“Nobody plays with the whole fullness”: The one guitarist Jerry Garcia said nobody came close to
As the leader of one of the greatest jam bands to have ever walked the earth, Jerry Garcia rightfully earned his reputation as a fine improviser when it came to playing the guitar. While the Grateful Dead arguably played in a different style from most other improvisational musicians, flitting between psychedelic and country rock, their musical dexterity is arguably what has drawn legions of devoted fans to their music, and for them, Garcia is their God.
Plenty of other rock guitarists of his generation were also exceptional improvisers, but chose not to show this off to the same degree as Garcia did. The likes of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page were brought up on blues and jazz music. They were more than capable of moving around the fretboard in a remarkable, off-the-cuff fashion. Still, when it came to incorporating it into the output and performances of their respective bands, neither of them did it to quite the same degree as Garcia, who built large amounts of the Dead’s identity around it.
Garcia loved plenty of blues artists and formed a large part of his playing style around the works of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, two of his earliest influences. However, despite the fact that large amounts of this rubbed off on the work of the Grateful Dead, Garcia’s adoration of jazz was arguably an even stronger force in guiding him towards becoming an accomplished improviser, and plenty of jazz musicians even commended Garcia on his abilities.
He was a noted fan of Miles Davis, who mutually appreciated his love and wealth of knowledge on the genre, but he was also known to have been a fan of the likes of Bill Evans and Ornette Coleman, the latter of whom he collaborated with on the 1988 album, Virgin Beauty. This deep appreciation for jazz may not have made him a typical ‘jazz guitarist’, but certainly gave him the foundations he needed to develop a playing style that was heavily informed by it.
However, there was one jazz guitarist whose brilliance he couldn’t help but admire, and who he noted as having a style and resilience that was nothing short of an inspiration to him and other guitarists. Having discovered the work of Django Reinhardt at a young age, he was instantly captivated by the Belgian’s intricate fingerwork, and began to try modelling aspects of his work on what he was hearing – to no avail, as far as he was concerned.
“Even today, nobody has really come to the state that he was playing at,” Garcia previously stated. “As good as players are, they haven’t gotten to where he is. There’s a lot of guys that play fast and a lot of guys that play clean, and the guitar has come a long way as far as speed and clarity go, but nobody plays with the whole fullness of expression that Django has.”
Not only was his playing style an inspiration, but Garcia also shared a disadvantage similar to Reinhardt’s as a guitarist. Reinhardt was known for having lost the use of three of his fingers on his left (fretting) hand in a house fire, yet he still managed to overcome this loss of appendages and develop a unique style. Having lost the middle finger on his right (strumming) hand in a woodcutting accident as a child, Garcia couldn’t help but be inspired by this exceptional musician who had fewer fingers than one would typically expect – and he never let it get in his way.
