Workingman's Dead

When I was in college, and discussion of rock music was on the level of politics or religion, there wasn't a more polarizing group than The Grateful Dead. On Long Island, where I went to school, they were extremely popular. I took a course on rock music, and the instructor took a poll of students, asking them to list their favorite bands. After the Beatles and the Stones came the Dead.

My opinion of the Dead has been largely ambivalent. I like some of their songs, but I don't think I would enjoy their concerts, which of course is where their greatest fame came, as legions of "Deadheads" spent their youth following them from venue to venue, and tapes of their shows were collected. It has always been assumed that to enjoy the Dead's live shows one must be in a drugged state, as their songs were long and meandering.

Workingman's Dead, their fourth album, released fifty years ago this summer, saw a departure in their style. Prior, their work was psychedelic, but this record was a throwback to the folk-rock they started with. A song like "Cumberland Blues" sounds as if it could have been written in the 1930s. Jerry Garcia had become of an enthusiast of the steel guitar, which makes any song sound like country, and I wasn't surprised to read that the Dead had been spending a lot of time with Crosby, Stills, and Nash (Garcia played steel guitar on their hit, "Teach Your Children") as Workingman's Dead has the flavor of the Laurel Canyon sound that CSN exemplified.

The album begins and ends with two of their most famous songs. "Uncle John's Band" kicks things off, and has rich harmonies and an almost spiritual sound, as if heard at a revival meeting down by a river. The lyrics, by Robert Hunter (all the songs on the album were written by him and Garcia) are cryptic, but something about them suggests transcendence;

"It's the same story the crow told me; it's the only one he knows.
Like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go.
Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait,
Wo, oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?"

The album closes with "Casey Jones," a classic rock staple using the name of a train engineer involved in a wreck. He was a real person that inspired an old folk song, but the Dead modernized it a bit by suggesting what Jones' problem was:

"Driving that train
High on cocaine
Casey Jones you'd better
Watch your speed."

In contrast to later albums, where Bob Weir would have more lead vocals, almost all the songs are sung by Garcia (Weir is a better singer--one of my favorite vocal performances is his rendition of "Estimated Prophet" on Terrapin Station). Garcia's voice has always seemed to me fragile, a reedy sound that sounds as if it could break at any time. I think this is best heard on "Dire Wolf," in which he plaintively asks, repeatedly, "Please don't murder me."

The Grateful Dead are now one of the signature bands of the hippie movement, associated with tie-dye and wizard bongs. But Workingman's Dead is less Haight-Ashbury than Bakersfield.