Before the Dead


Before the Dead is an album by Jerry Garcia. It is a compilation of early recordings of Garcia playing folk and bluegrass music with various other musicians. The recordings were made from 1961 to 1964, before Garcia co-founded the rock band the Grateful Dead. Produced as a four-CD box set, and also as a five-LP limited edition box set, it was released on May 11, 2018.

Recording

In the early 1960s, the American folk music revival was in full swing, and the San Francisco Bay Area had its own folk scene. In 1961, after getting out of the Army, Jerry Garcia started playing folk music and other old-time songs. Garcia would sing and play acoustic guitar as a member of various ensembles and bands. Over the next few years, Garcia also become interested in bluegrass music, and learned to play the banjo. As his music skills evolved, he continued to play in different bands with similarly inclined musicians. A number of these performances were captured on reel-to-reel tape. In 1965, after a dalliance with jug band music, Garcia co-founded the rock band the Grateful Dead.
Before the Dead includes performances by several musicians who also collaborated with Garcia in later years. Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics for many Grateful Dead songs; David Nelson was a member of the New Riders of the Purple Sage; and Nelson and Sandy Rothman were members of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band.

Production

Before the Dead was produced by Dennis McNally, an author and former publicist for the Grateful Dead, and Brian Miksis, a documentarian and audio engineer. The two worked together to track down some of the original recordings from Jerry Garcia's formative years as a musician. They also assembled many new short essays about the songs and the early '60s folk scene in the Bay Area, along with photographs from that time.
The 1962 performance by the Hart Valley Drifters, at the studio of Stanford University radio station KZSU, was previously released as the album Folk Time.

Critical reception

In Rolling Stone, David Browne wrote, "... Garcia spent several years immersed in bluegrass and folk, playing in a succession of Palo Alto-area bands with oddball names like the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers. To date, only a small portion of the recordings he made with those combos has been released, making the multi-disc Before the Dead the deepest – and most educational – dive yet into Garcia's pre-Dead musical life. Right up to his death, Garcia would periodically revisit his bluegrass roots, from the wonderful but short-lived Old & In the Way to albums he made with mandolinist David Grisman. But Before the Dead reveals, in more detail than ever before, when and how that appetite began and why numbers like "Deep Elem Blues" and "Rosa Lee McFall", both heard here, made their way into the Dead's repertoire."
In DownBeat, Jesse Jarnow said, "An illuminating new box set, Before the Dead... shines light on Garcia's earliest music – recordings between 1961 and 1964 – most often remembered as his "bluegrass period" for his virtuosic banjo playing. But the four-CD/five-LP collection reveals a far richer picture.... No casual player, the nearly four hours of music uncover a musician filled with ambition and energy. By a year after the earliest recording, Garcia had turned to banjo. That, too, became a progression, from the ghostly frailings of the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers, recorded in June 1962, to the shredding Bill Keith style he'd accentuated by his time with the Black Mountain Boys in 1964. The sequence resulted in Garcia's instantly recognizable electric guitar playing with the Dead, each crystalline, articulated note picked with a banjoist’s precision."
In Glide Magazine, Doug Collette wrote, "In roughly three and half hours of live and studio recordings, captured in various ways at a variety of locales between 1961 and 1964, Before the Dead documents the late Jerry Garcia's formative years as a musician. Overflowing with meticulous attention to detail in sound, text and graphics, this 4-CD/5-LP box set reveals how this iconic musician nurtured those attributes that eventually stood him in such good stead as titular leader of the Grateful Dead... If Before the Dead proves anything, it is that this man's passion for playing, as well as his insatiable curiosity about a diversity of styles, traditional and otherwise, was well-established long before the coalescence of the Grateful Dead."

Track listing

Disc 1
  1. "Santy Anno" – 2:15
  2. "I Got a Home in That Rock" – 1:46
  3. "Oh, Mary Don't You Weep" – 3:31
  4. "All My Trials" – 4:01
  5. "I Was Born Ten Thousand Years Ago" – 2:12
  6. "Blow the Candles Out" – 2:02
  7. "Rake and a Rambling Boy" – 1:31
  8. "Trouble in Mind" – 3:10
  10. "Brown's Ferry Blues" – 2:51
  11. "Jesse James" – 4:13
  13. "Down in the Willow Garden" – 1:48
  14. "Long Lonesome Road" – 2:39
  15. "Railroad Bill" – 3:17
  16. "The Wagoner's Lad" – 3:00
  17. "Katie Cruel" – 3:40
Disc 2
  1. "Cannonball Blues" – 3:02
  2. "Little Birdie – 3:17
  3. "Sally Goodin" – 2:06
  4. "Hold That Woodpile Down" – 3:32
  5. "Legend of the Johnson Boys" – 3:10
  6. "Shady Grove" – 2:49
  7. "Sweet Sunny South" – 3:13
  8. "Man of Constant Sorrow" – 2:26
  10. Band introductions – 1:12
  11. "Roving Gambler" – 3:46
  12. "Ground Speed" – 1:29
  13. "Pig in a Pen" – 2:15
  14. "Standing in the Need of a Prayer" – 2:09
  15. "Flint Hill Special" – 2:00
  16. "Nine Pound Hammer" – 2:42
  17. "Handsome Molly" – 2:19
  18. "Clinch Mountain Backstep" – 1:18
  19. "Think of What You've Done" – 2:41
  20. "Cripple Creek" – 1:24
  21. "All the Good Times Have Past and Gone" – 3:07
  22. "Billy Grimes, the Rover" – 2:42
  23. "Paddy on the Turnpike" – 1:38
  24. "Run Mountain" – 4:11
  25. "Sugar Baby" – 3:52
  26. "Sitting on Top of the World" – 3:37
Disc 3
  1. "Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms" – 3:25
  2. "Jerry's Breakdown" – 2:08
  3. "Standing in the Need of Prayer" – 2:39
  4. "Mule Skinner Blues" – 3:23
  5. "Saturday Night Shuffle" – 2:05
  6. "Pike County Breakdown" – 1:44
  7. "My Little Sparrow" – 3:25
  8. "We Shall Not Be Moved" – 2:41
  10. "Deep Elem Blues" – 3:17
  11. "Will the Weaver" – 3:14
  12. "I Truly Understand" – 3:20
  13. "Long Black Veil" – 4:28
  14. "The Man That Wrote That Home Sweet Home Never Was a Married Man" – 3:38
  15. "Foggy Mountain Top" – 3:13
Disc 4
  1. "Barefoot Nellie" – 3:41
  2. "She's More to Be Pitied" – 3:26
  3. "Noah's Breakdown" – 2:18
  4. "Who Will Sing for Me?" – 2:07
  6. "Salt Creek" – 2:19
  7. "Jody's Hornpipe" – 1:51
  8. "Rosa Lee McFall" – 2:31
  9. "John Hardy" – 1:26
  11. "Katie Kline" – 3:17
  12. "Walkin' the Dog" – 2:10
  13. "Paddy on the Turnpike" – 3:12
  14. "Love and Wealth" – 2:19
  15. "Sourwood Mountain" – 0:45
  16. "If I Lose" – 2:16
  17. "Homestead on the Farm" – 2:20
  18. "Stony Creek" – 2:24
  19. "Salty Dog Blues" – 2:28
  20. "Love Please Come Home" – 2:21
  21. "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" – 2:27
  22. "Darlin' Allalee" – 2:08
  23. "In the Pines" – 3:25
  24. "Raw Hide" – 2:32
  25. "Black Mountain Rag" – 2:12
  26. "True Life Blues" – 2:21
  27. Medley: "Devil's Dream" / "Sailor's Hornpipe" – 1:45
  29. "Drink Up and Go Home" – 3:05
  31. "These Men of God" – 3:14
  32. "Roll On Buddy" – 2:11
  33. "Goodbye Old Pal" – 1:50
  34. "Back Up and Push" – 1:10

    Personnel

Musicians

Bob and Jerry
Jerry Garcia, Marshall Leicester, and Robert Hunter
Jerry Garcia and unknown musician
Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers
Hart Valley Drifters
The Wildwood Boys
Jerry and Sara
Black Mountain Boys
Black Mountain Boys
Black Mountain Boys
Asphalt Jungle Mountain Boys