Why is ‘Cornell 5/8/77’ thought to be the greatest Grateful Dead concert?
Every Deadhead has their favourite Grateful Dead concert. As a band with 30 years of history and more than 2,000 concerts, there’s plenty of material to choose from. Are you a fan of Primal Dead, the era featuring more intense psychedelic jamming from the 1960s? Maybe you love the jazzier style that the band adopted with keyboardist Keith Godchaux in the 1970s? There are major fans of Brent Mydland’s tenure in the 1980s, and you’ll even see a stray 1990s defender out there, although those Deadheads are fewer and farther between.
For those who don’t know where to start, there are two distinct “Golden eras” that tend to be recommended when jumping into the Dead’s live history. One is 1972, a time when the band had a massive explosion of new material that co-mingled with some of their headiest psychedelic head trips like ‘Dark Star’ and ‘The Other One’. The other is 1977, the period when the band were at their tightest and most diverse in terms of catalogue. But if there’s one date that all Deadheads know by heart, it’s May 8th, 1977.
As Dead & Company set off for their final tour this year, the offshoot featuring John Mayer will pay tribute to more than 50 years of classic Dead history. On their social media, the band have shared a fascinating teaser: their signature lightning bolt logo along with Cornell University’s signature red hue and a “C23” message. The band currently don’t have a concert date for the 46th anniversary of their May 8th concert at Cornell, but that could change in a short amount of time.
Why would they be teasing a non-major anniversary for one of their thousands of shows? Simply put: the 5/8/77 Cornell show is probably the most famous and well-regarded Grateful Dead concert of all time. The nearly three-hour concert contains material from across the band’s first decade, played on a tour that was renowned for its preciseness and exploration. The Library of Congress archived the original soundboard recordings of the show in 2012 before an official release was produced. ‘Cornell 77’ is shorthand in Dead lore, and for many, it was the first Dead show that got them on the bus.
But why this show? Just like everything else in the Grateful Dead’s universe, it came about thanks to happenstance, luck, and pure chance. Since as early as 1966, the Dead were recording their live shows. Originally helmed by soundman/LSD manufacturer Owsley ‘Bear’ Stanley for his “sonic journals”, the live tapes soon became essential for the band as they attempted to progress as musicians. In their early years, the band would listen to tapes and discuss what they liked and disliked about their performances.
As the band started to gain a dedicated fanbase, recordings of shows were starting to become valuable currency among Deadheads. Since the band never played the same way twice, full shows became the best way for fans to become fully immersed in the band’s unique sonic experience. Audience members began taping from inside the halls, and particularly lucky Deadheads occasionally got to patch in straight to the soundboard courtesy of soundman Dan Healy. Still, direct copies of soundboards continued to be made by members of the band’s crew, including Healy and roadies like Rex Jackson and Kidd Candelario.
From the late 1960s on, tapings of live recordings were often handled by engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson. Along with producer Bob Matthews, Cantor-Jackson helped produce the band’s legendary live albums like Live/Dead and Europe 72. Cantor-Jackson was the band’s main trusted source for recording, and her soundboard recordings were known for their distinctive sound: an even balance of tones, rich fullness in the mix, and sparkling sound clarity. Cantor-Jackson recorded more than 1,00 concerts throughout her initial tenure, and these tapes soon became known as the legendary “Betty Boards”.
Before the Dead paid closer attention to their vault, the quality of a Grateful Dead tape varied wildly. Sometimes tapes were made directly from the soundboard, sometimes they were from the audience, and sometimes Deadheads would tape radio broadcasts to preserve concerts. Cantor-Jackson’s tapes became renowned as the best of the bunch, and some of her recordings found their way onto unofficial bootleg tapes made by fans. One of the earliest “Betty Boards” that found widespread bootleg distribution among Deadheads was the 5/8/77 concert, which became a favourite as one of the best-sounding concert tapes among early traders and tapers.
The easy accessibility of the 5/8/77 concert is probably the main why it has become so legendary. But there’s something to be said about the quality of performance as well. Just before the Dead began their 1977 tour, the band were in the process of recording their ninth studio album, Terrapin Station. Producer Keith Olsen insisted that the band rehearse tirelessly in order to tighten up their arrangements, something that the notoriously loose and spontaneous Dead loathed doing. In particular, Olsen focused on the twin-drumming power of Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann, insisting that the pair be metronomically perfect with each other.
One of the unintended consequences of Olsen running a tight ship in the studio was that the Dead were the most rehearsed and cohesive that they had ever been once they started their 1977 tour. The results were clear: the Dead were turning on a dime, fully able to anticipate each other’s moves during jams and long passages. Hart and Kreutzmann were working perfectly in tandem, singer Donna Jean Godchaux had improved her monitor situation so that she could hear herself better, and all of the musicians were as keyed into each others’ playing as they had ever been.
The Cornell 77 show is the tightest live version of Grateful Dead, captured by their most talented recorder. Some of the tracks featured during the concert have become canon versions of songs. You’ll hardly hear a better ‘Scarlet Begonias’ > ‘Fire on the Mountain’, and the show even features a surprise: a rare post-1974 version of ‘St. Stephen’, the iconic Aoxomoxoa track that had been taken out of regular rotation after the band played it on a nearly-nightly basis throughout the late 1960s. The 5/8/77 show had something for everyone, and for new Deadheads, it was the perfect way to understand some of the more important elements that made the Grateful Dead so unique.
The Cornell 77 show circulated for years as perhaps the highest-quality live show in the entire Dead catalogue. But it wasn’t until 2017, on the show’s 40th anniversary, that the band officially released the full show for the first time. 5/8/77 remains an essential entry point for new Deadheads looking to jump into the live Dead experience. Since live shows are the most revered aspect of the Grateful Dead’s career, it’s no wonder that 5/8/77 has become a mythical date in Deadhead lore.
