(ABOVE)The members of all-female San Francisco psychedelic rock band the Ace of Cups, in 1967. The Aces performed alongside heavyweights like Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. COURTESY OF HIGHMOON RECORDS.
In June of 1967 the Jimi Hendrix Experience played a legendary set at the Monterey Pop Festival, cementing Hendrix's position as a rising star of rockguitar. About a week later, crowds gathered in the panhandle of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for a hastily organized free concert featuring Hendrix. The makeshift stage was a flatbed truck that rattled and shook with the sonic power of bass, drums and incendiary lead guitar.
But not all of the shaking came from Hendrix's band. All the equipment, including amps and drums, was borrowed from a local Haight-Ashbury area group who warmed up the show. That opening act really caught Hendrix's attention. He was still thinking about them later that year in December in the UK when he told Melody Maker magazine, "I heard some groovy sounds last time in the States, like this girl group, Ace of Cups, who write their own songs and the lead guitarist is, hell, really great." As one of the first all-female rock bands in the country, Ace of Cups left an impression wherever they went. Whether it was warming up for Hendrix, the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane, Ace of Cups was for a brief time at the epicenter of the counterculture revolutions of the 1960s. More than fifty-five years later, two of those Aces, Denise Kaufman and Mary Alfiler, now make their home on Kauai.
Kaufman started expressing herself at an early age. It was 1960 in San Francisco, and the 14-year-old Kaufman ventured out to see a movie with a 10-year-old friend. They arrived to find a civil rights protest occurring at the theater. Instead of seeing the movie, Kaufman and her friend walked across the street and picked up signs. Not long after, Kaufman began writing songs on guitar.
 |
 |
(LEFT) Denise Kaufman (left) and Mary Alfiler, both Kauai residents today, share the mic in 1968. “You have to raise your voice to make a statement,” Kaufman says.
(RIGHT) Guitarist Mary Ellen Simpson took lessons from Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane. Hendrix said of her, “Their lead guitarist is, hell, really great.”
At the time, the cultural revolution of the 1960s was gaining momentum, fueled in part by the Northern California folk- and rock-music scene. Inspired, Kaufman joined the Stanford University folk music club while she was still in high school. She spent time hanging out at Top of the Tangent, a small acoustic music venue on the street she lived on in Palo Alto, watching Jerry Garcia (then a guitar teacher at the local music store) play with his jug and bluegrass bands. "I loved that Jerry was just playing all the time," Kaufman recalls. "Music was pouring out of him. Everywhere he went, his guitar and his instruments were just like a living part of him."
Yearning to surf, Kaufman spent the summer between her high school junior and senior years at a program in Hawaii. She learned to surf and also learned more about singing and playing guitar from friends she made in the Nalu Alii surf club. The experience gave Kaufman fuel for her songwriting, as she became more aware of ecological and environmental concerns.
As a college student at the University of California, Berkeley, Kaufman focused on political science and theater but continued writing songs and playing whenever and wherever she could. She got involved in the San Francisco music scene, building up a repertoire of originals and becoming a talented solo singer/songwriter.
By the mid-1960s many of Kaufman's friends and contemporaries, including members of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and Taj Mahal, were getting popular. These bands made statements, playing to increasingly receptive audiences at local festivals and in popular Bay Area venues like the Matrix on Fillmore Street, where many folk-rock groups launched their careers. Kaufman brought her vocal, guitar and harmonica talents to jams around San Francisco. The songstress was in her element, she says, though at the time she had no idea she'd soon join four other similarly motivated musicians to form Ace of Cups.
Diane Vitalich held down drum duties as Ace of Cups paved the way for other women in rock. “We weren’t consciously thinking of starting a band,” says Alfiler. “But I met Diane at this party, and she was playing drums. It was like, ‘Wow, there’s music! Let’s do it.’”
"Denise is this amazing lyricist," says Mary Alfiler (nee Gannon) from her home in Kapaa. "She cares about people deeply and writes things that knock your socks off." Alfiler should know: She and Kaufman started playing together in 1967, when they formed Ace of Cups.
Alfiler, a former Miss Monterey who'd competed in the California division of the Miss America pageant before trading in the role of beauty queen for feminist artist and social activist, was a vocalist and veteran of Catholic school choral groups. She had been studying piano and music theory for a few years before moving to San Francisco in 1966. Alfiler rented an old upright piano and had it moved to a cheap second-floor apartment in Haight-Ashbury. She soon met a girl named Marla Hunt, a recent transplant from Los Angeles. "When I heard her play piano, I went, 'Oh my god,'" Alfiler says. "We clicked right away and started writing little ditties, mostly folk stuff." Alfiler and Hunt became fast friends and musical collaborators. Then the cards started magically falling into place. "I was at a party, and there was this big, empty Victorian house that some hippies had taken over," Alfiler recalls. "There was a room with no furniture-all it had was a drum set. And there was this chick, this gorgeous chick just jamming. That was Diane." Alfiler, now 79 and still as effervescent as a teenager, smiles fondly. "And I said, 'You know, I've been singing with this girl on piano, we should get together.'"
At the time, Diane Vitalich didn't own a drum set. But she cobbled together a snare and a couple of accessories. They invited Mary Ellen Simpson, a friend of Vitalich from City College in San Francisco who played folk and blues guitar. Simpson had taken lessons from Jorma Kaukonen, the guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, just before that band started to take off. "At that point we had vocals, piano, drums and guitar," says Alfiler. "Then Mary Ellen lent me a bass, and I learned three chords, really just three notes to play blues in G or C."
Ace of Cups sometimes played impromptu gigs on the back of a flatbed truck—and in one case opened for Jimi Hendrix for a free concert on a truck in the Golden Gate Park panhandle on April 12, 1967. The Aces so impressed Hendrix that he praised them in a later interview with Melody Maker magazine in the UK.
(BELOW) Music runs deep in the Kaufman family. Denise’s daughter and son-in-law own and operate Hanalei Strings in KIlauea, KauaI, and her grandson is a touring singer-songwriter.
With more musical experience than the rest of the band, Kaufman was the missing fifth element. She'd also been adventuring: She dropped out of Berkeley and joined Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, traveling around in their psychedelic bus as they organized LSD-infused concerts called the Acid Tests. Kaufman assumed the Prankster moniker Mary Microgram and lived on the bus with her comrades, performing mellow solo folk sets to help audiences "come down" once the house band (and her bus mates), the Grateful Dead, finished playing. But when Kesey headed to Mexico to avoid legal troubles, Kaufman returned to Haight-Ashbury and started playing solo gigs as well as joining other artists in various venues. Kaufman was at a party at the Blue Chair House when she heard Simpson playing blues guitar. "Denise couldn't believe it," recalls Alfiler. "She took out her harp and they started jamming. It was a magical moment."
Kaufman, now 76, remembers that moment well. "I had been playing with some guys who had come from Seattle, in a band that later became known as Moby Grape. But it wasn't my thing. It really wasn't the right band for me. I was still writing, and I had started working at Fantasy Records in San Francisco, running the office. But I wanted to find the right people and be in a band. Then, as 1966 was turning into 1967, I was at this New Year's Eve party and met Mary Ellen and just hit it off."
While Ace of Cups would pave the way for other women in rock, they didn't necessarily consider themselves pioneers. "We never really thought of ourselves in terms of being specifically an all-girl band," Alfiler says. "We were just musicians. We were just players who loved singing and playing our instruments, and weren't thinking, 'Oh, I want to have a boyfriend that's a player in a band.' We wanted to be the ones playing."
Ace of Cups got plenty of chances to play. Named after a tarot card depicting five streams of water pouring out of a chalice, a symbol of love and new beginnings, the combination of Alfiler, Hunt, Vitalich, Simpson and Kaufman seemed like a perfect reflection of the name. Except for drummer Vitalich, all the members sang lead vocals, and as a group they became known for intricate, multipart harmonies. As word spread they started picking up increasingly high-visibility gigs, but they weren't trying to break out. "For me it was never about going to the top," says Kaufman. "It was just writing music that I cared about and finding people to play it with. Because I always heard more voices than just one. I heard harmony parts. I heard background parts. So the idea of playing with people that just wanted to sing and play, I loved it."
After disbanding in 1972, Ace of Cups reunited in 2011 for a live show celebrating the 75th birthday of 1960s counterculture icon Wavy Gravy. A record label executive in attendance saw that the women still rocked and signed them to record their first studio album, Ace of Cups, released in 2018. Above, Ace of Cups performs in Mill Valley, California, in 2018.
(BELOW) Ace of Cups in 1968. Left to right: Diane Vitalich, Mary Gannon Alfiler, Denise Kaufman, Mary Ellen Simpson and Marla Hunt.
Ace of Cups headlined at Bay Area clubs like the Matrix and opened for bigger acts, including Jefferson Airplane, the Band and the Grateful Dead in venues like the Avalon Ballroom, Fillmore West and Winterland Ballroom. All of the members also sang lead and backup on records for artists like Quicksilver Messenger Service, Mike Bloomfield and Jefferson Airplane. But Ace of Cups never signed a record deal themselves, despite entertaining multiple offers. Eventually life got in the way. One by one, most of the members had children and discovered why there weren't more all-female bands. "That's one of the things about being a woman," says Alfiler. "When you have a baby, you want to take care of that baby." Male musicians in the 1960s and '70s, and even today, could more easily continue their careers. But women-especially these women, who sang about love, caring and belonging-were more likely to prioritize, or be expected to prioritize, their kids over their musical or professional ambitions.
After a few short years in the middle of a musical revolution that saw many of their friends continue on to superstardom, Ace of Cups disbanded in 1972. But they all remained musically active and stayed in touch. Kaufman, with young daughter in tow, headed straight back to the place that had captured her heart many years earlier: Kaua'i. Alfiler soon followed at Kaufman's urging, and the two former Aces raised their children and worked to improve their community.
In 1977, Kaufman, wanting to provide a unique educational experience for her elementary school-age daughter, joined with six other mothers to co-found Island School, now one of the most celebrated learning institutions in the state. Alfiler taught music first at Island School and then at St. Catherine's, a Catholic school in the tradition of her childhood alma mater, where she taught her own kids and thousands of others over the next several decades. As much as she loved performing, Alfiler found teaching to be even more rewarding. "I really could incorporate everything I had learned in the band into my classes," Alfiler says. "It was like the Jack Black movie School of Rock!" For Kaufman, founding Island School was only part of her involvement in education. She also taught yoga for decades and continues to practice to this day.
A musician, activist, yoga teacher, former Merry Prankster and cofounder of Kauai's Island School, Kaufman “always felt I could make a difference.” Now 77, Kaufman will be laying down bass for her grandson, London-based singer-songwriter Eli Smart, on his 2023 tour. “He’s got a great band there,” she says. “So I’m gonna go play bass on that tour with him. Like, what a dream, right?”
If Kaufman and Alfiler had simply let Ace of Cups fade into the past along with their rock-and-roll ambitions, the group's genesis, rise and eventual disbandment would still have been a fantastic experience. But in 2003 they reconvened to collaborate on the release of It's Bad for You but Buy It! a compilation album of old demos, rehearsal tapes and live recordings. Then in 2011 they reunited to play a live show at the 75th birthday party for counterculture icon Wavy Gravy, who had served as emcee during the iconic Woodstock music festival. The more mature, experienced version of Ace of Cups still rocked. "Over the years we would get together from time to time, sometimes three or four of us," Kaufman recalls. "But when we all got together in 2011, it was like no time had passed. We all knew all the harmonies and parts. Our voices would just blend immediately."
A record label executive in attendance offered the band that long-awaited record deal, and in 2018 the group released Ace of Cups, their self-titled first-ever studio album, more than fifty years after the group's inception. They followed up in 2020 with their second studio album, Sing Your Dreams, and released an EP of "lost" songs called Extended Play in 2022. The albums offer rhythmically solid, hook-driven, vocally complex folk, rock and blues songs with beautiful, multipart harmonies and conscious themes.
If, as Aesop quipped, a man is known by the company he keeps, then perhaps a band is known by the company it keeps as well. The Ace of Cups albums feature guest appearances from a slew of musicians who loved the band and had been part of the Summer of Love and musical revolution so many years earlier, including members of Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Taj Mahal, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jackson Browne and many others.
Alfiler is now enjoying retirement in Kapa'a after spending decades teaching music. Kaufman, not far away in Kilauea, is still practicing and teaching yoga, as well as playing music. The musical gene has also been passed down in both families: Alfiler's kids love to sing and play music, and Kaufman can often be found jamming with family at her daughter and son-in-law's music shop, Hanalei Strings in Kilauea. She's even heading out on tour in 2023 with her 23-year-old grandson Eli Smart, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter from Kauai now living in London. "Eli was a huge Beatles fan growing up," Kaufman says of her grandson, whose senior project at Island School involved playing and recording all of the instruments and voices himself, for a cover album of songs from the Beatles' Revolver. The project helped him get into the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts in London. The wiry and cheerful Kaufman is fit and exudes joy at the prospect of joining her grandson onstage. "He's got a great band there," she says. "So I'm gonna go play bass on that tour with him. Like, what a dream, right?"
