Eugene "ED" Denson 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. Early life and education Denson was born in Washington, D.C., in 1940. His parents were civil servants, and he has one sister. Denson 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. He then studied English, first at Merritt College, then at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. Personal life In the late 1960s, Denson and his first wife divorced, and Denson remarried. They divorced in the late 1970s. Denson lives in Alderpoint with his third wife. Music Around 1963, in the wake of Fahey's location of Bukka White, 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 them helped shape John's early image. He brought Robbie Basho to the label. In the early 1960s, he was the road manager for the Blues Project and then for Mississippi John Hurt, helped manage and produce records of Bukka White, and Skip James, after Fahey located White and James was found by a folklorist in Mississippi. He sold his interest in Takoma records to Fahey in the mid-1960s. In the mid-1960s, Denson expanded his management activities into rock and, with Country Joe McDonald, published a magazine, Rag Baby. He was also music columnist for the Berkeley Barb in this period. As a founder of the University's Pretentious Folk Front he produced a concert featuring Allen Ginsberg and the Fugs. From around 1965 to 1970 he managed Country Joe & the Fish and Joy of Cooking. In 1972, Denson and Stefan Grossman founded and managed Kicking Mule Records, which at first released acoustic guitar instrumentals with tablature and later 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