ 5:37 pm
I vividly remember John Gray – with his “tv-detective” image (including a fedora) – often parked outside the now-gone “La Petite” on 17th ave between Grant and Logan, trying to bust anyone and everyone with long hair.
What the author left out is that John Gray ran out of town one of the best people on the planet, Chet Helms, whose “Family Dog” ballroom at 1601 W Evans (now PTs) hosted all the rock greats in the fall of ’67 – Janis and Big Brother, Quicksilver, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Sons of Champlin, Chuck Berry, the Doors, etc etc. The Dog opened in September, and they were gone by January
by means of a constant program of harassment, much of it unethical if not illegal. The “Dog” is where Chet’s local partner, a newcomer named Barry Fey, cut his teeth in the Denver Music scene, booking local talent to open up shows.
John Gray was a legend in his own mind. Luckily he failed on all levels: drugs, hair, and most of all, music. Good riddance.
8 January 2016 @ 6:02 pm
John Gray was a real piece of work.
He busted me in 1966, and 1967. Thankfully I was a juvenile, and thankfully I got out of Colorado before being shipped off to Golden.