Sherman Clay

San Francisco's Barbary Coast was at its zenith-huge open, bawdy, brawling, brimming with uncivilized humanity. Painted dance hall girls flounced their way to fame and fortune as a rough-and-tumble assortment of miners, sailors and railroaders chugged the rawest whiskey in the West. All that remained of the Gold Rush was the savagery born of disillusionment. To this primitive, barbaric land in 1861, came a refined young man of gentle breeding, determined to establish his own music business.