The three musicians who inspired Jerry Garcia’s improvisation
There are a number of words available to describe the career of Jerry Garcia. As the frontman and principal songwriter for the Grateful Dead, he can be considered one of the finest creators of rock and roll history. As a man with a highly-coveted style on the six-string, he might be regarded as one of his generation’s finest guitarists. Garcia and the band were also noteworthy for their unique on-stage performances that would see thousands of Deadheads follow the group across the country. However, the easily attributed moniker is that of an improvisational master.
Across his work in the studio, on stage or in his general life, Garcia was a spontaneous creative genius, often jumping out of the confines of one note to produce something wholly different. Leaping from one key to another, he shifted songs on stage and created one-time-only experiences for those in the audience, with their jam sessions often shrinking and swelling for hours on end. Garcia was a one-off, but he was inspired by three great musicians.
During a conversation with Elvis Costello, the punk shared his deep admiration for Garcia and his talent for refusing to conform to any kind of structure. During a conversation between the pair in 1991, Costello opened up about some of his favourite guitarists and found a common connection when discussing how both Garcia and Don Rich uniquely played solos. “I got that from him, Garcia admits before sharing the spotlight with another. “Roy Nichols, he’s another one. Both of them are important influences for me. I heard them both live lots of times. And Don Rich’s attitude was always so cool.”
As the gleaming heart of the country rock sub-genre that emerged in Bakersfield, Don Rich would twang in harmony with Buck Owens’ incredible vocals to make beautiful music. Likewise, Roy Nichols was a pioneering guitarist in the country rock realm, becoming one of the pivotal figures in the scene and an inspiration for countless six-string maestros.
However, perhaps the most important musician for Garcia’s unique style was actually a fiddler. “Well, I get my improvisational approach from Scotty Stoneman, the fiddle player, who is the guy who first set me on fire. Where I just stood there and don’t even remember breathing.”
Scotty Stoneman, the Appalachian fiddle virtuoso whose playing was as wild and untamed as the rugged hills of his Virginia homeland. He remains a towering yet underappreciated figure in the annals of American roots music. Garcia was clearly aware of his work; however, he shared with Costello that “he played with the Stoneman family for years; he was just an incredible fiddler”.
Adding: “He grew up in bars, and he was a total alcoholic wreck by the time I heard him, in his early 30s, playing with the Kentucky Colonels — who used to have Clarence White and Roland White.”
Garcia was aware of his frenzied playing and wild man persona when he made his way to an LA club to hear him play for the first time: “They did this medium-tempo fiddle tune, like ‘8th of January,’ and it’s going along, and pretty soon Scotty starts taking these longer and longer phrases — ten bars, 14 bars, 17 bars — and the guys in the band are just watching him. They’re barely playing, going ding-ding-ding, while he’s burning. The place was transfixed. They played this tune for like 20 minutes, which is unheard of in bluegrass.”
For the continuously immersive player like Garcia was, the fiddler possessed something as close to lightning in a bottle as he had ever witnessed. Keen to learn his secret, Garcia approached the musician: “I’d never heard anything like it. I asked him later, ‘How do you do that?’ And he said, ‘Man, I just play ‘lonesome.'”
Stoneman is a figure largely forgotten by mainstream music. His position in the history of American music is one of tragedy, as Garcia confirms: “He probably died of drinking hair tonic; he was one of those guys. He grew up in bars, and when you’re 14 or 15, the first thing you do in bars is drink. So playing in those razor-totin’ bluegrass bars and getting involved in that whole country and western soap opera life took him away, and he died pretty early. But his playing on the records he appears on — mostly anonymously — is this incredible blaze.”
While Garcia’s place in history is more firmly assured, there are many similarities between the three men. Each one represented a willingness to push beyond the boundaries in front of them and evolve their art towards something entirely new. It would inspire Garcia’s work until his final days.
