Chet Powers

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Chet Powers
Birth name	Chester William Powers, Jr.
Also known as	Dino Valenti, Dino Valente, Jesse Orris Farrow, Jesse Oris Farrow
Born	November 7, 1943
Died	November 16, 1994 (aged 51)
Instrument(s)	Guitar
Years active	1960s - 1994
Associated acts	Quicksilver Messenger Service

Chester (Chet) William Powers, Jr. (November 7, 1943 – November 16, 1994) was an American singer/songwriter.

In the early 1960s, while a member of the Greenwich Village folk scene, he wrote "Get Together", a quintessential 1960s love-and-peace anthem, later recorded by Jefferson Airplane, The Youngbloods, and many others. While in Greenwich Village, he played often with singer-songwriter Fred Neil. He was involved in the formation San Francisco psychedelic rock group Quicksilver Messenger Service (QMS), but claims that he founded the band have been disputed by other members of the group. Powers' career was blighted by frequent drug busts. He was quickly dispatched from Quicksilver's early line-up after one such bust, though he rejoined the group in later years as lead singer and rhythm guitarist.

Chet Powers became Dino Valenti by the time he arrived in Greenwich Village in 1960 from staid Connecticut. He worked his way through the basket-houses and crash pads over the next couple of years and came closer than anyone to earning a rep as the "underground Dylan" (as characterized by Ben Fong-Torres in Rolling Stone years later). During this period he wrote "Get Together" published by "Chet Powers", that could have been his annuity for life but for unforeseen circumstances. (In later years there was a myth that "Hey Joe" was written by the same pen, but research shows that honor belongs to a Seattle-based folksinger named Billy Roberts, circa 1958.)

By 1963 Valenti was in Los Angeles, where the folk-into-rock process had already begun to coalesce long before its East Coast counterpart. After working his way through the southland folk clubs, and making some strong connections among the musical cognoscenti there, Valenti moved north to the San Francisco Bay area, where he began to record for Autumn Records, though no album was ever issued. He had been friendly with Roger McGuinn in Los Angeles and it is said that David Crosby discovered drummer Michael Clarke while he was playing in a band with Valenti in Big Sur. At least three members of the Byrds have a connection to him, lending credence to the apocryphal footnote that he was offered a membership in that band but declined.

Valenti did not decline the offer of a backup band, however, when John Cipollina (guitar), bassist David Freiberg, and Jim Murray (harmonica/vocals) all came under his wing in 1964. The three musicians looked up to Valente: he had a manager, had published songs, and had even been recorded. They formed Quicksilver Messenger Service (QMS).

Dino Valenti was arrested for possession of marijuana while riding in a friend's car. To complicate matters, while awaiting trial he was picked up by the police after a gig on Grant Avenue. They shook him down and found more marijuana, then busted into his apartment and found amphetamines. He received a one-to-ten-year sentence at Folsom State Prison. Valenti had been in jail much longer than they expected. According to one report, he was released on parole but was promptly arrested on another drug charge and was back in the pen within two days. It was 1966 and it was a costly defense. To raise money he sold the publishing rights for "Get Together" to the manager of the Kingston Trio, who had first recorded the song in 1964.

So Valenti battled the State of California while QMS - who played in 1967 at the first Human Be-In and at Monterey Pop, and were heard on the Revolution movie soundtrack - gained notoriety as the last of the original Bay area bands (notably Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and The Charlatans) to land a major label recording contract.

Within a few months, Valenti had spirited Gary Duncan to New York in January 1969 to form a new band that would be called the Outlaws. In the wake of Duncan's departure, QMS issued the half-studio/half-live Happy Trails album in March, a stopgap LP that brought them their first charted single (an edited version of "Who Do You Love") and which is generally regarded as one of the top two or three albums of the San Francisco 'golden era'. While Valenti and Duncan were in New York, British keyboardist Nicky Hopkins took up the slack in the QMS lineup and recorded their third album, Shady Grove (December 1969), featuring his FM radio instrumental, "Edward, the Mad Shirt Grinder".

The Outlaws expedition had come to naught, and so Duncan rejoined the QMS fold at a New Year's Eve concert by the band, along with Valenti, who was finally at the helm after nearly five years of being side-tracked. On the next album, Just For Love (August, 1970), eight of the nine songs, including "Fresh Air" and the title track, were written by Valenti, six of them under the pseudonym of Jesse Oris Farrow for contractual reasons. They were able to squeeze out another album in December, What About Me?, with "Farrow" again credited as the primary songwriter.

Despite occasional personnel changes, the band maintained its pace through Quicksilver (1971) and Comin' Thru (1972) before calling it quits. The 2-LP Anthology was issued in 1973, and a short-lived reunion tour and album, Solid Silver, took them through 1975.

Valenti died in Santa Rosa, California on November 16, 1994.