The building at Telegraph and Russell had musical history before the Jabberwock name went up. Glenn Ross opened the Tsubo in September 1961 as a jazz club, sharing the space with KJAZ-FM, Berkeley's jazz radio station. The arrangement meant live music and live broadcasting operated under the same roof - an intimate setup that attracted serious musicians. Montgomery's Full House session captured the guitarist alongside a band that included pianist Wynton Kelly and saxophonist Johnny Griffin, producing an album that would become a touchstone of jazz guitar. But Berkeley residents loved the Tsubo for a more practical reason: it served no alcohol and welcomed minors, making it one of the few nightlife options for the university's younger crowd. Ross poured $35,000 into the venture. When it closed on October 15, 1962, he walked away broke. The music, at least, survived on vinyl.

Belle Randell and her husband John Stauber, a classically trained guitarist, took over the space in 1963 and rechristened it the Jabberwock. Less than a mile from the UC Berkeley campus, the club became a natural gathering point for students and recent graduates - especially after 1964, when the university erupted into the Free Speech Movement and became ground zero for anti-war sentiment. Poster artist Tom Waller remembered the Jabberwock as a "beatnik sort of place" with espresso and cool jazz, its walls painted black in the prevailing coffeehouse aesthetic of the era. Classical music threaded through the early programming too: a recorder trio featuring Michael Rossman, later famous for his role in the Free Speech Movement, played for free meals and passed a hat for tips. The club evolved with its audience, shifting from beatnik jazz to folk as the scene around it transformed.

On March 23, 1965, Randell and Stauber sold the Jabberwock to Bill "Jolly Blue" Ehlert, and the club entered its most consequential phase. Ehlert booked a young singer named Country Joe McDonald and a guitarist named Barry "The Fish" Melton, who performed together in the Instant Jug Band alongside Bruce Barthol. These were the musicians who would soon form Country Joe and the Fish, one of the defining bands of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Even after their debut album Electric Music for the Mind and Body made them famous, the band kept returning to the Jabberwock - though by then their sound had traded acoustic folk for electric psychedelia. The club hit its peak popularity in 1966, straddling the line between the folk scene that had nurtured it and the psychedelic wave that was overtaking the Bay Area.

Ehlert was ambitious enough to run two venues simultaneously. In 1966, he hired Jesse Cahn, who had drummed with the Chambers Brothers, to co-manage the Jabberwock while Ehlert focused on the Matrix, his new club in San Francisco. The Matrix would become legendary in its own right as the launchpad for Jefferson Airplane and other psychedelic acts. But splitting attention between two clubs meant the Jabberwock suffered from divided leadership. After Cahn, several co-managers came and went without finding a sustainable rhythm. Sally Henderson took the helm for the club's final months, steering a ship that was already taking on water.

In 1967, the Health and Building Departments delivered the death sentence. The Jabberwock's growing popularity had pushed occupancy beyond what the aging building could safely handle, and a full renovation was financially impossible. The club closed on July 7, 1967 - six years and a cultural revolution after the Tsubo first opened its doors on the same corner. Two years later, the building was demolished entirely. Someone planted a garden on the vacant lot, and for a while, flowers grew where Montgomery had recorded Full House and Country Joe had rehearsed protest songs. The corner at Telegraph and Russell looks nothing like it did in the 1960s. But the music that passed through that room - the jazz, the folk, the psychedelia, the protest - still echoes through the culture it helped shape.