I've put together a list of all the guest appearances in the Dead's early shows. I don't know of a site that provides a listing like this, and it's likely that I've forgotten or left out some guests, so if anyone notices something missing, please speak up!
This list is mostly limited to electric Dead shows where someone outside the band added a musical contribution.
It doesn't include shows for which we have no tapes - for instance, various unrecorded Airplane/Dead jams that happened over the years.
It doesn't include the New Riders' sets - though I should at least mention the 3/18/73 New Riders show where Garcia, Weir, and Godchaux all joined in. It also doesn't include the 1970 acoustic sets in which John Dawson & David Nelson regularly sat in for some songs, though other acoustic guests are noted.
It doesn't include announcers - some of whom, in the early days, are quite entertaining in their own right.
It doesn't include studio sessions (for instance, the Jon Hendricks session in late '66). For a good discography and listings of various studio collaborations (including Garcia's non-Dead projects), check www.deaddisc.com.
It doesn't include the collaborations with David Crosby in late '70 (for instance, the PERRO sessions or the 12/15/70 Matrix show), which could be a whole separate discussion.
It doesn't include the many tapes of Garcia jamming with other musicians - for instance, Country Joe (the Fillmore West '69 "Donovan's Reef jam"), Jefferson Airplane (Family Dog 9/6/69), the Allman Brothers (Cow Palace 12/31/73), Doug Sahm (Austin 11/23/72), or various early jams with Airplane members and others.
But I did include a couple illuminating non-Dead shows that happen to be on the Archive, where Dead members have a strong presence, as well as the notorious Hartbeats shows since those have so much Dead material.
I've decided to skip the early '66 Acid Tests, since they're so full of audience mikes and Prankster chatter - the Dead themselves were the guests. So we'll start at the dawn of 1967:
12/1/66 Matrix - An unknown blues singer & harmonica player joins the Dead for Yonder's Wall and My Own Fault.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-12-01.sbd.sirmick.26968.sbeok.shnf
1/14/67 Great Human Be-In - During a speedy instrumental Schoolgirl, Charles Lloyd plays flute and does a jazzy, aggressive stream-of-consciousness rap.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-01-14.sbd.vernon.9108.sbeok.shnf
6/18/67 Monterey Festival - This is the earliest version of Alligator we have - at the beginning of Alligator, someone's playing harmonica where the verses should be. It isn't Pigpen, since it's horrible and off-key (meanwhile he's probably singing into a dead mike) and later in Caution he plays harmonica in his usual style - but I had the impression it might be someone familiar with the song. (They also bleat a little bit in Cold Rain & Snow.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-06-18.sbd.mandrake.19586.sbeok.shnf
7/23/67 Straight Theater - Garcia introduces Neal Cassady, who raps for a while while the Dead back him. For the first part they play an instrumental Lovelight (their first known version), then in the second part they get into a minimal 'space' - also the earliest space.
https://archive.org/details/gd1967-07-23.aud.sorochty.125462.flac16
9/20/68 Berkeley - In this snippet of a show, the Dead abort a short Eleven to go into drums - they're joined by Shankar Ghosh and Vince Delgado (two percussionists from the Ali Akbar College of Music) for a 25-minute drum break, which ends the show with cries of "Ya, ya, yaketa!" Perhaps equipment or lysergic troubles prevented an Alligator jam - in any case, this must be the longest drum solo until 1978.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1968-09-20.sbd.miller.32900.sbeok.flac16
In October '68, after the temporary firing of Weir and Pigpen, a series of Mickey and the Hartbeats shows started at the Matrix - consisting of Garcia, Hart, sometimes Lesh, and any other musicians that might show up, jamming on a few Dead themes and some freeform explorations. Sometimes it's said that they were auditioning for new Dead members, but this is highly unlikely, since the other players were already in established bands. Garcia may have just wanted to open up a new side-project (we'd certainly see more of those in later years). It's less-known that Lesh isn't even playing during many of these shows - with the exception of 10/30/68, these are mostly Garcia/Casady duets. When Elvin Bishop shows up, the Hartbeats take a definite turn towards standard blues jams.
Not all the Hartbeats shows seem to survive - there are some undated fragments circulating - and occasional Hartbeats shows took place into '69, of which we only have the Aug 28 show with Howard Wales.
10/8/68 - Elvin Bishop & Jack Casady in the later sets.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-10-08.sbd.belaff.17691.sbeok.shnf
10/10/68 - 'Marvin' (blues singer & harmonica player). I don't think Jack Casady was at the Matrix this night (he was playing with Hendrix at Winterland).
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-10-10.sbd.miller-ladner.4513.sbeok.shnf
10/30/68 - Elvin Bishop; then Jack Casady in the second Dark Star.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-10-30.sbd.sacks.1205.sbeok.shnf
12/16/68 - Garcia & Hart with Jack Casady, Spencer Dryden, David Getz.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-12-16.sbd.hartbeats.4529.sbeok.shnf
12/24/68 - Garcia & Hart with Harvey Mandel, Elvin Bishop, Stephen Miller & John Chambers (not on the Archive).
1969
1/24/69 - After Lovelight is cut off during this Avalon show, the drummers keep going, and someone onstage shouts into a microphone during the drums, clearly out of his mind at the end.
https://archive.org/details/gd69-01-24.sbd.kaplan.7922.sbeok.shnf
2/19/69 Fillmore West - Someone sings along with Pigpen in the second part of Lovelight. After Lovelight, the Dead stop the music
for twenty minutes of audience chanting and various guest speakers. For the second half of the
show, the Dead are joined by Gary Duncan on guitar.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-06-19.sbd.cotsman.4511.sbeok.shnf
Early '69 was a conspicuously guest-free time as the Dead played their limited setlist with Tom Constanten at show after show. As I've mentioned before, in April/May '69 a little setlist upheaval started as the Dead started bringing back bunches of old covers, adding more variety (and sloppiness) to their shows. All of a sudden in late spring, we see a whole torrent of guests taking the stage in Dead shows, which would continue through 1970.
4/4/69 - A mystery organ player guests in Lovelight, possibly Bob Powell of Sanpaku - clearly not Pigpen or TC, since he's not very familiar with the song.
https://archive.org/details/gd69-04-04.sbd.sacks.1314.sbefail.shnf
5/11/69 - Santana percussionists Mike Carabello & Chepito Areas join the Dead in the Alligator drum section, and Garcia jams with the percussion; one of them sings a bit in Lovelight.
https://archive.org/details/gd69-05-11.fm.cotsman.6296.sbefail.shnf
5/31/69 - Ken Babbs starts Baby Blue with a sad little rap; he's also heard rapping at length after Cold Rain & Snow.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-05-31.sbd.oleynick.76.sbeok.shnf
6/6/69 - Jerry is late to the show (or too dosed to play), so Wayne Ceballos of Aum takes his place for almost the whole show, except for Lovelight. (He was previously misidentified as Elvin Bishop.) Needless to say, we get an extra dose of blues with Smokestack Lightning and Checkin' Up On My Baby. The Lovelight may be the longest ever, at 48 minutes (though some others come close).
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-06.sbd.jupile.9494.sbeok.shnf
6/7/69 - Janis Joplin sings with Pigpen in Lovelight in her usual blues-scat style. (This part of the show suffers from tape deterioration.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-07.sbd.kaplan.9074.sbeok.shnf
6/8/69 - After an amazing first set, we get no less than two guests - Wayne Ceballos sings Lovelight instead of Pigpen (making it feel twice as long, though Pigpen seems to approve). Then Elvin Bishop (who played guitar in Lovelight) takes over again for a couple blues tunes with Pigpen, Things I Used To Do and Who's Lovin' You Tonight, before Garcia returns. There may possibly also an unknown keyboard guest in the set (though it could be Constanten), and Billy Nicks (Junior Walker & the All-Stars drummer) joins on percussion. All-Stars guitarist Philip Leno Wright also says Garcia brought him on for a solo at some point during this run, though I haven't found it.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-08.sbd.cotsman.19285.sbeok.shnf
6/13/69 - Wayne Ceballos sings Schoolgirl with Pigpen. (He was previously misidentified as Ronnie Hawkins.) Someone plays flute for a bit in the middle of Lovelight (most likely Gary Larkey, of Sanpaku), and Ceballos comes back for the raveup at the end.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-13.sbd.barbella.7775.sbeok.shnf
6/14/69 - Wayne Ceballos sings in Lovelight again.
https://archive.org/details/gd69-06-14.sbd.skinner.5182.sbeok.shnf
6/27-28/69 - A bunch of guests on these dates! On 6/27, Tom Ralston (drummer for the Cleanliness & Godliness Skiffle Band) sat in for Mickey Hart on drums for the first few songs. Peter Grant plays (barely audible) banjo in Slewfoot on 6/27, and more inaudible banjo in at least Mama Tried and Me & My Uncle on 6/28, and switches to pedal steel in Doin' That Rag (as on the album). John Dawson sings Me & My Uncle with Weir on 6/28. David Nelson plays a guitar solo in Mama Tried on 6/28.
https://archive.org/details/gd69-06-27.sbd.samaritano.20547.sbeok.shnf
https://archive.org/details/gd69-06-28.sbd.samaritano.20548.sbeok.shnf
7/7/69 - Deadlists suggests that Gregg Allman is playing organ in Lovelight. Not so - I only hear Constanten. (In any case, though the Dead didn't play with the Allmans here, there was a multi-player jam after the show, not recorded.) http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-07-07.sbd.clugston.3116.sbeok.shnf
7/12/69 - Madness breaks loose in Lovelight - Pigpen tries to get Mickey to sing, and Weir gives a mike to an enthusiastic audience member who starts shrieking and hollering the blues: "Let me tell you baby, you're a brown cow, let's go get stoned....."
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-07-12.sbd-aud.hanno.4645.sbeok.shnf
8/2/69 - David Nelson plays guitar in Slewfoot and Mama Tried. He adds a different texture, and I wish he'd sat in more often!
https://archive.org/details/gd69-08-02.sbd.miller.30651.sbeok.flacf
8/3/69 - Very unusual (and anonymous) guests tonight - a fiddle player in Hi-Heel Sneakers, and then saxophone and fiddle in the Dark Star>Alligator>Other One>Caution jam. One of the most unique sets the Dead ever played, though the mix is poor. The guests have still not been identified - Charles Lloyd is presumed to be on sax, but the fiddle player is a mystery. David Nelson plays a guitar solo in Mama Tried again.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1969-08-03.sbd.miller.30652.sbeok.flac16
8/16/69 - Ken Babbs raps for quite a while after Mama Tried. Someone also raps about the "third coast" at the beginning of Lovelight; this used to be attributed to Babbs, but it is actually some mysterious stranger. A video of Dark Star also reveals a baby onstage with the band.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-16.sbd.cotsman.15205.sbeok.shnf
8/21/69 - Gary Larkey of Sanpaku plays flute in Minglewood Blues and China Cat. (He was previously misidentified as Charles Lloyd.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-21.sbd.cotsman.13850.sbeok.shnf
8/23/69 - After Pigpen has the crowd yell "Howdy!" he asks for a volunteer: "Anyone wanna come up and testify? - anyone, come up and say something! Y'all chicken?" Some crazed fellow takes him up on it and starts screeching, "Woo-hoo! Everybody get it on! Have a good ol' time! Baby baby, do ya feel it?" and makes a little speech.....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1969-08-23.sbd.2196.sbeok.shnf
(There are many more Lovelights in '70/71 where Pigpen would give the mike to delirious romantics in the audience. I don't have the heart to seek out any more examples, though.)
8/28/69 - Hartbeats with Howard Wales (Weir & Pigpen absent). There's also a flute player heard briefly in Dark Star.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-28.sbd.lepley.4234.sbeok.shnf
9/7/69 - Not the Dead, but Garcia with some of the Jefferson Airplane playing some drunken garage-band oldies from their youth. A rare chance to hear Garcia singing Johnny B Goode (and the first known Big Railroad Blues) - but the playing's pretty rough.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-07.sbd.dfinney.5808.sbeok.shnf
9/11/69 - There's a stray audience tape with this date of an early Easy Wind which supposedly had a guest player on slide guitar; but this turned out to be from the 8/30/69 AUD, with Weir on slide.
10/25/69 - Stephen Stills plays guitar in Lovelight.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-10-25.sbd.jagla.81.sbefail.shnf
11/7/69 - After Mama Tried, someone in the audience plays the Star-Spangled Banner on a pennywhistle, to general hilarity - the Dead respond with a few little traditional ditties.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1969-11-07.sbd.cotsman.6299.shnf
11/8/69 - In the Caution jam just before the Main Ten, someone recites a little poem in a Dylanesque manner - perhaps John Dawson. (Released on the Dick's Pick.)
12/10/69 - Stephen Stills plays guitar in Casey Jones, Schoolgirl, and Morning Dew, and sings Black Queen. (He probably played in Lovelight as well, but it cuts after two minutes.) Black Queen is excellent.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-12-10.sbd.gerland.10986.sbeok.shnf
12/29/69 - Soon after the jam starts in Good Lovin', a disturbed audience member yells into a mike, and they stop for a bit while he's hustled off-stage. This isn't a "guest appearance", but it helps remind us that in many shows (as Garcia occasionally mentions) the stage must have been full of people wandering around - kids, dancers, freaks, and so on.....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-12-29.sbd.8044.sbeok.shnf
1970
1/23/70 - Around 12 minutes into Lovelight, someone screeches and hoots lamely with Pigpen for a couple minutes - Pigpen encourages him, "Anything you wanna say, go ahead, I'll follow ya." (This has been thought to be Joey Covington, I'm not sure why.)
https://archive.org/details/gd70-01-23.sbd.fixed.connor.18153.sbeok.shnf
2/1/70 - Peter Green plays guitar in Lovelight, and another Fleetwood Mac member hollers for a bit.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-02-01.psbd.cousinit.18121.sbeok.shnf
2/4/70 - Though it wasn't part of the Dead show, several bands were being filmed at the Family Dog this night; and at the end of the evening there was an "all-star jam" including Garcia, Santana, and the Jefferson Airplane guitarists, part of which was broadcast. It's not on the 2/4/70 Download Series CD, but it is on the "Night at the Family Dog" DVD.
https://archive.org/details/gd70-02-04.sbd.kaplan.14188.sbeok.shnf
2/11/70 - For the Dark Star>Spanish Jam>Lovelight, an enormous crew including most of Fleetwood Mac and the Allman Brothers joined the Dead onstage - Peter Green, Duane Allman, Mick Fleetwood, Danny Kirwan, Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks & Berry Oakley.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1970-02-11.late-set2.aud.smith.99152.sbeok.flac16
3/8/70 - A mystery guest takes the mike after Pigpen's Katie Mae and "sings" a blues while Pigpen and the band accompany him - then he continues shouting while someone else tunelessly bleats a harmonica all through Not Fade Away, while the Dead apparently ignore them. The singer was thought to be Wayne Ceballos, but is now said to be "Paul Michael Cantrell (aka Rathead)," a local high school student - Pigpen seems to have encouraged him onstage, for some reason. Hands-down the worst guest appearance. (The Archive link has a debate on whether this singer is Ceballos or not - which is ironic, since the genuine Ceballos on 6/8/69 is almost equally atrocious.)
"Wake Me, Shake Me" was a song done by the Blues Project. An audience member notes that "by the time the band did "Lovelight" there were maybe 50 members of the audience on stage with the band... The band members were surrounded by crazed audience members."
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-03-08.sbd.9195.sbeok.shnf
3/17/70 - This famed show, where the Dead played with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, doesn't survive on tape. But there are descriptions of the show here:
http://www.theblackdog.org/gd-bpo/
(As for lost shows, I should also mention 5/10/70, where the Dead jammed with the Allman Brothers again.)
4/9/70 - An unknown guest sings the improvised "Cowboy Song", an interesting Sugar Magnolia-type hoedown, as the audience stamp their feet.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-04-09.sbd.hanno.6157.sbeok.shnf
4/15/70 - Deadlists says that during the Santana-like jam in the Other One, "A third guitarist sits in, and also someone on keyboards, and someone on congas." There is a mystery organ player, but there is no third guitarist.
https://archive.org/details/gd70-04-15.sbd.kaplan.14354.sbeok.shnf
6/7/70 - During the Other One drum solo, a lady gives a speech to the audience; not only that, but someone's singing off-mike during the Cryptical reprise. (Deadlists claims this is Robert Hunter.) Someone also sings "hey baby" over the opening of Cosmic Charlie. The Dead themselves, perhaps unsurprisingly, seem a little unfocused.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-06-07.sbd.hollister.98.sbeok.shnf
6/13/70 - According to Deadlists, "Dino Valenti and Gary Duncan appear on Good Lovin' and Lovelight." There may be a third guitar in Lovelight, but otherwise I can't hear them, so I'm skeptical of this. (Pigpen plays a neat piano in the New Speedway Boogie solo, though.)
https://archive.org/details/gd70-06-13.sbd.hanno.9079.sbefail.shnf
7/14/70 - In the acoustic set, David Crosby plays 12-string on Cumberland Blues and New Speedway Boogie.
https://archive.org/details/gd1970-07-14.sbd.unknown.96628.sbeok.shnf
7/16/70 - At Bear's going-away party, Janis Joplin sings another Lovelight with Pigpen - this one is much raunchier than last year's.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-07-16.sbd.clugston.6485.sbeok.shnf
7/70 - A KSAN broadcast from an unknown date of an in-studio "Bobby Ace" set - Weir on acoustic, Garcia on pedal steel, John Cipollina on slide guitar, Pete Sears on piano. Weir sings four acoustic songs. Known as "the Garage Tape;" not on the Archive.
8/19/70 - David Crosby plays guitar in Not Fade Away>Lovelight - unfortunately, in the audience tape it's hard to make him out.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-08-19.aud.cotsman.11797.sbeok.shnf
9/17/70 - On Box of Rain, David Nelson plays guitar and Garcia plays piano, as on the album.
https://archive.org/details/gd70-09-17.aud.remaster.sirmick.27591.sbeok.shnf
9/20/70 - In the acoustic set, David Grisman plays a second mandolin (along with David Nelson) for several songs. It's also notable that Garcia plays piano on To Lay Me Down, as he had on 9/19 (Pigpen usually played the piano during the acoustic sets).
https://archive.org/details/gd70-09-20.aud.remaster.sirmick.27583.sbeok.shnf
11/11/70 - Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, and Papa John Creach join the Dead during Goin' Down the Road and they play a series of fun jams, blues, and rockers to end the show.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-11-11.aud.cotsman.17081.sbeok.shnf
11/16/70 - This Hell's Angels benefit has a few guests on several tunes - Steve Winwood on organ, Will Scarlet on harmonica, and perhaps Chris Wood doing some singing in Not Fade Away. (This show used to be known as 11/23/70, but 11/16 Fillmore has become the accepted date.)
An audience tape from this date also features Papa John Creach soloing on Good Lovin'. (Jorma and Jack may be playing too, though it's hard to hear.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-11-16.sbd.winters.17361.sbeok.shnf
https://archive.org/details/gd1970-11-16.135717.aud.petlock.flac16
11/20/70 - The bonus set with Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady features quite a few hot jams and rockers, in better quality than 11/11.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-11-20.aud.cotsman.9001.sbeok.shnf
11/21/70 - Only part of the set exists, a Cryptical>Other One medley. Ned Lagin played with the Dead (as photos show), but he wasn't plugged into the PA, so he's quite inaudible.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-11-21.sbd.cotsman.17033.sbeok.shnf
I should also mention here the 11/21/70 Boston radio show after this performance - Garcia & Weir play several acoustic songs and are joined by Duane Allman, who plays one acoustic instrumental. (This set is not on deadlists or the Archive.)
12/31/70 - During I Know You Rider, you can hear a woman screaming continually for quite a while; the Dead ignore her. After the song, another woman says into a mic, "Um, excuse me, I forgot my cape in the corner over there...." As Deadlists puts it, "Plainly things were a little out of control backstage; perhaps there was a mic live that shouldn't have been." (This is also the show where the Dead direct a spotlight onto an audience taper - Garcia shouts, "There's bootleggers among us - let's find out who these people are!")
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-12-31.sbd-fm.7283.sbeok.shnf
12/31/70 - After the Dead show, in the wee morning hours Weir came back for an extra set with Hot Tuna (Jorma, Jack, Will Scarlet on harmonica, Joey Covington on drums) - playing a selection of oldies, most of them in the Dead's setlists, but here done Hot Tuna-style. This is a rare example of hearing Weir (rather than Garcia) as a guest.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-12-31.aftershow.sbd.cole.6171.sbeok.shnf
From 1970-1972, Ned Lagin appeared at a number of Dead shows, playing organ during the jams - including 11/5/70, 11/8/70, 8/14-15/71, and 9/16/72. Sadly, he can scarcely be heard on any of the tapes, so I'll refer you to this indispensable site which lists his appearances:
http://nedbase.blogspot.com/
He can be heard in these shows:
2/18/71 - Ned Lagin on clavichord in several songs, most notably the Dark Star medley.
https://archive.org/details/gd1971-02-18.sbd.miller.111793.flac16
4/7/71 - Ned Lagin is likely on piano, barely audible in the post-drums jam.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1971-04-07.sbd.cantor.gmb.96225.flac16
4/8/71 - Ned Lagin is faintly audible on electric piano, particularly in Dark Star.
https://archive.org/details/gd1971-04-08.sbd.cantor.gmb.96627.flac16
Guest appearances dropped off significantly in 1971, as the Dead tightened up their shows. In fact, there were no others that year - except for three nights in the Fillmore East run in April:
4/26/71 - Duane Allman plays guitar in Sugar Magnolia, Hurts Me Too, & BIODTL. He's rather low in the mix on circulating tapes (and the song selection could be better). Apparently these songs were almost released on the Ladies & Gentlemen set, but were halted by legal issues. (One song has been released on the Skydog box set.)
https://archive.org/details/gd1971-04-26.113839.sbd.smith.boswell.flac16
4/27/71 - The Beach Boys emerge from the mists of time for a little mini-set in the middle of the Dead's set, playing a few of their own tunes with the Dead joining in for some '50s covers.
https://archive.org/details/gd1971-04-27.sbd.boswell.smith.114094.flac16
4/28/71 - In an even more surprising emergence, Tom Constanten reappears - not for a whole set, interestingly, but he plays in the Dark Star>St Stephen>Not Fade Away medley. This was released on Ladies & Gentlemen.
https://archive.org/details/gd1971-04-28.sbd.boswell.smith.114088.flac24
8/14/71 - Before the encore, David Crosby comes onstage and the band plays him Happy Birthday. (It's been claimed that he plays in Johnny B Goode & Uncle John's Band, but I don't think so.)
https://archive.org/details/gd71-08-14.sbd.ladner.21268.sbeok.shnf
One summer jam session must be mentioned:
8/21/71 at Mickey Hart's barn - The Dead jam for a couple hours with John Cipollina, David Crosby, Ned Lagin, and Merl Saunders - and amazingly, it's taped. (An earlier "Day in the Country" jam at the Barn with a similar lineup was also recorded, but hasn't circulated.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-08-21.hartjam.aud.17179.sbeok.shnf
12/31/71 also has a raucous midnight start - during the opening Dancin' in the Streets jam, the radio announcer mentions that two men "took off their diapers and are running around the stage nude!" Someone (perhaps one of these men) shouts "Happy new year!" and some random shrieks into a mic during the jam. Afterwards, Weir announces that the stage is a mess....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-12-31.fm.lanum.135.sbeok.shnf
1972-73 saw a few more guest appearances:
3/25/72 - Bo Diddley plays a set of his songs with the Dead as backing band during the Academy of Music run. Part of it was released on a Dick's Pick (along with the one-time-only Are You Lonely For Me Baby, How Sweet It Is, and Pigpen's last Smokestack Lightning, from the Dead's set) - and a horrible AUD tape is here:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1972-03-25.aud.hanno.horner.22094.sbeok.shnf
7/16/72 - At the end of the show, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, and Jaimoe from the Allman Brothers join the Dead for a fantastic Not Fade Away>Goin' Down the Road>Hey Bo Diddley, and the Johnny B Goode encore. (I think Betts also appears on Sugar Magnolia, though he's barely in the mix.) Duane Allman unfortunately couldn't appear, since by this time he had merged with infinity. (By the way, the other two '72 Hey Bo Diddleys were done on 5/23/72 and 8/22/72, which are well worth checking out.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-07-16.sbd-aud.cotsman.11258.sbeok.shnf
9/10/72 - David Crosby appears in this excellent show, playing in Dark Star. (He's not very evident in the following songs.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-09-10.sbd.winters.17690.sbeok.shnf
9/30/72 - Several witnesses in the reviews here report a topless dancer onstage - unfortunately, she doesn't appear on the tapes..... But judging by the Veneta '72 film, such sights were common among Dead audiences.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-09-30.sbd.unknown.5681.sbeok.shnf
10/9/72 - Grace Slick appears, not topless but apparently drunk - to start the second set, she sings a Janis-style rap while the Dead play a blues jam. She returns to make a little speech about the band before Truckin'.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-09.sbd.vernon.5249.sbeok.shnf
12/31/72 - David Crosby shows up again to play guitar in the fantastic Other One>Morning Dew jam.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-12-31.prefm.vernon.20559.sbeok.shnf
6/10/73 - In one of their giant '73 shows, the Dead give us a famed third set with Dickey Betts, Merl Saunders & Butch Trucks. Interestingly, Garcia picks That's All Right and Takes a Lot to Laugh from his Keystone setlists.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-06-10.sbd.hollister.174.sbeok.shnf
7/28/73 - The encore is the highlight of the show - Not Fade Away, Mountain Jam, Around & Around, and Johnny B Goode with the Allmans and the Band. One of the only times (other than 12/31/73) where you hear Garcia actually playing in a Mountain Jam, rather than just quoting Donovan's melody. Garcia also appeared on some earlier Band encore songs, which circulate with the Band's set but not the Dead's: Have You Ever Been Mistreated, Da Di De Day, and Warm & Tender Love.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-07-28.sbd.weiner.14196.sbeok.shnf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yui6xHeXGgY
(A joint Dead/Allmans CD set was prepared some time ago from these '73 shows, but release has been delayed indefinitely.)
A new twist came in September '73. For eight shows in the 9/11 to 9/26 Northeast tour, Joe Ellis & Martin Fierro joined the Dead on horns for Let Me Sing Your Blues Away, the Weather Report Suite, Eyes of the World, Truckin' and Sugar Magnolia. These shows have aroused mixed feelings - while the horns added a free-jazz or New Orleans-ish tinge to the sets, some people feel they're more intrusive than enjoyable. It's also notable that the horns weren't added to other jam songs - and this tour in general was rather light on the deep jams. I suspect the horn players weren't given much practice time to work out arrangements - as a result, we get quite a few second-set jams of Truckin'>Eyes>Weather Report.
This is one show illustrating all the songs they played in: Let Me Sing Your Blues Away, Truckin', Eyes of the World, Weather Report Suite>Let It Grow, Stella Blue, and Sugar Magnolia.
https://archive.org/details/gd1973-09-17.sbd.sirmick.107542.flac16
Though not a Dead show, 11/28/73 is worth mentioning since Ned Lagin & Phil Lesh (unbilled) joined Garcia & Hart for a Seastones-inspired "Experiments in Quadrophonic Sound" concert - more prolonged and abstract than the usual Dead space-jam, but more listenable than Lesh & Lagin's 1974 adventures, since Garcia's doing some interesting things.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-11-28.sbd-seastones.finney.968.sbefail.shnf
(This file has 11/28/73 divided into several AUD & SBD sections, which may not all be from that date, along with some non-Dead Constanten Tarot outtakes. A full AUD tape is also available, but not on the Archive.)
Starting on June 23, 1974, Ned Lagin & Phil Lesh played some Seastones pieces in-between Dead sets at most of the '74 shows. At the first show, Lagin also played in much of the second set, though I don't think he can be heard:
https://archive.org/details/gd74-06-23.sbd.cribbs.16780.sbeok.shnf
These bass drones & synthesizer noises are a bit too experimental for most people; but there were a few times in Europe and Winterland when the rest of the band would come out and turn Seastones into a full-band jam, leading into generally very spacy sets where Lagin could continue playing with the Dead:
9/11/74 Seastones>space>Eyes of the World>space>Wharf Rat
https://archive.org/details/gd1974-09-11.sbd.unknown.4647.shnf
9/21/74 Seastones>Playin' in the Band
http://www.archive.org/details/gd74-09-21.sbd.miller.30654.sbeok.flacf
10/16/74 Seastones>space>Wharf Rat>space>Eyes of the World
http://www.dead.net/features/tapers-section/january-7-january-13-2008
https://archive.org/details/gd1974-10-16.sbd.eaton-miller.88251.sbeok.flac16
10/16/74 Seastones>jam>Dark Star>Morning Dew (partly released on the Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack, but with much of Seastones omitted)
https://archive.org/details/gd1974-10-18.sbd.miller.110771.flac16
Finally, there are a few 1975 guest appearances:
3/17/75 - Not a show but an unusual session at Weir's studio, in which David Crosby & Ned Lagin rehearse with the Dead on Lagin's birthday - mostly on a couple Crosby songs, Low Down Payment and Homeward Through the Haze. Not one of the more interesting '75 sessions for me (though others differ).
http://www.archive.org/details/gd75-03-17.sbd.vernon.10111.sbeok.shnf
Lagin appears on a number of the early Blues for Allah studio sessions - the only other one I'll list here is 4/17/75, where Crosby, Lagin & possibly John Cipollina join the Dead, without Garcia or Godchaux, for some instrumental run-throughs. Cipollina is barely present, and it's a very repetitive session of rhythm takes:
http://archive.org/details/gd1975-04-17.122863.flacf
3/23/75 - Ned Lagin (Fender Rhodes) & Merl Saunders (Hammond organ) join the Dead for this surprising Blues for Allah show. Not only is it a hardcore set to drop on an unsuspecting audience, it's unique in having three keyboardists. (It was released on the Beyond Description bonus CD.)
https://archive.org/details/gd1975-03-23.sbd.miller.110126.flac16
6/6/75 - Not a Dead show, but a Seastones show with Lagin, Lesh, Garcia, Hart, and David Crosby. (Not that anyone can be recognized in the barrage of electronic sound effects.)
https://archive.org/details/gd73-11-28.sbd-seastones.finney.968.sbefail.shnf (the last disc)
9/28/75 - Matt Kelly plays harmonica on Music Never Stopped and BIODTL.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd75-09-28.sbd.fink.9392.sbeok.shnf (SBD)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1975-09-28.fob.menke-falanga.motb-0069.91770.flac24 (AUD)
Once the Dead started touring again, I don't recall any guests onstage until mid-'78, with the likes of Hamza el-Din, Lee Oskar, John Cippolina, and various Pranksters & motorcycles & banjo ladies....but that is a list for someone else to start.
Here is a list of the later years put together by Earl Powell from Deadbase, though it's not complete:
https://archive.org/post/253296/the-crowded-dead-stage-76-88
https://archive.org/post/253299/the-crowded-dead-89-the-end
And here is a new compilation of all the guests at the Dead's shows over the years - there are some omissions, and the chronology skips around, but overall it's pretty comprehensive, over 80 hours long:
https://archive.org/details/AllGratefulDeadGuestSit-ins66To95
August 25, 2009
August 24, 2009
China>Rider - The Early Years
The first China>Rider we have was played on 9/30/69, 40 years ago - these two songs have a tangled history in the early years of the Dead, so I'll offer a brief introduction to how their performances evolved up to '74. (Note that this is not a guide to best-of versions; in fact, I won't even be mentioning the best versions.)
Our story begins with I Know You Rider, which first emerged as a series of floating blues verses in the '30s. In the late '50s it started circulating as a folk song and was covered by a number of people in the early '60s; Garcia picked up the song from the folk scene and brought it to the Dead - possibly they had even been doing it in the Mother McCree's jugband. Some of the alternate lyrics of other versions are here: http://www.whitegum.com/introjs.htm?/songfile/I1KNOWYO.HTM
The lyrics the Dead chose are very evocative in their compressed blues style, being somehow foreboding and hopeful at the same time. There's an excellent discussion of the origins of Rider here:
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40592&messages=16
I Know You Rider was one of the first songs the Dead recorded, at the Autumn Records session in November '65 - not a standout version, but it shows they already had the arrangement in place, and it wouldn't significantly change during the next year. A somewhat better version was recorded at the Scorpio Records session in June '66; but one of the Dead's trademarks was already becoming apparent - their songs were better at live shows.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd65-11-03.sbd.vernon.9044.sbeok.shnf (studio)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-06-xx.sbd.vernon.9513.sbeok.shnf (studio - these early takes were also released on the "Birth of the Dead" CD)
There are lots of live Riders from '66, mostly identical to each other - they turned this old blues into a happy pop song that fits in well with the mid-'60s folk/rock sound. Phil takes the singing lead with Weir harmonizing; the music is more upbeat and bouncy than later Riders, taken at a faster speed with Garcia's constant rhythm-guitar chirps and Weir's Byrds-style chords; the harmonies are straight folk. Garcia has a cool, poppy guitar solo, and he keeps soloing under the vocals in the second half, which is a nice touch. They sometimes sing the verse, "I'd drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow log, than stay here in Frisco, be treated like a dog" - which would be dropped in later years.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-XX-XX.sbd.GEMS.81254.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-02-25.sbd.unknown.1593.sbefail.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-03-19.sbd.scotton.81951.sbeok.flac
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-05-19.sbd.lestatkat.6516.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-07-03.sbd.unknown.40.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-07-16.sbd.miller.21063.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-07-30.sbd.GEMS.94631.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-09-16.sbd.vernon.9127.sbeok.shnf (also in So Many Roads box)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-12-01.sbd.sirmick.26968.sbeok.shnf
The 9/16 version marks a change - it's longer with more verses and two solos, and it's the first time the "I wish I was a headlight" verse appears (sung by all). 12/1 follows the same format.
They apparently considered Rider for their first album, since we have an instrumental track of it from the album sessions in January '67. It seems stronger than their last studio attempt in June '66, but sadly they don't seem to have finished it.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-12-05.sbd.kimbro.23064.sbeok.shnf
After that, the song vanished from their setlists for nearly three years.
China Cat Sunflower was one of the first lyrics Robert Hunter wrote for the Dead - apparently he mailed it to them as a poem in mid-'67, and they later set it to music. The lyrics are quite consciously psychedelic:
http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/china.html
When Garcia sang the words, they could sound like a string of nonsense syllables.....but the words weren't the focus of the song, they were more a backdrop to the music. China Cat is one of the Dead's catchiest pieces, with an unstoppable riff, intertwining guitars, and memorable soaring solos - it might make even a non-deadhead tap their toes. Bob Weir later said, "China Cat Sunflower is just about the only song where Jerry ever taught me a riff and told me that's what he wanted to hear. That little arpeggiated lick was his."
Our first live performances of China Cat come from the Northwest Tour in January '68, as part of a medley: Dark Star>China Cat>Eleven. These three songs were always performed as an indivisible unit - the segue from Dark Star into China Cat is like stepping onto a rocket, as China Cat blasts into hyper-speed with some screeches from Garcia's guitar. The Eleven fits so naturally into the China Cat jam it seems inseparable, like an extension of the same song.
China Cat is very different in early '68 from its later incarnation - it's full of that roaring '68 energy, taken very fast with lots of rattling drums and lots of solos from Garcia, and Pigpen doubling the lead riff with Weir - the song just rushes by. It's in a different key, which Garcia doesn't sound too comfortable with, since his voice is too low. By March they'd start to correct this - notice in the March versions how they change the key right after the opening riff. Also in the middle solo, the key changes again for a section of the solo, then shifts back for the verse - this part of the arrangement they would keep in later versions.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1968-01-17.sbd.cotsman.11795.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-01-22.sbd.weiner.8583.sbeok.shnf
1-23-68 - Road Trips
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-02-03.sbd.jools.14987.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-02-14.sbd.kaplan.15640.sbeok.shnf
2-23/24-68 - Dick's Picks (two versions, one out of Alligator)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-03-16.sbd.vernon.9388.sbeok.shnf (also in So Many Roads)
3-17-68 - Download Series (out of New Potato Caboose)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-03-30.aud.cotsman.14912.sbeok.shnf
If there were any more live performances of China Cat in 1968, they've been lost. The Dark Star>China Cat>Eleven medley was broken up into its separate pieces that spring, and none of them were used on the Anthem of the Sun album (the Dead perhaps feeling they weren't fully worked-out yet). But when recording Aoxomoxoa later that year, China Cat was an obvious contender. It wasn't as much of a victim of studio over-experimentation as other songs on the album, and some of the changes they made became permanent - the song is taken at a more moderate pace, Garcia sings in a more playful way, and his loose solos capture a live feel. Aside from the rattling drums, the new intro of Garcia and Phil setting up the rhythm would remain standard. Constanten is now a big part of the sound with his organ fills, and he's a natural fit in this song; but one feature that's only heard on the studio version is the backing vocals, endearingly silly as they sing "na na na....china cat...." as if this will be their radio hit. Perhaps thankfully, they didn't repeat that in live shows! It's odd, though, that they didn't play China Cat live while they were recording it.
(A reader comments: "The original vinyl mix of Aoxomoxoa has Weir playing from the beginning. The 1971 remix has his guitar entering at the same time as the vocal - among other changes making this version sound more like the one they were playing live by then." The outro jam was also considerably shortened in the remix, losing the loose, stoned "live-in-the-studio" feel of the original album.)
The outtake here (sadly shortened) has quite a different intro, fewer overdubs, and a very druggy feel. Garcia's guitar part is less thought-out, but it's nice to hear the fadeout solo run to its conclusion.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-xx-xx.sbd.dodd.16760.sbeok.shnf (Aox outtakes)
China Cat makes a brief surprise appearance in the 12/16/68 Hartbeats show - around the 35-minute point of the "Creator" jam, Garcia plays the riff for a bit.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-12-16.sbd.hartbeats.4529.sbeok.shnf
China Cat pops up again in early '69 - in the great Alligator jam on 2/7/69, shortly after the drums, Weir starts up the China Cat riff and the band grabs it. Garcia seems to be trying to remember how it goes, and he eventually drags them back to Alligator....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-02-07.late.sbd.wiley.14471.sbeok.shnf
In April '69 the Dead's shows were generally becoming looser; the singleminded focus we can hear in the winter shows was dissipating. They were looking to break out of the tight format of their shows over the past few months, and shake up the setlist a bit - but what they didn't have yet were new songs - those wouldn't start coming until June. So one little-mentioned facet of the April shows is that they dug up a lot of the old songs that they hadn't done, sometimes in years! (I know, since so many '67/68 shows weren't recorded, a lot of these dates will be wrong, but I think the general picture is true.)
For instance, at the 4/6 Avalon show, they played Viola Lee for the first time since March '68, Beat It On Down the Line also for the first time since March '68, and It's All Over Now Baby Blue for the first time since 1966.
On 4/5/69, they resurrected It's a Sin for the first time since May '66, and did it a few times that month. (And of course, they also did China Cat Sunflower for the first time since March '68.)
At the 4/26 show they did Silver Threads and New Minglewood Blues for the first time since 1966.
At the 4/27 show they did Me and My Uncle for the first time since 1967.
They also started doing He Was a Friend of Mine regularly in April, which hadn't been in their setlists since 1967. And they started doing Sitting on Top of the World again, for the first time since March '68.
And on 5/7/69 they pulled out a couple more antiques - Good Loving for the first time since May '66 (with Jerry singing), and Smokestack Lightning (which we only have one version of from '68).
And, they started doing Hard to Handle (its debut show was 3/15).
So without writing any new songs, the Dead added about a dozen oldies to their setlists that month, almost all of them 'traditional' tunes or covers. The shift to more country songs and Workingman's Dead would come a few months later....
Anyway - on 4/5/69, China Cat was returned to the setlist, with an extended intro and a long exit jam. China Cat was more feisty and rollicking in early '69 than it would become - Garcia sings emphatically, Constanten adds his organ swirls, the drums bash all over, and the playing is very energetic. Though they're sloppier than later 'classic' China Cats, these early April-June '69 versions are all recommended for their exuberant feel. The jamming at the end sounds fresh and exciting, since they're playing 'free' without any set format of where they're going to go. On 4/5 the jam almost sounds like it's heading into Rider....but over the next few months, they'd segue into a variety of songs:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-05.sbd.miller.18701.sbesok.shnf China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-15.sbd.cotsman.6288.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Doin' That Rag>It's a Sin
4-26-69 - Dick's Picks - Mountains>China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-05-24.sbd.kpfa.16177.sbeok.shnf Doin' That Rag>Friend of Mine>China Cat>Eleven>Death Don't
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-05.sbd.cotsman.15204.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Sittin' on Top of the World
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-08.sbd.cotsman.19285.sbeok.shnf Dancin' in the Streets>Friend of Mine>China Cat>New Potato Caboose
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-13.sbd.barbella.7775.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Morning Dew
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-21.early-late.aud-sbd.cotsman.16334.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Morning Dew (AUD)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-07-05.sbd.cotsman.4282.sbefail.shnf China Cat>High Time>Mama Tried
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-07-12.sbd-aud.hanno.4645.sbeok.shnf Doin' That Rag>China Cat>Mama Tried>High Time (poor AUD)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-21.sbd.cotsman.13850.sbeok.shnf Minglewood>China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-30.sbd.barbella.8594.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-27.aud.hanno.14857.sbeok.shnf China Cat>High Time (AUD)
China Cat never came to a stop, but was always jammed into another song. Doin' That Rag was the usual segue, but other odd combinations were tried. Morning Dew was a strange song to try to segue into, but High Time was a diabolical choice - on 7/5 the attempt to slow down is quite awkward. 7/12 is a notably long China Cat; the Dead seem to have been somewhat dazed at that show, and the intro to China Cat is stretched out with Weir taking a long solo to start the song! - but they head into an intense jam. 8/21 is unusual since there's a guest playing flute and whooping through China Cat; the band tries to accommodate him, but he's very repetitive and doesn't add much. 9/27 is the last China Cat that doesn't go into Rider; it has a nice long jam, from which the Dead exit into.....a super-slow High Time.
On 9/30/69 the Dead played their first China>Rider. How they got the idea to resurrect this long-dead folk song and pair it with China Cat, I think has been lost to time, but they must have been happy with the result. Due to the recording quality, it's hard to hear the vocals in I Know You Rider, but it's clear the song hasn't changed much despite the long hiatus - it's less of a chirpy pop song and sounds a bit more somber now, but other than a few slight changes (mainly in Garcia's playing), the parts are much the same. Rider has a very 'closed' arrangement, and over the years it would develop very little, aside from some extra verses and Garcia's solos. As for China Cat, it would now forever be tied to its folky partner.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-30.aud.early.hollister.80.sbeok.shnf (AUD)
Our next performance is from a month later, another audience tape of 10/24/69, and is worth noting since it's the first time Weir takes the first solo after China Cat. From then on, he would have an increasingly dominant part in the China Cat jam.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-10-24.aud.jools.19527.sbeok.shnf (AUD)
The first two China>Riders we have are from pretty low-fi audience recordings; the first soundboard China>Rider is from 10/31/69, and we can finally hear it clearly. China Cat is notable for coming out of Cryptical (the only time this happened); there is a long transition solo out of China Cat which is all Weir - Garcia seems to sit out the solo entirely. Weir is actually quite good here - it's not the standard China Cat solo he'd develop over the next year, but a little more in Garcia's style.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-10-31.sbd.lai.3377.sbefail.shnf
One more China>Rider that needs attention is from 12/5/69. Not only does it have the longest transition jam for years (five minutes), but it's also the first time Garcia sang the "I wish I was a headlight" verse. Though not the big climax it would become in later years, this verse was striking from day one; with the later versions in our memory, it's interesting to hear how he sings it in December '69.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-12-05.sbd.cotsman.11256.sbeok.shnf (exc AUD)
At this point there's no need to provide links for the China>Riders, since each version is much the same as the next, and changes come slowly. By this time China Cat was sounding tamer than it had been in the spring; but late '69 is one of my favorite periods for this song - Constanten adds a nice presence, I like Garcia's raw '69-style guitar sound in this song, and the transition jam is looser and less rigid than it would be for the next few years. They have a questing feel coming out of China Cat and they're free to explore it for a few minutes, without rushing straight into Rider. By February '70 the jam had shortened down to a couple minutes, where it would stay for a couple years, with Weir taking his usual solo and Garcia often doing little more than setting up Rider with a few notes.
In their acoustic sets of 1970, the Dead debuted a third version of I Know You Rider. Though the acoustic arrangement was simplified, it was a lot slower and more dirgelike; they replaced the three-part harmony with Garcia's lead vocal sounding very stark and mournful. Garcia also revived the "I'd rather drink muddy water" verse that hadn't been heard since 1966. This was always a highlight of the acoustic set - of course they never played China>Rider at the same show.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-04-24.aud.remaster.sirmick.27205.sbeok.shnf (poor AUD)
5-2-70 - Dick's Picks
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-05-07.aud.weiner-gdADT04.5439.sbefail.shnf (AUD)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd_nrps70-05-15.sbd.reynolds-kaplan.29473.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-06-05.sbd.hanno.7589.sbefail.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1970-11-08.aud.weiner.28609.sbeok.shnf (AUD)
For me, 1970-71 are the least interesting years for China>Rider, due to most of the versions being very short (each one is about ten minutes) - Garcia solos in the transition jam only briefly, or barely at all. Also, after Constanten left, Pigpen didn't play any organ in this song, which further simplified it. That said, otherwise most of the time it's played very well.
There is an interesting tryout of China>Rider from Keith's first rehearsals with the band: http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-09-29.sbd.cousinit.16891.sbeok.shnf
However, they didn't perform China>Rider very much in the fall '71 tour - once in October, twice in November, thrice in December - which is odd since they normally played it at nearly every show. They did, though, introduce China Cat jams into the Not Fade Aways. They'd done this sometimes in 1970, most famously 9-19-70 (as I mentioned in the Fillmore East '70 post); by late '71 Not Fade Away was hitting a new peak and becoming more jammed-out than it had been in early '71, and some of the best versions come from this tour. These are the Not Fade Aways with China Cat jams in them:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1971-10-27.ashley-bertha.32869.sbeok.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-11-15.sbd.cotsman.12438.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1971-11-20.sbd.miller.92908.sbeok.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-12-05.prefm.miller.3391.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-12-10.sbd.yerys.1311.sbeok.shnf
and a later one -
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-04-14.sbd.hurwitt.8828.sbeok.shnf
It may be worth mentioning the few China>Riders that have unusual places in the set. Up through '74 China>Rider could appear anywhere in the show, first or second sets, but it was almost never attached to another song. The exceptions are:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1970-06-24.aud.lee.5339.sbeok.shnf - St Stephen>China>Rider
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-07-10.aud.cotsman.17351.sbeok.shnf - Good Lovin'>China>Rider>Good Lovin'; here it replaces the usual Good Lovin' jam.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-01-02.sbd.eD.8709.sbeok.shnf - Good Lovin'>China Cat>Good Lovin'; here China Cat comes out of a great '72-style jam and returns to Good Lovin', minus Rider. A must-hear.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-09-24.sbd.jeffm.2202.sbeok.shnf - Dark Star>China>Rider
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-02-17.sbd.carman.11771.sbeok.shnf - Here Comes Sunshine>China>Rider
The Dead were pleased enough with China>Rider in their Europe '72 tour that they included it on the album, and this is probably the most 'classic' China>Rider format in people's minds. Some of this may be due to Keith: he is so much at home in China>Rider it's hard to remember what it was like without him. In 1972 the China>Riders are slowing down (especially noticeable in the fall), and the playing sounds more precise and methodical. With a more relaxed groove, they start building the dynamics of the music a little more - the second line of the "headlight" verse in particular starts to get the extra kick in fall '72. Weir has his solo down to a science and it's nearly the same every time; Garcia's solo into Rider is more unpredictable, and sometimes in late '72 he stretches it out a bit, depending on his mood - some of the transitions from these months are great.
The China>Riders in February '73 mark a change from '72 - though not longer, they are considerably more peppy, with Garcia downright hyper sometimes. The transition jam from 2/28/73 (on Dick's Picks 28) is particularly explosive, one of the finest - the Dead were ready to inject new life into this medley.
A new character now enters our story: the Feelin' Groovy jam, which the Dead had adopted back in fall '69. The first Feelin' Groovy jam appears in the 9/26/69 Dark Star, around the 11-minute mark, unfortunately hard to appreciate due to the sound quality:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-26.aud.hanno.14856.sbeok.shnf
Since it's an audience tape, most people probably haven't heard it - but this one from the Dark Star a month later is well-known:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-10-25.sbd.jagla.81.sbefail.shnf
- and just a week after that it had one of its best performances:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-11-02.sbd.goodbear.1125.sbefail.shnf
Feelin' Groovy appeared in many Dark Stars thereafter, too many to cite - some of the best-loved versions might include 1/2/70, 2/13/70, 5/15/70, 9/19/70, 10/21/71, 4/14/72, and 5/25/72. From the end of '69 and through '70, Dark Star had a particular format: after the first verse the band would evaporate into space, explore weirdness for a while, then slowly return back to melody - and here the Feelin' Groovy jam (or sometimes the Tighten Up jam) would emerge, like bright joy after the darkness. Over time the Stars changed, and became more dense and complex; particularly after Keith joined, the '72 Stars got jazzier with more jamming elements and meltdowns, and the Feelin' Groovy jams often became more brief and fleeting - sometimes just a hint from Phil. Late '72 saw the end of its stay in Dark Star - one instance is 10/18/72, a classic version at the end of the Star, after the Philo Stomp:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-18.sbd.weir.7295.sbeok.shnf
- by contrast, from 11/13/72 we have an extremely fast version in a Star filled with intense meltdowns:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1972-11-13.aud.cotsman.7518.sbefail.shnf
The last time I recall Feelin' Groovy being played in a Dark Star is 11/26/72, a great version that should be known by more people - the end of the Star has a bass solo>Feelin' Groovy>Tiger meltdown - Garcia's tone in the Feelin' Groovy is just amazing:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-11-26.sbd.cotsman.9248.sbeok.shnf
A couple times the Feelin' Groovy jam would appear 'solo': on 10/2/72, in the post-Truckin' jam it's one of the themes after Nobody's Fault But Mine and is played very loosely, leading up to Morning Dew:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-02.sbd.lai.158.sbefail.shnf
- and on 2/24/73 it's part of the jam coming out of Eyes of the World (unfortunately the more complete audience tape isn't on the Archive), and follows a long bass solo - Garcia initiates it and they play it very sweetly:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-02-24.sbd.elliot.11929.sbeok.shnf
The first time Feelin' Groovy entered the China>Rider transition was on 3/16/73 - the Dead started the show with it, as if eager to show off their new jam. Though it would never leave its new spot, Feelin' Groovy was a very welcome addition to China>Rider - played simply and briskly and sliding into Rider, it extended Garcia's solo and brought a new emotional lift to the medley as Garcia's cheerful notes soar and peak. The audiences in '73 certainly seem surprised to hear it, and it often brings cheers.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-03-16.sbd.hamilton-jackson.167.14770.sbefail.shnf
The rest of March '73 offers the same pattern; one unique variation happens in the 3/31/73 show, where out of an Other One space they suddenly shift into Feelin' Groovy, and from there head naturally into Rider without bothering with the China Cat:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-03-31.sbd.yerys.2237.sbeok.shnf
The new China>Rider format remained basically unchanged through '73/74. These China>Riders are probably most people's favorites, and there are numerous discussions of various versions from this era; so there's no need to provide links to examples, as you will probably have your own favorites on-hand. I'll just mention that in the summer and fall of '73, China Cat grew much longer as they really started jamming the solos, and even longer in '74; almost every transition during this period is fantastic, and the Riders are much improved from earlier years, with wizardly solos and growled "headlights". And I'd be remiss not to mention the longest China>Rider ever played, on 6/26/74:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd74-06-26.moore.weiner.gdADT17.16037.sbeok.shnf
The last linkable '74 China>Rider on the Archive is from 9/20/74. Ironically, it's one of the poorest versions of the year, very disjointed as if the Dead are too spaced-out to focus, though they do manage to build up a bit of heat in the transition. So it's worth a listen just to hear a comically weak China Cat from this peak year, with the Dead stumbling around the song unable to connect - it's rare in '74 to find them like this.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd74-09-20.sbd.gasperini.5648.sbeok.shnf
(Update: 10/20/74 is now streamable - though the mix here is rather poor, with Weir buried in the back, it's the last China>Rider from the early years, and has a good example of the long, unwinding transition with a Feelin' Groovy jam.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1974-10-20.sbd.smith-lee.GEMS.97193.flac16
The Dead decided not to carry China>Rider over the touring break, and aside from one revival in 1977, didn't start performing it again til 1979. From then, they played it steadily til the end -- but that's a story for someone else to tell......
* * *
APPENDIX
Here is a short article on China>Rider written by Andy Lemieux for another website in 1999:
Our story begins with I Know You Rider, which first emerged as a series of floating blues verses in the '30s. In the late '50s it started circulating as a folk song and was covered by a number of people in the early '60s; Garcia picked up the song from the folk scene and brought it to the Dead - possibly they had even been doing it in the Mother McCree's jugband. Some of the alternate lyrics of other versions are here: http://www.whitegum.com/introjs.htm?/songfile/I1KNOWYO.HTM
The lyrics the Dead chose are very evocative in their compressed blues style, being somehow foreboding and hopeful at the same time. There's an excellent discussion of the origins of Rider here:
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40592&messages=16
I Know You Rider was one of the first songs the Dead recorded, at the Autumn Records session in November '65 - not a standout version, but it shows they already had the arrangement in place, and it wouldn't significantly change during the next year. A somewhat better version was recorded at the Scorpio Records session in June '66; but one of the Dead's trademarks was already becoming apparent - their songs were better at live shows.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd65-11-03.sbd.vernon.9044.sbeok.shnf (studio)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-06-xx.sbd.vernon.9513.sbeok.shnf (studio - these early takes were also released on the "Birth of the Dead" CD)
There are lots of live Riders from '66, mostly identical to each other - they turned this old blues into a happy pop song that fits in well with the mid-'60s folk/rock sound. Phil takes the singing lead with Weir harmonizing; the music is more upbeat and bouncy than later Riders, taken at a faster speed with Garcia's constant rhythm-guitar chirps and Weir's Byrds-style chords; the harmonies are straight folk. Garcia has a cool, poppy guitar solo, and he keeps soloing under the vocals in the second half, which is a nice touch. They sometimes sing the verse, "I'd drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow log, than stay here in Frisco, be treated like a dog" - which would be dropped in later years.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-XX-XX.sbd.GEMS.81254.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-02-25.sbd.unknown.1593.sbefail.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-03-19.sbd.scotton.81951.sbeok.flac
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-05-19.sbd.lestatkat.6516.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-07-03.sbd.unknown.40.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-07-16.sbd.miller.21063.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-07-30.sbd.GEMS.94631.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-09-16.sbd.vernon.9127.sbeok.shnf (also in So Many Roads box)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-12-01.sbd.sirmick.26968.sbeok.shnf
The 9/16 version marks a change - it's longer with more verses and two solos, and it's the first time the "I wish I was a headlight" verse appears (sung by all). 12/1 follows the same format.
They apparently considered Rider for their first album, since we have an instrumental track of it from the album sessions in January '67. It seems stronger than their last studio attempt in June '66, but sadly they don't seem to have finished it.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-12-05.sbd.kimbro.23064.sbeok.shnf
After that, the song vanished from their setlists for nearly three years.
China Cat Sunflower was one of the first lyrics Robert Hunter wrote for the Dead - apparently he mailed it to them as a poem in mid-'67, and they later set it to music. The lyrics are quite consciously psychedelic:
http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/china.html
When Garcia sang the words, they could sound like a string of nonsense syllables.....but the words weren't the focus of the song, they were more a backdrop to the music. China Cat is one of the Dead's catchiest pieces, with an unstoppable riff, intertwining guitars, and memorable soaring solos - it might make even a non-deadhead tap their toes. Bob Weir later said, "China Cat Sunflower is just about the only song where Jerry ever taught me a riff and told me that's what he wanted to hear. That little arpeggiated lick was his."
Our first live performances of China Cat come from the Northwest Tour in January '68, as part of a medley: Dark Star>China Cat>Eleven. These three songs were always performed as an indivisible unit - the segue from Dark Star into China Cat is like stepping onto a rocket, as China Cat blasts into hyper-speed with some screeches from Garcia's guitar. The Eleven fits so naturally into the China Cat jam it seems inseparable, like an extension of the same song.
China Cat is very different in early '68 from its later incarnation - it's full of that roaring '68 energy, taken very fast with lots of rattling drums and lots of solos from Garcia, and Pigpen doubling the lead riff with Weir - the song just rushes by. It's in a different key, which Garcia doesn't sound too comfortable with, since his voice is too low. By March they'd start to correct this - notice in the March versions how they change the key right after the opening riff. Also in the middle solo, the key changes again for a section of the solo, then shifts back for the verse - this part of the arrangement they would keep in later versions.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1968-01-17.sbd.cotsman.11795.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-01-22.sbd.weiner.8583.sbeok.shnf
1-23-68 - Road Trips
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-02-03.sbd.jools.14987.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-02-14.sbd.kaplan.15640.sbeok.shnf
2-23/24-68 - Dick's Picks (two versions, one out of Alligator)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-03-16.sbd.vernon.9388.sbeok.shnf (also in So Many Roads)
3-17-68 - Download Series (out of New Potato Caboose)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-03-30.aud.cotsman.14912.sbeok.shnf
If there were any more live performances of China Cat in 1968, they've been lost. The Dark Star>China Cat>Eleven medley was broken up into its separate pieces that spring, and none of them were used on the Anthem of the Sun album (the Dead perhaps feeling they weren't fully worked-out yet). But when recording Aoxomoxoa later that year, China Cat was an obvious contender. It wasn't as much of a victim of studio over-experimentation as other songs on the album, and some of the changes they made became permanent - the song is taken at a more moderate pace, Garcia sings in a more playful way, and his loose solos capture a live feel. Aside from the rattling drums, the new intro of Garcia and Phil setting up the rhythm would remain standard. Constanten is now a big part of the sound with his organ fills, and he's a natural fit in this song; but one feature that's only heard on the studio version is the backing vocals, endearingly silly as they sing "na na na....china cat...." as if this will be their radio hit. Perhaps thankfully, they didn't repeat that in live shows! It's odd, though, that they didn't play China Cat live while they were recording it.
(A reader comments: "The original vinyl mix of Aoxomoxoa has Weir playing from the beginning. The 1971 remix has his guitar entering at the same time as the vocal - among other changes making this version sound more like the one they were playing live by then." The outro jam was also considerably shortened in the remix, losing the loose, stoned "live-in-the-studio" feel of the original album.)
The outtake here (sadly shortened) has quite a different intro, fewer overdubs, and a very druggy feel. Garcia's guitar part is less thought-out, but it's nice to hear the fadeout solo run to its conclusion.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-xx-xx.sbd.dodd.16760.sbeok.shnf (Aox outtakes)
China Cat makes a brief surprise appearance in the 12/16/68 Hartbeats show - around the 35-minute point of the "Creator" jam, Garcia plays the riff for a bit.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-12-16.sbd.hartbeats.4529.sbeok.shnf
China Cat pops up again in early '69 - in the great Alligator jam on 2/7/69, shortly after the drums, Weir starts up the China Cat riff and the band grabs it. Garcia seems to be trying to remember how it goes, and he eventually drags them back to Alligator....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-02-07.late.sbd.wiley.14471.sbeok.shnf
In April '69 the Dead's shows were generally becoming looser; the singleminded focus we can hear in the winter shows was dissipating. They were looking to break out of the tight format of their shows over the past few months, and shake up the setlist a bit - but what they didn't have yet were new songs - those wouldn't start coming until June. So one little-mentioned facet of the April shows is that they dug up a lot of the old songs that they hadn't done, sometimes in years! (I know, since so many '67/68 shows weren't recorded, a lot of these dates will be wrong, but I think the general picture is true.)
For instance, at the 4/6 Avalon show, they played Viola Lee for the first time since March '68, Beat It On Down the Line also for the first time since March '68, and It's All Over Now Baby Blue for the first time since 1966.
On 4/5/69, they resurrected It's a Sin for the first time since May '66, and did it a few times that month. (And of course, they also did China Cat Sunflower for the first time since March '68.)
At the 4/26 show they did Silver Threads and New Minglewood Blues for the first time since 1966.
At the 4/27 show they did Me and My Uncle for the first time since 1967.
They also started doing He Was a Friend of Mine regularly in April, which hadn't been in their setlists since 1967. And they started doing Sitting on Top of the World again, for the first time since March '68.
And on 5/7/69 they pulled out a couple more antiques - Good Loving for the first time since May '66 (with Jerry singing), and Smokestack Lightning (which we only have one version of from '68).
And, they started doing Hard to Handle (its debut show was 3/15).
So without writing any new songs, the Dead added about a dozen oldies to their setlists that month, almost all of them 'traditional' tunes or covers. The shift to more country songs and Workingman's Dead would come a few months later....
Anyway - on 4/5/69, China Cat was returned to the setlist, with an extended intro and a long exit jam. China Cat was more feisty and rollicking in early '69 than it would become - Garcia sings emphatically, Constanten adds his organ swirls, the drums bash all over, and the playing is very energetic. Though they're sloppier than later 'classic' China Cats, these early April-June '69 versions are all recommended for their exuberant feel. The jamming at the end sounds fresh and exciting, since they're playing 'free' without any set format of where they're going to go. On 4/5 the jam almost sounds like it's heading into Rider....but over the next few months, they'd segue into a variety of songs:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-05.sbd.miller.18701.sbesok.shnf China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-15.sbd.cotsman.6288.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Doin' That Rag>It's a Sin
4-26-69 - Dick's Picks - Mountains>China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-05-24.sbd.kpfa.16177.sbeok.shnf Doin' That Rag>Friend of Mine>China Cat>Eleven>Death Don't
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-05.sbd.cotsman.15204.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Sittin' on Top of the World
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-08.sbd.cotsman.19285.sbeok.shnf Dancin' in the Streets>Friend of Mine>China Cat>New Potato Caboose
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-13.sbd.barbella.7775.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Morning Dew
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-06-21.early-late.aud-sbd.cotsman.16334.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Morning Dew (AUD)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-07-05.sbd.cotsman.4282.sbefail.shnf China Cat>High Time>Mama Tried
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-07-12.sbd-aud.hanno.4645.sbeok.shnf Doin' That Rag>China Cat>Mama Tried>High Time (poor AUD)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-21.sbd.cotsman.13850.sbeok.shnf Minglewood>China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-30.sbd.barbella.8594.sbeok.shnf China Cat>Doin' That Rag
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-27.aud.hanno.14857.sbeok.shnf China Cat>High Time (AUD)
China Cat never came to a stop, but was always jammed into another song. Doin' That Rag was the usual segue, but other odd combinations were tried. Morning Dew was a strange song to try to segue into, but High Time was a diabolical choice - on 7/5 the attempt to slow down is quite awkward. 7/12 is a notably long China Cat; the Dead seem to have been somewhat dazed at that show, and the intro to China Cat is stretched out with Weir taking a long solo to start the song! - but they head into an intense jam. 8/21 is unusual since there's a guest playing flute and whooping through China Cat; the band tries to accommodate him, but he's very repetitive and doesn't add much. 9/27 is the last China Cat that doesn't go into Rider; it has a nice long jam, from which the Dead exit into.....a super-slow High Time.
On 9/30/69 the Dead played their first China>Rider. How they got the idea to resurrect this long-dead folk song and pair it with China Cat, I think has been lost to time, but they must have been happy with the result. Due to the recording quality, it's hard to hear the vocals in I Know You Rider, but it's clear the song hasn't changed much despite the long hiatus - it's less of a chirpy pop song and sounds a bit more somber now, but other than a few slight changes (mainly in Garcia's playing), the parts are much the same. Rider has a very 'closed' arrangement, and over the years it would develop very little, aside from some extra verses and Garcia's solos. As for China Cat, it would now forever be tied to its folky partner.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-30.aud.early.hollister.80.sbeok.shnf (AUD)
Our next performance is from a month later, another audience tape of 10/24/69, and is worth noting since it's the first time Weir takes the first solo after China Cat. From then on, he would have an increasingly dominant part in the China Cat jam.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-10-24.aud.jools.19527.sbeok.shnf (AUD)
The first two China>Riders we have are from pretty low-fi audience recordings; the first soundboard China>Rider is from 10/31/69, and we can finally hear it clearly. China Cat is notable for coming out of Cryptical (the only time this happened); there is a long transition solo out of China Cat which is all Weir - Garcia seems to sit out the solo entirely. Weir is actually quite good here - it's not the standard China Cat solo he'd develop over the next year, but a little more in Garcia's style.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-10-31.sbd.lai.3377.sbefail.shnf
One more China>Rider that needs attention is from 12/5/69. Not only does it have the longest transition jam for years (five minutes), but it's also the first time Garcia sang the "I wish I was a headlight" verse. Though not the big climax it would become in later years, this verse was striking from day one; with the later versions in our memory, it's interesting to hear how he sings it in December '69.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-12-05.sbd.cotsman.11256.sbeok.shnf (exc AUD)
At this point there's no need to provide links for the China>Riders, since each version is much the same as the next, and changes come slowly. By this time China Cat was sounding tamer than it had been in the spring; but late '69 is one of my favorite periods for this song - Constanten adds a nice presence, I like Garcia's raw '69-style guitar sound in this song, and the transition jam is looser and less rigid than it would be for the next few years. They have a questing feel coming out of China Cat and they're free to explore it for a few minutes, without rushing straight into Rider. By February '70 the jam had shortened down to a couple minutes, where it would stay for a couple years, with Weir taking his usual solo and Garcia often doing little more than setting up Rider with a few notes.
In their acoustic sets of 1970, the Dead debuted a third version of I Know You Rider. Though the acoustic arrangement was simplified, it was a lot slower and more dirgelike; they replaced the three-part harmony with Garcia's lead vocal sounding very stark and mournful. Garcia also revived the "I'd rather drink muddy water" verse that hadn't been heard since 1966. This was always a highlight of the acoustic set - of course they never played China>Rider at the same show.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-04-24.aud.remaster.sirmick.27205.sbeok.shnf (poor AUD)
5-2-70 - Dick's Picks
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-05-07.aud.weiner-gdADT04.5439.sbefail.shnf (AUD)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd_nrps70-05-15.sbd.reynolds-kaplan.29473.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-06-05.sbd.hanno.7589.sbefail.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1970-11-08.aud.weiner.28609.sbeok.shnf (AUD)
For me, 1970-71 are the least interesting years for China>Rider, due to most of the versions being very short (each one is about ten minutes) - Garcia solos in the transition jam only briefly, or barely at all. Also, after Constanten left, Pigpen didn't play any organ in this song, which further simplified it. That said, otherwise most of the time it's played very well.
There is an interesting tryout of China>Rider from Keith's first rehearsals with the band: http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-09-29.sbd.cousinit.16891.sbeok.shnf
However, they didn't perform China>Rider very much in the fall '71 tour - once in October, twice in November, thrice in December - which is odd since they normally played it at nearly every show. They did, though, introduce China Cat jams into the Not Fade Aways. They'd done this sometimes in 1970, most famously 9-19-70 (as I mentioned in the Fillmore East '70 post); by late '71 Not Fade Away was hitting a new peak and becoming more jammed-out than it had been in early '71, and some of the best versions come from this tour. These are the Not Fade Aways with China Cat jams in them:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1971-10-27.ashley-bertha.32869.sbeok.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-11-15.sbd.cotsman.12438.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1971-11-20.sbd.miller.92908.sbeok.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-12-05.prefm.miller.3391.sbeok.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd71-12-10.sbd.yerys.1311.sbeok.shnf
and a later one -
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-04-14.sbd.hurwitt.8828.sbeok.shnf
It may be worth mentioning the few China>Riders that have unusual places in the set. Up through '74 China>Rider could appear anywhere in the show, first or second sets, but it was almost never attached to another song. The exceptions are:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1970-06-24.aud.lee.5339.sbeok.shnf - St Stephen>China>Rider
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-07-10.aud.cotsman.17351.sbeok.shnf - Good Lovin'>China>Rider>Good Lovin'; here it replaces the usual Good Lovin' jam.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-01-02.sbd.eD.8709.sbeok.shnf - Good Lovin'>China Cat>Good Lovin'; here China Cat comes out of a great '72-style jam and returns to Good Lovin', minus Rider. A must-hear.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-09-24.sbd.jeffm.2202.sbeok.shnf - Dark Star>China>Rider
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-02-17.sbd.carman.11771.sbeok.shnf - Here Comes Sunshine>China>Rider
The Dead were pleased enough with China>Rider in their Europe '72 tour that they included it on the album, and this is probably the most 'classic' China>Rider format in people's minds. Some of this may be due to Keith: he is so much at home in China>Rider it's hard to remember what it was like without him. In 1972 the China>Riders are slowing down (especially noticeable in the fall), and the playing sounds more precise and methodical. With a more relaxed groove, they start building the dynamics of the music a little more - the second line of the "headlight" verse in particular starts to get the extra kick in fall '72. Weir has his solo down to a science and it's nearly the same every time; Garcia's solo into Rider is more unpredictable, and sometimes in late '72 he stretches it out a bit, depending on his mood - some of the transitions from these months are great.
The China>Riders in February '73 mark a change from '72 - though not longer, they are considerably more peppy, with Garcia downright hyper sometimes. The transition jam from 2/28/73 (on Dick's Picks 28) is particularly explosive, one of the finest - the Dead were ready to inject new life into this medley.
A new character now enters our story: the Feelin' Groovy jam, which the Dead had adopted back in fall '69. The first Feelin' Groovy jam appears in the 9/26/69 Dark Star, around the 11-minute mark, unfortunately hard to appreciate due to the sound quality:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-26.aud.hanno.14856.sbeok.shnf
Since it's an audience tape, most people probably haven't heard it - but this one from the Dark Star a month later is well-known:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-10-25.sbd.jagla.81.sbefail.shnf
- and just a week after that it had one of its best performances:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-11-02.sbd.goodbear.1125.sbefail.shnf
Feelin' Groovy appeared in many Dark Stars thereafter, too many to cite - some of the best-loved versions might include 1/2/70, 2/13/70, 5/15/70, 9/19/70, 10/21/71, 4/14/72, and 5/25/72. From the end of '69 and through '70, Dark Star had a particular format: after the first verse the band would evaporate into space, explore weirdness for a while, then slowly return back to melody - and here the Feelin' Groovy jam (or sometimes the Tighten Up jam) would emerge, like bright joy after the darkness. Over time the Stars changed, and became more dense and complex; particularly after Keith joined, the '72 Stars got jazzier with more jamming elements and meltdowns, and the Feelin' Groovy jams often became more brief and fleeting - sometimes just a hint from Phil. Late '72 saw the end of its stay in Dark Star - one instance is 10/18/72, a classic version at the end of the Star, after the Philo Stomp:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-18.sbd.weir.7295.sbeok.shnf
- by contrast, from 11/13/72 we have an extremely fast version in a Star filled with intense meltdowns:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1972-11-13.aud.cotsman.7518.sbefail.shnf
The last time I recall Feelin' Groovy being played in a Dark Star is 11/26/72, a great version that should be known by more people - the end of the Star has a bass solo>Feelin' Groovy>Tiger meltdown - Garcia's tone in the Feelin' Groovy is just amazing:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-11-26.sbd.cotsman.9248.sbeok.shnf
A couple times the Feelin' Groovy jam would appear 'solo': on 10/2/72, in the post-Truckin' jam it's one of the themes after Nobody's Fault But Mine and is played very loosely, leading up to Morning Dew:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-02.sbd.lai.158.sbefail.shnf
- and on 2/24/73 it's part of the jam coming out of Eyes of the World (unfortunately the more complete audience tape isn't on the Archive), and follows a long bass solo - Garcia initiates it and they play it very sweetly:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-02-24.sbd.elliot.11929.sbeok.shnf
The first time Feelin' Groovy entered the China>Rider transition was on 3/16/73 - the Dead started the show with it, as if eager to show off their new jam. Though it would never leave its new spot, Feelin' Groovy was a very welcome addition to China>Rider - played simply and briskly and sliding into Rider, it extended Garcia's solo and brought a new emotional lift to the medley as Garcia's cheerful notes soar and peak. The audiences in '73 certainly seem surprised to hear it, and it often brings cheers.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-03-16.sbd.hamilton-jackson.167.14770.sbefail.shnf
The rest of March '73 offers the same pattern; one unique variation happens in the 3/31/73 show, where out of an Other One space they suddenly shift into Feelin' Groovy, and from there head naturally into Rider without bothering with the China Cat:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-03-31.sbd.yerys.2237.sbeok.shnf
The new China>Rider format remained basically unchanged through '73/74. These China>Riders are probably most people's favorites, and there are numerous discussions of various versions from this era; so there's no need to provide links to examples, as you will probably have your own favorites on-hand. I'll just mention that in the summer and fall of '73, China Cat grew much longer as they really started jamming the solos, and even longer in '74; almost every transition during this period is fantastic, and the Riders are much improved from earlier years, with wizardly solos and growled "headlights". And I'd be remiss not to mention the longest China>Rider ever played, on 6/26/74:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd74-06-26.moore.weiner.gdADT17.16037.sbeok.shnf
The last linkable '74 China>Rider on the Archive is from 9/20/74. Ironically, it's one of the poorest versions of the year, very disjointed as if the Dead are too spaced-out to focus, though they do manage to build up a bit of heat in the transition. So it's worth a listen just to hear a comically weak China Cat from this peak year, with the Dead stumbling around the song unable to connect - it's rare in '74 to find them like this.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd74-09-20.sbd.gasperini.5648.sbeok.shnf
(Update: 10/20/74 is now streamable - though the mix here is rather poor, with Weir buried in the back, it's the last China>Rider from the early years, and has a good example of the long, unwinding transition with a Feelin' Groovy jam.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1974-10-20.sbd.smith-lee.GEMS.97193.flac16
The Dead decided not to carry China>Rider over the touring break, and aside from one revival in 1977, didn't start performing it again til 1979. From then, they played it steadily til the end -- but that's a story for someone else to tell......
* * *
APPENDIX
Here is a short article on China>Rider written by Andy Lemieux for another website in 1999:
CHINA CAT SUNFLOWER > I KNOW YOU RIDER
The pairing of China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider is
one of the most enduring, consistently well played, and psychedelic in the
Grateful Dead's repertoire. It is a pairing that is successful and popular
among Deadheads because it harkens back to the band's beginnings and speaks to the
multifarious talents of the band members. The combination of the colorful
lyrics and convoluted music of China Cat Sunflower, with the care-free nature
and straightforward jamming of I Know You Rider, blends psychedelia and folk
music in a way that is quintessentially Grateful Dead.
The sneaky, resplendent laughter of China Cat Sunflower
segues perfectly into the down-home honesty of I Know You Rider. Hunter's
kaleidoscopic epiphany in China Cat Sunflower, is combined with the double
drumming rhythms of Kreutzmann and Hart that Jerry once described to Hugh
Hefner as creating "figure eights inside your head," as well as the
layered throb of Weir and Lesh, and Garcia's shimmering, metallic attack,
dancing joyously over the whole shebang. I Know You Rider offers a simple but
heartfelt reflection, and resolute optimism in the combined vocals of Garcia
and Weir, and is backed by the roaring rhythm of Weir and the drummers while Lesh
unleashes mad, steam-blast bombs and Garcia soars freely in flight.
Lyrically, the two songs are very different stylistically.
However, the pairing is not an accidental one. China Cat Sunflower is a
metaphoric onslaught that beautifully depicts Hunter's psychedelic vision. It
invites us to join in, to "look for a while" at the startling weaving
of sights and sounds, the "proud walking jingle in the midnight sun."
The words are a vehicle for vividly describing the revelations of both LSD and
the music of the Grateful Dead, the "Leonardo words from out a silk
trombone." Both of these elements bring a Buddhist-like enlightenment, a
"copper dome bodhi" that "drip[s] a silver kimono." The
music and the acid offer a journey that shines, "like a crazy quilt star-gown
through a dream night wind." It is a merry adventure filled with
"comic book colors" that is expansive, striking "a silent bell
beneath a shower of pearls." The band becomes the "leaf of all
colors" that "plays a golden string fiddle to a double e water
fall."
I Know You Rider is a much simpler, more straightforward
folk song, but there is a connection between the two songs. I Know You Rider is
an honest, if somewhat bold declaration by the speaker that his love, his
"rider," will miss his "rollin' in [her] arms...when he is
gone." The speaker seems torn between staying, and the urge to hit the
road again, as his mind is "wanderin' like the wild geese in the
West." Ultimately he leaves, convinced that things will get better,
"the sun will shine" and "March winds will blow all...troubles
away." The brilliance of combining these two songs, the search for a
higher enlightenment that washes "over [their] back[s]" can only come
through continuing to ply their trade, by continuing the adventure, and in
doing so, shining for all of us who joined the ride like "a headlight on a
North-bound train...through the cool Colorado
rain."
The combination of the two songs developed quite a bit
through the years, enduring a number of stylistic changes, but remaining a testament
to the ethos of the band and the community of Deaddom as a whole. The early versions
of China Cat Sunflower, that pre-date 9/30/69a (the first version that is
combined with I Know You Rider), are paired with a number of songs, including
The Eleven, Alligator, Doin' That Rag, Sittin' on Top of the World, Morning
Dew, and High Time.
The early versions from 1968, while shorter and played in
the key of E, are dripping with psychedelia and played at a much speedier pace
than most later-day versions. The pair began to gel in 1969 and 1970, as the
band began to stretch the combo out and changed the key of China Cat Sunflower
to G, as evidenced by versions such as 12/5/69, 12/30/69, and 2/14/70b. The
band began to put more emphasis on the vocals in 1970 and 1971, and also
experimented with the China Cat Sunflower Jams, intertwining the theme at a
number of shows, including, most notably, 3/21/70b, 5/7/70, 11/15/71, 11/20/71,
and 12/10/71. Other outstanding versions that cook from start to finish from
this time period include 10/4/70 and 4/29/71.
The perfect blend of vocal harmony and pristine jamming
culminated in the versions that were played in Europe in 1972, including such
stellar efforts as those performed on 4/26/72, 5/3/72, 5/11/72, and 5/26/72.
The band experimented with the pairing again in 1973 with interesting results, including
the incredible trifecta of Here Comes Sunshine > China Cat Sunflower > I
Know You Rider on 2/17/73 and the noteworthy, stand-alone I Know You Rider out
of Spanish Jam on 3/31/73. This exploration led the band to change the tone of
the transition jam to a more Reggae flavored style that hints at Uncle John's
Band at times, and has wilder, more extended jamming as in the versions played
on 2/24/74, 5/25/74, and 6/16/74. The remarkable interpretation from 6/26/74,
with the long and spacey jam with the China Cat Sunflower theme before the song
proper is also exquisite and is an essential version!
The change to an even more powerful swelling, transition,
and explosion, not unlike the version from 5/25/74, began with the version on 12/29/77,
after a long hiatus, and was expanded upon on 2/3/79, 10/28/79 and 11/5/79.
This approach, in turn, led to the full tilt boogie and blown out insanity of
latter day versions, such as the powerful rendition on 8/16/80, as well as the
performance on 6/20/83. The pairing continued to be well played throughout the
band's entire career, and other later versions that are outstanding and worth
tracking down include 4/6/85, 6/25/85, 4/22/86, 9/9/87, 7/29/88, 7/17/89,
3/26/90, 6/16/90, 7/6/90, 9/20/90, 4/1/91, 6/16/91, 9/24/91, 5/19/92, 6/28/92,
6/9/93, 9/28/93, 6/18/94, and 3/17/95.
By Andy Lemieux
Viola Lee Blues
Viola Lee Blues was the Dead's first big jamming tune. Dating from the start of their career when they were doing mostly pop and blues songs, they designed it as a psychedelic trip: it would start as a strange old jugband tune with dark chords, a constricted groove, and wailing black-harmony vocals, but the music in-between the verses would gradually stretch out to unreasonable lengths and start accelerating until the band were playing fast, shrieking gusts of sound, tearing open the fabric of reality -- then suddenly the noise stops and the song jauntily reappears again. As one writer has said, it may have been a one-dimensional song, but that happened to be the fifth dimension! The band stopped performing it in 1970, but in their early shows it appears frequently. We have over 30 performances to explore....
The story of Viola Lee begins when Gus Cannon's Jug Band recorded it on September 20, 1928.... Many years later, in the early '60s, a folk revival was booming among the coffeehouse kids, and many of the old songs of the '20s were reissued on record, to be picked up by the 'new' folk bands. The origin of the Dead was basically as a jugband (before 'going electric') and they borrowed many songs from the folk scene, which Garcia was most familiar with. (The Dead's first single in '66 took both its sides from the '20s, one song from the Memphis Jug Band and one from Henry Thomas.) Hearing Viola Lee, Garcia and Weir were enticed by this antique tale of incarceration, and if they heard it early enough, they may well have played it in Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. (A couple other Gus Cannon songs, Minglewood Blues and Big Railroad Blues, would also become Dead staples). Another popular folk group of the early '60s, Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, also did Viola Lee Blues (the Dead borrowed several other songs from them as well).
The Dead's Viola Lee barely resembles Cannon's original; Kweskin was more of a traditionalist and his version is faithful to the '20s:
http://www.box.net/shared/sh26zlw4ck
As to how the Dead got the inspiration to take this song "out", it's probably no coincidence that it took shape at the time of the Acid Tests. They had an opportunity to play with a free format, to a zonked-out audience, and were encouraged to play more open-ended music than in the regular pop-concert scene of the time -- in short, "freakout" music could emerge. The Dead were also influenced by a broad range of music -- though initially they may have seemed like another of the early-Stones-type cover bands that littered the country, their eclecticism would take them in new directions. Garcia's primary model as a guitarist was the bluegrass music he'd been playing, and through early '66 the banjo lingers in his style with his constant stream of fast notes, though by '67 he would shift more into "rock-guitar" mode; so he was used to precise, well-practiced instrumental combos and old-time string bands with their intertwined instruments.
Lesh on the other hand was much more into jazz and classical music, the jazz of the time being a particular influence on the Dead's jamming (they revered Coltrane and Miles Davis) and giving them a different vocabulary to use when 'opening up' one of their songs. Lesh has also said they were listening to Indian music with its changing tempos, and this especially shows in Viola Lee with its steady, careful acceleration from a moderate pace to a racing inferno of notes. The Indian influence shows up more in '67 when their playing styles had matured and they were practiced enough to really venture into strange tempos and rhythm changes.
As for Viola Lee itself, the strongest influence may have been the Butterfield Blues Band and their long raga-instrumental 'East/West' -- that album came out in '66, and the Dead certainly saw them live; Garcia was interested in the blues playing of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. (Bloomfield did not like the Dead, but Bishop sometimes joined Garcia at shows.) 'East/West' is a very successful merging of Indian, Latin, and rock musical styles in a series of guitar solos, and it's very similar to Viola Lee in its long instrumental passages in-between statements of the theme, the changing tempos, and the way the solos accelerate into increasingly wild climaxes. (The CD East/West Live has a performance from Hollywood in early 1966.)
The very first Dead rehearsal tape we have is probably from January 1966, and they are practicing Viola Lee. (It's odd that so early on, they're using studio time to tape a rehearsal!) I don't think it's the first time they played it, they seem familiar with the basic arrangement, but it needs a lot of work, and they practice the verses and harmonies over and over. What's highlighted right away is Pigpen singing the verses with them, which would be pretty rare in a Dead song. Unfortunately, he seems pretty drunk and is not helping rehearsals....eventually he just wanders off. (But not before a very interesting bit where he plays harmonica in the song, which I wish they'd kept, but they decided to leave him on the keyboard.) Finally they decide to play the whole song straight through, and the last thing on the tape is an embryonic performance which stretches out to over 15 minutes before the tape cuts! This is when their other songs, other than Pigpen's long r&b tunes, were all normal 3-minute lengths. So they planned from the start to have a big improvisation speeding up in the middle -- but in early '66, though they had an idea what they wanted to do, they didn't have the skills yet. So the tempo changes in this early version are pretty clumsy, and it's noticeable that Weir is much more limited than the rest of the band, sticking to some repetitive chords. But it's still quite interesting as being the first improvisation we have from the band -- Garcia is trying all kinds of things, and not knowing where to go, they just keep going.....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-01-xx.sbd.hanno-uli.18846.sbeok.shnf 15:37//
Bear started recording the Dead in the Acid-Test days, and many of their early shows are unlabeled. One collection of '66 shows that recently came out is undated but seems to be from February, and has three versions of Viola Lee. The first is the best; it's still clunky as the band thrashes around, but builds up to a frenzied climax before dropping back down to the verse tempo. The third version is clearly the earliest, in fact it may well be the first live Viola Lee after their studio rehearsal, since the playing is almost identical -- including the sudden, clumsy shifts in tempo -- and it does not have a climax. Even in the second version, the climax is barely there. All the other elements of the song are in place, including Garcia's spiraling lines between verses. Garcia and Kreutzmann are way ahead of the rest of the band in playing ability; already at this early date the drummer is jazzing things up.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-XX-XX.sbd.GEMS.81254.flac16
Viola Lee seems to have been performed at most shows in 1966. It was played briskly, as more of a march than a swing; the band was still finding their style and sounded rather thin, so we don't get the waves of noise in Viola Lee that would come later. Lesh was starting to wander around on bass, but wasn't yet a full counterpoint-guitar; Weir is hard to keep track of since he is often buried in the mix; Pigpen's stabs of organ often dominate the sound as he follows the band through their jams; Kreutzmann is a standout in his ability to always be on top of where they are; Garcia buzzes around on the frets like an uptight bumblebee with high-pitched clutters of notes (which sometimes resemble Lou Reed's playing on the first Velvet Underground album, recorded at the same time).
The version on 3/19 (formerly known as 3/12) is still played slowly, and also strange in that it stays at the same steady pace rather than speeding up; even so, they botch the climax. It's still one of the nicer early versions, with somewhat hypnotic, stinging guitar notes from Garcia. (Note that in the old three-song excerpt of "3/12/66", the Viola Lee is actually from 12/1/66.) The next few versions from May and July are very similar to each other; in July the song is taken at a faster clip, they're much more confident, and they're able to handle the gradual acceleration more smoothly. What's still not done well is the climax, which is usually just a few strangled twangs from Garcia before they dive straight back into the verse. The Viola Lee on 7/16 was used for the Birth of the Dead CD; on 7/16 and 7/30 they added an interesting little intro to the song that was soon dropped. On 7/16 there is a little foreshadowing of Garcia's later style as he keeps repeating a note to signal the climax. 7/30's Viola Lee is the best of this period; it's noticeably tougher in the playing and has a good climax.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-03-19.sbd.scotton.81951.sbeok.flac 11:19
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-05-19.sbd.lestatkat.6516.sbeok.shnf 7:24
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-07-03.sbd.unknown.40.sbeok.shnf 7:21
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-07-16.sbd.miller.89555.sbeok.flac16 8:54
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-07-29.sbd.vernon.9051.sbeok.shnf 9:47
Bear left the Dead in the middle of '66, so we have a gap of four months until the next recorded Viola Lee, at the Matrix. (The owner there taped the bands that played in his club.) There is a marked difference in their style -- they're a more unified group with a heavier sound; Garcia has a better guitar tone; and they're close to the "classic Dead" style. Two Violas were taped; the one from 12/1 has the band getting deeper into the jam, with an excellent buildup, and they draw out the climax much longer than they'd done before.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-11-29.sbd.ret.20448.sbeok.shnf 10:23
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-12-01.sbd.sirmick.26968.sbeok.shnf 15:02
A month later we have their set at the Great Human Be-In, and the Viola Lee is hot. (The recording isn't, though, with Garcia very low.) It's a mostly instrumental version perhaps due to some trouble with the mikes, so the band chugs along while Garcia wails away. The primal Dead era has arrived; with Weir loud in the mix for once, we can tell by now he has improved dramatically, with slashing chords and added textural notes that fill in a lot of the space around Garcia.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-01-14.sbd.vernon.9108.sbeok.shnf 11:01
[Note that the "10/20/67" studio session has an instrumental Viola Lee that is actually an edit of this 1/14/67 performance.]
Their first album was recorded in January '67, and of course Viola Lee was the big climax. After a year of performances, they'd perfected the tune, and rarely for the Dead's studio recordings, the Viola Lee jam on the album is an excellent version. Ironically, though the Dead later criticized this album as being played too fast, the Viola Lee is quite sedate compared to live versions, not speeding up til halfway through; but Garcia's solo is lovely, with such a sweet tone.
Garcia said in early '67, "Each night when we went into the studio, we played Viola Lee Blues for as long as we wanted to play it, and we recorded it, and at the end of the week, we went through and listened to them and the one that turned us on was the one..... It isn't as good as it could have been, but it's still OK." There's a heavily edited three-minute alternate take as a bonus on the CD reissue of the first album; though it's chopped into pieces, perhaps more complete takes are still available for release as "bonus tracks" someday.
Grateful Dead album - 10:01
Viola Lee was probably played at most 1967 shows; but since Bear wasn't with the band, we have little to listen to from this year. The Viola on 3/18 is pretty similar to the album cut, but much more energized. All the shows from '67 are bursting with energy, and the whole second half of this show is fantastic; Viola Lee swings more than in '66, the acceleration builds up gradually, Garcia's playing is very sharp, and the climax roars. There's also a longer solo section after the climax as Garcia winds things down. I might note that by now (as on the album) Viola Lee finally has its striking opening chord (in '66 they just opened with the bass riff), which sounds similar to the Hard Day's Night chord but becomes more doom-laden over time.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-03-18.sbd.fink.10282.sbeok.shnf 13:38
Though Woodstock would give them a reputation as a band that blew it when they played big events, the Dead played a wild show at Monterey. Given an unenviable slot in between the Who and Jimi Hendrix, it's often forgotten that the Dead played just as noisy a set (though they didn't smash anything); and since they didn't appear in the movie or any soundtrack compilation, for years one could wonder whether the Dead played anything worth hearing at all. But finally their set surfaced, with another wonderful Viola Lee (and an early Alligator) -- and even better, a video of the Viola Lee has also turned up! (I have to wonder when this will be officially released.....if they're putting out the lackluster Egypt shows, can Monterey be far behind?) Lesh by now has become a driving force, pushing the bass upfront into a duel with Garcia and producing monstrous surges of noise; they're increasingly tight, and starting to draw the climax out to the brink of endurance.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-06-18.sbd.mandrake.19586.sbeok.shnf 14:07
Monterey video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axAfNjgdey4
It's also worth mentioning that a brief bit of the Dead performing Viola Lee in the Avalon Ballroom around this time was used in the movie Petulia:
Petulia snippet - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5owegbqcrjo
Viola Lee appears again in the fragments from the Dead's Toronto shows. The 8/4 version is the most exciting yet; Garcia is blasting from the start, and they stretch it out to 20 minutes for the first time. It particularly resembles an Indian raga here. Even the ending chord gets special treatment; earlier it had rattled for a little while (as on the album), but here it leads into a brief burst of feedback and the merry-go-round melody. In all later performances the Dead would typically have a minute or so of feedback at the end of Viola Lee, giving it an extra-apocalyptic feeling.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-08-04.sbd.hanno.16752.sbeok.shnf 20:25
A super-long Viola Lee was played in the amazing 9/3/67 show. Long famous for its Midnight Hour, when the rest of the show surfaced it turned out to be a highpoint of '67 with some strikingly advanced jamming, in which Lesh and Weir spin magical webs of sound. The Viola Lee is very laid-back, with the band interested in exploring new corners of the music. Garcia's dizzying three-note lines between the verses are stretched out longer than before; this would become a common feature, sometimes winding out so long it seemed the song would never come back. The improvisation is unusual as they take their time; at one point it's just Garcia and the drums playing (like in a '68 Alligator), and then the others rumble back in and continue. Also by mid-'67, Garcia no longer had to play constantly through the jam, but sometimes lets Lesh and Weir groove on the rhythm for a while before he comes back in; this would be an occasional technique in '69 and afterwards. After the climax explodes and they return to the groove, Garcia hangs onto the main riff for quite a while, repeating it over and over almost as in an Other One as if he's about to start a new jam; this also became a regular part of the song for the next few performances.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-09-03.sbd.backus.17272.sbeok.shnf /23:43
A couple audience recordings around this time should also be mentioned. The tape from 9/15 is pretty distant and hard to listen to; it seems like it would be a super show if it had better sound. The tape labeled 1/27/67 is clearly the wrong date (and is usually the wrong speed), and probably comes from another September/October show; it has another frenzied twenty-minute Viola Lee with Garcia upfront. Pigpen's keyboard is pretty loud in these recordings; he seems to have been much louder in the halls than in the soundboard mixes, but also in these '67 shows, that chintzy organ is a bigger part of the sound than it would be later on.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-09-15.aud.vernon.9192.sbeok.shnf 15:14
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-01-27.aud.hanno.16744.sbeok.shnf 21:09
(An aside: At this time, Lesh would sometimes use the bass line of Caution in the middle of Viola Lee, as they start speeding up. Caution of course had been one of their first recorded songs, and was played at a couple shows in early '66 but then apparently dropped until it re-appeared as the tail of Alligator in mid-'67. It is basically a straight copy of Them's 'Mystic Eyes' with different lyrics but the same bass, harmonica, and guitar parts; listening to the early live version from 1/8/66, it's striking how little the song changed in later years -- the structure is the same, the main difference is Pigpen's extended harmonica solos.
(Another thing to hear in 1/8/66 is the strong influence of Freddie King on Garcia's playing -- Garcia at that time was a Freddie King disciple, and even did one of King's instrumentals in the 3/19/66 show. As he said, "Freddie King is the guy that I learned the most volume of stuff from. When I started playing electric guitar with the Warlocks, it was [the first] Freddie King album that I got almost all my ideas off of, his phrasing really.")
On 3/12/66 (formerly known as 2/25, now on the Rare Cuts release) they take Caution out a bit more with a strong Chess feel; it was clearly a good live number, more developed than Viola Lee was, so it's odd that they wouldn't play it more often that year. But the idea is very similar to Viola Lee -- speed, accelerating rhythm, and long instrumental wildness. Lesh would still be playing the Caution riff in the 1969 Viola Lee, but I wouldn't call it a "Caution jam", just a push to the rhythm.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-01-08.sbd.bershaw.5410.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-02-25.sbd.unknown.1593.sbefail.shnf
One more Viola Lee survives from '67, a solid textbook version with Garcia blazing his way through the jam while Lesh constantly pushes him and Weir and Pigpen keep a steady underpinning.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-11-10.sbd.sacks.1612.sbeok.shnf 14:16
We have some more Viola Lees from early 1968, all played in a one-month period. The first, from 2/2, is awesome; it seems like the universe is being sucked through the tape as the climax blows up. They stumble a bit coming back to earth again.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-02-02.sbd.jools.15801.sbeok.shnf 14:07
The Lake Tahoe shows were among the coolest finds of recent years, and a big surprise when they appeared since no one expected more shows from this oddly incomplete tour to emerge. 2/23 has a rather stop-and-start Viola Lee, in which Garcia keeps dropping out when you think he's going to keep going. It doesn't help that the power cuts out just as they're building to the climax, so after a little drum break they restart and decide to head back to the song again.
2/23/68 -- Dick's Pick 18:37
An even more remarkable discovery came this year when two more Viola Lees from this tour were released as Road Trips bonus tracks. Pigpen is up-front and pushing the band through the jams (especially on 1/23), showing how central he was in the band's sound.
Viola Lee on 1/20 explodes right out of the gate, but seems to dissipate as it goes along - the jam doesn't build up so smoothly, like they're getting stuck; and there's a calm spot in the middle when Lesh stops playing for a while (which makes me imagine Garcia getting furious at him). The meltdown itself is long and great; they don't go into feedback at the end, but just quietly stop (it sounds like Garcia cuts out).
On 1/23 Garcia tells the audience, "Well the cops say you can't dance....you can still take off your clothes and wriggle around!" The band sounds very excited - Garcia just swoops into the jam, and his playing is vicious. They steadily pick up speed, only pausing briefly when Garcia changes his tone - the meltdown is bone-crushing as reality turns inside-out. Garcia hits some metallic Hendrix-type chords on the way back to the verse - this Viola Lee is a clear rival to 2/2/68.
1/20/68 - 20:26
1/23/68 - 21:18
The 3/3 show has surprisingly good sound for an outdoor '68 show recorded on dying batteries. The Viola Lee I think is rather disorganized and sloppy, perhaps because it was the first tune and they weren't quite ready, but they get together for a fiery second half.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-03-03.aud.vernon.9374.sbeok.shnf 21:03
Viola Lee isn't heard for another year. Whether they just stopped playing it, too many shows are lost to know. But it resurfaces in three April '69 shows -- a month when they were starting to shake up their setlist and bring back old songs that they hadn't played in a while. At each show it is the last song or encore.
The 4/6 Viola Lee is very strong, enthusiastic and concise, without any signs of rust. Pigpen's keyboard is prominent in the sound during the jam (I think this is usually an accident of the mix, since he generally played all through the song but is often low in the recordings). Garcia lays back for a while after the verses as the rest of the band churns away, and then they rush into the climax. But coming back to the verse, the power is cut and the drums stumble on -- Weir says, "It seems someone's trying to tell us something" -- and they sing the last verse to the crowd's delight.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-06.sbd.fm.cotsman.9492.sbeok.shnf 11:57
On 4/21 Viola Lee starts slowly and awkwardly, but builds into a great version. They really take it out to a ferocious fire-spitting climax, and the feedback at the end stretches to five minutes before it cuts....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-21.sbd.bertha-ashley.19841.sbeok.shnf 18:30
On 4/26, as the story goes, the Dead were trying to play as long a show as they could; the night before, the Velvet Underground had opened and gone for so long that the Dead could only play an hour; so on the 26th the Dead opened and had their revenge. A twenty-minute Viola Lee encore wasn't enough, they had to add fifteen minutes of feedback to the strains of What's Become of the Baby! (An interesting comment on the Velvets.) The Viola Lee itself is mesmerizing as the Dead seem to be building on the earlier performances, using the slow pace to explore the jam more and add new '69 motifs. Lesh even hints at the Seven, which the Dead hardly ever played.
4/26/69 -- Fallout from the Phil Zone 19:43
Lesh mentions in the notes to Fallout that none of the later versions of the Seven seem to have survived. Possibly they played more Viola Lees that summer (a lot of shows are missing), but a couple Sevens do survive on audience recordings, and this one is the best:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-29.aud.early.hollister.79.sbeok.shnf
Viola Lee then disappears again until 1970, when fortunately they played it a number of times, some of them among the best versions. Oddly, they played it two days in a row in the same theater. 3/20 has a solid Viola Lee, the highlight of the evening. The 3/21 early show is very laid-back (at least the Dead are, not the audience), and Viola Lee comes out of, of all things, He Was a Friend of Mine. After a very nice climax, they start doing the Seven theme again (flashback!), this time the whole band doing it; then Lesh starts the Cumberland Blues riff while they're playing the Seven, and they switch immediately to Cumberland -- a very smooth segue!
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-03-20.sbd.late.hamilton.14287.sbeok.shnf 12:20
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-03-21.early.aud.5315.sbeok.shnf 14:30
From a great show, 4/12, we have an excellent, light-footed Viola Lee; and from the legendary 5/2 we have a ragged but definitive version. The song was well-suited for 1970: in that year the Dead played an aggressive style in which the three guitar lines danced around each other in multiple rhythms, and r&b-styled tunes like Good Loving, Dancing in the Streets, Not Fade Away, Easy Wind, Man's World, and Hard to Handle became centerpieces for the band's new hard-edged jamming. Viola Lee was slowed down to a sultry groove, the better to gradually kick up the pace until lightning strikes the guitars and an unearthly squall erases time and space. Pigpen still played keyboards throughout the jam (especially notable on 4/12), though he was not as dominant in the sound.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-04-12.sbd.kaplan.3820.sbeok.shnf 15:07
5/2/70 -- Dick's Pick 16:35
7/11, like the rest of that Fillmore East run, is sadly only available in a lousy audience tape in which the audience is louder than the band. These shows would be acclaimed as some of the best of the year, if soundboards were available. (Technically, this is actually the 7/12/70 show, since the two nights got mixed up on initial tape datings.) The Viola Lee is clearly superb, if only it could be heard; it's amusing to hear the excited audience singing along with the lyrics.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-07-11.aud.cotsman.9379.sbefail.shnf 19:04
Finally, on 10/31, the Dead were having an 'off' night, but pulled out Viola Lee once more. It's a very slow version which turns out to be the weakest in years (though Garcia's guitar tone is sweet); they start speeding up quickly and it sounds just like a Cumberland Blues jam, the Viola Lee intensity isn't there; so after a while they switch to Cumberland, and say goodbye to Viola Lee.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-10-31.early.sbd.fischer.6517.sbeok.shnf 9:00
Much more can be said about the song and how the Dead played it, but that's enough for a start.....
******
TIMINGS
The longest meltdown in Viola Lee? It's a close tie between 8/4/67 and 1/20/68! But you may be surprised by the actual lengths.
I timed 17 of the top Viola Lees, basically breaking them into sections: the verses, the buildup, and the meltdown. (The ending part of the jam leading back into the last verse is usually just a minute or two with a few exceptions, for instance on 3/21/70 when they go into the Seven jam.)
I timed the meltdowns starting from when Garcia stops playing individual notes and starts fanning (though Lesh often starts trilling earlier) since that sounds like a recognizable 'start point' in each version. You can see there's hardly any difference in time between the climaxes. (Sometimes Garcia will return to a stream of notes in-between fanning, for instance on 12/1/66 which is why that climax seems timed so much longer than most of the later ones.)
_______verses > jam > melt > reentry
12/1/66 -- 3:53 > 8:05 > 1:15 > :25
3/18/67 -- 3:29 > 7:14 > :37 > 1:46
6/18/67 -- 3:27 > 6:38 > :45 > 2:03
8/4/67 -- 4:07 > 10:13 > 1:17 > 2:37
9/3/67 -- /1:28 > 13:56 > 1:03 > 5:55
11/10/67 -- 3:51 > 7:18 > :41 > 1:40
1/20/68 -- 4:39 > 12:11 > 1:19 > 1:19
1/23/68 -- 5:06 > 11:23 > 1:02 > 2:54
2/2/68 -- 3:12 > 6:30 > :40 > 1:28
3/3/68 -- 4:37 > 9:50 > :58 > 4:51
4/6/69 -- 4:58 > 4:24 > 1:02
4/21/69 -- 5:36 > 4:44 > 1:06 > 1:41
4/26/69 -- 6:37 > 10:26 > :53 > 1:00
3/21/70 -- 4:50 > 5:47 > :52 > 3:58
4/12/70 -- 5:26 > 5:41 > :51 > :49
5/2/70 -- 4:56 > 7:02 > 1:02 > 1:40
7/11/70 -- 5:03 > 9:07 > 1:06 > 2:08
The story of Viola Lee begins when Gus Cannon's Jug Band recorded it on September 20, 1928.... Many years later, in the early '60s, a folk revival was booming among the coffeehouse kids, and many of the old songs of the '20s were reissued on record, to be picked up by the 'new' folk bands. The origin of the Dead was basically as a jugband (before 'going electric') and they borrowed many songs from the folk scene, which Garcia was most familiar with. (The Dead's first single in '66 took both its sides from the '20s, one song from the Memphis Jug Band and one from Henry Thomas.) Hearing Viola Lee, Garcia and Weir were enticed by this antique tale of incarceration, and if they heard it early enough, they may well have played it in Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. (A couple other Gus Cannon songs, Minglewood Blues and Big Railroad Blues, would also become Dead staples). Another popular folk group of the early '60s, Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, also did Viola Lee Blues (the Dead borrowed several other songs from them as well).
The Dead's Viola Lee barely resembles Cannon's original; Kweskin was more of a traditionalist and his version is faithful to the '20s:
http://www.box.net/shared/sh26zlw4ck
As to how the Dead got the inspiration to take this song "out", it's probably no coincidence that it took shape at the time of the Acid Tests. They had an opportunity to play with a free format, to a zonked-out audience, and were encouraged to play more open-ended music than in the regular pop-concert scene of the time -- in short, "freakout" music could emerge. The Dead were also influenced by a broad range of music -- though initially they may have seemed like another of the early-Stones-type cover bands that littered the country, their eclecticism would take them in new directions. Garcia's primary model as a guitarist was the bluegrass music he'd been playing, and through early '66 the banjo lingers in his style with his constant stream of fast notes, though by '67 he would shift more into "rock-guitar" mode; so he was used to precise, well-practiced instrumental combos and old-time string bands with their intertwined instruments.
Lesh on the other hand was much more into jazz and classical music, the jazz of the time being a particular influence on the Dead's jamming (they revered Coltrane and Miles Davis) and giving them a different vocabulary to use when 'opening up' one of their songs. Lesh has also said they were listening to Indian music with its changing tempos, and this especially shows in Viola Lee with its steady, careful acceleration from a moderate pace to a racing inferno of notes. The Indian influence shows up more in '67 when their playing styles had matured and they were practiced enough to really venture into strange tempos and rhythm changes.
As for Viola Lee itself, the strongest influence may have been the Butterfield Blues Band and their long raga-instrumental 'East/West' -- that album came out in '66, and the Dead certainly saw them live; Garcia was interested in the blues playing of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. (Bloomfield did not like the Dead, but Bishop sometimes joined Garcia at shows.) 'East/West' is a very successful merging of Indian, Latin, and rock musical styles in a series of guitar solos, and it's very similar to Viola Lee in its long instrumental passages in-between statements of the theme, the changing tempos, and the way the solos accelerate into increasingly wild climaxes. (The CD East/West Live has a performance from Hollywood in early 1966.)
The very first Dead rehearsal tape we have is probably from January 1966, and they are practicing Viola Lee. (It's odd that so early on, they're using studio time to tape a rehearsal!) I don't think it's the first time they played it, they seem familiar with the basic arrangement, but it needs a lot of work, and they practice the verses and harmonies over and over. What's highlighted right away is Pigpen singing the verses with them, which would be pretty rare in a Dead song. Unfortunately, he seems pretty drunk and is not helping rehearsals....eventually he just wanders off. (But not before a very interesting bit where he plays harmonica in the song, which I wish they'd kept, but they decided to leave him on the keyboard.) Finally they decide to play the whole song straight through, and the last thing on the tape is an embryonic performance which stretches out to over 15 minutes before the tape cuts! This is when their other songs, other than Pigpen's long r&b tunes, were all normal 3-minute lengths. So they planned from the start to have a big improvisation speeding up in the middle -- but in early '66, though they had an idea what they wanted to do, they didn't have the skills yet. So the tempo changes in this early version are pretty clumsy, and it's noticeable that Weir is much more limited than the rest of the band, sticking to some repetitive chords. But it's still quite interesting as being the first improvisation we have from the band -- Garcia is trying all kinds of things, and not knowing where to go, they just keep going.....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-01-xx.sbd.hanno-uli.18846.sbeok.shnf 15:37//
Bear started recording the Dead in the Acid-Test days, and many of their early shows are unlabeled. One collection of '66 shows that recently came out is undated but seems to be from February, and has three versions of Viola Lee. The first is the best; it's still clunky as the band thrashes around, but builds up to a frenzied climax before dropping back down to the verse tempo. The third version is clearly the earliest, in fact it may well be the first live Viola Lee after their studio rehearsal, since the playing is almost identical -- including the sudden, clumsy shifts in tempo -- and it does not have a climax. Even in the second version, the climax is barely there. All the other elements of the song are in place, including Garcia's spiraling lines between verses. Garcia and Kreutzmann are way ahead of the rest of the band in playing ability; already at this early date the drummer is jazzing things up.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-XX-XX.sbd.GEMS.81254.flac16
Viola Lee seems to have been performed at most shows in 1966. It was played briskly, as more of a march than a swing; the band was still finding their style and sounded rather thin, so we don't get the waves of noise in Viola Lee that would come later. Lesh was starting to wander around on bass, but wasn't yet a full counterpoint-guitar; Weir is hard to keep track of since he is often buried in the mix; Pigpen's stabs of organ often dominate the sound as he follows the band through their jams; Kreutzmann is a standout in his ability to always be on top of where they are; Garcia buzzes around on the frets like an uptight bumblebee with high-pitched clutters of notes (which sometimes resemble Lou Reed's playing on the first Velvet Underground album, recorded at the same time).
The version on 3/19 (formerly known as 3/12) is still played slowly, and also strange in that it stays at the same steady pace rather than speeding up; even so, they botch the climax. It's still one of the nicer early versions, with somewhat hypnotic, stinging guitar notes from Garcia. (Note that in the old three-song excerpt of "3/12/66", the Viola Lee is actually from 12/1/66.) The next few versions from May and July are very similar to each other; in July the song is taken at a faster clip, they're much more confident, and they're able to handle the gradual acceleration more smoothly. What's still not done well is the climax, which is usually just a few strangled twangs from Garcia before they dive straight back into the verse. The Viola Lee on 7/16 was used for the Birth of the Dead CD; on 7/16 and 7/30 they added an interesting little intro to the song that was soon dropped. On 7/16 there is a little foreshadowing of Garcia's later style as he keeps repeating a note to signal the climax. 7/30's Viola Lee is the best of this period; it's noticeably tougher in the playing and has a good climax.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-03-19.sbd.scotton.81951.sbeok.flac 11:19
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-05-19.sbd.lestatkat.6516.sbeok.shnf 7:24
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-07-03.sbd.unknown.40.sbeok.shnf 7:21
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-07-16.sbd.miller.89555.sbeok.flac16 8:54
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-07-29.sbd.vernon.9051.sbeok.shnf 9:47
Bear left the Dead in the middle of '66, so we have a gap of four months until the next recorded Viola Lee, at the Matrix. (The owner there taped the bands that played in his club.) There is a marked difference in their style -- they're a more unified group with a heavier sound; Garcia has a better guitar tone; and they're close to the "classic Dead" style. Two Violas were taped; the one from 12/1 has the band getting deeper into the jam, with an excellent buildup, and they draw out the climax much longer than they'd done before.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-11-29.sbd.ret.20448.sbeok.shnf 10:23
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-12-01.sbd.sirmick.26968.sbeok.shnf 15:02
A month later we have their set at the Great Human Be-In, and the Viola Lee is hot. (The recording isn't, though, with Garcia very low.) It's a mostly instrumental version perhaps due to some trouble with the mikes, so the band chugs along while Garcia wails away. The primal Dead era has arrived; with Weir loud in the mix for once, we can tell by now he has improved dramatically, with slashing chords and added textural notes that fill in a lot of the space around Garcia.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-01-14.sbd.vernon.9108.sbeok.shnf 11:01
[Note that the "10/20/67" studio session has an instrumental Viola Lee that is actually an edit of this 1/14/67 performance.]
Their first album was recorded in January '67, and of course Viola Lee was the big climax. After a year of performances, they'd perfected the tune, and rarely for the Dead's studio recordings, the Viola Lee jam on the album is an excellent version. Ironically, though the Dead later criticized this album as being played too fast, the Viola Lee is quite sedate compared to live versions, not speeding up til halfway through; but Garcia's solo is lovely, with such a sweet tone.
Garcia said in early '67, "Each night when we went into the studio, we played Viola Lee Blues for as long as we wanted to play it, and we recorded it, and at the end of the week, we went through and listened to them and the one that turned us on was the one..... It isn't as good as it could have been, but it's still OK." There's a heavily edited three-minute alternate take as a bonus on the CD reissue of the first album; though it's chopped into pieces, perhaps more complete takes are still available for release as "bonus tracks" someday.
Grateful Dead album - 10:01
Viola Lee was probably played at most 1967 shows; but since Bear wasn't with the band, we have little to listen to from this year. The Viola on 3/18 is pretty similar to the album cut, but much more energized. All the shows from '67 are bursting with energy, and the whole second half of this show is fantastic; Viola Lee swings more than in '66, the acceleration builds up gradually, Garcia's playing is very sharp, and the climax roars. There's also a longer solo section after the climax as Garcia winds things down. I might note that by now (as on the album) Viola Lee finally has its striking opening chord (in '66 they just opened with the bass riff), which sounds similar to the Hard Day's Night chord but becomes more doom-laden over time.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-03-18.sbd.fink.10282.sbeok.shnf 13:38
Though Woodstock would give them a reputation as a band that blew it when they played big events, the Dead played a wild show at Monterey. Given an unenviable slot in between the Who and Jimi Hendrix, it's often forgotten that the Dead played just as noisy a set (though they didn't smash anything); and since they didn't appear in the movie or any soundtrack compilation, for years one could wonder whether the Dead played anything worth hearing at all. But finally their set surfaced, with another wonderful Viola Lee (and an early Alligator) -- and even better, a video of the Viola Lee has also turned up! (I have to wonder when this will be officially released.....if they're putting out the lackluster Egypt shows, can Monterey be far behind?) Lesh by now has become a driving force, pushing the bass upfront into a duel with Garcia and producing monstrous surges of noise; they're increasingly tight, and starting to draw the climax out to the brink of endurance.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-06-18.sbd.mandrake.19586.sbeok.shnf 14:07
Monterey video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axAfNjgdey4
It's also worth mentioning that a brief bit of the Dead performing Viola Lee in the Avalon Ballroom around this time was used in the movie Petulia:
Petulia snippet - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5owegbqcrjo
Viola Lee appears again in the fragments from the Dead's Toronto shows. The 8/4 version is the most exciting yet; Garcia is blasting from the start, and they stretch it out to 20 minutes for the first time. It particularly resembles an Indian raga here. Even the ending chord gets special treatment; earlier it had rattled for a little while (as on the album), but here it leads into a brief burst of feedback and the merry-go-round melody. In all later performances the Dead would typically have a minute or so of feedback at the end of Viola Lee, giving it an extra-apocalyptic feeling.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-08-04.sbd.hanno.16752.sbeok.shnf 20:25
A super-long Viola Lee was played in the amazing 9/3/67 show. Long famous for its Midnight Hour, when the rest of the show surfaced it turned out to be a highpoint of '67 with some strikingly advanced jamming, in which Lesh and Weir spin magical webs of sound. The Viola Lee is very laid-back, with the band interested in exploring new corners of the music. Garcia's dizzying three-note lines between the verses are stretched out longer than before; this would become a common feature, sometimes winding out so long it seemed the song would never come back. The improvisation is unusual as they take their time; at one point it's just Garcia and the drums playing (like in a '68 Alligator), and then the others rumble back in and continue. Also by mid-'67, Garcia no longer had to play constantly through the jam, but sometimes lets Lesh and Weir groove on the rhythm for a while before he comes back in; this would be an occasional technique in '69 and afterwards. After the climax explodes and they return to the groove, Garcia hangs onto the main riff for quite a while, repeating it over and over almost as in an Other One as if he's about to start a new jam; this also became a regular part of the song for the next few performances.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-09-03.sbd.backus.17272.sbeok.shnf /23:43
A couple audience recordings around this time should also be mentioned. The tape from 9/15 is pretty distant and hard to listen to; it seems like it would be a super show if it had better sound. The tape labeled 1/27/67 is clearly the wrong date (and is usually the wrong speed), and probably comes from another September/October show; it has another frenzied twenty-minute Viola Lee with Garcia upfront. Pigpen's keyboard is pretty loud in these recordings; he seems to have been much louder in the halls than in the soundboard mixes, but also in these '67 shows, that chintzy organ is a bigger part of the sound than it would be later on.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-09-15.aud.vernon.9192.sbeok.shnf 15:14
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-01-27.aud.hanno.16744.sbeok.shnf 21:09
(An aside: At this time, Lesh would sometimes use the bass line of Caution in the middle of Viola Lee, as they start speeding up. Caution of course had been one of their first recorded songs, and was played at a couple shows in early '66 but then apparently dropped until it re-appeared as the tail of Alligator in mid-'67. It is basically a straight copy of Them's 'Mystic Eyes' with different lyrics but the same bass, harmonica, and guitar parts; listening to the early live version from 1/8/66, it's striking how little the song changed in later years -- the structure is the same, the main difference is Pigpen's extended harmonica solos.
(Another thing to hear in 1/8/66 is the strong influence of Freddie King on Garcia's playing -- Garcia at that time was a Freddie King disciple, and even did one of King's instrumentals in the 3/19/66 show. As he said, "Freddie King is the guy that I learned the most volume of stuff from. When I started playing electric guitar with the Warlocks, it was [the first] Freddie King album that I got almost all my ideas off of, his phrasing really.")
On 3/12/66 (formerly known as 2/25, now on the Rare Cuts release) they take Caution out a bit more with a strong Chess feel; it was clearly a good live number, more developed than Viola Lee was, so it's odd that they wouldn't play it more often that year. But the idea is very similar to Viola Lee -- speed, accelerating rhythm, and long instrumental wildness. Lesh would still be playing the Caution riff in the 1969 Viola Lee, but I wouldn't call it a "Caution jam", just a push to the rhythm.)
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-01-08.sbd.bershaw.5410.shnf
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-02-25.sbd.unknown.1593.sbefail.shnf
One more Viola Lee survives from '67, a solid textbook version with Garcia blazing his way through the jam while Lesh constantly pushes him and Weir and Pigpen keep a steady underpinning.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-11-10.sbd.sacks.1612.sbeok.shnf 14:16
We have some more Viola Lees from early 1968, all played in a one-month period. The first, from 2/2, is awesome; it seems like the universe is being sucked through the tape as the climax blows up. They stumble a bit coming back to earth again.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-02-02.sbd.jools.15801.sbeok.shnf 14:07
The Lake Tahoe shows were among the coolest finds of recent years, and a big surprise when they appeared since no one expected more shows from this oddly incomplete tour to emerge. 2/23 has a rather stop-and-start Viola Lee, in which Garcia keeps dropping out when you think he's going to keep going. It doesn't help that the power cuts out just as they're building to the climax, so after a little drum break they restart and decide to head back to the song again.
2/23/68 -- Dick's Pick 18:37
An even more remarkable discovery came this year when two more Viola Lees from this tour were released as Road Trips bonus tracks. Pigpen is up-front and pushing the band through the jams (especially on 1/23), showing how central he was in the band's sound.
Viola Lee on 1/20 explodes right out of the gate, but seems to dissipate as it goes along - the jam doesn't build up so smoothly, like they're getting stuck; and there's a calm spot in the middle when Lesh stops playing for a while (which makes me imagine Garcia getting furious at him). The meltdown itself is long and great; they don't go into feedback at the end, but just quietly stop (it sounds like Garcia cuts out).
On 1/23 Garcia tells the audience, "Well the cops say you can't dance....you can still take off your clothes and wriggle around!" The band sounds very excited - Garcia just swoops into the jam, and his playing is vicious. They steadily pick up speed, only pausing briefly when Garcia changes his tone - the meltdown is bone-crushing as reality turns inside-out. Garcia hits some metallic Hendrix-type chords on the way back to the verse - this Viola Lee is a clear rival to 2/2/68.
1/20/68 - 20:26
1/23/68 - 21:18
The 3/3 show has surprisingly good sound for an outdoor '68 show recorded on dying batteries. The Viola Lee I think is rather disorganized and sloppy, perhaps because it was the first tune and they weren't quite ready, but they get together for a fiery second half.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-03-03.aud.vernon.9374.sbeok.shnf 21:03
Viola Lee isn't heard for another year. Whether they just stopped playing it, too many shows are lost to know. But it resurfaces in three April '69 shows -- a month when they were starting to shake up their setlist and bring back old songs that they hadn't played in a while. At each show it is the last song or encore.
The 4/6 Viola Lee is very strong, enthusiastic and concise, without any signs of rust. Pigpen's keyboard is prominent in the sound during the jam (I think this is usually an accident of the mix, since he generally played all through the song but is often low in the recordings). Garcia lays back for a while after the verses as the rest of the band churns away, and then they rush into the climax. But coming back to the verse, the power is cut and the drums stumble on -- Weir says, "It seems someone's trying to tell us something" -- and they sing the last verse to the crowd's delight.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-06.sbd.fm.cotsman.9492.sbeok.shnf 11:57
On 4/21 Viola Lee starts slowly and awkwardly, but builds into a great version. They really take it out to a ferocious fire-spitting climax, and the feedback at the end stretches to five minutes before it cuts....
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-21.sbd.bertha-ashley.19841.sbeok.shnf 18:30
On 4/26, as the story goes, the Dead were trying to play as long a show as they could; the night before, the Velvet Underground had opened and gone for so long that the Dead could only play an hour; so on the 26th the Dead opened and had their revenge. A twenty-minute Viola Lee encore wasn't enough, they had to add fifteen minutes of feedback to the strains of What's Become of the Baby! (An interesting comment on the Velvets.) The Viola Lee itself is mesmerizing as the Dead seem to be building on the earlier performances, using the slow pace to explore the jam more and add new '69 motifs. Lesh even hints at the Seven, which the Dead hardly ever played.
4/26/69 -- Fallout from the Phil Zone 19:43
Lesh mentions in the notes to Fallout that none of the later versions of the Seven seem to have survived. Possibly they played more Viola Lees that summer (a lot of shows are missing), but a couple Sevens do survive on audience recordings, and this one is the best:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-29.aud.early.hollister.79.sbeok.shnf
Viola Lee then disappears again until 1970, when fortunately they played it a number of times, some of them among the best versions. Oddly, they played it two days in a row in the same theater. 3/20 has a solid Viola Lee, the highlight of the evening. The 3/21 early show is very laid-back (at least the Dead are, not the audience), and Viola Lee comes out of, of all things, He Was a Friend of Mine. After a very nice climax, they start doing the Seven theme again (flashback!), this time the whole band doing it; then Lesh starts the Cumberland Blues riff while they're playing the Seven, and they switch immediately to Cumberland -- a very smooth segue!
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-03-20.sbd.late.hamilton.14287.sbeok.shnf 12:20
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-03-21.early.aud.5315.sbeok.shnf 14:30
From a great show, 4/12, we have an excellent, light-footed Viola Lee; and from the legendary 5/2 we have a ragged but definitive version. The song was well-suited for 1970: in that year the Dead played an aggressive style in which the three guitar lines danced around each other in multiple rhythms, and r&b-styled tunes like Good Loving, Dancing in the Streets, Not Fade Away, Easy Wind, Man's World, and Hard to Handle became centerpieces for the band's new hard-edged jamming. Viola Lee was slowed down to a sultry groove, the better to gradually kick up the pace until lightning strikes the guitars and an unearthly squall erases time and space. Pigpen still played keyboards throughout the jam (especially notable on 4/12), though he was not as dominant in the sound.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-04-12.sbd.kaplan.3820.sbeok.shnf 15:07
5/2/70 -- Dick's Pick 16:35
7/11, like the rest of that Fillmore East run, is sadly only available in a lousy audience tape in which the audience is louder than the band. These shows would be acclaimed as some of the best of the year, if soundboards were available. (Technically, this is actually the 7/12/70 show, since the two nights got mixed up on initial tape datings.) The Viola Lee is clearly superb, if only it could be heard; it's amusing to hear the excited audience singing along with the lyrics.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-07-11.aud.cotsman.9379.sbefail.shnf 19:04
Finally, on 10/31, the Dead were having an 'off' night, but pulled out Viola Lee once more. It's a very slow version which turns out to be the weakest in years (though Garcia's guitar tone is sweet); they start speeding up quickly and it sounds just like a Cumberland Blues jam, the Viola Lee intensity isn't there; so after a while they switch to Cumberland, and say goodbye to Viola Lee.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-10-31.early.sbd.fischer.6517.sbeok.shnf 9:00
Much more can be said about the song and how the Dead played it, but that's enough for a start.....
******
TIMINGS
The longest meltdown in Viola Lee? It's a close tie between 8/4/67 and 1/20/68! But you may be surprised by the actual lengths.
I timed 17 of the top Viola Lees, basically breaking them into sections: the verses, the buildup, and the meltdown. (The ending part of the jam leading back into the last verse is usually just a minute or two with a few exceptions, for instance on 3/21/70 when they go into the Seven jam.)
I timed the meltdowns starting from when Garcia stops playing individual notes and starts fanning (though Lesh often starts trilling earlier) since that sounds like a recognizable 'start point' in each version. You can see there's hardly any difference in time between the climaxes. (Sometimes Garcia will return to a stream of notes in-between fanning, for instance on 12/1/66 which is why that climax seems timed so much longer than most of the later ones.)
_______verses > jam > melt > reentry
12/1/66 -- 3:53 > 8:05 > 1:15 > :25
3/18/67 -- 3:29 > 7:14 > :37 > 1:46
6/18/67 -- 3:27 > 6:38 > :45 > 2:03
8/4/67 -- 4:07 > 10:13 > 1:17 > 2:37
9/3/67 -- /1:28 > 13:56 > 1:03 > 5:55
11/10/67 -- 3:51 > 7:18 > :41 > 1:40
1/20/68 -- 4:39 > 12:11 > 1:19 > 1:19
1/23/68 -- 5:06 > 11:23 > 1:02 > 2:54
2/2/68 -- 3:12 > 6:30 > :40 > 1:28
3/3/68 -- 4:37 > 9:50 > :58 > 4:51
4/6/69 -- 4:58 > 4:24 > 1:02
4/21/69 -- 5:36 > 4:44 > 1:06 > 1:41
4/26/69 -- 6:37 > 10:26 > :53 > 1:00
3/21/70 -- 4:50 > 5:47 > :52 > 3:58
4/12/70 -- 5:26 > 5:41 > :51 > :49
5/2/70 -- 4:56 > 7:02 > 1:02 > 1:40
7/11/70 -- 5:03 > 9:07 > 1:06 > 2:08
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