Workingman's Dead Grateful Dead

• 1 Uncle John's Band 04:45
• 2 High Time 05:15
• 3 Dire Wolf 03:16
• 4 New Speedway Boogie 04:22
• 5 Cumberland Blues 03:20
• 6 Black Peter 05:44
• 7 Easy Wind 04:58
• 8 Casey Jones 04:27
• Total Runtime 36:07

Info zu Workingman's Dead

It’s become almost a cliché to say that the two studio albums released in 1970 by The Grateful Dead, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, are the high point of the band’s studio output. That probably depends what your favorite version of the Dead is. If you’re looking for the jamming flights of fancy that mark the band’s live shows, these two albums aren’t for you. But if it’s songcraft that’s your thing, then there is no doubt that the band was never better than on this duo. The first of those, Workingman’s Dead, was the product of a band that changed their tactics because they had no other choice, but necessity proved to be the mother of something truly special.

The Dead were having money issues at the time they made Workingman’s Dead, which meant they had to simplify. Another factor was that they, like so many other music fans, had become enamored with the harmonies of Crosby, Stills & Nash. “Hearing those guys and how nice they sounded together, we thought, we can try that,” Jerry Garcia recalled. “Let’s work on it a little.”

The shift to mostly acoustic material brought the harmonies to the forefront and also put a spotlight on Robert Hunter’s lyrics for the first time. It all came together immediately on opening track “Uncle John’s Band,” a gorgeously melodic balm for the frazzled nerves of a culture in upheaval. That song was bookended by “Casey Jones,” a genial rambler about a runaway train conductor, Hunter’s metaphor for an entire generation that can see its scary destiny and still barrels toward it at full speed. That was something with which the Dead could identify; “Trouble with you is the trouble with me,” Garcia sings.

In between those two high points, the Dead get to try on different styles and guises. There’s Band-like balladry (“High Time”), country rock à la The Byrds (“Dire Wolf”), and bluegrass (“Cumberland Blues.”) Percussive penultimate track “Easy Wind” is the only thing that sounds like it belongs on previous Dead albums; here it’s a bit of a sore thumb. By contrast, “New Speedway Boogie,” the band’s ornery take on the Altamont tragedy, is a far more effective change of pace from the mellower stuff surrounding it.

For all of these subtle stylistic shifts and the band’s heretofore untapped capability as harmonizers, what really elevates Workingman’s Dead are the uniformly great lead vocal efforts by Jerry Garcia. Chief among these is the mesmerizing “Black Peter,” a deathbed lament where Garcia, then all of 28, gives a harrowingly convincing performance. The album may not have the same amount of knockout songs as the follow-up American Beauty, but it makes up for it with the winningly ramshackle vibe that it maintains. It’s probably not fair to compare all other Grateful Dead albums to Workingman’s Dead. Better to compare Workingman’s Dead to some of the best albums in rock history, since it no doubt deserves that exalted status.“ (Jim Beviglia, www.americansongwriter.com)

'...a modest, even penitent look back, not for nostalgic reassurance but for wisdom and perspective....maps the crises of the present onto the past and offers solace only in the ability of human virtues...to survive the most harrowing chaos.' (Rolling Stone)

'Inspired by the first two Band albums and the harmonies of Crosby Stills & Nash....Homespun folk and frontier songs played and sung in a loose, lived-in manner and sung as an old tie-dye T-shirt.' (Mojo)

Jerry Garcia, lead guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo, vocals
Bob Weir, guitar, vocals
Pigpen (Ron McKernan), keyboards, harmonica, vocals
Phil Lesh, bass, vocals
Bill Kreutzmann, drums
Mickey Hart, drums

Recorded February 1970 at Pacific High Recording Studio, San Francisco, California
Produced by Bob Matthews, Betty Cantor, Grateful Dead

Digitally remastered

From the 1960s until the 1995 death of guitarist, singer-songwriter Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead played roughly 2,300 long, freeform concerts that touched down on their own country-, blues and folk –tinged songs, and on a similarly wide range of cover versions. Along the way, they popularized the concept of the jam band, influencing thousands of songwriters and basement improvisers and earning themselves maybe the most loyal fans a rock band have ever had.

Nearly as famous as the band itself were its legions of "Deadheads" — predominantly white men who have lovingly preserved the era that spawned the Dead by emulating their Summer of Love predecessors' philosophy and that period's accoutrements: tie-dye clothing, hallucinogenic drugs, and the Dead's music. These fans supported the band with an almost religious fervor, following the group around the country, trading tapes of live concerts (something the band allowed as long as it wasn't for profit, providing prime spots for tapers at shows), and providing a synergy between band and audience that was unique in rock. In true psychedelic style, the Grateful Dead preferred the moment to the artifact — but to keep those moments coming, the Dead evolved into a far-flung and smoothly run corporate enterprise that, for all its hippie trimmings, drew admiring profiles in the financial and mainstream press.

Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia took up guitar at 15, spent nine months in the Army in 1959, then moved to Palo Alto, where he began his long-standing friendship with Robert Hunter, who late became the Dead's lyricist. In 1962 he bought a banjo and began playing in folk and bluegrass bands, and by 1964 he was a member of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, along with Bob Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and longtime associates Bob Matthews (who engineered Dead albums and formed the Alembic Electronics equipment company) and John Dawson (later of New Riders of the Purple Sage).

In 1965 the band became the Warlocks: Garcia, Weir, Pigpen, Bill Kreutzmann, and Phil Lesh, a former electronic-music composer. With electric instruments, the Warlocks debuted in July 1965 and soon became the house band at Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, a series of public LSD parties and multimedia events held before the drug had been outlawed. LSD chemist Owsley Stanley bankrolled the Grateful Dead — a name from an Egyptian prayer that Garcia spotted in a dictionary — and later supervised construction of the band's massive, state-of-the-art sound system. The Dead lived communally at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco in 1966–67 and played numerous free concerts; by 1967's Summer of Love, they were regulars at the Avalon and Carousel ballrooms and the Fillmore West. MGM signed the band in 1966, and it made some mediocre recordings. The Dead's legitimate recording career began when Warner Bros. signed the band. While its self-titled 1967 debut album featured zippy three-minute songs, Anthem of the Sun (Number 87, 1968) and Aoxomoxoa (Number 73, 1969) featured extended suites and studio experiments that left the band $100,000 in debt to Warner Bros., mostly for studio time, by the end of the 1960s. Meanwhile, the Dead's reputation had spread, and they appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969.

As the Seventies began, the Dead recouped its Warner debt with three comparatively inexpensive albums — Live/Dead (Number 64, 1969) (recorded in concert at San Francisco's Fillmore West in February and March of 1969), Workingman's Dead (Number 27, 1970), and American Beauty (Number 30, 1970). The former featured extended psychedelic explorations, such as the classic "Dark Star," while in sharp contrast the latter two found the Dead writing concise country-ish songs and working out clear-cut, well-rehearsed arrangements. Workingman's Dead (including "Uncle John's Band" [Number 69, 1970] and "Casey Jones") and American Beauty (including "Truckin'" [Number 64, 1971], "Ripple," and "Box of Rain") received considerable FM radio airplay, sold respectably, and provided much of the Dead's concert repertoire.

With a nationwide following, the Dead expanded its touring schedule and started various solo and side projects (aside from the band members' own works, many Dead members also appeared on the half-dozen-plus albums Dead lyricist Robert Hunter began releasing in 1973). The group worked its way up to a 23-ton sound system and a large traveling entourage of road crew, family, friends, and hangers-on — most of whom would later become staff employees complete with health-insurance and other benefits, as the Dead evolved into an efficient and highly profitable corporation. The Dead finished out its Warners contract with a string of live albums including 1971's Grateful Dead, a.k.a. "Skull and Roses" (Number 25), which introduced more concert staples such as "Bertha" and "Wharf Rat." In 1973 the Dead played for over half a million people in Watkins Glen, New York, on a bill with the Band and the Allman Brothers. By then the group had formed its own Grateful Dead Records and a subsidiary, Round, for non-band efforts. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/the-grateful-dead/biography

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet