Kezar Stadium

I would think that people who don't agree with that already have them here.

Can't stand out for them, can you? Kezar Stadium is located Rather close to the Haight-Ashbury section.

So I think that would be the least of their problems in this immediate vicinity.

Brown's in the eye, shifting out of it now.

At Kezar.

At Kezar Stadium.

Was it pouring?

No, it wasn't even raining.

Well, it was, Keith.

It was Blues for All at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco on March 23rd, 1975.

So you evened up the series, Mateo.

And Nick, why did you choose that song?

It used to be just like the rest of the sport, which was a great family event for everybody.

My family, my dad had season tickets going back to Kezar Stadium and my dad did not come from money.

he broke in as a kid, but then, you know, grew up and became a season ticket holder there.

And then they went, went to candlestick.

70.

And then season ticket holders for 60 years dating back to Kezar.

How do you even find that story? So that, the beauty of local television, when we were in Australia, my photographer and I were walking to go to the public transport bar, wherever the Niner headquarters was for all the fans.

And we were walking through Melbourne.

Like, you learn something, I'm sure, talking to that family that there's no chance you could get it from Football Reference or Wikipedia or anything else.

Just because they had a perspective of a play or of a moment.

I mean, Kezar, like, how awesome is that?

Like, I didn't realize that people who saw games at Kezar were still living.

see their team in the Bay Area again.

And a fun little tidbit that I learned not too long ago, the Raiders actually played their inaugural season at Kezar Stadium in 1960.

And that's where Kezar Stadium is obviously where the 49ers played their first seasons before Candlestick was open.

There's so much great history.

As much as we talk about the 49ers' rich, rich history, the Raiders can...

Nobody agrees on this, and nobody ever has.

Which high school was it? One careful historian, writing about Merle's early life, says he went to Polytechnic High, the old school on Frederick Street right across from Kezar Stadium.

The same historian, writing in another post entirely, says merle formed that first band at lincoln high at the age of fourteen with his classmate johnny mathis and then there's mathis himself who went to washington high a different school again which is why the first account guesses that the two boys knew each other from sports or simply from living a few blocks apart was it polly with the stadium lights across the street was it lincoln out toward the avenues or did the educated men of music belong to no single school at all just to a handful of neighborhood kids who could play and one who could sing the fog keeps coming in over the hill in the front room the lamp stays on and the piano waits lid down for somebody small enough to need the phone-book on the bench on the table there is a theatre programme a little creased a paper cup of coffee gone cold a set of keys on a ring a folded newspaper turned to the jazz column and a passport because the man these things belong to has been a long way from home this year and he is about to go farther that man is merle saunders somewhere in the last years of the sixties and he is busy in the way a working musician is busy nobody knows his name outside the clubs yet inside the clubs they know it well his trio played the jazz rooms of the bay area organ guitar and drums on guitar was jimmy daniels a connecticut man who had played with the organist johnny hammond smith on drums was eddie moore who was merle's first cousin and a well-known player in his own right one autumn the trio played the jazz workshop in san francisco and a critic named russ wilson wrote them up kindly in the oakland tribune he listed some of their other bookings lake tahoe las vegas chicago so they were getting around the following spring they got a lucky call the trident was a waterfront restaurant in sausalito on the marin side of the golden gate owned by the man who had produced the kingston trio it booked jazz five or six nights a week and the pianist vince guaraldi who had the date sprained a finger getting off an airplane or so the club manager said and the critic reported it in a tone that suggests there may have been more to the story Either way, the Merle Saunders Trio stepped in for three weeks.

The same critic praised Merle as an organist who knew his stops as well as his keyboards and said he could swing.