The origin of the Jam Band

[jamminOnThe1]

I recently have been watching documentaries and reading about the Dead and trying to understand the origin of their sound and style of play. Just wanted to know the thoughts of fellow Deadheads on this topic....Did the Acid Test of the 60's start this style of music with the Dead playing at Acid parties?

In a documentary I was watching Jerry said " The acid test of the 60's allowed the Dead to understand the form that follows chaos. The ability to throw all rules out the window and perform with complete freedom. He said the people that came to the acid test came for the psychedelic trip and not for the music. So he said that allowed them to experiment freely in a situation that didn't require anything of them. They didn't have to be good or intelligible on any level."

So what I got out of all that was that The Dead sound comes from a form that has no form. That when you accept that music has no boundaries and are brave enough to make your own path you ultimately produce something beautiful as well.

[Ammagamalin Crew]

Let's not discount the influence of Hunter's lyrics

[Octal]

First and foremost, jazz had gone through quite a bit before the Dead came along. Extended solos are nothing new. Collective improvisation comes inherent with this. Bob Weir has been cited on multiple occasions to say that the Dead were only the first to make what they did electric. Rock and Roll was not known to do such things as frequently, but that is only that genre. As a band, Coltrane's "Ascension" was one of their favorite jazz pieces/albums. If you listen to that, you might find a parallel to the Acid Tests.

(By the way, when is DSO going to recreate an Acid Test?)

I remember reading in "A Long Strange Trip" about how Jerry was inspired by a banjo player who ran up and down the neck like a flamethrower (this up and down the neck is very similar to Jerry's guitar playing), but his name unfortunately eludes me.

[Ammagamalin Crew]

Jerry Garcia's Musical Roots:The Banjo Years - Part 3

by

Sandy Rothman©

During the spring of 1963, when Bill Monroe's band with Bill ("Brad") Keith on banjo came through California, almost every banjo player attending the concerts, including Jerry Garcia, was blown away by Keith's revolutionary playing. Unlike Garcia, Keith had passed through the eye of the Scruggs needle. A musically literate Amherst graduate and member of the Boston-Cambridge folk scene, he had meticulously transcribed most of Earl's compositions into tablature (banjo notation) and could reproduce them with great accuracy. At the same time he was forging his own stunning approach, which had such underpinnings as his early piano and tenor banjo training; much exposure in New England to Don Stover's classy five-string work and Paul Cadwell's exquisite classical banjo playing; and the melodic banjo licks of Nashville session wizard Bobby Thompson and Kentucky banjoist Noah Crase—although it seems that Keith's melodic style developed independently from theirs.Garcia reacted to Keith's playing immediately. It changed his life, as it did for a multitude of banjo players worldwide, and from that point on I didn't hear Jerry work as hard on any other banjo technique. He appreciated and extended Keith's subtle rhythmic accents, themselves an extension of Scruggs's syncopation filtered through Stover, and with great diligence he set to work mastering the fretboard "Keith-style." Banjoist and capo inventor Rick Shubb characterized this as "essentially playing a higher note on a lower string." Keith's banjo approach allowed for dazzling displays of arpeggiated (strung-together) passages that swooped dramatically up and down the neck like musical parachute jumps. This newfound freedom naturally lent itself to abuse, and hard-core traditionalists tended to dislike the style. Jerry loved the risk and high adventure of it, taking special pleasure in lines that ascended the scale. And he worked at it continuously—at home, at gigs, in between students at Dana Morgan's music shop, and even in his spare time after switching back to guitar, which he did a year later.Jerry was also influenced by the lighthearted banjo picking of Billy Ray Latham, longtime

Kentucky Colonels

member from Arkansas who was well-traveled on the West Coast folk circuit around the time Garcia was first listening to bluegrass. Watching the Colonels—featuring

Clarence White

on lead guitar—as often as he could, Jerry absorbed Billy Ray's up-to-date five-string licks, many of which represented Latham's own take on the new Keith banjo vocabulary. Jerry absorbed plenty of Billy Ray's zany southern humor (patterned after the Opry's Cousin Jody) at the same time. To my ear there is a similarity between Jerry's and Billy Ray's sound: a joyously uninhibited clanginess, as if to say, this is a banjo, damn it, and I'm not going to make any apologies for it!Years later Garcia was affected by Bill Keith in a different way, as were a number of other banjo players around the country, when Keith took up pedal steel guitar and they followed suit. Garcia's crystalline country steel licks on Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's 1970 hit "Teach Your Children" reached a much wider audience than his banjo playing ever did. That track might even contain the most listened-to pedal steel solo of all time.One result of Garcia's intensive melodic banjo practice was that he developed a rather ornate, linear solo style. He didn't concentrate on reproducing the standard southern bluegrass banjo language—especially certain conventional "tags" (repetitive end-of-line figures) and other musical punctuation—even as much as Bill Keith had, which was already not as heavily as most mainstream players. Jerry put his own spin on standard licks or avoided them altogether. He wasn't much for clichés or anything he considered gratuitous, whether in talk or in music. It sounded to me as if he paid a kind of musical lip service to most of the conventional banjo phrases; he played them—respectfully, even obediently—but didn't emphasize them the way a southern banjo picker might. (This was also true of Billy Ray Latham to some extent. They both used the tags, but did them their way, rather than emulating the crisp, punctual delivery of bluegrass banjo pioneers like Earl Scruggs, Sonny Osborne, or J. D. Crowe.) I'd say that Jerry put more attention on the "meat" of his banjo breaks, the musical architecture of the chords and melody lines, if punctuation were to be considered the "trimmings." It wasn't until later that his rhythmically expressive backup playing would emerge. His playing in the early '60s might have been described as note-rich, maybe even overstated at times, but it was always expressive and energetic. Any way you looked at it, it was fancy banjo picking, consistently well executed. He was admired by progressives and staunch traditionalists alike.

[Rbarracoph]

I like to draw a line between jam bands and group improvisational bands. If you go as far back as dixie land bands, all these musicians were playing off each other not just comping behind a soloist. Bands like The Allman Bros, String Cheese, Phish(sometimes), Wide Spread, etc are jam bands to me. I call it roller coaster rock. Up and down, up and down, mostly a soloist being supported by the rest of the band.

Very few rock bands fall into the collective, group improvisational category. The Grateful Dead may be credited with being the start of the jam band scene but they were the only rock band to fit the collective improv group in my opinion. They were all soloing off each other and created a psychedelic dixie land sound. Again, MHO.

[NoahBF]

totally agree Rob! great way to say it. DSO is able to do this so well where each musician in the band can be expressing themself to the fullest extent during a jam, all at the same time! there is a depth to how DSO and the Grateful Dead play music that compares more with jazz than any jam band right now

[jamminOnThe1]

I am also a firm believer that you can trace most all good music (besides the 80's synthesized crap) to the early 1900's blues and jazz of the South. And in my opinion Jazz musicians are the most skilled musicians their are. In my opinion of the early Dead Jerry, Phil, and Pigpen had that kind of exceptional talent and skill. Thanks ROB BARRACO for making me aware to look at the music produced by bands as being collectively Improvisational or more of a talented soloist being supported by the rest of the band.

My objective of this post was not to compare The Dead and DSO to Phish or Widespread. That was my mistake by deciding to use the title that I did...

It just seems to me that the Acid Tests of the 60's had a big impact on the way the members of the band looked at things as a whole. Including deciding to do things their own way, focusing on touring and not on producing records and tracks for radio. The overall attitude and direction the band decided to go to bring their music to me is one of the factors that makes me a Deadhead I think.

[Rbarracoph]

If you look back to blues and jazz musicians, and even classical musicians, it never was about making records. Sure, a great perk but they would tour to play their music anyway. I think not just the acid tests but the times as well. I was the one comparing but only because I've been banging this drum for a long time.

[jamminOnThe1]

I guess back in that era, if your music wasn't being played on the radio and you wanted it to be recognized you had to tour the country.... I feel lucky that DSO and Dead music is so available now a days like on the internet. And the fact that you guys have such an extensive touring schedule as well is a blessing. Thank you DSO and Crew for everything you do to bring the music to us

[2muchfun]

When I was a freshman @ Stony Brook in 1975 before "the bus came by and I got on" the professor teaching my history of rock n roll class elained the Grateful Dead had the ability to play rock and roll such that one moment the audience could be in a frenzy and the next moment you could hear a pin drop. Next spring I was able to witness that for myself for the first time @ Palladium in NYC.

So "up and down" seems like part of it alright.

[Dstone5553]

In an interview, when asked how Garcia started in terms of his guitar playing, he said that after doing his basic learning as a wee lad, he figured out pretty quickly that what he was into most was improvisation. That's what he got off on.

I would venture to guess that the origin of the GD philosophy started there.

In other words, if he wasn't into that, as say a guitarist like David Gilmour wasn't, then the GD would have most likely been a much different entity and the entire jam band scene would have had to look to some other band as their foundation.

[Dstone5553]

Recently, RS released the entire video of which I speak...a whole hour (!)

Pretty cool stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91i_XGQU2BI

[jamminOnThe1]

_{Cool thanks Dstone....}

_{Its just interesting to me that 7-16-1966 Fillmore Show (during the early acid test years) the Dead have a similar sound to other bands in my oppinion. Almost organized short songs with that shows longest song being a 10 min Morning Dew I think......Compared to a show 4 years later 11-8-1970 Capitol Theatre where they played an almost 10 min I know you Rider...and a 15 min Dancing in the Streets...The 70's show is what I consider the Dead improvisational sound to be. Dont get me wrong I love the 60's sound too}

_{I think its very cool that their sound evolved that much during those years. Whatever the reason may be that the Dead music is a part of my life today some 47 years later I'm forever Grateful}

[Dstone5553]

_{I think its very cool that their sound evolved that much during those years.}

It sure did. And then continued to do so. Weir has talked about the band as a whole deciding (during their break from touring in '75) that what they were doing previously wasn't really working. The long, complex playing that so many of us adore now seemed to go above the average fan's head who was attending those shows, or at least according to Weir's impressions...and the idea of doing something that would have a greater appeal to that average fan coming in to check them out was a reason, according to him, that they had a different approach by the time they started to tour again in '76.

Then compare that to '80 and then to '88 and so on.

That's why it has always seemed to silly to me when someone asks for an all time favorite show or best show or something like that...the band changed selves over and over throughout a pretty significant lifetime.

And it IS pretty cool to my way of thinking.

Imagine how boring it would have been for them had everything stayed static.

Like CSN or something....

[John A]

Imagine how boring it would have been for them had everything stayed static.

Which is why, in combination with the horrific types of venues they were saddled with playing, by at least '94 Garcia was sick and tired with the whole monstrous enterprise. The evolution had stagnated.

[Supplicated Velvet Thunder]

The Grateful Dead is a portal to the ecstatic experience mystics, shamans, and those that seek with heart have talked of in hushed tones since the beginning of humanity itself- perhaps the beginning of time itself if you are quantumly minded

America has had many "sub-cultures" but little collective culture other than that sold to us due to the "melting pot" we represent. Everything everyone has said above is so very valid and informative! I just wanted to add that I strongly feel that the "Deadhead subculture" hit the "critical 10%" needed to make a "minority opinion" a "majority opinion" sometime since Jerry's passing, partially in thanks to the Jam Bands that came after and more recently very much thanks to DSO. That means we win in the end.

I would even consider it THE culture when you consider more college kids have been to a music festival than haven't these days and we all know what THAT means..... the world HAS ALREADY CHANGED BECAUSE OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD we are just realizing it. Jam bands are circular and roller coaster.....

Improvisational music is the ORIGINAL LANGUAGE and surely still the only universal one as it represents tribal communication that links us here on earth to the Multiverse...

Blame it on the acid tests, blame it Pan, blame it on mushroom aliens, blame it on Jerry's love of the banjo, blame it on the sub culture but the

REAL BLAME just may go to the ascension that is inevitable in our progression towards the stars that has ensured there are

songs to fill the air. ALWAYS. REAL SONGS.

The ancient Greeks called the "holy trinity" Math, Music, and Astronomy for a REASON and when we all get together to do our thing, like we have been doing ALWAYS, it MOVES THE UNIVERSE.

We remove the dark holes in the world energy field and replace them with rainbow love every time we celebrate the Dead together and if that is

Improvisational music

I LOVE IT.

(sorry for the preaching from the burning shore..... not trying to soapbox it or nothin this is just a really important topic to me)

[jamminOnThe1]

We remove the dark holes in the world energy field and replace them with rainbow love every time we celebrate the Dead together

I Love this....Its a shame that more people in our world have not experienced this

[chuckvegas]

Well, I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him, "tell me where are you going?"

This he told me...

[oysterhead]

Im going down to Trickles farm.....

[Supplicated Velvet Thunder]

Well, I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him, "tell me where are you going?"

This he told me...

This little speck of stardust is mighty happy in the garden. Chuckles I will never forget you asking who would water all the children in the garden back when you were a FB personality and that Mango and I answered you way back then about William and Rosemary and the revolution that is upon us.... all from watering the garden. Its people like you that make all the difference in the world.

So Noah and Riley will be here at our place for West Coast tour (our chickens should start laying fresh eggs and we'll have more baby bunnies!) and since we have a couple kids here already we are about to end up with that dreamed of DSO family property so people like you, Chuckles, (and ALL of you!) will have a place to go when you are done with your fun in that silly world we used to all live in. The real world really is right here and maybe we can all be together, shaking our hands, and make OUR OWN promised land. If this is something that appeals to you, keep in touch with me and Mango, the DSO Farm is gonna be cool

Now off to work at Shakedown and make some bunny headbands and Flailer patches

[jamminOnThe1]

DSO Farms sounds like an extraordinary idea

[bs69]

jelly roll morton