Enter Keith Godchaux

Rich Mahan (0:05)

The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, the official podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarnow, exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for The Committed And The Curious.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. This is the first episode of our fourth season, and we are beyond thrilled with the way things are shaping up. We've got some heaters planned we know you'll really dig. Through season four, you can get new episodes of The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast right here every other week. Visit us at our website, dead.net/deadcast, and check out the extra materials we have for you to explore for this episode. Also at dead.net/deadcast are all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons one, two and three, and you can link from there to any and all of the podcasting platforms available so you can listen where you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing, hitting that like button, and if you're up to the task, leave us a review. Thank you very much.

Well, there is a new Grateful Dead Live archival release on the horizon entitled Listen To The River, St. Louis 717273 This set includes seven previously unreleased concerts from St. Louis recorded on December 9th and 10th, 1971 at the Fox Theater, October 17th, 18th and 19th, 1972 at the Fox Theater and October 29th and 30th, 1973 at the Keele Auditorium. Production of the 20 CD set is limited to 13,000 individually numbered copies and will be available in its entirety as a digital download exclusively at dead.net in Apple Lossless and FLAC 19224

dead.net will also exclusively release Light Into Ashes, Fox Theater, St. Louis, Missouri 101872 as a double LP on 180 gram custom vinyl. Limited to 7200 copies, the set focuses on an exceptional hour plus jam plucked from The Grateful Dead's October 18th, 1972 show at the Fox. And the breakout show from this set is Fox Theater St. Louis 121071 and will be available as a three CD set and a limited edition five LP set on 180 gram vinyl. This is an exceptional collection of music that highlights the oh so important transitional period of the band from the end of the Pigpen era through the establishment of Keith Godchaux as the band's new pianist and ultimately the integration of vocalist Donna Godchaux as a full fledged band member. All of these configurations of Listen To The River St. Louis 717273 are set for release on October 1st and pre-orders are open now at dead.net.

Speaking of Keith Godchaux, this is the 50th anniversary of his joining the band and the manner in which that happened is just as unique as the keyboard contributions he made to the Grateful Dead's music. If you have ever wanted to know about Keith's background both personally and musically, this is the episode for you. Brian Godchaux, Keith's brother, joins us for an in-depth look at Keith's upbringing and we have insightful contributions from drummer Greg Anton, Donna Godchaux-McKay, Sandy Rothman and Jerry Garcia. Time to hand it off to Jesse Jarnow.

Jesse Jarnow (3:57)

Back in 2018, before the world took a few different courses, Rich and I visited Brian Godchaux, younger brother of late Grateful Dead keyboardist Keith Godchaux.

One of the first things we learned before the microphones were even set up was a handy mnemonic to remember the correct pronunciation of their last name. We made Brian repeat it for us more recently.

Brian Godchaux (4:17)

Godchaux, it rhymes with Godchaux, not dog chow.

Jesse Jarnow (4:22)

50 years ago this September, Jerry Garcia was approached by a couple he'd never met before at a San Francisco bar while he was playing with Merle Saunders. They informed him that this was Keith Godchaux and he was The Grateful Dead's new piano player. What Donna Jean and Keith Godchaux didn't know was that Ron McKernan, otherwise known as Pigpen, The Grateful Dead's organist and sometimes frontman since 1965, had suddenly entered Novato General Hospital with a perforated ulcer and hepatitis. He'd be unable to tour that fall. Every single bit of this story is totally unlikely and yet it both seems like it's what really happened and becomes even more wondrous in the telling. But it becomes even more unlikely the more you know about Keith Godchaux.

When the cameras show Keith Godchaux in various Grateful Dead concert films from his tenure between 1971 and 1979, which isn't very often, it's still pretty easy to miss Keith. He's just like playing piano. The story of how it was that he came to be in The Grateful Dead is, of course, extraordinary and still hard to believe even a half century later. Even more extraordinary was his musicality, as if he was born to play with the dead. And in fact, that's more or less how everybody involved treated the sudden, unexpected arrival of Keith Godchaux.