Bill Graham (promoter)

===Fillmore Auditorium (December 10, 1965 – July 4, 1968)===
Graham moved from New York to San Francisco in the early 1960s to be closer to his sister Rita. He was invited to attend a free concert in [[Golden Gate Park]], produced by [[Chet Helms]] and the [[Diggers (theater)|Diggers]], where he made contact with the [[San Francisco Mime Troupe]], a radical theater group.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rock.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120421100137/http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rock.html|url-status=dead|title=Chronology of San Francisco Rock 1965-1969|archive-date=April 21, 2012|website=Sfmuseum.org}}</ref> After Mime Troupe leader R. G. Davis was arrested on obscenity charges during an outdoor performance, Graham organized a benefit concert to cover the troupe's legal fees. The concert was a success and Graham saw a business opportunity.

Graham began promoting more concerts with Chet Helms and [[Family Dog Productions|Family Dog]] projects, which provided a vital function of the 1960s, promoting concerts that provided a social meeting place to network, where many ideologies were given a forum, sometimes even on stage, such as peace movements, civil rights, farm workers and others.{{citation needed|date=June 2022}} Most of his shows were performed at rented venues, and Graham saw a need for more permanent locations of his own.

Charles Sullivan was a mid-20th-century entrepreneur and businessman in San Francisco who owned the master lease on the [[The Fillmore|Fillmore Auditorium]]. Graham approached Sullivan to put on the Second Mime Troupe appeals concert at the Fillmore Auditorium on December 10, 1965, using Sullivan's dance hall permit for the show. Graham later secured a contract from Sullivan for the open dates at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1966. Graham credits Sullivan with giving him his break in the music concert hall business.

The Fillmore trademark and franchise has defined music promotion in the United States for the last 50 years. From 2003 to 2013 auxiliary writers of the times surrounding the 1960s, and Graham family lawsuits,<ref name="ReferenceA">United States District Court Northern District of California Oakland Division Case No. CV 10-4877 CW</ref> tell the narrative of the Fillmore phenomena and how the Black community there was disenfranchised.<ref name="chroniclebooks.com">Pepin, Elizabeth. ''Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era'' (Chronicle Books, December 15, 2005).</ref> The best way to set the historic record straight concerning Charles Sullivan and Bill Graham is to review what Graham left in his own words. Historically the first time Graham mentioned Charles Sullivan, in print, was in a ''[[BAM (magazine)|Bay Area Music]]'' article from 1988:

{{blockquote|Bill Graham — and anyone who's even attended a show at San Francisco Fillmore — owes a big debt to Charles Sullivan... "If Mr. Sullivan, Charles, hadn't stood by me and allowed me to use his permit I wouldn't be sitting here."<ref>Moerer, Keith. "The Historic Fillmore's New Tradition," ''Bay Area Music'' (May 20, 1988).</ref>}}

Although Graham acknowledged Sullivan's part he historically has never revealed how he got the lease to the Fillmore Auditorium and how and when he trademarked the Fillmore brand, which by all historical accounts belonged to Sullivan.<ref name="chroniclebooks.com"/> In a handbill from Graham's first show at the Fillmore Auditorium, "The Mime Troupe is holding another appeal party Friday night, December 10th, at the Fillmore Auditorium", Bill Graham gives a general impression of the Fillmore neighborhood:

{{blockquote|The Fillmore Auditorium was located on Fillmore and Geary, which was like 125th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem.... In there, Charles Sullivan, a black businessman, had booked a lot of the best R&B acts.... Charles had put on [[James Brown]] and [[Duke Ellington]]. At the Fillmore, [[Bobby Bland]] and [[the Temptations]].... I met Charles Sullivan by appointment the second time I saw the ballroom.... We needed a dance permit but I didn't have one. Of course, he had one because he operated the place. So he allowed us to use his permit and didn't charge me for it.<ref name="grahamautobio"/>}}

Mime Troupe leader R. G. Davis states that, "Graham... got very excited about the success of the Fillmore Auditorium Show. He got a contract with the black guy who owned the Fillmore. He nails it. Closed." On pages 150–156 of his autobiography, Graham outlined his battles with City Hall in getting a dance hall permit. By schmoozing with merchants and having criminologists and sociologists from [[University of California, Berkeley|U.C. Berkeley]] and [[University of California, Santa Cruz|U.C. Santa Cruz]] giving merit to the shows Graham managed to obtain a second permit hearing, but was again denied. He reported that Sullivan came to him sometime in March or April and announced he had to pull his dance hall permit. The morning of the next day, when Graham was returning to move out of his office in the Fillmore Auditorium, Sullivan met him on the steps. Graham claimed Sullivan poured out his life story, concluding with a pledge of support to Graham to beat City Hall. Graham added, "He was the guy, Charles. He was it. I don't know if I could have ever found another place. Why would I have even tried? That was the place."<ref name="grahamautobio">Graham, Bill; Greenfield, Robert. ''Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out'', Delta (1992), pp. 37, 128–129, 153–154, 156, 544. {{ISBN|9780306813498}}</ref>

Graham was denied by the Board of Permit Appeals who refused to overrule the first denial. Graham then stated, "Then on April 21, 1966, a Thursday, the ''Chronicle'' ran an editorial, 'The Fillmore Auditorium Case' ... [I]t was a big turning point for me. In more ways than one"; he secured his permit.<ref name="grahamautobio"/>

Charles Sullivan was found shot dead at 1:45 am on August 2, 1966, at 5th and Bluxome Streets, San Francisco ([[South of Market, San Francisco|South of Market]] industrial area near the train station). Sullivan had just returned from Los Angeles, where he had presented a weekend concert starring soul singer [[James Brown]]. The police have never determined whether Sullivan's death was suicide or homicide.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.pbs.org/kqed/fillmore/learning/time.html | title=The Fillmore: Timeline | publisher=PBS.org | access-date=June 27, 2011}}</ref><ref>''San Francisco Chronicle'' (August 3, 1966)<!-- page?? -->.</ref>

Sullivan was laid to rest on August 8, 1966, according to the ''Sun Reporter'', which reported that "Last respects were paid Charles Sullivan Monday, Aug. 8, when hundreds crowded into Jones Memorial Methodist Church, 1975 Post St. from 11:30 a.m. to view Sullivan for the last time. An enormous crowd had gathered by 1 p.m. to hear the eulogy for a friend."<ref name="sunreporter">''The Sun Reporter'' (August 13, 1966), pp. 8-9, 27.</ref> The funeral announcement is accompanied by photographs of the actual funeral covering two pages in which police are stopping traffic to assist the motorcade to the cemetery in [[Colma, California|Colma]].<ref name="sunreporter"/>  Graham later reported, "Charles Sullivan got himself killed. He had a bad habit of always carrying a roll of money with him. He was proud of his work and proud of the fact that he earned a good living and always carried a roll. He was jumped and stabbed to death. I went to his funeral in [[Colma, California]]. It was small, mostly family. Had that not happened, I think I would have done anything Charles wanted. Just out of gratitude."<ref name="grahamautobio"/>

After Graham's death on October 25, 1991, the description of his funeral procession states:
{{blockquote|Escorted by motorcycle police, more long black limousines than had ever before been seen at a private funeral in the city of San Francisco formed a phalanx for the procession to the cemetery. Bill was to be buried in [[Colma, California|Colma]], the same small town south of San Francisco filled with graveyards where so many years before Bill himself had gone to the funeral of Charles Sullivan, the black man who stood up for him when the Fillmore Auditorium was on the line.<ref name="grahamautobio"/>}}

''The Sun Reporter'' noted:
{{blockquote|He took over the Fillmore Auditorium at Geary and Fillmore Sts. and began to present different artists in dances and concerts. Some of the greatest names in the entertainment world, like [[Duke Ellington]], [[Lionel Hampton]], [[Count Basie]], [[Ray Charles]] and numerous others, have been presented all up and down the Pacific Coast by Sullivan. He always signed these artists for presentations not only in San Francisco, but in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, and Seattle."<ref name="sunreporter"/>}}

According to the historical record, Sullivan also gave the Fillmore Auditorium its name.<ref name="chroniclebooks.com"/>

Graham's struggle to get his dance hall permit in 1966 was described in an article in ''[[Billboard Magazine]]'', July 11, 1966. San Francisco music critic [[Ralph Gleason]], in defense of Graham's Fillmore Auditorium scene, wrote that Graham got a three-year lease for the Fillmore Auditorium from Charles Sullivan and was still struggling to procure his dance hall permit,<ref>''Billboard Magazine'' (July 11, 1966).</ref> a fact never publicly revealed by Graham. Charles Sullivan's last show at the Fillmore Auditorium came a week before his death, on July 26, 1966, The Temptations Dance and Show. Graham must have gotten his permit in mid-July 1966, confirming his possession of the Fillmore brand.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lefebvre |first=Sam |date=2017-06-14 |title=Without Charles Sullivan, There'd Be No Fillmore As We Know It {{!}} KQED |url=https://www.kqed.org/arts/13414955/without-charles-sullivan-thered-be-no-fillmore-as-we-know-it |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209180518/https://www.kqed.org/arts/13414955/without-charles-sullivan-thered-be-no-fillmore-as-we-know-it |archive-date=December 9, 2023 |access-date=2024-03-11 |website=www.kqed.org |language=en}}</ref>

It was unknown how Graham had taken over the Fillmore lease until the 2004 publication of [[Hendrik Hertzberg]]'s ''Politics Observations & Arguments (1966-2004)''. It contains an article, "The San Francisco Sound, New music, new subculture", at the end of which it stated, "Unpublished file for ''Newsweek'', October 28, 1966". This article contains the only published account of how Graham acquired the Fillmore.<ref name=Hertzberg>{{Cite book|isbn = 1-59420-018-1|title = Politics: Observations and Arguments, 1966-2004|last1 = Hertzberg|first1 = Hendrik|year = 2004| publisher=Penguin Press }}</ref> In the beginning, Hertzberg recounts familiar territory with the Mime Troupe, reducing the Fillmore Auditorium to a run-down ballroom in "SF's biggest negro ghetto." After the success of the Fillmore Auditorium Mime Troupe shows, Graham parts ways with the Troupe: "He went back to the Fillmore and found that eleven other promoters had already put in bids for it. Graham got forty-one prominent citizens to write letters to the auditorium's owner, a [[haberdasher]] named Harry Shifs, and Shifs gave him a three-year lease at five hundred dollars a month.... [T]he hippie community ... has turned out to be something the man from Montgomery Street can point to with pride, in a left-handed way, and say 'these are our boys'"'', stated [[Jerry Garcia]].<ref name=Hertzberg />{{Rp|8–9}}

One of the early concerts Graham sponsored, with [[Chet Helms]] hired to promote it, featured the [[Paul Butterfield|Paul Butterfield Blues Band]]. The concert was an overwhelming success and Graham saw an opportunity with the band.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-paul-butterfield-blues-band/concerts/fillmore-auditorium-october-14-1966.html|title=The Paul Butterfield Blues Band Concert|publisher=[[Wolfgang's Vault]]|access-date=June 27, 2011|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110718074556/http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-paul-butterfield-blues-band/concerts/fillmore-auditorium-october-14-1966.html|archive-date=July 18, 2011|url-status=live}}</ref> Early the next morning, Graham's secretary called the band's manager, [[Albert Grossman]], and obtained exclusive rights to promote them. Shortly thereafter, [[Chet Helms]] arrived at Graham's office, asking how Graham could have cut him out of the deal. Graham pointed out that Helms would not have known about it unless he had tried to do the same thing to Graham. He advised Helms to "get up early" in the future. Graham produced shows attracting elements of America's now-legendary [[1960s counterculture]] such as the [[Jefferson Airplane]], [[Big Brother and the Holding Company]], [[Country Joe and the Fish]], [[Lawrence Ferlinghetti]], [[the Committee (improv_group)]], [[The Fugs]], [[Allen Ginsberg]], and a particular favorite of Graham's, the [[Grateful Dead]]. He was the [[talent manager|manager]] of the Jefferson Airplane during 1967 and 1968. His staff's amount of resourcefulness, success, popularity, and personal contacts with artists and fans alike was one reason Graham became the top rock concert promoter in the San Francisco Bay Area.