Eugene "ED" Denson (the capitalization of both letters in his "first name" is his own spelling that evolved from constantly using his initials) is an American music group manager, producer, record label owner, and - later - lawyer, who has made notable contributions to folk, blues, and early San Francisco rock.
Denson was born in Washington D.C. in 1940. His parents were civil servants, and they had a succession of homes in the Montgomery County, Maryland, suburbs of Washington, each home being a bit larger, and a bit farther from the city. He was educated in the public schools, except for one year at Fishburne Military School. While attending the University of Maryland, in College Park, intending to study physics, he became interested in "folk" music and learned much from the record collector, Dick Spottswood. He met John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Max Ochs -- all folk guitarists—before leaving with his first wife, the guitarist and singer, Pat Sullivan, for the West coast where he became a student of English, first at Merritt College, then at the University of California, Berkeley campus.
Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White, ED Denson and John Fahey set up Takoma Records with Norman Pierce as their first distributor. The label was a pioneer of what was to become the Indie records movement. Denson produced one or two of Fahey's early albums for the label, and by getting Tom Weller to design psychedelic covers for Fahey's albums helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho to the label. In the early 1960s he was road manager for the Blues Project, and then Mississippi John Hurt, helped manage Bukka White, and produced recordings by Skip James, after John located Bukka, and Skip James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-60s.
In the late 60's Denson and his first wife divorced, and he married Gloria Naramatsu. They remained together for a decade, living in a brown shingle house in the Oakland foothills. They divorced in the late 70's, and she moved to Washington State when she remarried, and became the Postmaster of the town in which she and her husband live.
In the mid-1960s Denson expanded his management activities into rock, and - together with Country Joe McDonald - put out a magazine, Rag Baby. From around 1965-1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish as well as Joy of Cooking. In 1972 Denson and Stefan Grossman founded and managed Kicking Mule Records, which released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature at the onset, and branched out to include artists such as John Renbourn, Michael Bloomfield, and Charlie Musselwhite. Denson has been involved in radio work since the 1960s when he and Michael Sunday produced a late night show on KPFA in Berkeley. Since 1983, he has hosted folk and blues radio shows first on Redway, California Station KERG, then briefly on KHSU, and since shortly after it went on-air, KMUD, Garberville. His show is being streamed on kmud.org Saturday mornings 9:30-11:30 am, California time.
He and his 3rd wife, Mary Alice, moved to Humboldt County in 1980 and for 15 years operated Kicking Mule records from the barn on their ranch. After dividing the masters with his partner, Stefan Grossman, in 1995 he sold the remaining masters & the label to Fantasy Records. In the mid-1980s ED became involved in the civil rights movement occasioned by the government's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the marijuana eradication raids in Southern Humboldt county. He was president of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project (CLMP) for many years, and became a non-violence preparer for the Citizens Observation Group (COG). In that capacity he travelled extensively in the Southern Humboldt county area, training over 200 people in non-violence techniques to use while monitoring police activity during marijuana raids. In 1990 after extensive litigation by CLMP, the government signed a consent decree to alter their raiding techniques, thanks in large part to the lawyering of Ron Sinoway and Mel Pearlston. It was this which inspired ED to start studying law in 1995.
In 1992 he ran for Humboldt County supervisor, but came in 4th in a field of 8. Nevertheless, the run was important for establishing the political clout of the "new settlers" who lived in the rural sections of Southern Humboldt county. He received an inheritance following his mother's death in 1994, which allowed him to study law. In 1995 he enrolled in William Howard Taft University, a mail-order law school, graduating in January, 1999. He passed the California Bar Exam that month and in August 1999 was sworn in as an attorney. His practice has been focused on defense of people charged with marijuana crimes, or DUI, adding quite a bit of pro-bono work for activists arrested during protests of logging practices in the old growth redwoods. He has given a number of public lectures on California's medical marijuana law to patients and their caregivers, and hosts a once-monthly, one-hour, talk show on the topic, on local community radio station, KMUD. In 2006 he went to China as part of a Global Volunteers program, and gave lectures on the American legal system to University students in Xi'an. As of 2011 his practice takes him into California courts in most Northern California counties, and he estimates that he drives over 30,000 miles a year. In their free time ED and his wife, Mary Alice, travel, mostly on cruises. The cruises have taken him to every continent except Australia. His travel blog is at eddenson.blogstream.com [1]
In early 2011 Denson was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and, instead of taking his planned cruise to Australia, underwent 8 weeks of chemo and radiation to treat it. His doctors are optimistic and the cancer appears to be gone, but he is on 5 years of "cancer probation," as the legal mind would call it, checking in monthly to be sure the cancer is really gone. (September 2011).
An avid and lifelong (with intervals) stamp collector, ED became interested in the philately of the Falkland Islands when he visited there in 2005, and his collecting now focuses primarily on stamps from that area. He has collected Swedish stamps, and US Plate Number Coils (PNC), and published a catalog of PNC First Day Covers. He has written for several philatelic publications and won the Luff award for his philatelic writing on US First Day Covers. A nit picker, he has gotten the editors of Scott's Standard Catalog of Postage Stamps, and West's Annotated California Codes to make minor but important corrections to their publications. He is currently working on a project to update the categorization of the registration labels used by the postal system of the Falkland Islands, and determine their relative rarity, a project he expects to have appeal to about 10 people on the planet.
ED Denson's stepson is Bruce Loose, singer for the San Francisco punk band Flipper. [2] [3]