Which band member sang the lead vocals on the most Grateful Dead songs?
The Grateful Dead are a rock and roll institution. Not bad for a band that spent the bulk of their time more stoned than a drywall in Scotland.
The band has an inimitable body of work spanning four different decades, a whole range of styles and sounds, 13 studio albums and eight live albums, each radically different from the last, and more lineup changes than you can shake a guitar at. They’ve played live over 2,300 times, and plenty of new incarnations keep the bus rolling on.
One thing that makes the Dead so unique is how comfortable different members of the group were at taking on lead vocal parts. While Jerry Garcia was the group’s main songwriter, and Bob Weir pitched in with his own fair share of superb songs, the group’s two leaders were far from its only singers. They were a true ensemble, sharing duties like joints.
Original keyboard player Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan took the mic on six tracks across the group’s first five studio albums, and bassist Phil Lesh grew into the role of supporting singer-songwriter. His heartfelt bluegrass ballad ‘Box of Rain’ is a standout moment on the band’s 1970 masterpiece American Beauty. When the Godchaux siblings joined the band following McKernan’s tragic death, they were immediately given the chance to shine on lead vocal parts.
Meanwhile, late-era keyboard player Brent Mydland is viewed by many fans as the outstanding vocalist in the Dead’s history, eclipsing even Garcia and Weir. He also sang the lead on many of the tracks during the final decade of the Grateful Dead’s existence, and he can be heard harmonising with the two band leaders on their biggest hit, ‘Touch of Grey’.
So, who was Grateful Dead’s lead vocalist?
Bob Weir sang lead vocals on more Grateful Dead tracks than all of Lesh, both Godchaux, and Mydland put together. However, the 40 songs he sings as the lead are still no match for Jerry Garcia. After all, Garcia wrote far more songs than any other member of the Dead, so it’s hardly surprising that he was the group’s main singer overall.
The band had an unwritten rule that whoever wrote the song sang lead on it, meaning Garcia naturally got behind the microphone more than anyone else. He was the main singer on a total of 61 Grateful Dead studio recordings, excluding bonus tracks on reissues. If you include those extra songs, his total is closer to 100.
Garcia sang the lead on his favourite song by the Dead, ‘Stella Blue’, from the band’s 1973 album Wake of the Flood. Still, his tender, wispy vocal part couldn’t do without the serene harmonies of Weir and the Godchaux siblings backing him up. It’s a marker of how he viewed the band, even the artefacts he was most proud of creating, he had no bones about sharing.
As Pete Townshend would later appraise on Broken Record, “The big thing about the Dead I remember was that they gave their road crew the same share that they got themselves. Did you know that? Yeah, it was a true cooperative, so nobody got rich. Nobody. They made a living, but they didn’t get rich.”
Sharing was caring in the Dead, even when it came to vocal duties.
