The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area amid the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. The founding members were Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums). Members of the Grateful Dead had played together in various San Francisco bands, including Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and the Warlocks. Lesh was the last member to join the Warlocks before they became the Grateful Dead; he replaced Dana Morgan Jr., who had played bass for a few gigs. Drummer Mickey Hart and non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter joined in 1967. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973, and Hart, who took time off from 1971 to 1974, the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history. The other official members of the band are Tom Constanten (keyboards; 1968–1970), John Perry Barlow (nonperforming lyricist; 1971–1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards; 1971–1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals; 1972–1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals; 1979–1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards, vocals; 1990–1995). Bruce Hornsby (accordion, piano, vocals) was a touring member from 1990 to 1992, as well as a guest with the band on occasion before and after the tours.
The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, "[Jerry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary ... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial". According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of Fictionary. In the Garcia biography, Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. The term "grateful dead" appears in folktales of a variety of cultures.
Live performances
The Grateful Dead toured constantly throughout their career, playing more than 2,300 concerts. They promoted a sense of community among their fans, who became known as "Deadheads", many of whom followed their tours for months or years on end. Around concert venues, an impromptu communal marketplace known as 'Shakedown Street' was created by Deadheads to serve as centers of activity where fans could buy and sell anything from grilled cheese sandwiches to home-made t-shirts and recordings of Grateful Dead concerts.
In their early career, the band also dedicated their time and talents to their community, the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, making available free food, lodging, music, and health care to all. It has been said that the band performed "more free concerts than any band in the history of music".
With the exception of 1975, when the band was on hiatus and played only four concerts together, the Grateful Dead performed many concerts every year, from their formation in April 1965, until July 9, 1995. Initially all their shows were in California, principally in the San Francisco Bay Area and in or near Los Angeles. They also performed, in 1965 and 1966, with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as the house band for the Acid Tests. They toured nationally starting in June 1967 (their first foray to New York), with a few detours to Canada, Europe and three nights at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt in 1978. They appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Festival Express train tour across Canada in 1970. They were scheduled to appear as the final act at the infamous Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969 after the Rolling Stones but withdrew after security concerns. "That's the way things went at Altamont—so badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play", staff at Rolling Stone magazine wrote in a detailed narrative on the event.
Their first UK performance was at the Hollywood Music Festival in 1970. Their largest concert audience came in 1973 when they played, along with the Allman Brothers Band and the Band, before an estimated 600,000 people at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen. They played to an estimated total of 25 million people, more than any other band, with audiences of up to 80,000 attending a single show. Many of these concerts were preserved in the band's tape vault, and several dozen have since been released on CD and as downloads. The Dead were known for the tremendous variation in their setlists from night to night—the list of songs documented to have been played by the band exceeds 500. The band has released four concert videos under the name View from the Vault.
In the 1990s, the Grateful Dead earned a total of $285 million in revenue from their concert tours, the second-highest during the 1990s, with the Rolling Stones earning the most. This figure is representative of tour revenue through 1995, as touring stopped after the death of Jerry Garcia. In a 1991 PBS documentary, segment host Buck Henry attended an August 1991 concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre and gleaned some information from some band members about the Grateful Dead phenomenon and its success. At the time, Jerry Garcia stated, "We didn't really invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead, you know what I mean? We were sort of standing in line, and uh, it's gone way past our expectations, way past, so it's, we've been going along with it to see what it's gonna do next." Furthermore, Mickey Hart stated, "This is one of the last places in America that you can really have this kind of fun, you know, considering the political climate and so forth." Hart also stated that "the transformative power of the Grateful Dead is really the essence of it; it's what it can do to your consciousness. We're more into transportation than we are into music, per se, I mean, the business of the Grateful Dead is transportation." One of the band's largest concerts took place just months before Garcia's death — at their outdoor show with Bob Dylan in Highgate, Vermont on June 15, 1995. The crowd was estimated to be over 90,000; overnight camping was allowed and about a third of the audience got in without having purchased a ticket.
Their numerous studio albums were generally collections of new songs that they had first played in concert. The band was also famous for its extended musical improvisations, having been described as having never played the same song the same way twice. Their concert sets often blended songs, one into the next, often for more than three songs at a time.
Tapes
Like several other bands during this time, the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to record their shows. For many years the tapers set up their microphones wherever they could, and the eventual forest of microphones became a problem for the sound crew. Eventually, this was solved by having a dedicated taping section located behind the soundboard, which required a special "tapers" ticket. The band allowed sharing of their shows, as long as no profits were made on the sale of the tapes.
Of the approximately 2,350 shows the Grateful Dead played, almost 2,200 were taped, and most of these are available online. The band began collecting and cataloging tapes early on and Dick Latvala was their keeper. "Dick's Picks" is named after Latvala. After his death in 1999, David Lemieux gradually took the post. Concert set lists from a subset of 1,590 Grateful Dead shows were used to perform a comparative analysis between how songs were played in concert and how they are listened online by Last.fm members. In their book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History, David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan identify the taper section as a crucial contributor to increasing the Grateful Dead's fan base.
After the death of Garcia in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as the Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and the Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company, Furthur, the Rhythm Devils, Phil Lesh and Friends, RatDog, and Billy & the Kids.
Mr. Charlie
Grateful Dead Lyrics
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Jubba jubba, wolly bully, looking high, looking low,
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie told me so.
I won't even take your life, won't even take a limb,
Just unload my shotgun, take a little skin.
Jubba jubba, wolly bully, looking high, looking low,
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie told me so.
Well you take my silver dollar, take those silver dimes,
Fix it up together in some alligator wine.
I can hear the drums, voodoo all night long,
Mister Charlie tells me I can't do nothing wrong.
Jubba jubba, wolly bully, looking high, looking low,
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie told me so.
Now Mister Charlie told me, won't you like to know,
Give you little warning before I let you go.
Jubba jubba, wolly bully, looking high, looking low,
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie told me so.
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie, Mister Charlie told me so.
The Grateful Dead's song "Mr. Charlie" is a tongue-in-cheek indictment of police brutality and institutional racism. The lyrics describe a white police officer, known as "Mr. Charlie," who is eager to use violence against black people at the slightest provocation. The opening line, "I take a little powder, take a little salt, put it in my shotgun, I go walkin'," suggests that Mr. Charlie is using drugs to enhance his aggression.
As the song continues, the lyrics become increasingly absurd, with references to "jubba jubba" and "wolly bully," which are presumably meant to satirize the nonsensical language of white supremacists. The repeated refrain, "gonna scare you up and shoot ya," is a chilling reminder of the violence that black people have experienced at the hands of police.
The final verse of the song is particularly biting, as Mr. Charlie warns the listener that he will shoot them unless they comply with his commands. The line, "Mister Charlie tells me I can't do nothing wrong," suggests a sense of impunity that many police officers feel when using force against marginalized communities.
Overall, "Mr. Charlie" is a powerful critique of police violence and racism, delivered with the Grateful Dead's trademark wit and musicality.
Line by Line Meaning
I take a little powder, take a little salt, put it in my shotgun, I go walkin'
I load up my shotgun with powder and salt as ammunition and go out for a walk.
Jubba jubba, wolly bully, looking high, looking low,
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie told me so.
A nonsensical phrase to build up the intimidating atmosphere of the song, implying that the singer is on a mission to find someone to shoot as per Mister Charlie's orders.
I won't even take your life, won't even take a limb,
Just unload my shotgun, take a little skin.
The singer claims that they won't aim to kill or dismember their target, but only aim to take off a little bit of their skin with their shotgun.
Well you take my silver dollar, take those silver dimes,
Fix it up together in some alligator wine.
The artist accuses someone of stealing their silver coins and hints that some sort of punishment will be delivered, possibly by brewing up some kind of mystical potion with alligator parts.
I can hear the drums, voodoo all night long,
Mister Charlie tells me I can't do nothing wrong.
The artist hears voodoo drumbeats, suggesting they may be under a spell or influenced by the mystical forces of voodoo, and Mister Charlie reassures them that they cannot do anything wrong.
Now Mister Charlie told me, won't you like to know,
Give you little warning before I let you go.
Mister Charlie has given the singer a final warning before releasing them to carry out their mission.
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie told me so.
Gonna scare you up and shoot ya, Mister Charlie, Mister Charlie told me so.
The chorus repeats the same message of the singer's mission to intimidate and shoot someone, which is allegedly ordered by Mister Charlie.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: ROBERT C. HUNTER, RONALD CHARLES MCKERNAN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Kevin O'Connor
This whole album is magic
TangoCharlie1020
Different level
Brian Aiello
Darn right!!!
Kevin O'Connor
@Sam Dodson shit, tru
Sam Dodson
tour*
Derek Dykes
Absolutely.
Sean Sklenar
Jerry's tone on that strat is so good man. sounds like he's between middle and bridge pickup. Pigpen sounds good too. Jerry really knows how to weave in and out of vocals without stepping on toes. so difficult to do
Jeremy Barriga
jerrys strat, a gift from g nash, was the best sounding guitar he EVER had , ive always felt that way.
Daniel Stein
@Bobby Dudley heck thats only 2 lol
Edward Time
Jooba jooba