“Listening for the secret, searching for the sound…”

I am one of those people who early in life, somewhere around age four, started grappling with the existential ‘problem’ of death.  I don’t know why. Maybe it was because my grandmother took me several times to her husband’s new grave (he died just before I was born.)  Maybe I’m just biochemically wired that way.  Who knows?  But I remember crying about death one night with my mother on her bed when she couldn’t give me the answer I wanted (which was, of course, that we don’t have to die.)   I’ve been on a quest ever since.  It’s part of what drew me to this music.  And it’s part of why I jumped at Ken’s invitation to write for this blog.

Concert Poster, Winterland Auditorium- Lee Conklin, 12/31/68

My recent exploration of the Grateful Dead’s “Jack Straw” as a murder ballad spurred in me the idea of exploring the theme of death more broadly in their music.  Though no other of their original songs is quite properly a murder ballad, the themes of murder and death are present in many of their covers and originals.

Interestingly, their treatment of murder as an explicit element in their songs is uneven. Unlike as in “Jack Straw”, the deed is usually used to make a point unrelated, or at best tangential, to deep issues of life and death.  Sometimes it works quite well.  That’s what I’ll explore today in this first set of songs.

But as you might expect from a bunch of hippies, their treatment of the theme of death was – when authentic – well, just cosmic.  I’ll take that up later this week with a second set, then finish with a short encore when the weekend begins.

My mood these days has me dipping regularly into the Dead’s music, where I go cyclically for refreshment. Spring as well has me in a lighter frame of mind and I find myself not wanting yet to dive back into the heavier Child Ballads.  Honestly, I’d rather be on Spring Tour…  but I’ll settle for a virtual Road Trip!

I’m going where those chilly winds don’t blow

I remember flashing often as the boys took the stage that I was watching Odysseus and his men preparing to make sail or row, whatever it took.  Sooner or later, someone would open the ox-hide bag from Aeolus and we were all at the mercy of the winds.  I know that sounds silly to some of you, but that’s ok.  Others of you know exactly what I mean.

At RFK Stadium, June 14, 1991, a show I happened to attend with another writer for this blog, the wind was blowing through Jerry’s hair as he led the crew into “Cold Rain and Snow” – an Appalachian murder ballad, and a staple in the Dead’s repertoire since their earliest days.

This tune has a week to itself beyond the Dead in our blog.   Interestingly, the Dead do nothing more than imply the murder that is indeed quite explicit in some other versions like Dillard Chandler’s.  “I shot her through the head, and I laid her on the bed, and I trembled to my knees with cold fear.”  The Dead leave the murder out of the murder ballad!

Certainly tempering the violence might have been a commercial decision about audience appeal, though the Dead were never noted for paying much attention to such considerations.  It strikes me as more likely that their ethics shaped their aesthetic, perhaps making them ‘rationalizers‘ for this tune.  I’m speculating of course; though we do know the story of Robert Hunter’s insistence that the band refrain from using a picture of them playing with guns to adorn the back cover of their 1970 album American Beauty.  That was a conscious choice in the aftermath of Altamont.  Now, the Dead were playing “Cold Rain” well before Altamont, but a choice by hippies to edit out explicitly violent imagery does not seem like a stretch, even if they did see themselves as outlaws.

“Reach for the sky, man!”

“Solemnly they stated he has to die….”

Murder shows up in a somewhat muted form in a couple of other pre-Altamont originals.

In “Cryptical” (which bookends the more popular “That’s It for the Other One”) we see the image of the condemned on his way to execution.  The lyrics join the inner and outer worlds to set the tone…  “Every leaf was turning to watch him die.”

Whether the song, as some speculate, specifically refers to Owsley Stanley’s incarceration or Neal Cassady’s death doesn’t matter here.  It’s clear enough from the lyrics that the imminent execution is also a broader metaphor for the ‘straight’ world’s reaction to the counterculture.  The perspective in the song then is more political than spiritual, though the line between the two can be illusory.  Still, I don’t think this song is *really* about facing death.

Album cover, Aoxomoxa – Rick Griffin, 1969

“First thing you know you gonna pull that trigger…”


Neither is this one, ostensibly as well about a death sentence.

This is a rewriting of the blues standard “Betty and Dupree” such as performed most excellently by Josh White as well as Brownie McGhee and many others.  This song as well is due its own week, so I’ll leave the details of its back story for a later day.  It is, quite typically of the blues, matter-of-fact about the murder itself.

The Dead’s “Dupree’s” moves away from anything heavy about life and death. Though in this song the deed is actually done, it is told and not shown.  The moral isn’t about murder, but rather comes down to a standard, sexist formulation.  ‘A good man will do anything for a bad woman.’  This in part makes the song misfire lyrically for me, though the greater problem I always had with it is the way Dupree cheerfully accepts the judge’s death sentence.  I always imagined them winking at each other!  It’s quite silly, really.  Still, the words flow and musically I find the song irresistibly interesting.

Allow me to further illustrate that last point with a wonderful, swinging cover by The Waybacks.

“Not only is that mother big, he packs a forty five…”


A decade after “Dupree’s” though, it seems to me Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia reran the experiment, wholly rewriting another blues standard to make a more mature statement.  “Stagger Lee”!  This time, women come out righteous, and the whole thing seems more real. Most importantly to our purpose here, the violence is effectively integrated with the narrative to make art that works well aesthetically and, I believe, as social commentary.  Even if only the former is true, the Dead then should be counted as true “integrators” when it comes to this widespread traditional American murder ballad.

Paul Slade does a most thorough job on his outstanding site of telling the story behind the original song, and more.

For Robert Hunter though I think that history and catalog mattered only as fodder for his imagination, as he was going after a new angle to the story; an angle which Garcia’s arrangement helps sharpen beautifully. After the first verse, we begin move beyond the traditional narrative and into Hunter’s revision – Delia DeLyon, Billy’s widow, brings Stagger Lee to justice when the sheriff won’t do the job.  Elements of the traditional lyrics never wholly disappear, but the big picture is a new one.

“You arrest the girls for turning tricks but you’re scared of Stagger Lee?”

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Bob Weir and John Barlow began a songwriting relationship in the early 1970’s after the short, tumultuous collaboration between Weir and Robert Hunter that produced “Jack Straw” among other classics. “Mexicali Blues” was Barlow and Weir’s first song together.  Barlow noted “I was just stricken when I heard what kind of setting he’d chosen for it.”  I tend to agree personally, and though I find the themes and moral cliche, it turned out to be a peppy Country and Western song.  They usually had fun with it on stage, and I always danced to it most happily.

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But the song I most often play myself is our last sample today, and just thinking about it makes me want to me pick up my guitar.  “Me and My Uncle” was written by John Phillips and covered by John Denver as well as other artists, but to my mind The Grateful Dead did it best.  Three men are dead by the end of the song, and you’re still dancing; no mean feat!  The YouTube clip below is the classic album version; live from 4/29/71, the last show they played at the Fillmore East.

If you’ve skipped every other song in this post, at least try this one.

“Of all creatures that breathe and walk on the earth there is nothing more helpless than a man is, of all that the earth fosters; for he thinks that he will never suffer misfortune in future days, while the gods grant him courage, and his knees have spring in them. But when the blessed gods bring sad days upon him, against his will he must suffer it with enduring spirit. For the mind in men upon earth goes according to the fortunes the Father of Gods and Men, day by day, bestows upon them.”   (Odysseus)

Next time, a bit of that.