Garcia’s high-school band at Analy High in Sebastopol. It was a small dance band that mixed big-band jazz and pop with some early rock and roll.
Before the Army and before folk music, a teenage Garcia played electric guitar in the Chords while attending Analy High School in Sebastopol, in Sonoma County. It was a school dance band with a sax section, working mostly through big-band standards and easy-listening numbers, with the odd rock-and-roll tune mixed in.
After the group won a contest it got to record a version of Bill Justis’s instrumental “Raunchy,” which makes it Garcia’s first band on record in any form. Garcia soon dropped out of school and joined the Army in 1960.
