Joy of Cooking

Imagine the Grateful Dead was led by two women and you’ll get an idea as to what Joy of Cooking sounds like. The five-member group, which formed in the Dead’s backyard of Marin County in 1967, released three first-rate albums from 1970 to 1972. For a while there was some buzz about the band, but that buzz was mostly novelty-oriented, since a rock band fronted by women back then was apparently too strange an entity for the general public to deal with. But there’s nothing novel about this band’s music, which ran the gamut
from serious singer-songwriter fare (“Red Wine at Noon” to wild percussive jamming (“Laugh, Don’t Laugh” to credible country rock (“Let Love Carry You Along” .

Joy of Cooking was put together by keyboardist Toni Brown and guitarist Terry Garthwaite as an outlet for their burgeoning songwriting and like the Dead, they drew on roots music for inspiration. As Garthwaite told me in an interview for the online music zine Perfect Sound Forever in 2006, “Both of us were listening a lot to blues. Again, because Toni came from the Boston area and I was from the Bay area. There were lots of blues players who came through doing concerts and playing in local clubs. We had great clubs where
people like Muddy Waters and The Staple Singers played… I remember early on listening to some Blind Willie Johnson stuff that just knocked me out.” Unfortunately, the public wasn’t knocked out, and Joy of Cooking was largely ignored despite their albums, which are generally brilliant. The group could cut it live as well, as evidenced on the self-released double CD set Back to Your Heart, which came out in 2008.
Even the solo albums Brown and Garthwaite put out are both tuneful and innovative and worth searching for on eBay. Readers should note that this Toni Brown is not the same Toni Brown as the one who once edited Relix magazine and now fronts the Toni Brown Band -- and was interviewed for this book.
- Tony Sclafani