“Morning Dew” was a contemporary folk song by Bonnie Dobson, and is a song that would stay in the band’s repertoire for their entire career. Written in 1962, “Morning Dew” was inspired by the film On the Beach, a vision of a post-apocalyptic world where the bewilderment of such total loss takes place as a …
“Sittin’ on Top of the World,” originally written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, recorded in 1930 by their group the Mississippi Sheiks, is another standard in American music. Confidence and optimism is driven home in both lyrical content as well as in the Dead’s arrangement. Adapted easily for a rock ‘n roll tempo, punctuated …
“Cold Rain and Snow” is another song pulled from the catalog of American folk music. This traditional was inspired by Obray Ramsey’s rendering with a solo banjo, and it is likely Garcia was attracted to it from his banjo playing days. The song would remain in the repertoire until the end. Again, we have a …
The Grateful Dead were described as ugly and ruffian, with the unlikely oddity of Pigpen as front man. The uniqueness of Pigpen as this character unlike anyone else in the band (arguably unlike anyone else, really) was largely part of the appeal of this act playing the circuit of small bars along the Bay Area’s …
The second track, a Skjellyfetty arrangement of Jesse “The Lone Cat” Fuller’s “Beat It on Down the Line,” is an example of the Dead’s interest in a continuum of music and its roots, and their arrangement continues the adventurous spirit, born perhaps of the struggle with the mundane and the desire to find happiness. Escapism, …
The opening track on the 1967 album is the album’s sole original tune, credited to McGallahan Skjellyfetty, which was the pseudonym used for group arrangements or group compositions on the album. This song was written in response to the label’s criticism that the album lacked a potential hit, and so it was written and recorded …
The Grateful Dead’s debut album marks the emergence of a musical and cultural phenomenon, of which this recording is merely a small lens into what would become the greater whole. The eponymous record Grateful Dead is certainly somewhat reflective of their sound at the time, but as with most of their studio work, it is …