Workingman’s Dead 50, Episode 1: Uncle John’s Band

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Yes, friends, America's hardest-working rock band now presents Workingman's Dead, an album of country-flavored tunes by the Grateful Dead, an album different from anything they've ever done before.

Workingman's Dead, the newest from Jerry, Phil, Bob, Bill, Mickey and Pig-Pans, ready now on Warner Brothers, albums and tapes. Stealing.

SPEAKER_3 (0:23)

Come here, Uncle John's Band, by the riverside. Got some things to talk about, here beside the rising sun.

Rich Mahan (0:42)

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, this is The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. We are so excited to present this podcast to you. It's been in the works for what seems like forever, and here we are, Episode 1, Finally In Your Earbuds. Welcome. We're gonna dive into Workingman's Dead, the classic Grateful Dead album originally released on June 14th, 1970, now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager, David Lemieux.

David Lemieux (1:20)

Workingman's Dead, I can honestly say that I could listen to that hundreds and hundreds of times. It's one of the first albums that 35 years ago when I was collecting individual Grateful Dead records, as I was also getting into tape trading, it was one of the albums, it was the first one or two I got. To me, it's a flawless album.

Rich Mahan (1:36)

Sirius XM, Tales From The Golden Road host, Gary Lambert.

Gary Lambert (1:40)

They played really well live in the studio. They may have overdubbed vocals or little guitar fills and things like that, but it really has an organic and live feel to it.

Rich Mahan (1:50)

Singer-songwriter and Robert Hunter co-writer, Jim Lauderdale.

Jim Lauderdale (1:54)

That album, Workingman's Dead, I look at that and American Beauty as almost like a double album.

I heard those and then just got totally blown away with Workingman's Dead. I mean, this record is one of those perfect records to me.

Rich Mahan (2:17)

NBA champion Bill Walton.

Bill Walton (2:19)

What could be better than the 50th anniversary of Workingman's Dead? Start it up, let's go. It's a high time we got to this.

Rich Mahan (2:33)

I'm sure many of you have discovered the bounty that is Angel's Share by now. For those of you who haven't uncovered this buried treasure, Angel's Share is over two and a half hours of unreleased Workingman's Dead session recordings consisting of outtakes from every song on the album.

These recordings give a unique fly on the wall perspective that will shed all kinds of kaleidoscopic light on these recordings for you, and they are currently available via your favorite streaming platform. We're gonna dedicate a podcast episode to each of the eight songs on Workingman's Dead, taking them in order, which of course means kicking things off with the classic Uncle John's Band. And with that, I'm gonna hand it off to our resident Grateful Dead historian, author Jesse Jarnow, for a deep dive into side one, track one, on Workingman's Dead.

Jesse Jarnow (3:23)

Let's start with a word from Jerry Garcia. From a 1988 interview conducted by Joe Smith, the beloved Warner Brothers executive who signed the Grateful Dead to the label.

This interview is now part of the Library of Congress' collection.

Jerry Garcia (3:36)

We spent so much time and so much money working on our second two records, and then we didn't want to go through that experience again, definitely, so I thought, hey, what I'm gonna do is write some songs that are so fucking simple, man, and so easy for everybody to understand that we'll do them in the studio in about a minute, you know? It'll take no time, it will cost us hardly anything, and we may be able to get out of this endless thing of spending more than we make, you know? On records, it seemed crazy to me. So that's kind of the idea behind Workingman's Dead, although really, and also the next record, Workingman's Dead, American Beauty, it's almost kind of one record, really.

And that worked out beautifully, it really did, it worked out great.

Jesse Jarnow (4:22)

Workingman's Dead is often called a return to the basics or some such, usually in comparison with the screaming psychedelic peaks and Martian valleys of the Dead's two albums from the year before, Live Dead and Oxum Oxoa.

Rich Mahan (4:34)

Gary Lambert.

Gary Lambert (4:35)

They started introducing some of those country songs in early or mid-1969. Jerry Garcia trotted out a pedal steel guitar on stage with the Grateful Dead, and they were doing old country standards like the Green Green Grass of Home and Silver Threads and Golden Needles. Now, if you were used to the Grateful Dead being just the most anarchic, psychedelic, weird-sounding band in the world, that could be a shock to the system even in 1969