Grateful Dead: The Grateful Dead (50th anniversary, remastered) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This 50th anniversary remaster, produced for reissue by David Lemieux, comes on 180g vinyl pressed in the EU. It's the record that introduced the San Francisco band's blend of blues, folk and jug-band songs to the world.

This edition

• 50th anniversary edition
• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

A band famous for three-hour concerts made their first album in four days. In January 1967 the Grateful Dead went down to RCA's Studio A in Los Angeles, since no San Francisco studio of the time had the modern equipment they wanted, and worked with producer Dave Hassinger, who had engineered the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" and Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow. Warner Bros. had it in shops by March.

Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan play it fast and bright. "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)" was the single, credited to the whole band under a pseudonym, and "Cream Puff War" is a Garcia original. The rest comes from the blues, folk and jug-band songs they'd been playing in the clubs: Pigpen growls through Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Mornin' Little School Girl," Garcia sings "Cold Rain and Snow," and the ten-minute "Viola Lee Blues" hints at the long improvisations to come. "Morning Dew" was co-written by Toronto-born folk singer Bonnie Dobson, a Canadian connection we like to bring up.

Rolling Stone later named it one of the essential albums of 1967, and in San Francisco it was a very big deal from the start. Four days in the studio, then roughly thirty years on the road to make up for it.

Also at Kops: more Grateful Dead on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Warner / Rhino (cat# R1 1689), a reissue of the 1967 album.