Saturday Night Music, May 30 – Santana, “No One to Depend On”-

Yeah, I am feeling that way tonight.

In the fall of 1968, I was back in the Bay Area, starting as a freshman at an East Side San Jose high school. I was trying to fight my way out of the C courses in which I had been placed because I had gone to junior high in the South, and get into the A courses (university preparatory). I distinctly remember passing by a wall near the school auditorium where there was a big poster inviting students to see Santana off on its last concert before they went on the road to promote their first album by Columbia Records. Santana was a San Francisco Bay Area band; they played everyone and everywhere, even high schools. It was only $5, but I couldn’t go; our family didn’t have much money at that time. Yet I became a fan of theirs; the high school I graduated from, like the first, had a sizeable Mexican American presence; there was a student radio station where Santana was played as consistently Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

“No One to Depend On” appears on the Santana III album. According to Wikipedia.com, it was the last album to include the personnel from “the Woodstock era line-up,” like Michael Shrieve, Chepito Areas, David Brown, and Mike Carabello, along with guests like Linda Tillery and the Tower of Power Horn Section. Critics believe that this was the album that showed the group at its creative peak. It’s also the first album to feature Neal Schon, only seventeen years old, as guitarist and as producer. A year later, he and Greg Rolie left Santana to form the group, Journey.

Yes, I did get into the university prep courses. Enjoy one of my favorites from the Seventies.