ED Denson
Encyclopedia
Eugene "ED" Denson is an American
music group
manager
, producer
, record label
owner, and - later - lawyer
, who has made notable contributions to folk
, blues
, and early San Francisco rock
.
, Robbie Basho
, and Max Ochs
-- all folk guitarists—before leaving with his first wife, the guitarist and singer, Pat Sullivan, for the West coast where he became a student of English, first at Merritt College, then at the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White
, ED Denson and John Fahey
set up Takoma Records
with Norman Pierce as their first distributor. The label was a pioneer of what was to become the Indie records movement. Denson produced one or two of Fahey's early albums for the label, and by getting Tom Weller to design psychedelic covers for Fahey's albums helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho
to the label. In the early 1960s he was road manager for the Blues Project
, and then Mississippi John Hurt
, helped manage Bukka White
, and produced recordings by Skip James
, after John located Bukka, and Skip James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-60s.
In the late 60's Denson and his first wife divorced, and he married Gloria Naramatsu. They remained together for a decade, living in a brown shingle house in the Oakland foothills. They divorced in the late 70's, and she moved to Washington State when she remarried, and became the Postmaster of the town in which she and her husband live.
In the mid-1960s
Denson expanded his management activities into rock, and - together with Country Joe McDonald
- put out a magazine, Rag Baby. From around 1965-1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish as well as Joy of Cooking
. In 1972 Denson and Stefan Grossman
founded and managed Kicking Mule Records
, which released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature at the onset, and branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn
, Michael Bloomfield
, and Charlie Musselwhite
. Denson has been involved in radio work since the 1960s when he and Michael Sunday produced a late night show on KPFA in Berkeley. Since 1983, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows
first on Redway, California Station KERG, then briefly on KHSU, and since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD
, Garberville. His show is being streamed on kmud.org Saturday mornings 9:30-11:30 am, California time.
He and his 3rd wife, Mary Alice, moved to Humboldt County in 1980 and for 15 years operated Kicking Mule records from the barn on their ranch. After dividing the masters with his partner, Stefan Grossman, in 1995 he sold the remaining masters & the label to Fantasy Records. In the mid-1980s ED became involved in the civil rights movement occasioned by the government's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the marijuana eradication raids in Southern Humboldt county. He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years, and became a non-violence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG). In that capacity he travelled extensively in the Southern Humboldt county area, training over 200 people in non-violence techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids. In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the lawyering of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston. It was this which inspired ED to start studying law in 1995.
In 1992 he ran for Humboldt County supervisor, but came in 4th in a field of 8. Nevertheless, the run was important for establishing the political clout of the "new settlers" who lived in the rural sections of Southern Humboldt county. He received an inheritance following his mother's death in 1994, which allowed him to study law. In 1995 he enrolled in William Howard Taft University, a mail-order law school, graduating in January, 1999. He passed the California Bar Exam that month and in August 1999 was sworn in as an attorney. His practice has been focused on defense of people charged with marijuana crimes, or DUI, adding quite a bit of pro-bono work for activists arrested during protests of logging practices in the old growth redwoods. He has given a number of public lectures on California's medical marijuana law to patients and their caregivers, and hosts a once-monthly, one-hour, talk show on the topic, on local community radio station, KMUD. In 2006 he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program, and gave lectures on the American legal system to University students in Xi'an. As of 2011 his practice takes him into California courts in most Northern California counties, and he estimates that he drives over 30,000 miles a year. In their free time ED and his wife, Mary Alice, travel, mostly on cruises. The cruises have taken him to every continent except Australia. His travel blog is at eddenson.blogstream.com http://eddenson.blogstream.com
In early 2011 Denson was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and, instead of taking his planned cruise to Australia, underwent 8 weeks of chemo and radiation to treat it. His doctors are optimistic and the cancer appears to be gone, but he is on 5 years of "cancer probation," as the legal mind would call it, checking in monthly to be sure the cancer is really gone. (September 2011).
An avid and lifelong (with intervals) stamp collector, ED became interested in the philately of the Falkland Islands when he visited there in 2005, and his collecting now focuses primarily on stamps from that area. He has collected Swedish stamps, and US Plate Number Coils (PNC), and published a catalog of PNC First Day Covers. He has written for several philatelic publications and won the Luff award for his philatelic writing on US First Day Covers. A nit picker, he has gotten the editors of Scott's Standard Catalog of Postage Stamps, and West's Annotated California Codes to make minor but important corrections to their publications. He is currently working on a project to update the categorization of the registration labels used by the postal system of the Falkland Islands, and determine their relative rarity, a project he expects to have appeal to about 10 people on the planet.
ED Denson's stepson is Bruce Loose, singer for the San Francisco punk band Flipper
. http://www.asis.com/~edenson/edhome.html http://www.marijuanadefenselawyer.com
Eugene "ED" Denson (the capitalization of both letters in his "first name" is his own spelling that evolved from constantly using his initials) is an American
music group
manager
, producer
, record label
owner, and - later - lawyer
, who has made notable contributions to folk
, blues
, and early San Francisco rock
.
, Robbie Basho
, and Max Ochs
-- all folk guitarists—before leaving with his first wife, the guitarist and singer, Pat Sullivan, for the West coast where he became a student of English, first at Merritt College, then at the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White
, ED Denson and John Fahey
set up Takoma Records
with Norman Pierce as their first distributor. The label was a pioneer of what was to become the Indie records movement. Denson produced one or two of Fahey's early albums for the label, and by getting Tom Weller to design psychedelic covers for Fahey's albums helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho
to the label. In the early 1960s he was road manager for the Blues Project
, and then Mississippi John Hurt
, helped manage Bukka White
, and produced recordings by Skip James
, after John located Bukka, and Skip James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-60s.
In the late 60's Denson and his first wife divorced, and he married Gloria Naramatsu. They remained together for a decade, living in a brown shingle house in the Oakland foothills. They divorced in the late 70's, and she moved to Washington State when she remarried, and became the Postmaster of the town in which she and her husband live.
In the mid-1960s
Denson expanded his management activities into rock, and - together with Country Joe McDonald
- put out a magazine, Rag Baby. From around 1965-1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish as well as Joy of Cooking
. In 1972 Denson and Stefan Grossman
founded and managed Kicking Mule Records
, which released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature at the onset, and branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn
, Michael Bloomfield
, and Charlie Musselwhite
. Denson has been involved in radio work since the 1960s when he and Michael Sunday produced a late night show on KPFA in Berkeley. Since 1983, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows
first on Redway, California Station KERG, then briefly on KHSU, and since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD
, Garberville. His show is being streamed on kmud.org Saturday mornings 9:30-11:30 am, California time.
He and his 3rd wife, Mary Alice, moved to Humboldt County in 1980 and for 15 years operated Kicking Mule records from the barn on their ranch. After dividing the masters with his partner, Stefan Grossman, in 1995 he sold the remaining masters & the label to Fantasy Records. In the mid-1980s ED became involved in the civil rights movement occasioned by the government's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the marijuana eradication raids in Southern Humboldt county. He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years, and became a non-violence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG). In that capacity he travelled extensively in the Southern Humboldt county area, training over 200 people in non-violence techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids. In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the lawyering of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston. It was this which inspired ED to start studying law in 1995.
In 1992 he ran for Humboldt County supervisor, but came in 4th in a field of 8. Nevertheless, the run was important for establishing the political clout of the "new settlers" who lived in the rural sections of Southern Humboldt county. He received an inheritance following his mother's death in 1994, which allowed him to study law. In 1995 he enrolled in William Howard Taft University, a mail-order law school, graduating in January, 1999. He passed the California Bar Exam that month and in August 1999 was sworn in as an attorney. His practice has been focused on defense of people charged with marijuana crimes, or DUI, adding quite a bit of pro-bono work for activists arrested during protests of logging practices in the old growth redwoods. He has given a number of public lectures on California's medical marijuana law to patients and their caregivers, and hosts a once-monthly, one-hour, talk show on the topic, on local community radio station, KMUD. In 2006 he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program, and gave lectures on the American legal system to University students in Xi'an. As of 2011 his practice takes him into California courts in most Northern California counties, and he estimates that he drives over 30,000 miles a year. In their free time ED and his wife, Mary Alice, travel, mostly on cruises. The cruises have taken him to every continent except Australia. His travel blog is at eddenson.blogstream.com http://eddenson.blogstream.com
In early 2011 Denson was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and, instead of taking his planned cruise to Australia, underwent 8 weeks of chemo and radiation to treat it. His doctors are optimistic and the cancer appears to be gone, but he is on 5 years of "cancer probation," as the legal mind would call it, checking in monthly to be sure the cancer is really gone. (September 2011).
An avid and lifelong (with intervals) stamp collector, ED became interested in the philately of the Falkland Islands when he visited there in 2005, and his collecting now focuses primarily on stamps from that area. He has collected Swedish stamps, and US Plate Number Coils (PNC), and published a catalog of PNC First Day Covers. He has written for several philatelic publications and won the Luff award for his philatelic writing on US First Day Covers. A nit picker, he has gotten the editors of Scott's Standard Catalog of Postage Stamps, and West's Annotated California Codes to make minor but important corrections to their publications. He is currently working on a project to update the categorization of the registration labels used by the postal system of the Falkland Islands, and determine their relative rarity, a project he expects to have appeal to about 10 people on the planet.
ED Denson's stepson is Bruce Loose, singer for the San Francisco punk band Flipper
. http://www.asis.com/~edenson/edhome.html http://www.marijuanadefenselawyer.com
Eugene "ED" Denson (the capitalization of both letters in his "first name" is his own spelling that evolved from constantly using his initials) is an American
music group
manager
, producer
, record label
owner, and - later - lawyer
, who has made notable contributions to folk
, blues
, and early San Francisco rock
.
, Robbie Basho
, and Max Ochs
-- all folk guitarists—before leaving with his first wife, the guitarist and singer, Pat Sullivan, for the West coast where he became a student of English, first at Merritt College, then at the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White
, ED Denson and John Fahey
set up Takoma Records
with Norman Pierce as their first distributor. The label was a pioneer of what was to become the Indie records movement. Denson produced one or two of Fahey's early albums for the label, and by getting Tom Weller to design psychedelic covers for Fahey's albums helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho
to the label. In the early 1960s he was road manager for the Blues Project
, and then Mississippi John Hurt
, helped manage Bukka White
, and produced recordings by Skip James
, after John located Bukka, and Skip James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-60s.
In the late 60's Denson and his first wife divorced, and he married Gloria Naramatsu. They remained together for a decade, living in a brown shingle house in the Oakland foothills. They divorced in the late 70's, and she moved to Washington State when she remarried, and became the Postmaster of the town in which she and her husband live.
In the mid-1960s
Denson expanded his management activities into rock, and - together with Country Joe McDonald
- put out a magazine, Rag Baby. From around 1965-1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish as well as Joy of Cooking
. In 1972 Denson and Stefan Grossman
founded and managed Kicking Mule Records
, which released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature at the onset, and branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn
, Michael Bloomfield
, and Charlie Musselwhite
. Denson has been involved in radio work since the 1960s when he and Michael Sunday produced a late night show on KPFA in Berkeley. Since 1983, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows
first on Redway, California Station KERG, then briefly on KHSU, and since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD
, Garberville. His show is being streamed on kmud.org Saturday mornings 9:30-11:30 am, California time.
He and his 3rd wife, Mary Alice, moved to Humboldt County in 1980 and for 15 years operated Kicking Mule records from the barn on their ranch. After dividing the masters with his partner, Stefan Grossman, in 1995 he sold the remaining masters & the label to Fantasy Records. In the mid-1980s ED became involved in the civil rights movement occasioned by the government's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the marijuana eradication raids in Southern Humboldt county. He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years, and became a non-violence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG). In that capacity he travelled extensively in the Southern Humboldt county area, training over 200 people in non-violence techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids. In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the lawyering of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston. It was this which inspired ED to start studying law in 1995.
In 1992 he ran for Humboldt County supervisor, but came in 4th in a field of 8. Nevertheless, the run was important for establishing the political clout of the "new settlers" who lived in the rural sections of Southern Humboldt county. He received an inheritance following his mother's death in 1994, which allowed him to study law. In 1995 he enrolled in William Howard Taft University, a mail-order law school, graduating in January, 1999. He passed the California Bar Exam that month and in August 1999 was sworn in as an attorney. His practice has been focused on defense of people charged with marijuana crimes, or DUI, adding quite a bit of pro-bono work for activists arrested during protests of logging practices in the old growth redwoods. He has given a number of public lectures on California's medical marijuana law to patients and their caregivers, and hosts a once-monthly, one-hour, talk show on the topic, on local community radio station, KMUD. In 2006 he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program, and gave lectures on the American legal system to University students in Xi'an. As of 2011 his practice takes him into California courts in most Northern California counties, and he estimates that he drives over 30,000 miles a year. In their free time ED and his wife, Mary Alice, travel, mostly on cruises. The cruises have taken him to every continent except Australia. His travel blog is at eddenson.blogstream.com http://eddenson.blogstream.com
In early 2011 Denson was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and, instead of taking his planned cruise to Australia, underwent 8 weeks of chemo and radiation to treat it. His doctors are optimistic and the cancer appears to be gone, but he is on 5 years of "cancer probation," as the legal mind would call it, checking in monthly to be sure the cancer is really gone. (September 2011).
An avid and lifelong (with intervals) stamp collector, ED became interested in the philately of the Falkland Islands when he visited there in 2005, and his collecting now focuses primarily on stamps from that area. He has collected Swedish stamps, and US Plate Number Coils (PNC), and published a catalog of PNC First Day Covers. He has written for several philatelic publications and won the Luff award for his philatelic writing on US First Day Covers. A nit picker, he has gotten the editors of Scott's Standard Catalog of Postage Stamps, and West's Annotated California Codes to make minor but important corrections to their publications. He is currently working on a project to update the categorization of the registration labels used by the postal system of the Falkland Islands, and determine their relative rarity, a project he expects to have appeal to about 10 people on the planet.
ED Denson's stepson is Bruce Loose, singer for the San Francisco punk band Flipper
. http://www.asis.com/~edenson/edhome.html http://www.marijuanadefenselawyer.com
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
music group
Band (music)
In music, a musical ensemble or band is a group of musicians that works together to perform music. The following articles concern types of musical bands:* All-female band* Big band* Boy band* Christian band* Church band* Concert band* Cover band...
manager
Records management
Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...
, producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
owner, and - later - lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, who has made notable contributions to folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, and early San Francisco rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
.
Biography
Denson was born in Washington D.C. in 1940. His parents were civil servants, and they had a succession of homes in the Montgomery County, Maryland, suburbs of Washington, each home being a bit larger, and a bit farther from the city. He was educated in the public schools, except for one year at Fishburne Military School. While attending the University of Maryland, in College Park, intending to study physics, he became interested in "folk" music and learned much from the record collector, Dick Spottswood. He met John FaheyJohn Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
, and Max Ochs
Max Ochs
*Max Ochs is a fingerstyle acoustic guitarist and folklorist who recorded for Takoma Records among other labels. His family moved to Annapolis, Maryland in 1945, where Ochs spent his adolescence...
-- all folk guitarists—before leaving with his first wife, the guitarist and singer, Pat Sullivan, for the West coast where he became a student of English, first at Merritt College, then at the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, ED Denson and John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
set up Takoma Records
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
with Norman Pierce as their first distributor. The label was a pioneer of what was to become the Indie records movement. Denson produced one or two of Fahey's early albums for the label, and by getting Tom Weller to design psychedelic covers for Fahey's albums helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
to the label. In the early 1960s he was road manager for the Blues Project
Blues Project
The Blues Project is a band from the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City that was formed in 1965 and originally split up in 1967. While their songs drew from a wide array of musical styles, they are most remembered as one of the earliest practitioners of psychedelic rock, as well as one...
, and then Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...
, helped manage Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, and produced recordings by Skip James
Skip James
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, after John located Bukka, and Skip James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-60s.
In the late 60's Denson and his first wife divorced, and he married Gloria Naramatsu. They remained together for a decade, living in a brown shingle house in the Oakland foothills. They divorced in the late 70's, and she moved to Washington State when she remarried, and became the Postmaster of the town in which she and her husband live.
In the mid-1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
Denson expanded his management activities into rock, and - together with Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald is an American musician who was the lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish.-Personal life:...
- put out a magazine, Rag Baby. From around 1965-1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish as well as Joy of Cooking
Joy of Cooking (band)
Joy of Cooking was an American folk-rock band formed in 1967 in Berkeley, California. It was led by two women, pianist Toni Brown and guitarist Terry Garthwaite . The rest of the band consisted of bass guitarist David Garthwaite , drummer Fritz Kasten and percussion player Ron Wilson...
. In 1972 Denson and Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.-Early life and influences:Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman...
founded and managed Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records was an independent American record label founded in 1972 by Stefan Grossman and Eugene "ED" Denson. Denson was previously a co-owner of Takoma Records. The company's title comes from the country blues sexual two-timing allegory "there's another mule kicking in your stall"....
, which released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature at the onset, and branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
, Michael Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
, and Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the non-black bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Though he has often been identified as a "white bluesman", he claims Native American heritage...
. Denson has been involved in radio work since the 1960s when he and Michael Sunday produced a late night show on KPFA in Berkeley. Since 1983, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows
Radio programming
Radio programming is the Broadcast programming of a Radio format or content that is organized for Commercial broadcasting and Public broadcasting radio stations....
first on Redway, California Station KERG, then briefly on KHSU, and since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD
KMUD
KMUD is a community radio station broadcasting a Variety format. Licensed to Garberville, California, USA, the station serves Humboldt, Northern Mendocino, and Western Trinity counties in Northwestern California. KMUD is owned by Redwood Community Radio, Inc...
, Garberville. His show is being streamed on kmud.org Saturday mornings 9:30-11:30 am, California time.
He and his 3rd wife, Mary Alice, moved to Humboldt County in 1980 and for 15 years operated Kicking Mule records from the barn on their ranch. After dividing the masters with his partner, Stefan Grossman, in 1995 he sold the remaining masters & the label to Fantasy Records. In the mid-1980s ED became involved in the civil rights movement occasioned by the government's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the marijuana eradication raids in Southern Humboldt county. He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years, and became a non-violence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG). In that capacity he travelled extensively in the Southern Humboldt county area, training over 200 people in non-violence techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids. In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the lawyering of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston. It was this which inspired ED to start studying law in 1995.
In 1992 he ran for Humboldt County supervisor, but came in 4th in a field of 8. Nevertheless, the run was important for establishing the political clout of the "new settlers" who lived in the rural sections of Southern Humboldt county. He received an inheritance following his mother's death in 1994, which allowed him to study law. In 1995 he enrolled in William Howard Taft University, a mail-order law school, graduating in January, 1999. He passed the California Bar Exam that month and in August 1999 was sworn in as an attorney. His practice has been focused on defense of people charged with marijuana crimes, or DUI, adding quite a bit of pro-bono work for activists arrested during protests of logging practices in the old growth redwoods. He has given a number of public lectures on California's medical marijuana law to patients and their caregivers, and hosts a once-monthly, one-hour, talk show on the topic, on local community radio station, KMUD. In 2006 he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program, and gave lectures on the American legal system to University students in Xi'an. As of 2011 his practice takes him into California courts in most Northern California counties, and he estimates that he drives over 30,000 miles a year. In their free time ED and his wife, Mary Alice, travel, mostly on cruises. The cruises have taken him to every continent except Australia. His travel blog is at eddenson.blogstream.com http://eddenson.blogstream.com
In early 2011 Denson was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and, instead of taking his planned cruise to Australia, underwent 8 weeks of chemo and radiation to treat it. His doctors are optimistic and the cancer appears to be gone, but he is on 5 years of "cancer probation," as the legal mind would call it, checking in monthly to be sure the cancer is really gone. (September 2011).
An avid and lifelong (with intervals) stamp collector, ED became interested in the philately of the Falkland Islands when he visited there in 2005, and his collecting now focuses primarily on stamps from that area. He has collected Swedish stamps, and US Plate Number Coils (PNC), and published a catalog of PNC First Day Covers. He has written for several philatelic publications and won the Luff award for his philatelic writing on US First Day Covers. A nit picker, he has gotten the editors of Scott's Standard Catalog of Postage Stamps, and West's Annotated California Codes to make minor but important corrections to their publications. He is currently working on a project to update the categorization of the registration labels used by the postal system of the Falkland Islands, and determine their relative rarity, a project he expects to have appeal to about 10 people on the planet.
ED Denson's stepson is Bruce Loose, singer for the San Francisco punk band Flipper
Flipper (band)
Flipper is a punk band formed in San Francisco, California in 1979, continuing in often erratic fashion until the mid-1990s, then reuniting in 2005. The band influenced a number of grunge,, punk rock and noise rock bands...
. http://www.asis.com/~edenson/edhome.html http://www.marijuanadefenselawyer.com
External links
- ED Denson homepage
- ED Denson: Country Joe & The Fish - How the Band Got Started
- Illustrated Kicking Mule Records discography
- Illustrated Takoma Records discography
Eugene "ED" Denson (the capitalization of both letters in his "first name" is his own spelling that evolved from constantly using his initials) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
music group
Band (music)
In music, a musical ensemble or band is a group of musicians that works together to perform music. The following articles concern types of musical bands:* All-female band* Big band* Boy band* Christian band* Church band* Concert band* Cover band...
manager
Records management
Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...
, producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
owner, and - later - lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, who has made notable contributions to folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, and early San Francisco rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
.
Biography
Denson was born in Washington D.C. in 1940. His parents were civil servants, and they had a succession of homes in the Montgomery County, Maryland, suburbs of Washington, each home being a bit larger, and a bit farther from the city. He was educated in the public schools, except for one year at Fishburne Military School. While attending the University of Maryland, in College Park, intending to study physics, he became interested in "folk" music and learned much from the record collector, Dick Spottswood. He met John FaheyJohn Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
, and Max Ochs
Max Ochs
*Max Ochs is a fingerstyle acoustic guitarist and folklorist who recorded for Takoma Records among other labels. His family moved to Annapolis, Maryland in 1945, where Ochs spent his adolescence...
-- all folk guitarists—before leaving with his first wife, the guitarist and singer, Pat Sullivan, for the West coast where he became a student of English, first at Merritt College, then at the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, ED Denson and John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
set up Takoma Records
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
with Norman Pierce as their first distributor. The label was a pioneer of what was to become the Indie records movement. Denson produced one or two of Fahey's early albums for the label, and by getting Tom Weller to design psychedelic covers for Fahey's albums helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
to the label. In the early 1960s he was road manager for the Blues Project
Blues Project
The Blues Project is a band from the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City that was formed in 1965 and originally split up in 1967. While their songs drew from a wide array of musical styles, they are most remembered as one of the earliest practitioners of psychedelic rock, as well as one...
, and then Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...
, helped manage Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, and produced recordings by Skip James
Skip James
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, after John located Bukka, and Skip James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-60s.
In the late 60's Denson and his first wife divorced, and he married Gloria Naramatsu. They remained together for a decade, living in a brown shingle house in the Oakland foothills. They divorced in the late 70's, and she moved to Washington State when she remarried, and became the Postmaster of the town in which she and her husband live.
In the mid-1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
Denson expanded his management activities into rock, and - together with Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald is an American musician who was the lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish.-Personal life:...
- put out a magazine, Rag Baby. From around 1965-1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish as well as Joy of Cooking
Joy of Cooking (band)
Joy of Cooking was an American folk-rock band formed in 1967 in Berkeley, California. It was led by two women, pianist Toni Brown and guitarist Terry Garthwaite . The rest of the band consisted of bass guitarist David Garthwaite , drummer Fritz Kasten and percussion player Ron Wilson...
. In 1972 Denson and Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.-Early life and influences:Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman...
founded and managed Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records was an independent American record label founded in 1972 by Stefan Grossman and Eugene "ED" Denson. Denson was previously a co-owner of Takoma Records. The company's title comes from the country blues sexual two-timing allegory "there's another mule kicking in your stall"....
, which released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature at the onset, and branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
, Michael Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
, and Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the non-black bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Though he has often been identified as a "white bluesman", he claims Native American heritage...
. Denson has been involved in radio work since the 1960s when he and Michael Sunday produced a late night show on KPFA in Berkeley. Since 1983, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows
Radio programming
Radio programming is the Broadcast programming of a Radio format or content that is organized for Commercial broadcasting and Public broadcasting radio stations....
first on Redway, California Station KERG, then briefly on KHSU, and since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD
KMUD
KMUD is a community radio station broadcasting a Variety format. Licensed to Garberville, California, USA, the station serves Humboldt, Northern Mendocino, and Western Trinity counties in Northwestern California. KMUD is owned by Redwood Community Radio, Inc...
, Garberville. His show is being streamed on kmud.org Saturday mornings 9:30-11:30 am, California time.
He and his 3rd wife, Mary Alice, moved to Humboldt County in 1980 and for 15 years operated Kicking Mule records from the barn on their ranch. After dividing the masters with his partner, Stefan Grossman, in 1995 he sold the remaining masters & the label to Fantasy Records. In the mid-1980s ED became involved in the civil rights movement occasioned by the government's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the marijuana eradication raids in Southern Humboldt county. He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years, and became a non-violence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG). In that capacity he travelled extensively in the Southern Humboldt county area, training over 200 people in non-violence techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids. In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the lawyering of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston. It was this which inspired ED to start studying law in 1995.
In 1992 he ran for Humboldt County supervisor, but came in 4th in a field of 8. Nevertheless, the run was important for establishing the political clout of the "new settlers" who lived in the rural sections of Southern Humboldt county. He received an inheritance following his mother's death in 1994, which allowed him to study law. In 1995 he enrolled in William Howard Taft University, a mail-order law school, graduating in January, 1999. He passed the California Bar Exam that month and in August 1999 was sworn in as an attorney. His practice has been focused on defense of people charged with marijuana crimes, or DUI, adding quite a bit of pro-bono work for activists arrested during protests of logging practices in the old growth redwoods. He has given a number of public lectures on California's medical marijuana law to patients and their caregivers, and hosts a once-monthly, one-hour, talk show on the topic, on local community radio station, KMUD. In 2006 he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program, and gave lectures on the American legal system to University students in Xi'an. As of 2011 his practice takes him into California courts in most Northern California counties, and he estimates that he drives over 30,000 miles a year. In their free time ED and his wife, Mary Alice, travel, mostly on cruises. The cruises have taken him to every continent except Australia. His travel blog is at eddenson.blogstream.com http://eddenson.blogstream.com
In early 2011 Denson was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and, instead of taking his planned cruise to Australia, underwent 8 weeks of chemo and radiation to treat it. His doctors are optimistic and the cancer appears to be gone, but he is on 5 years of "cancer probation," as the legal mind would call it, checking in monthly to be sure the cancer is really gone. (September 2011).
An avid and lifelong (with intervals) stamp collector, ED became interested in the philately of the Falkland Islands when he visited there in 2005, and his collecting now focuses primarily on stamps from that area. He has collected Swedish stamps, and US Plate Number Coils (PNC), and published a catalog of PNC First Day Covers. He has written for several philatelic publications and won the Luff award for his philatelic writing on US First Day Covers. A nit picker, he has gotten the editors of Scott's Standard Catalog of Postage Stamps, and West's Annotated California Codes to make minor but important corrections to their publications. He is currently working on a project to update the categorization of the registration labels used by the postal system of the Falkland Islands, and determine their relative rarity, a project he expects to have appeal to about 10 people on the planet.
ED Denson's stepson is Bruce Loose, singer for the San Francisco punk band Flipper
Flipper (band)
Flipper is a punk band formed in San Francisco, California in 1979, continuing in often erratic fashion until the mid-1990s, then reuniting in 2005. The band influenced a number of grunge,, punk rock and noise rock bands...
. http://www.asis.com/~edenson/edhome.html http://www.marijuanadefenselawyer.com
External links
- ED Denson homepage
- ED Denson: Country Joe & The Fish - How the Band Got Started
- Illustrated Kicking Mule Records discography
- Illustrated Takoma Records discography
Eugene "ED" Denson (the capitalization of both letters in his "first name" is his own spelling that evolved from constantly using his initials) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
music group
Band (music)
In music, a musical ensemble or band is a group of musicians that works together to perform music. The following articles concern types of musical bands:* All-female band* Big band* Boy band* Christian band* Church band* Concert band* Cover band...
manager
Records management
Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...
, producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
owner, and - later - lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, who has made notable contributions to folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, and early San Francisco rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
.
Biography
Denson was born in Washington D.C. in 1940. His parents were civil servants, and they had a succession of homes in the Montgomery County, Maryland, suburbs of Washington, each home being a bit larger, and a bit farther from the city. He was educated in the public schools, except for one year at Fishburne Military School. While attending the University of Maryland, in College Park, intending to study physics, he became interested in "folk" music and learned much from the record collector, Dick Spottswood. He met John FaheyJohn Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
, and Max Ochs
Max Ochs
*Max Ochs is a fingerstyle acoustic guitarist and folklorist who recorded for Takoma Records among other labels. His family moved to Annapolis, Maryland in 1945, where Ochs spent his adolescence...
-- all folk guitarists—before leaving with his first wife, the guitarist and singer, Pat Sullivan, for the West coast where he became a student of English, first at Merritt College, then at the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, ED Denson and John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
set up Takoma Records
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
with Norman Pierce as their first distributor. The label was a pioneer of what was to become the Indie records movement. Denson produced one or two of Fahey's early albums for the label, and by getting Tom Weller to design psychedelic covers for Fahey's albums helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
to the label. In the early 1960s he was road manager for the Blues Project
Blues Project
The Blues Project is a band from the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City that was formed in 1965 and originally split up in 1967. While their songs drew from a wide array of musical styles, they are most remembered as one of the earliest practitioners of psychedelic rock, as well as one...
, and then Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...
, helped manage Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, and produced recordings by Skip James
Skip James
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, after John located Bukka, and Skip James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-60s.
In the late 60's Denson and his first wife divorced, and he married Gloria Naramatsu. They remained together for a decade, living in a brown shingle house in the Oakland foothills. They divorced in the late 70's, and she moved to Washington State when she remarried, and became the Postmaster of the town in which she and her husband live.
In the mid-1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
Denson expanded his management activities into rock, and - together with Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald is an American musician who was the lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish.-Personal life:...
- put out a magazine, Rag Baby. From around 1965-1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish as well as Joy of Cooking
Joy of Cooking (band)
Joy of Cooking was an American folk-rock band formed in 1967 in Berkeley, California. It was led by two women, pianist Toni Brown and guitarist Terry Garthwaite . The rest of the band consisted of bass guitarist David Garthwaite , drummer Fritz Kasten and percussion player Ron Wilson...
. In 1972 Denson and Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.-Early life and influences:Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman...
founded and managed Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records was an independent American record label founded in 1972 by Stefan Grossman and Eugene "ED" Denson. Denson was previously a co-owner of Takoma Records. The company's title comes from the country blues sexual two-timing allegory "there's another mule kicking in your stall"....
, which released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature at the onset, and branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
, Michael Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
, and Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the non-black bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Though he has often been identified as a "white bluesman", he claims Native American heritage...
. Denson has been involved in radio work since the 1960s when he and Michael Sunday produced a late night show on KPFA in Berkeley. Since 1983, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows
Radio programming
Radio programming is the Broadcast programming of a Radio format or content that is organized for Commercial broadcasting and Public broadcasting radio stations....
first on Redway, California Station KERG, then briefly on KHSU, and since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD
KMUD
KMUD is a community radio station broadcasting a Variety format. Licensed to Garberville, California, USA, the station serves Humboldt, Northern Mendocino, and Western Trinity counties in Northwestern California. KMUD is owned by Redwood Community Radio, Inc...
, Garberville. His show is being streamed on kmud.org Saturday mornings 9:30-11:30 am, California time.
He and his 3rd wife, Mary Alice, moved to Humboldt County in 1980 and for 15 years operated Kicking Mule records from the barn on their ranch. After dividing the masters with his partner, Stefan Grossman, in 1995 he sold the remaining masters & the label to Fantasy Records. In the mid-1980s ED became involved in the civil rights movement occasioned by the government's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the marijuana eradication raids in Southern Humboldt county. He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years, and became a non-violence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG). In that capacity he travelled extensively in the Southern Humboldt county area, training over 200 people in non-violence techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids. In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the lawyering of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston. It was this which inspired ED to start studying law in 1995.
In 1992 he ran for Humboldt County supervisor, but came in 4th in a field of 8. Nevertheless, the run was important for establishing the political clout of the "new settlers" who lived in the rural sections of Southern Humboldt county. He received an inheritance following his mother's death in 1994, which allowed him to study law. In 1995 he enrolled in William Howard Taft University, a mail-order law school, graduating in January, 1999. He passed the California Bar Exam that month and in August 1999 was sworn in as an attorney. His practice has been focused on defense of people charged with marijuana crimes, or DUI, adding quite a bit of pro-bono work for activists arrested during protests of logging practices in the old growth redwoods. He has given a number of public lectures on California's medical marijuana law to patients and their caregivers, and hosts a once-monthly, one-hour, talk show on the topic, on local community radio station, KMUD. In 2006 he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program, and gave lectures on the American legal system to University students in Xi'an. As of 2011 his practice takes him into California courts in most Northern California counties, and he estimates that he drives over 30,000 miles a year. In their free time ED and his wife, Mary Alice, travel, mostly on cruises. The cruises have taken him to every continent except Australia. His travel blog is at eddenson.blogstream.com http://eddenson.blogstream.com
In early 2011 Denson was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and, instead of taking his planned cruise to Australia, underwent 8 weeks of chemo and radiation to treat it. His doctors are optimistic and the cancer appears to be gone, but he is on 5 years of "cancer probation," as the legal mind would call it, checking in monthly to be sure the cancer is really gone. (September 2011).
An avid and lifelong (with intervals) stamp collector, ED became interested in the philately of the Falkland Islands when he visited there in 2005, and his collecting now focuses primarily on stamps from that area. He has collected Swedish stamps, and US Plate Number Coils (PNC), and published a catalog of PNC First Day Covers. He has written for several philatelic publications and won the Luff award for his philatelic writing on US First Day Covers. A nit picker, he has gotten the editors of Scott's Standard Catalog of Postage Stamps, and West's Annotated California Codes to make minor but important corrections to their publications. He is currently working on a project to update the categorization of the registration labels used by the postal system of the Falkland Islands, and determine their relative rarity, a project he expects to have appeal to about 10 people on the planet.
ED Denson's stepson is Bruce Loose, singer for the San Francisco punk band Flipper
Flipper (band)
Flipper is a punk band formed in San Francisco, California in 1979, continuing in often erratic fashion until the mid-1990s, then reuniting in 2005. The band influenced a number of grunge,, punk rock and noise rock bands...
. http://www.asis.com/~edenson/edhome.html http://www.marijuanadefenselawyer.com
External links
- ED Denson homepage
- ED Denson: Country Joe & The Fish - How the Band Got Started
- Illustrated Kicking Mule Records discography
- Illustrated Takoma Records discography