by Bruce Eder The Charlatans album San Francisco 1969 (originally known simply as The Charlatans) has had all kinds of incarnations -- the ultrarare original Philips Records LP from 1969, the illegal Groucho Records LP from Italy in the late '70s, the equally dubious French reissue on the Eva label from the 1980s, and a CD mastered off of vinyl, from the early '90s. And then there's this CD, from England's Acadia label, licensed from Universal Music and mastered from the original tapes. One can hear the difference in the closer singing and playing on "High Coin," and even better on "Folsom Prison Blues," where you can almost hear the action on the lead guitar, or on "The Blues Ain't Nothin'," where Mike Wilhelm's voice seems like it's in the room with you, and it's possible to hear the woodwinds all spread out instead of compressed and muted, and the lead guitar without any distortion in the playback (the sound on the older CD tended to crack and rumble on the louder passages), and the ethereal harmonizing and flute accompaniment on "Time To Get Straight," now in smooth, elegant textures. The notes by San Francisco music scholar Gene Sculatti give the clearest picture yet of the band's rather complex history. The makers have included one bonus track, a one-minute radio commercial for the LP that, as a marketing piece, takes a little too long to get where it's going, but is pretty funny. In all, heard properly for the first time in decades, this is a rather gorgeous and gently challenging piece of San Francisco rock, incorporating elements of blues and big-band swing, as well as '50s rock & roll and elegant '60s pop. It might not be as quite as overpowering creatively as the best records by the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, or the Grateful Dead, but it is one of the prettiest and most subtly beguiling albums to come out of the '60s San Francisco scene, and is also essential listening, as well as being just plain delightful.