The Adventures of Pigpen, part 2

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season seven of The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. I'm your co-host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. This episode is the second in a two-part series on Ron Pigpen McKernan, as we commemorate the life of the original Grateful Dead frontman on the 50th anniversary of his passing.

Head on over to dead.net/deadcast and check out all of our past episodes, including complete seasons one through six. And you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform, so you can listen how you like to listen. Please help this podcast. Subscribe, hit that like button, and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you very much, very kind of you. Have you checked out the transcripts we now have available for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes? Well, head over to dead.net/deadcastdashindex and click the transcript link on the episode you want to explore, including the recently uploaded season six transcripts.

Timing is everything, and as we salute Pigpen in this episode, it's only appropriate there be some music to come along with us on this trip. Announcing history of the Grateful Dead Volume One Bear's Choice 50th Anniversary Remaster. This is the original album newly remastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer David Glasser using Plangent processes from the original analog two-track tapes recorded live by Owsley Bear Stanley at the famed Fillmore East on February 13th and 14th, 1970 There's two versions, a black 180-gram vinyl edition and a limited edition custom vinyl version available exclusively at dead.net. You can pre-order any and all of the Bear's Choice 50th Anniversary Remaster releases and merch over at dead.net. Thanks to everyone who's left their stories over at stories.dead.net. We're now asking you to share your stories of serendipity, miracles, and the most unbelievable, craziest stories ever told. Share those stories over at stories.dead.net and you just may hear yourself on the Deadcast.

Today's episode continues our deep dive into the life of Ron Pigpen McKernan. Thanks in great part to the generosity of the McKernan family and Jim Sullivan, who has taken great care to preserve Pigpen's archive and many priceless McKernan family keepsakes. Welcome back to The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. Here's Jesse Jarnow.

Jesse Jarnow (3:29)

That was Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions performing at the top of the tangent in Palo Alto, California in the summer of 1964, doing She's On The Road Again, originally recorded by the Memphis Jug Band. Ron Pigpen McKernan is playing harmonica and singing backup there, Jerry Garcia on lead vocal.

Sometime later in 1964, or maybe early in 1965, it was Pigpen who suggested that the members of the Jug Band grab some electric instruments off the wall at Dana Morgan Music and try playing some rock and roll.

And that was an early Grateful Dead version of She's On The Road Again, probably from May of 1966 That's the band we'll be talking about today, the Palo Alto folk and blues freaks who transformed into psychedelic rock heroes. Before we get going, we wanted to shout out Blair Jackson and Reagan McMahon's tremendous Pigpen oral history from the final issue of The Golden Road in 1993 It was an enormous help as a jumping off point for researching Pigpen's life. We've posted a link at dead.net/deadcast. In our last episode, we went pretty deep into the McKernan family archives. We'll be doing a little bit more of that today. One document there is a scrap of paper that seems to be a song list in Ron McKernan's handwriting. Please welcome back Sully, the guide and guardian of the Pigpen archives.

Jim Sullivan (5:15)

Too much monkey business, you know, who do you love? I'm a man, you know, walking the dog. Yeah, a lot of Chuck Berry, you know, follow the sun, you know, some beetles in there, you know. And it had to be, you know, right around that time. Can't buy me love.

There was really no provenance, but it's obviously really early. I mean, you can tell it's all folded up and you just hold it up, stuck it in his pocket. And then when he got home, he probably just shoved it in a drawer.

So where and when lost the time?

Rock Scully (5:54)

I don't know.

Jesse Jarnow (5:55)

We poked into it a little more in our Operator episode in 2020

As musicians around the local folk clubs, the former jug band was already at least a little popular. Even before they'd played their first show, the band had a built-in fan base from the social scene they'd found around folk music, which included some places to practice. This is from David Ganz's 1992 interview with Bob Matthews, Sue Swanson and Connie Bonner.