Jerry Garcia’s favourite folk albums: “If it’s good I’ll listen to it”
It’s tempting to pivot to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, or The Doors when assessing the 1960s counterculture’s most instrumental figures. Yet truly living and breathing the era’s idyll was bluesy-psych improv outfit Grateful Dead, scoring San Francisco’s hippy bohemia along with Jefferson Airplane with a voluminous list of free gigs and regular appearances at the famous Acid Test parties organised by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.
At the helm was guitar maestro and principal songwriter Jerry Garcia. Aside from fronting a band boasting one of the most dedicated fanbases in rock, Garcia was also a committed music aficionado keenly tuned in to the artists of the day right up until his death in 1995—albeit not without critique aimed at artists across Van Halen, The Weather Report, and the entire hip hop community.
Allegedly boasting a record collection into the thousands, Garcia was a confident authority and source of encyclopedic knowledge on popular music: “Everything. Anything. If it’s good, I’ll listen to it, or if it’s around, I’ll listen to it. I listen to anything that turns me on. Or that somebody turns me on to”.
Like many artists of his generation, it was the East Coast that caught his attention at the dawn of the 1960s, drawn to the folk revivalism played out in Greenwich Village‘s various clubs and coffee houses providing an alternative to the pop and rock ‘n roll still dominating the charts.
First taking note of her collaborative Folksingers ‘Round Harvard Square recording debut with Bill Wood and Ted Alevizos, it was Joan Baez’s first solo effort that floored him with her distinctive finger-picking style. “…when Joan Baez’s first record came out I heard it, and I heard her finger-picking the guitar,” he once confessed. “I’d never heard anything like it before, so I got into that”.
Another budding songsmith from the New York folk scene was one Bob Dylan. Winning an army of fans with his solemn and prophetic acoustic numbers, a jump to electric rock in 1965 garnered a new rock-adjacent audience at the expense of the old folkies who turned their back on his plugged-in heresy for good. “I never used to like Bob Dylan until he came out with electric music,” Garcia revealed. “And I’m not sure why I like that more. I sure liked it a lot more. Boy, when Bringing It All Back Home came out. Yeah, lovely”.
The ensuing folk-rock exploded across the rest of the decade, offering an alternative to psychedelia and paving the way for the roots rock return as the 1970s arrived. Dylan’s backing group The Hawks supported his electric 1966 world tour and evolved into The Band, cutting a string of influential folk rock LPs that also touched on country, blues and a little R&B.
“I love ‘Life is a Carnival’ – that’s beautiful,” Garcia revealed when praising 1971’s Cahoots. “Shit, that’s great. All the stuff in there, all those great parts. The Dylan song (‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’) is great, too. I love that song. I’ll probably sing that with the barroom band. I like to do those kinda tunes”.
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