Happy 55th Anniversary to The Grateful Dead’s eponymous debut album The Grateful Dead, originally released March 17, 1967.
When we talk about the American counterculture of the 1960s, the role of music, particularly rock music, must not be overlooked. Rock music has been essential in the American culture and counterculture, providing a socio-cultural-political background for distinctive musical practices and revolutions. The genre served as an experiential setting where different groups found a sense of locality, community, and collective identity.
Originally formed in Palo Alto, California, the rock band Grateful Dead seemingly captured the whole counter-cultural scene and aesthetics. The Dead stood out for their alluring blend of musical genres, across jazz, rock, reggae, blues, folk, and country. Jerry Garcia—the group’s de-facto leader, lead guitarist, and vocalist—was into country music, bassist Phil Lesh was a trained classical composer, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir’s influences were rooted in folk/Americana, harmonica player and keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan’s main interest was blues music, and drummer Bill Kreutzmann was jazz-studied.
As popular music moved in one direction, the Dead, au contraire, followed the counterculture, its ground rules, and values, shying away from trends. From their looks—quite dissimilar from the Hollywood deco/nouveau hippie style—to their live shows based on long jam improvisation sessions and loud amplification and their lenient approach to the copyrighting of their music, the Grateful Dead made sure to always live by their own rules. The band's nonchalance about fans recording their live sets was, indeed, notorious, and they even actively encouraged their audience to share the music.
It was no mystery that the Dead was prevalently a live act, focused on improvising and jamming extensive pieces on stage, as rhythm guitarist Bob Weir recounted during an interview with Jas Obrecht in 1996: “We were primarily a dance band. We were there to swing. And in the studio, it was too sterile of an environment for us because there was nobody there to swing with us—just a bunch of microphones.”
However, as fellow San Franciscans Jefferson Airplane landed a record deal, the Grateful Dead decided to do the same, and in 1966 they signed with Warner Bros. The bandmates traveled to Los Angeles’ RCA Studio in January 1967 to record their eponymous debut album The Grateful Dead. The young and inexperienced artists were given only four days to record and cut the project.
During the recording process, the band encountered a few issues, with their label forcing them to shorten the length of some tracks—most songs were meant for radio airplay rather than psychedelic exploration. Eventually, they managed to carry out their debut record, offering seven tidy renditions of old blues tunes and two original songs. The project perfectly captured the band’s powerful energy and sound.
The record opens with the original track “The Golden Road,” which interestingly was the last song recorded. As Garcia recalled in an interview with DJ Larry Miller in 1967, “We were thinking specifically of a single, so we just played around, and came up with some nice changes and cooperated on the entire thing, and came up with ‘The Golden Road,’ which is a good song. I mean it's like really fun to sing and fun to play and everything like that, and it seems like a good single, whatever that is, we thought it could be a single.”
“The Golden Road” is close to what would have become the Grateful Dead’s blueprint sound, with full-on recording stunts, three screeching electric guitars, two flat top guitars, and in-your-face vocals.
The following songs, “Beat It on Down the Line” and “Good Morning, Little School Girl,” are the first two renditions, drawing from the Jug and Blues traditions. “Beat It on Down the Line”—formerly composed and performed by one-man musician Jesse Fuller—was reworked with sped-up tempo, the addition of Little Richard-esque electric guitar section, and flat-out organ, courtesy of Ron “Pigpen” Mckernan. “Beat It on Down the Line” was overall a well-done rendition. Whereas “Good Morning, Little School Girl” is perhaps the weakest track on the whole album.
“Cold Rain and Snow” has been adapted to rock music, including a background organ, while the banjo was exchanged with a staccato bass guitar. The piece is a reworked version of an American, Southern-Appalachian folk song. As Garcia explained, “The song is a traditional song...It's a ballad taken from Obray Ramsey and earlier from Rufus Crisp, I think. Like I say, it's only a frame, it's not a complete ballad. A lot of our material is traditional because we use the words as a format, is all, and the words are nice, those traditional lines are really nice, and we just do the arrangement and the melody and so forth. Also, we haven't copywritten any of the words in these things—the things that are traditional, we've left them traditional. Things that were authored previously, even if our version is somewhat different, we give credit to the people who were doing it.”
“Sitting on Top of the World” draws yet again from the blues tradition. It was originally recorded by guitar and fiddle group Mississippi Sheiks. The Dead put a new spin to the classic blues song, turning it into a country-rock jam, consisting of lightning speed guitar solos and bass lines for a more incisive rhythm section.
“Cream Puff War” is the second track composed and written by the Grateful Dead. The song, filled with thumping rhythm sections, hypnotic guitar lines, and clever lyrics, introduces the listener to the band’s distinctive sound, which they further developed in their subsequent releases. According to Garcia, “Cream Puff War” was already on its way by the time the group was recording the album: the lead guitarist had already worked out the bridge, the first verse, and the changes; and lastly, Weir suggested the name “Cream Puff War.” As Garcia elaborated, “So, Cream Puff War is the name of that song just because it was a name that happened to be around, and then, later on, I happened to work it into the lyric as the last line...”
The mid-tempo ballad “Morning Dew”—a Canadian folk song formerly released by singer-songwriter Bonnie Dobson—is a fictional dialogue between the last woman and man left alive following an apocalyptic catastrophe. The song would soon become a staple during the band’s live shows.
The next track is a short radio-friendly version of “New, New Minglewood Blues,” which the band would re-release with a brand-new arrangement on their 1978 album Shakedown Street.
Closing the record is “Viola Lee Blues," an extensive 10-minute jam, giving a taste of what to expect from the band’s live shows: lengthy sets, lots of improvisation, keen and skillful musicianship. Besides, the song is multi-hued and built on a jug tune. The highlight of the track is Pigpen’s organ improvisation, along with Garcia’s solo. Overall, “Viola Lee Blues” ends the album on a great note, offering a glimpse of the Grateful Dead’s remarkable abilities.
Although the record’s production and mixing might feel a bit hasty, Pigpen’s organ might sound too intense overshadowing Lesh’s bass lines, archaizing some songs, the Grateful Dead’s eponymous project—especially songs like “The Golden Road,” “Cream Puff War,” and “Viola Lee Blues”—marked the beginning of the group’s eminent and brilliant career. Fifty-five years later, the Dead’s debut album provides a glimpse into their formative years, sealing their exceptional blueprint sound on the front line of the counterculture that would subsequently characterize the then-imminent Summer of Love.
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