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/ Oral History of Larry Cragg

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Title
Oral History of Larry Cragg
Contributing Institution
Mill Valley Public Library
Collection
Mill Valley History Online
Rights Information
Please contact the contributing institution for more information regarding the copyright status of this object.
Description
In this oral history, guitar repairman and multi-instrumentalist Larry Cragg recounts a life engaged in two of the most important cultural scenes that took shape in Mill Valley during the 1970s: music and mountain biking. Born in Chicago in 1948, Larry first came out to California in 1967 for the Monterey Pop Festival. He recalls experiencing a powerful sense of belonging on that visit, prompting him to make the permanent move west later that same year. Initially landing in Oakland, Larry soon moved across the bay to Mill Valley, where he unexpectedly discovered his vocation when he started working at the newly opened Prune Music, a landmark in the musical history of Marin County. Larry recounts his earliest paid work as a guitar repairmen assembling Charlie Deal's signature toilet-seat guitars; and he vividly evokes the ambience of Prune Music throughout the 1970s with its "infamous back room" and impromptu jam sessions --- a space of encounter and creative ferment. Larry tells stories from his 37-year tenure as Neil Young's guitar tech and provides an insider's perspective on the origin and early development of mountain biking, or "klunking," as he and his friends originally referred to it. Throughout this oral history, Larry effectively conveys what it was like to participate in the counterculture of Mill Valley and Marin County from the 1970s on.
Identifier
FAA759D1-495C-4047-B9EE-134201297550
2016.032.001
Subject
Bicycling
Breeze, Joe
Cragg, Wende
Deal, Charlie
Kelly, Charlie
Music
Musicians
Photographers
Rock & roll bands
Rock bands
Santana, Carlos
Steele, Bill
Young, Neil

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