The Grateful Dead (album)

For the 1971 live album known informally as "Skull and Roses" or "Skull Fuck", see Grateful Dead (album).
The Grateful Dead
Album cover of the band members superimposed in front of a statue of a monkey idol and an explosion
Studio album by Grateful Dead
Released March 17, 1967 (1967-03-17)
Recorded January 1967
Genre
Length 34:53
Label Warner Bros.
Producer David Hassinger
Grateful Dead chronology
The Grateful Dead
(1967)		 Anthem of the Sun
(1968)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]

The Grateful Dead is the debut album of the Grateful Dead. It was released by Warner Bros. Records in March 1967. According to the biographies of both bassist Phil Lesh and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, the band released the album as San Francisco's Grateful Dead.

History

The album was primarily recorded at RCA's Studio A[2], in Los Angeles, in only four days. The band had wanted to record the tracks in their hometown of San Francisco, but no recording studios in the area had modernized equipment at the time. The group picked David Hassinger to produce because he had worked as an engineer on the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow album (the latter on which Jerry Garcia had guested and suggested the album title). Due to demands by the band's label, Warner Brothers, four of the tracks were edited for length.[3] Phil Lesh comments in his autobiography, "to my ear, the only track that sounds at all like we did at the time is Viola Lee Blues. ...None of us had any experience with performing for recording...the whole process felt a bit rushed."[4] Bill Kreutzmann, in his autobiography, says of the songs, "their recorded versions failed to capture the energy that we had when we performed them live. ...We weren’t that good yet. We were still learning how to be a band."[5]

Though the album was considered "a big deal in San Francisco", it did not see much airplay on AM radio stations outside of the Bay Area. The freeform FM radio format that favored bands like the Dead was still developing.[6] Warner Bros. held an album release party at the Fugazi Hall in North Beach. The label's A & R manager, Joe Smith, is noted for saying he "[is] proud that Warner Bros. is introducing the Grateful Dead to the world."[3]

The band used the collective pseudonym "McGannahan Skjellyfetti" for their group-written originals and arrangements. The name was a misrendering of "Skujellifeddy", a character in Kenneth Patchen's comic novel The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer, plus the name of then-frontman Pigpen's cat.[7] In an era where true authorship (or public domain status) was more difficult to ascertain, "Cold Rain and Snow" and "New, New Minglewood Blues" were originally credited as band compositions, though they were adaptations of existing songs.

A remastered version with the full versions of five album tracks, plus six bonus tracks, was released by Rhino as part of the box set The Golden Road (1965–1973) in 2001, and as a separate album in 2003. Album outtake "Alice D. Millionaire" was inspired by an Autumn, 1966 newspaper headline "LSD Millionaire", about the Dead's sound engineer and benefactor Owsley Stanley.

The album was reissued for Record Store Day 2011 on 180g vinyl cut from the original analog/mono masters from 1967 - the first time in over 40 years it had been released in this form. The 2013 high definition digital, remastered release features the edited versions, as originally released, of the four tracks which were extended for the 2003 Rhino release.

Album cover

On the original artwork, the writing on the top of the album cover read "In the land of the dark, the ship of the sun is drawn by the Grateful Dead", a passage taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. As the book had become more widely read, some had mistakenly assumed that the band had taken their name from the quote: "We now return our souls to the creator, as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness. Let our chant fill the void in order that others may know. In the land of the night, the ship of the sun is drawn by the grateful dead."[8] They hadn't, and because Garcia worried that it seemed "pretentious", and the band were uneasy about being seen as beholden to any specific philosophy or doctrine, they asked the artist, Stanley Mouse, to stylize the script so that all but the band name were illegible.[9]

Track listing

Side one
  1. "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)" (Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Bob Weir) – 2:07 (lead singer: Jerry Garcia)
  2. "Beat It On Down the Line" (Jesse Fuller) – 2:27 (lead singer: Bob Weir)
  3. "Good Morning, Little School Girl" (Sonny Boy Williamson) – 5:56 (lead singer: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan)
  4. "Cold Rain and Snow" (Obray Ramsey) – 2:25 (lead singer: Jerry Garcia)
  5. "Sitting on Top of the World" (Lonnie Chatmon, Walter Vinson) – 2:01 (lead singer: Jerry Garcia)
  6. "Cream Puff War" (Jerry Garcia) – 2:25 (lead singer: Jerry Garcia)
Side two
  1. "Morning Dew" (Bonnie Dobson, Tim Rose) – 5:00 (lead singer: Jerry Garcia)
  2. "New, New Minglewood Blues" (Noah Lewis) – 2:31 (lead singer: Bob Weir)
  3. "Viola Lee Blues" (Lewis) – 10:01 (lead singers: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir)
2003 reissue
  1. "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)" (Garcia, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir) – 2:09
  2. "Beat It on Down the Line" (Fuller) – 2:29
  3. "Good Morning Little School Girl" (Williamson) – 6:32 full-length version
  4. "Cold Rain and Snow" (Obray Ramsey) – 2:26
  5. "Sitting on Top of the World" (Chatmon, Vinson) – 2:43 full-length version
  6. "Cream Puff War" (Garcia) – 3:18 full-length version
  7. "Morning Dew" (Dobson, Rose) – 5:16
  8. "New, New Minglewood Blues" (Lewis) – 2:40 full-length version
  9. "Viola Lee Blues" (Lewis) – 10:09
Bonus tracks:
  1. "Alice D. Millionaire" (Grateful Dead) – 2:22
  2. "Overseas Stomp (the Lindy)" (Jab Jones and Will Shade) – 2:24
  3. "Tastebud" (Ron McKernan) – 4:18
  4. "Death Don't Have No Mercy" (Reverend Gary Davis) – 5:20
  5. "Viola Lee Blues" (Lewis) [edited version]  – 3:00
  6. "Viola Lee Blues" (Lewis) [live]  – 23:13
  • remastered CD contains full-length versions of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", "Sitting on Top of the World", "Cream Puff War", "Morning Dew", and "New, New Minglewood Blues" [10]
  • tracks 10 to 13 recorded at RCA Victor Studio A, Hollywood, CA (February 2, 1967)
  • track 14 is an edit of track 9
  • track 15 recorded live at Dance Hall, Rio Nido, CA (September 3, 1967). The master analog reels do not include the beginning of the song, resulting in the track beginning at the end of the second verse. Another track from this date is on Fallout from the Phil Zone.

Personnel

Grateful Dead
Technical personnel
Reissue production credits

Charts and certification

Billboard chart

Chart Peak Position
Pop Albums 73[11]

RIAA certification

Certification Date
Gold November 15, 1971[12]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Planer, Lindsay. The Grateful Dead at AllMusic. Retrieved June 16, 2011.
  2. ↑ Palaces, Jerry's Brokendown (6 November 2012). "Jerry's Brokendown Palaces: RCA's Studio B, 6363 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA".
  3. 1 2 Woodward, Jake; et al. (2003). Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip. Dorling Kindersley Limited. pg. 67.
  4. ↑ Lesh, Phil (2005). Searching for the Sound. Little, Brown and Company. pg. 99.
  5. ↑ Kreutzmann, Bill (2015). Deal. St. Martin's Press, New York. Chapter 4. ISBN 978-1-250-03380-2.
  6. ↑ Jackson, Blair (1999). Garcia: An American Life. Penguin Books. pg. 125.
  7. ↑ Shank, David; Silberman, Steve (1994). Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads. Broadway Books, New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-385-47402-3.
  8. ↑ "Poem:Egyptian Book of the Dead".
  9. ↑ "Grateful Dead Family Discography: The Grateful Dead".
  10. ↑ Discogs - The Grateful Dead images, reMastered CD 2001, Rhino (8122-74401-2-B) US
  11. ↑ "Artist Search for "grateful dead"".
  12. ↑ "RIAA Gold & Platinum database-The Grateful Dead". Retrieved February 28, 2009.
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