California Slim: The Music, The Magic and The Madness : FriesenPress : 9781525539381 : 1525539388 : 28 Nov 2018 : There are literary reminiscences that reek of self-congratulation over the authors' proximity to famous movers and shakers. Andy Bernstein's California Slim aspires to far more than that-and achieves it. Andy was there, at the onset of the post-'50s revolution that, as a beat poet once put it, roared as it ripped the threadbare fabric of an age. Andy was no distant, casual observer during the tumultuous '60s and '70s; he was at the heart of the maelstrom, and writes about it with candor, humor, and originality. The story begins, for God's sake, with Andy and his then unknown banjo teacher, a young Jerry Garcia, fingerpicking in a back room at Dana Morgan's Music Studio in Palo Alto in 1962. A skinny six-foot-seven-inch Jewish kid (later known as "California Slim"), Andy divided his time between the usual adolescent interests and music, for which he would go on to provide a