Credit: Alamy

The song that connects Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Grateful Dead

Fri 18 November 2022 16:00, UK

Folk music works in mysterious ways. Really, any song can be considered a folk song if it gets passed through different generations. Jack White isn’t blowing his own horn when he says that ‘Seven Nation Army’ has become a folk song: millions of people around the world (largely in soccer stadiums) have chanted along to the song without ever having any idea who The White Stripes – or White himself – actually are.

That’s the beauty of music – anyone can reshape, redefine, and restore a song, no matter how old it is or how far removed from its origins it becomes. So when Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Grateful Dead all played variations of the same song, none of them necessarily had to know that it was a Scottish ballad from before the 20th century.

‘The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie’ is a classic folk song in the sense that no one seems to know exactly when it was written or who wrote the original. With every new performance came a slight alteration to the track’s lyrics, meter, and meaning. By the time it had reached America, ‘The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie’ had largely shed its Scottish origins and was retooled as a Civil War ode. Along the way, “Fyvie” gradually shifted to the non-existent “Fennario”, while the central character also changed from “Bonnie” to “Peggy”.

By the early 1960s, the song was one of many folk songs that circulated among the Greenwich Village players. It was there that a young Bob Dylan heard the song for the first time. It was popular enough that Dylan and his cohort Joan Baez both recorded versions, with Dylan’s appearing on his self-titled debut in 1962. Baez’s version was credited as ‘Fennario’, but Dylan decided to title his version ‘Pretty Peggy-O’.

It’s likely through this association that Paul Simon first heard the track as well. Simon & Garfunkel recorded their own version for their 1964 debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., showing just how thoroughly the song had infiltrated the New York folk scene. It was Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. that the song found its truncated familiar name, ‘Peggy-O’.

Knowing his fascination with Dylan, it would stand to reason that Jerry Garcia could have been exposed to ‘Peggy-O’ through Dylan’s debut. However, as a prominent member of the Palo Alto folk scene, it seems just as likely that someone in his group of friends taught him the song. The Grateful Dead first picked up ‘Peggy-O’ in 1973, and although appearances of the song were scattered, it was played at least a handful of times every year until Garcia’s death in 1995.

Garcia himself even recorded the song for his 1982 solo album Run for the Roses, although it didn’t make the final tracklisting. There, he titled it ‘Fenarrio’, likely lending credence to the notion that Garcia learned it outside of Dylan’s influence. Dylan himself began playing ‘Pretty Peggy-O’ again after touring with the Dead in the summer of 1987, dropping his previous arrangement of the track and adapting the song to the Grateful Dead arrangement.

Check out versions of ‘Peggy-O’ from Dylan, Baez, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Dead down below.