Listen to the Grateful Dead play a rare version of ‘Katie Mae’ in 1970
Ron McKernan was an unlikely rock star. The man forever known as Pigpen was the Grateful Dead’s original frontman, blasting out blues standards and R&B classics while his eclectic group of bluegrass, folk, and classical musicians cranked out a mutated version of rock and roll behind him. To most original fans and onlookers, the Grateful Dead was Pigpen’s band, playing the music favoured by the husky leather-clad singer and harmonica player.
“Pigpen was the musician in the Grateful Dead. When I first met the Grateful Dead, it was Pigpen and the boys,” Mickey Hart observed. “He was the blues: he lived it, and he believed it, and he got caught in that web, and he couldn’t break out. And it killed him… He was just living the blues life: singing’ the blues and drinkin’ whiskey. That’s what all blues guys did.”
As psychedelia and LSD began to take over the San Francisco music scene, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh started to exert greater influence over the Dead’s music. Pigpen found a niche on the plastic organ, eventually graduating to the rich tones of the Hammond B3. Even though his original role in the band had diminished, Pigpen was still key to the band’s showstopping moments. The latter included bringing in one of the band’s first jam vehicles (Wilson Pickett’s ‘In the Midnight Hour’) and raving up crowds with killer versions of Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s ‘Turn on Your Love Light’.
During ‘Love Light’, Pigpen’s reputation as a frontman hit its peak. Stomping around the stage as the Dead vamped behind him, Pig would often call for stops, breaks, and increased volume, dictating the direction of the band as they explored the song’s sonic possibilities. After the band had cycled through the standard verses and choruses, it was up to Pigpen to launch one of his signature raps. He often talked directly to the audience, telling them to get their hands out of their pockets to get together with some of the single women in the audience.
“Out in front of the crowd, he could work the band, and he’d really get the audience going,” Garcia remembered about Pigpen. “He always had more nerve than I could believe. He’d get the audience on his side, and he’d pick somebody out (like a heckler) and get on them… He was the guy who really sold the band, not me or Weir. Pigpen is what made the band work.”
Offstage, Pigpen was the complete opposite of his aggressive cowboy persona. Shy, reserved, and exceedingly kind, Pigpen hated psychedelic drugs and wasn’t happy with the band’s shift in musical style. The group frequently brought in ringers, including Tom Constanten and Ned Lagin, to take over keyboard duties, often relegating Pigpen to percussion. Pigpen never complained, not even when he and Bob Weir were briefly fired from the group in 1968 for their lack of musical progression. Pigpen eventually got his head around the Hammond B3, and when the Dead began incorporating folk and blues back into their sound in 1970, Pigpen once again found his place within the band.
While he was best known for bluesy rave-ups and high-energy call-outs in ‘Love Light’, Pigpen didn’t actually seem to enjoy being the band’s frontman all that much. “He also had great stage presence. The ironic thing was that he hated it – it really meant nothing to him; it wasn’t what he liked,” Garcia added. “We had to browbeat him into being a performer. His best performances were one-on-one, sitting in a room with an acoustic guitar. That’s where he was really at home and at his best.”
“Never was Pigpen more at home than with a bottle of wine and a guitar, at home or at some party, improvising epic lues rant lyrics, playing Lightnin’ Hopkins songs, and doing Lord Buckley routines,” Phil Lesh concurred. “For him, joining the Mother McCree’s jug band with Bob and Jerry was just a small step away from what he did anyway. Garcia told me it was Pigpen’s idea to turn Mother McCree’s into an electric blues band. When the band turned into the Grateful Dead, Pig became our keel, our roots, our fundamental tone. Pig was the perfect frontman for the Dead: intense, commanding, comforting, but I don’t think he enjoyed doing that quite as much as sitting on a couch with a guitar and a jug.”
For most of his career, Pigpen never got the right opportunity to channel that intimate bluesman on stage. But when the Dead began performing acoustic sets during their live shows in early 1970, there was suddenly room for Pigpen to sit at the front of the stage and play guitar for the first time. Pig often skipped out on the band’s acoustic sets, but occasionally, the other band members were able to convince Pigpen to take over.
At the friendly confines of the Fillmore East, Bill Graham’s home away from home in New York City, Pigpen felt comfortable enough to get intimate. During their legendary shows at the venue in February of 1970, the acoustic sets featured the band’s latest material rubbing elbows with classic cuts from their live past. Exactly a week before their Fillmore East shows, the Dead cut the version of ‘Uncle John’s Band’ that would appear on Workingman’s Dead. Since it was fresh in their minds, it’s no surprise that ‘Uncle John’s Band’ found its way into the acoustic sets for both the February 13th and 14th late shows.
But immediately following those performances came a surprise. Uncharacteristically, Pigpen stepped out from behind his organ, grabbed Garcia’s acoustic guitar, and thumbed out the delicate tones of Lightin’ Hopkins’ ‘Katie Mae’. It was a side that you would normally only see if you had been at Pigpen’s house late at night – pure blues, sung without accompaniment or additional instrumentation. It was the purest distillation of Pigpen that was possible, and the directness of the performance hypnotised audiences.
As the Dead found a new place for Pigpen’s unique talents, his health began to take a turn for the worst. Years of alcoholism began to affect his organs, and a battle with an unrelated autoimmune disease put Pigpen in the hospital frequently. Midway through 1971, another hospital visit required Pigpen to stay off the road. New piano player Keith Godchaux was brought in, and when Pigpen returned, the pair briefly sparked a two-keyboard renaissance throughout the Europe ’72 tour. Unfortunately, the band’s date at the Lyceum in London would also be Pigpen’s final concert with the Grateful Dead.
Hiding away in his house, Pigpen stepped away from the Dead after Europe, cutting off almost all of his professional and personal contacts. The band moved ahead without him, although it remains up for debate whether the group had abandoned him or whether they were simply waiting for his health to recover. Judging by the large number of new songs that Pigpen had debuted in 1972, including songs like ‘Chinatown Shuffle’, ‘Mr. Charlie’, and ‘The Stranger (Two Souls in Communion)’, and the responses that the members would tell the audience when they asked for Pig, it seemed like the Dead were fully expecting Pigpen to return once he was able.
That never happened. In early March of 1973, Pigpen died of a gastrointestinal haemorrhage; he was just 27 years old. At the time, the band’s soundman and notorious LSD supplier, Owsley ‘Bear’ Stanley, was assembling a live album featuring material from the band’s Fillmore East run in February of 1970. Bear transformed the album, History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear’s Choice), into a tribute to Pigpen, featuring performances of Pigpen classics like ‘Smokestack Lighting’ and ‘Hard to Handle’. The album kicks off with Pig’s version of ‘Katie Mae’, one of only 12 live performances that Pigpen ever did with the Grateful Dead.
Check out the version of ‘Katie Mae’ from Bear’s Choice down below.
