I'm A King Bee | 1970-11-20 | Grateful Dead

2:49:15

Taper:

Bob Stone

Transferrer:

David Bernis;Doug Rice;Alan Bershaw

SHNID:

gd1970-11-20.175675.StereoAud.BetaHiFi.stone.bernis.rice.bershaw.flac2448

Lineage:

Lineage: Stereo Audience Master Cassettes > ? > Beta HiFi (Sony L-750 ES, dubbed in the late 1980s by David Bernis) > Sony SL-HF400 Super Beta HiFi VCR > 24/48 wav (transferred two times by Doug Rice AKA BFOQ -12/2025) > LogicPro (level and speed adjustments, DC offset correction, 3 patches utilizing other source, dropout repair utilizing transfer #2 and sequencing by Alan Bershaw 12/2025) > 24/48 wav > FLAC

Taper Notes:

View NotesNotes:
This may only be of interest to the hardcore Grateful Dead collectors out there - especially those who love their 1970 era. Thanks to my friend Doug, who has been scouring and preserving private collections in the Rochester, NY area for many years, we're sharing this newly discovered source of Bob Stone’s hand-held audience recording of the November 20, 1970 Grateful Dead concert at The Palestra.  Unlike what has been circulating for decades, Doug's new transfers are NOT sourced from Marty Weinberg’s reel copies, but from an alternate and substantially different sounding Beta HiFi tape copy that had never been transferred or circulated before.

While generally inferior to the known source and not without issues of its own, this new transfer has several things going for it, including additional material unavailable on previous versions of this show (including more of ‘Cold Rain And Snow’, ‘St. Stephen’ and 'King Bee') and it was not EQ’ed during playback. The source of this Beta tape suffered from vacillating speed issues, some of which were extreme. These have largely been corrected, but some speed instability issues remain.  It does not suffer from any “radio interference” or several other anomalies that have been noted on previously circulated copies and it is sequenced differently, which I believe makes more sense and is closer to being accurate.

The Jefferson Airplane performed at the War Memorial in Rochester that same evening. Following their concert, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady (and according to some accounts, Grace Slick) headed over to the University of Rochester campus, arriving around 2:00 a.m, as the Dead were winding up their 2nd set.  Their arrival motivated a 3rd set of oldies and spontaneous jamming, with Jorma joining in on all of it (and Jack possibly joining in for some of it), which according to first hand reports ended in the 3 to 3:30 a.m. range.

Like all other copies, the initial pre-drums portion of ‘Good Lovin’ is missing, as is part of ‘The Other One,’ which are presumed not to have been recorded or lost during tape changes.  Bob Stone either did not record the New Riders Of The Purple Sage opening set, or possibly recorded over it, to facilitate recording everything else. In an effort to save tape, Bob also paused recording between individual songs, which allowed him to get as much music as he thankfully did.

While this alternate source will primarily appeal to completists and those who can still enjoy 1970 audience recordings, this also has portions that I find superior to previous versions, like the “Jam > Darling Corey > Jam” sequence with Jorma Kaukonen joining in, which sounds more natural than the heavily EQ’ed version everyone is familiar with.  The entire recording also has better low end.

My sincere thanks to Bob Stone, who originally recorded this, David Bernis, who made the BetaHiFi copy back in the late 1980s, and especially Doug Rice, who discovered this Beta tape and meticulously did two 24/48 transfers of it, so that I could work it up to it's current state.  For 1970 hand-held technology in a school gymnasium, it's a surprisingly listenable recording from the woefully under-recorded Fall 1970 tour.  If nothing else, this new source can be used to patch several missing parts on the only other source.

I hold out hope that Bob Stone's master cassettes still exist and may even surface someday.  If you have any leads on that, please get in touch.

Happy New Year!

Alan Bershaw (January 2026)