GOOD OL' GRATEFUL DEADCAST
Season 4, Episode 1
Archival interviews:
- Jerry Garcia & Phil Lesh, KQRS, 10/19/71.
- Bob Weir, Keith Godchaux, Donna Godchaux and Jon McIntire, WAER, 9/17/73.
JESSE: Back in 2018, before the world took a few different courses, Rich and I visited Brian Godchaux, younger brother of late Grateful Dead keyboardist Keith Godchaux. One of the first things we learned, before the microphones were even set up, was a handy mnemonic to remember the correct pronunciation of their last name. We made Brian repeat it for us more recently.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Godchaux — it rhymes with God Show, not Dog Chow.
JESSE: 50 years ago this September, Jerry Garcia was approached by a couple he’d never met before at a San Francisco bar while he was playing with Merl Saunders. They informed him that this was Keith Godchaux, and he was the Grateful Dead’s new piano player. What Donna Jean and Keith Godchaux didn’t know was that Ron McKernan, otherwise known as Pigpen, the Grateful Dead’s organist and sometimes frontman since 1965, had suddenly entered Novato General Hospital with a perforated ulcer and hepatitis. He’d be unable to tour that fall. Every single bit of this story is totally unlikely, and yet it both seems like it’s what really happened and becomes even more wondrous in the telling. But it becomes even more unlikely the more you know about Keith Godchaux.
When the cameras show Keith Godchaux in various Grateful Dead concert films from his tenure between 1971 and 1979, which isn’t very often, it’s still pretty easy to miss Keith. He’s just, like, playing piano. The story of how it was that he came to be in the Grateful Dead is of course, extraordinary, and still hard to believe, even a half century later. Even more extraordinary was his musicality, as if he was born to play with the Dead. And, in fact, that’s more or less how everybody involved treated the sudden, unexpected arrival of Keith Godchaux.
Here’s Jerry Garcia describing the Dead’s scene to an interviewer on KQRS during soundcheck in Minneapolis on October 19th, 1971, just hours before Keith’s debut at the opening show of the band’s fall tour.
JERRY GARCIA [10/19/71]: The people who are seeing — I mean, we sort of find them and they find us. I mean it's just — whoever thinks that they can dig it, there are some people that it’s really right for.
JESSE: Garcia’s telling of Keith Godchaux’s origin story is as understated as Keith’s personality.
KQRS INTERVIEWER [10/19/71]: Who’s your new organist now?
JERRY GARCIA [10/19/71]: He’s Keith Godchaux.
KQRS INTERVIEWER [10/19/71]: And how did he happen to come to you guys?
JERRY GARCIA [10/19/71]: Well, he's the guy that thought that he was the right man for the job. And he came around, and we tried playing with him, and it seemed to work out real well. And it was just, you know, it’s just the thing that happened. It’s exactly like I was talking about a little while ago. There are some people that are just, that's what they're supposed to be doing.
JESSE: Keith might’ve been too shy to correct Jerry’s pronunciation. In case you missed it: Keith Godchaux told the Grateful Dead that he was their new piano player. And he was. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that and leads to some questions. Like specifically, how is it that what one is supposed to be doing is being the Grateful Dead’s new keyboard player? And even more specifically, but also generally, what the hell?
Keith Godchaux’s playing was responsive, understated, and soulful — not jazz, nor rock, nor any other idiom, just kinda Dead music. And after coming out of nowhere, he instantly became a part of the Dead’s ongoing conversation: a full band member, no side player. He didn’t often take solos, but he was also kind of always soloing. Listen to his playing here on this infamous version of “Scarlet Begonias.”
AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Get Shown the Light, 5/8/77] (6:38-7:07) - [dead.net] [Spotify]
JESSE: That was from May 8th, 1977 at Cornell University, now on the Get Shown the Light box set, Keith on grand piano, the only time he ever played the transition into the jam at all like that. Like his bandmates, he was constitutionally incapable of playing the same part twice.
Keith spent a little more than eight years as part of the band’s conversation, from late 1971 to early 1979. With his wife, vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux, they recorded Keith & Donna in 1975. Also members of the Jerry Garcia Band, the two played out with the Keith and Donna Band as well, and when they left the Grateful Dead in 1979, got immediately to work as The Ghosts, who eventually turned into the Heart of Gold Band. Keith died tragically in a car accident a year after leaving the Dead.
Check out what he’s doing under Garcia’s solo from “Comes a Time” from May 9th, 1977, recorded in Buffalo the night after the “Scarlet Begonias” we just heard, also on Get Shown the Light.
AUDIO: “Comes a Time” [Get Shown the Light, 5/9/77] (7:18-7:54) - [dead.net]
JESSE: Keith was deeply shy. I can count the number of interviews I’ve seen or read with him on one hand. He didn’t play in any other rock bands before the Dead, or come out of any particular musical scene. How did he get to be Keith Godchaux? The answer, probably, is Hal and Jeanne Godchaux. Here they are — Hal on piano, Jeanne singing, performing the 17th century French classical piece, “Plaisir D'Amoure”—“Pleasure of Love”—in 1987.
AUDIO: “Plaisir D'Amoure” [Henri and Jeanne Godchaux] (1:33-2:03)
BRIAN GODCHAUX: You really have to credit my dad, my father Harold—Hal, Henri— he kind of would change his name, as the years went by. But he was very serious about music. I mean, it was like his life. Before the war, [he] was really working to be an opera singer. He loved the opera — was studying for years and years, would have these journals, would be in Chicago studying with so and so. And then he would switch to another teacher, and then the other guy’d say, “Ah yeah, Nabucco says I am definitely a tenor.” This was a theme — like, I am definitely a tenor. Well, he was almost a tenor, right? Back then, you could kind of work it so that you could, as you mature, you could extend your range. And he would go from one teacher to the next. At the time, he would pay for that by giving piano lessons or accompanying the other students. Aside from opera, my dad had also spent some time with his uncle, Uncle Joe, and on the vaudeville circuit, and burlesque. I think he learned a lot doing that, because his uncle had put on these shows and variety shows and dancers and they would have musical comedy. Lots of dancing girls. So that was kind of, like, he did that. And the family was a little bit aghast. This is burlesque, kind of on the edge of that. But he spent some time doing that. And I think that’s where he learned something about popular music.
JESSE: But Harold Godchaux had to put aside music, both opera and burlesque.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: But anyway, did not happen. Then the war came along. So that was his huge dream that he had had, that he had worked tremendously hard. The war came along, and my dad went into the Navy, and was actually at Pearl Harbor. Yeah, he was at Pearl Harbor. Three weeks before Pearl Harbor, he fortunately got transferred off of the Arizona onto the Maryland. So, it's funny — you have your plans and dreams and aspirations, but then the world just throws a huge war. And you never know, it could happen at any time. Later on, a couple years later, still during the war, a very unusual occurrence happened, which was a collision at sea. My dad was serving on the Washington, and it was in a flotilla in the night. Another the ships went out of formation to get fueled, and they didn't do it right. Anyway, the Washington and the Indiana collided — February, ‘44. And a bunch of people were killed. It was terrible. And my dad was the yeoman. So actually, he ripped the page out of the copy of the log. So I have that somewhere, where it describes exactly what happened. So that’s another thing, like fate. So anyway, the ship collides, and my dad's ship ends up having to go back to the States to get its bow repaired. So it's on its way back and goes to Seattle — Bremerton, the shipyard. Then there's another little piece of this story. Actually, this is a story which has a magical — oh right, what do they call it, miracle? I need a miracle… ticket? A ticket, I need a miracle.
AUDIO: “I Need a Miracle” [Shakedown Street] (2:41-2:48) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
BRIAN GODCHAUX: The ticket in this case was a ticket to the opera — Barber of Seville, in Seattle. The ticket comes in a little bit. First, there's a chicken: a pet hen. This is crazy, I know, but this is the chain of events. So there was a Mr. Laverne, had a pet hen that had just laid its first eggs. And his girlfriend Mrs. House, Gladys House — he had planned, he was supposed to go to the opera with Gladys, his girlfriend. He didn't want to leave the house, leave the pet hen with… whatever. So, my mom was a voice student of Gladys House, and she was going anyway. So Gladys House and my mom arrive at the Seattle Opera to see Barber of Seville. And I guess it was [because] they had tickets, they had an extra ticket, because Mr. Laverne didn't want to leave his pet hen who’d just laid its first egg. Had that not happened, they would have not had this extra ticket. So my dad, who is on leave — I mean, he's in the shipyard, but he has a night off. So he comes up: I'm gonna go see the opera. So he's there in his Navy dress blues or something—
JESSE: Looking quite sharp.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Looking quite sharp. And so they're looking to give away the ticket, and my mom said, “What about him over there? Does he look alright? I can’t…” She didn't have her glasses, so she couldn't see, right? So yeah, he’ll do. Anyway, he came over: “Would you like this ticket?” So they sat together, and they were married two weeks later.
AUDIO: “The Barber of Seville — Finale” [The Barber of Seville]
JESSE: A bit of foreshadowing there. Like father, like son.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Keith was born in 1948 in Seattle. Bremerton, I think. They were obviously… they both had, they loved music. My mom was a wonderful singer, she was a wonderful singer. They were singing at the time in madrigal groups; always a piano in the house. So Keith learned music — this is what my dad would say, it was osmosis. They played music all the time around the house, listened to it. And apparently, Keith was very attentive when he was quite small. Just a baby, he would be very intently listening to… especially classical music. He didn't like jazz. If it was jazz, he would kind of fuss.
JESSE: Hal Godchaux was prepared. Besides a classical musical education, there was one hugely important singular thing he would impart to his son.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: During the Depression, like 1938, when he was about 26, he wrote a little pamphlet. Something like: “Play-Now, Learn to Play By Ear, The Hollywood Way.” By then, the family had moved to Hollywood. His dad and mom. His dad had a thing called Hollywood Slacks — mail-order, he’s getting the mail-order, Hollywood Slacks. So I guess they tried to do a mail-order piano course. I have a fragment of it. Basically how to play by ear, how to play popular music.
JESSE: Keith Godchaux, the Grateful Dead’s brilliant piano player who dropped into their music and could pick it up perfectly by ear, was raised by a serious musician who, in fact, had written his own course in piano ear training. For his career as a mail order music teacher, Harold Godchaux became… Hal Gotham, and you can still find ads scattered in old newspapers. “Play boogie woogie and swing,” reads one. “Learn piano from scratch in Hal Gotham’s Magic Course.” It was only a dollar.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: It was kind of a combination of just how to lay out the keyboard. My dad was very good. He just had a system where, how to lay out the keyboard, the chords and such, I think he just absorbed. And then, by absorbing, just hearing music all the time, you have all the music, and then you have this keyboard, and that you could naturally just relate to music by.
JESSE: In the early ‘60s, when Keith was between 12 and 17, his name turns up in East Bay newspapers in conjunction with numerous musical events — including string ensembles, weddings, jazz combos, and the Junior Bach Festival. References to Brian’s violin playing pop up, too.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: He was always quite involved, as my mom was, in this little musical theater in Concord. And this group still exists, Contra Costa Musical Theatre. And he was one of the early… they put on pretty darn good amateur productions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, South Pacific, Showboat, just on and on. And so we kind of grew up, again, going to all of those rehearsals and all of those shows. I think once in a while I sang in the chorus, played in the orchestra. I don't think [Keith] ever played the piano, but he was in the chorus and on the shows.
JESSE: Keith had also started playing cocktail jazz piano, which would become his vocation in the next years.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: My dad would do these, put on these little music… Contra Costa Musical Theatre, which is a semi-professional thing, and they had to have a certain number of union players in the orchestra. So he always had these union trumpet players and drummers and stuff. And knew the president of the local union out there. And so he joined that early, basically started playing gigs early through my dad's contacts in his pit orchestra for the musical theater. He got in the union and got a gig once playing up in Yosemite. That was an era where the whole generation gap suddenly took off. And my dad and brother would just fight — just fight, fight, fight. Usually stuff like haircuts, and drinking. And my dad was an English teacher in Concord, at Mount Diablo High School. And of course we lived there, so my brother and I went to that school. Well, Keith started getting in trouble. And I guess it was probably at a place where he got busted for pot, right? And oh, my dad was freaked out — here I am, choir director, school teacher in this little town, kind of terrified of losing his shit, right? They worked hard to put that shit together. So he had to transfer to another school.
JESSE: The year Keith turned 17 was also the same year that The Warlocks went electric.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Rock and roll came into the house probably in 1965 or 6. Keith started, he rented a bass and an amplifier. We’d just kind of experiment with, like, avant garde. Which is like: let's just play. We would just go for it in the garage and that kind of stuff.
JESSE: Would you be playing violin?
BRIAN GODCHAUX: I was... yeah, Keith actually bought me a DeArmond pickup, which was the old violin-style pickup. He wanted me to… I was like, well, I'll try it.
JESSE: Keith was ready to branch out, and there was soon a band rehearsing in the Godchaux family garage. The Bay Area music scene was small, and Keith Godchaux’s unnamed garage band proved it. The lead guitarist might be familiar to some Dead fans. He’d actually spent the summer of 1964 driving cross-country with none other than Jerry Garcia, recording and playing bluegrass music. Sandy Rothman even joined Bill Monroe’s legendary Blue Grass Boys that summer for a tour. But when he got back to California, like Jerry Garcia, Sandy Rothman tried plugging in too, with some friends he met via his running job at Campbell Coe’s Campus Music Shop in Berkeley.
SANDY ROTHMAN: I met Keith through a mutual friend named Ray Scott, who's now a jazz guitar player in San Francisco. He and Keith and Brian grew up in Concord, and went to the same schools and all that and they knew each other, but Ray used to come to Berkeley a lot. He used to hang out at Campus Music Shop, where I was working after high school, and even during high school. And Ray and I got to be friends, he introduced me to his friends. And one of his friends was Keith, who I knew as a pianist. But at the time, they were trying to play rhythm and blues, and they had been; the Rolling Stones’ first album or two had come out, and they wanted to make that kind of a sound. They were getting together in Keith’s garage. I went along and played an electric guitar somewhere and played electric lead. My friend Ray played rhythm, and Keith actually played bass in that setting. There was a real good singer who came along, and a drummer. And I remember all these guys — we used to get together and just practice in the garage band, playing in the garage, literally in the Godchaux family garage. Basically trying to play Stones stuff, kind of, and some standard blues. Whatever we could play. We never did gig out or do anything.
JESSE: If anybody would like to cannonball down the rabbit hole of the East Bay garage scene, circa 1966, Sandy says that the lineup for the unnamed R&B band was, along with Ray Scott on rhythm guitar, Sandy on lead, and Keith on bass, there was singer Steve Carvalho and drummer Peter Ostwald.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: He would organize jam sessions, and they would help him out in the garage. He had wanted to do something other than play cocktail music. Drummer Mike Clark, famous jazz — Mike Clark, actually, I remember he was around, I read somewhere, he talked about that. Just in kind of these casual, experimental jam sessions.
JESSE: But look up Keith Godchaux’s name in old newspapers in the years before he joined the Dead, and you’ll pull a few references to his time on the cocktail jazz circuit—including a reference to a small combo, the Keith Godchaux Trio. And that’s where he spent most of his musical time as a teenager. Keith Godchaux’s teenage years were also marked by some pretty serious darkness.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Another thing that, really formative I'd like to talk about with... he had health issues.
JESSE: Keith did?
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Yeah, serious health issues. When he was three, he had a burst appendix and peritonitis. Just terrible, nearly died. Years later, when he was I think 16 or 17, 16, he started having these problems of intestinal adhesions. And they kind of got, he would get sick and get better, get sick. Kind of kept getting worse. Then he would get sick enough to have to go in the hospital, have an operation. And he would get better, and then have to go have another operation. And progressively worse — each time, just putting himself back together after, really, near death. When he graduated from high school — how did that happen? How did he graduate, through all that sickness, and my dad, and the fighting, you know? You have to finish school! Anyway, he gets his first out of town job playing in Yosemite, at the Ahwahnee Hotel. It’s an old, very fine hotel in the middle of the park. And he was just 18, just turned 18 and was pretending to be 21, and playing in the cocktail thing. And so glad, finally, to be out. I think he really just had to get out of living in our house. From my dad, right? Be on his own. But then it was alright, then my folks get a call in the middle of the night: come get your son, he's very sick. They go up, drive up the station wagon, bring him back into the hospital again. Bad, bad. Recovers, 18. Then, happens again and again. Two other times, really, I think altogether, maybe five or six operations. And so, the last one, it was like he was 85 pounds. Literally, 85 pounds. Apparently, the appendicitis thing had done something, and all these adhesions were just like… was a mess. Anyway, they did what I would describe as a “hail mary” operation — they just took all his insides out, as I understood it, and just straightened out the whole… he got very close to death, but he survived. That never happened again, that never happened again. But a lifetime of just stomach… right? Just that. And also, just in retrospect, I was thinking about this — a big deal has been made about addiction and stuff like that, and Keith’s problems with that. Every time he would be in that situation with the operation, he would get massive pain medication. And I remember him being there, begging — like, begging — trying to get the nurse to give him more pain meds. He couldn't... like, he would not be able to drink water or anything. It was just, totally couldn't drink. He would beg to have water chips, right? But he had to spit them out, because he couldn't absorb anything. He was suffering terribly, and the key to ending that was the nurses with the painkillers. And then he would get home, and I remembered often we'd get home, besides being sick getting home… very, very dark. What I'm realizing now was like, yeah, it was coming in. It was like getting over the addiction, aside from everything else, breaking the addiction, once again, to painkillers. That whole thing. And this happened for two or three years. So I think that he was kind of naturally… that was a natural thing to be drawn to at that point. As if anyone else has to have that reason. But that was that. Another thing about that whole health issue is, if you look at his chronology, you'd think that he, given his… had he been healthier, I'm sure he'd have probably broken out of playing the cocktail stuff earlier. Part of that was that he needed to make the money. Again, he just wanted to move out. And through all the sickness, he wasn't going to spend that much time going to the Haight Ashbury and hanging out.
JESSE: You’ll notice that, so far, even though Keith Godchaux grew up in the Bay Area in the ‘60s, his life didn’t intersect much with what most people think about when they think of the Bay Area in the ‘60s. Keith Godchaux turned 18 in the summer of 1966, when the Haight Ashbury really took off, but was in no shape to be anywhere near that scene. But by the late summer of 1970, he was operational and ready to jam. Not that long after his 22nd birthday, Keith Godchaux made his most important connection. That it happened to be musical was secondary. At least at first.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Keith was playing with the bass player, Pete Naum was his name, who was Carol Burns’ boyfriend. And Carol Burns worked with Donna in the office. Donna was working at the Union 76, which is in the city — used to be by the bridge, there was a big Union 76 office tower. Carol invited Donna out to Walnut Creek, which was where they were living, and they had barbecues and that was that.
JESSE: By the summer of 1970, Donna Jean Thatcher had already had an illustrious career in professional music — one we’ll explore in a future episode. Music wasn’t what the two were thinking about, at least their own music. I interviewed Donna Jean Godchaux MacKay for my book Heads, in large part because that was how Keith and Donna met, through a group of friends — a group of friends who happened to be stone cold Grateful Dead freaks. We’ll hear her own story on the Deadcast later this season. But to tell her part of the story, here’s Donna Jean. We heard some of this story during our American Beauty season, but it bears repeating, and who better to repeat it?
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: They convinced me to go to a Dead concert, and the Grateful Dead were playing at Winterland with the New Riders, Quicksilver, the Airplane, and then the Grateful Dead. And, of course we were the lowest on the totem pole when it came to getting tickets and everything. So we were on the back row of the balcony of Winterland. And Keith was there too, and Keith and I had never really talked at all. But he was one of the friends of this girl that I was working with at Union Oil, and that's how Keith and I kind of met. And he had seen the Dead before, not too many times before we saw them together. But he had seen the Dead before and he was into it. I didn't even know Keith played the piano. We hadn’t even talked. We barely said hello and that was about it. But the New Riders came on, and I thought, “Well, that's kind of cool.” And then Quicksilver, and I thought, “Well, that's really cool too.” And then the Airplane — well, that's really cool. And then the Grateful Dead came on, and here I am in the back row. And on top of that, I wouldn't take any drugs or smoke any pot or anything. I said, “I'm going to prove to you guys that you are out of your friggin’ mind. Yeah, I'm not gonna take anything.” And I didn't. I was just stone cold sober on every level. And the Dead started playing and I just… I couldn't believe it. I kept saying to myself: how do they do that? How do they do that? And I was just blown away — absolutely blown away by what the Grateful Dead did, because I had never heard any music that sounded like that before. And they were so on. It was like one of their really, really, super magical nights. And every note was just... and every drum beat and everything was absolutely perfect, within what the Grateful Dead did, which is not like anybody had ever done really. I was amazed, and blown away. And I can't remember who it was that was sitting next to me, one of my friends, probably from Union Oil. And I said… I was so blown away. I said, “When I sing again, it's going to be with that band.” So I went home that night, and I couldn’t go to sleep. I just couldn’t go to sleep. And so I kept everybody in my apartment awake: how did they do that? I was just incredulous that a rock and roll band could make that kind of music. I couldn't get enough once I'd seen them the first time. I just could not get enough of the Grateful Dead, and that's all I wanted to listen to. Probably, depending on the situation, you know… eight to 10 people, going to see the Dead.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: She knew that he played because of Pete Naum. He knew Pete because they would play together, but she hadn't heard him play. And she said that they were already in love before, and I was like that before they had even—
JESSE: Found out about it… that the music was secondary to the relationship, that the music was a secondary part.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Right. But then it was just kind of… kaboom. I remember this very striking woman, and just like a very thick Alabama accent. Very strong accent. And they fell madly in love.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: Somebody had said he plays piano. But like, everybody plays the piano. And so, our falling in love and consequently, getting married didn't have anything to do with, you know, I saw Keith playing in the Grateful Dead and I was a groupie, and I went out and talked with him… no, no. When I finally did hear him play, I was just blown away. And it was just a little jazz club that he was playing… he was in a three-piece little jazz band. And I was just like — oh my gosh, he is fantastic. And then when they would take a break, people would play the jukebox. And every single song that came on that jukebox, I had sang on. So that's the way we got introduced, musically. And this was after we'd already decided to get married.
JESSE: And they fell in love with a soundtrack by the Grateful Dead, having their minds blown at Winterland on October 4th, 1970. Like Keith’s own parents after meeting at the opera, Keith and Donna were married less than two months later.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: The first time I really was aware of the Grateful Dead was shortly after Keith and Donna got together. They had gone to a concert. I don't know which one, Dead show. And when they came back the next day, they have — you know, the Crosby Stills and Nash record that has a little picture of Garcia on the back because he plays pedal steel?
JESSE: That’s Déjà Vu with Garcia on “Teach Your Children.”
AUDIO: “Teach Your Children” [Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Déjà Vu] (0:00-0:11) - [Spotify]
JESSE: Check out our “Black Peter” episode for our interview with Graham Nash about that.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: They had this record and they showed, and they pointed to… I had never heard of Garcia. And there was a little square there: “That's him,” they said, “we’re gonna play with him. We’re gonna play with him.” Not that they were gonna play with the Grateful Dead. They'd had some kind of experience where they just saw that. And it was funny, it didn't really come up that much after that — wasn't like, oh, Keith better start studying all the Grateful… right? Wasn't that at all, was none of that. And I think I watched them, the Grateful Dead, that New Year's on television. It was probably Winterland.
JESSE: On New Year’s Eve, 1970 going into 1971, KQED broadcast the Dead in Quad, live from Winterland over television and radio.
BOB WEIR [12/31/70]: Well now, for the sake of you TV viewers out there who aren’t here, or may be new to this kind of thing, this is what a spaceship looks like in construction.
JESSE: No video survives.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: So I watched it for a bit, and I was quite struck. But it was like… this was the time when you used to see bands on television, they'd kind of have cute costumes on still. So that was the expected, and like, who are these… I remember Garcia just, like, looking like Garcia, the whole thing. Who knows what… I didn't really listen that long because I said, what? Okay, but this is that…
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: We had this little spinet piano in our apartment, Keith and I did after we got married. And I didn't know, but Keith was supposed to have been going to college. So I was working at Union Oil, so I would go away every day. But what he would do, because he didn't know how to play rock and roll, he had grown up playing like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart when he was seven years old. That kind of thing. So he had a real classical background from an early age. And then by the time he was 13, he was playing jazz. But he had never played rock and roll. And so little did I know that when I was going to work, he was skipping class and trying to learn how to play rock and roll.
JESSE: it wasn’t too long before Keith and Donna were making music together.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Keith and Donna got a summer sublet around the corner up on College Avenue, so that they could be near the piano to do some writing. They come over and they'd write. I tried to write. This was just in the months before the Grateful Dead.
JESSE: Brian was part of the early songwriting, of which nothing survives, sadly.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Rock and roll. I had written some lyrics, and Donna had written some lyrics. They had been playing, getting this guy, Lonnie Turner. Lonnie Turner had been with Steve Miller's bass player. So I think they were trying to put together some music with him. And Lonnie started playing with Dave Mason.
AUDIO: “Feelin’ Alright?” [Traffic, Traffic] (0:32-0:54) - [Spotify]
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Keith went over to sit in, rehearsing with Dave Mason. Again, that should’ve been… he should have been able to do that, and he could do it. But I remember Donna and I went along with Keith to the rehearsal, and, I think looking back, behaving really strangely. Donna in particular was thinking, “No, this is not right, this is just not right, for Keith, this is just not right.” So we were smoking pot and joking around sort of inappropriately somehow. I think Donna, if you'd ask her, she remembers saying some stuff — like, why did I say that? He's too good for you. But the thing is, to back up just a little bit from that point, my feeling about Keith was we were doing these recordings and writing our own stuff. But there was something, and I can't really pinpoint exactly, but in my mind, he's attained mastery. This was ‘71.
JESSE: Wow, like that close?
BRIAN GODCHAUX: I mean, it was like… and this was part of the thing. And I think Donna saw this too. And so all of a sudden, Keith’s there playing with Dave Mason — which would be a great gig, right? They were at the end of the road. But Keith went in with his totally nonverbal... sunglasses, not relating. Then he brings us along. So anyway, that did not work out, he got a call — “I’m sorry, this is not gonna work out.” So I remember Donna and I, my initial… I’m feeling guilty. Here was this opportunity…
JESSE: If you’re wondering why some of the early press releases about Keith Godchaux mention Dave Mason, that’s the connection. The keyboardist who got the gig was Mark T. Jordan, going on to join Mason along with Lonnie Turner for 1972’s Headkeeper and still an active session player, most recently recording with Lucinda Williams and our own Rich Mahan.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: That didn't work out. And they're sort of at loose ends. Keith could have gone back to work in the cocktail lounge circuit. But he didn't want to do that. They decided they weren't going to do that. Keith of course didn’t discuss it at all. He didn’t talk much. I watched Donna say this is the time for that to happen, that we talked about, that we saw. So first thing we do is go for a walk and get a newspaper, see where Garcia’s playing. She’s gonna go talk to Garcia, she wants to talk to Garcia. So, and she also goes on the phone, is on the phone to everyone she knows, back in Alabama. Anyone in the music business she knows, can she get Garcia’s phone number? It was just like — this is the time. This is gonna happen, this is the time that this happens. Sure enough, they eventually went down to talk to Garcia and then it happened.
JESSE: Pigpen, apparently, had just fallen ill weeks before or somehow.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Right, right. Right. Right. Well, it was nothing, it was like… it wasn't like gee, Pigpen... this is time for whatever that is to happen. Keith was totally not there at all. He just was unconcerned with that somehow, or not thinking about it. And then of course it became time. Donna, we're gonna… say okay. And apparently, he put his head down on the table.
JESSE: After Donna Jean told Garcia they wanted to speak with him, he apparently came to their table, at which point Keith put his head down. “Honey,” Donna Jean told her husband, “I think Garcia’s hinting he wants to talk to you.”
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Which I can see him doing. This is just way too much, I'm just going to be here. And actually Jerry gave Donna his telephone number. Didn’t like giving out his phone number because, you know, obviously. They went over and took this tape that we had made in my folks’ house, and the piano was there. Just a little demo tape. They played that for Garcia, Keith and Garcia played. That was it.
JESSE: The next day, Garcia and Godchaux jammed with Bill Kreutzmann. Kreutzmann remembered: “Nobody else from the band was around, but almost immediately after I arrived, I knew that Jerry was right — this guy could really play piano. He was one of the best, if not the best, keyboardist that I’ve had the honor of playing with.”
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: I've read things that people have said that Keith just studied the Grateful Dead, for years and years. And that's just not true. The first time that he played with them was the first time I'd ever heard him play a Grateful Dead song. He just… but he had such technique and such chops that they tried to trip him up. And Bobby Weir will tell you to this day, they tried to trip him up. And he just passed with flying colors, through every song.
JESSE: Within a week, Keith was on the payroll.
PHIL LESH [10/21/71]: We’d like to introduce at this time, while Bobby’s tuning up, our new piano player and organ player, Keith Godchaux. He does one hell of a job, I hope you all agree. We’ve been waiting for this guy a long time.
JESSE: That was Phil Lesh at Keith’s second performance, October 21st, 1971 at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. That was the night Keith Godchaux met “Dark Star,” now on Dave’s Picks 3.
AUDIO: “Dark Star” [Dave’s Picks 3, 10/21/71] (2:57-3:27) - [dead.net]
JESSE: And all about a month after Donna Jean Godchaux approached Jerry Garcia at a bar. She’d join the Dead, too, on New Year’s at Winterland as 1971 turned to 1972, which is probably what Brian is describing here.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: I think the first time I saw them was probably at Winterland. Backstage was kind of very carnival-like. It was all this stuff happening. And it was kind of looser back in those earlier days. Toward the end, the back just got very controlled. But early on, it was very carnival-like, people wandering around. From not knowing anything about the Grateful Dead, really, or just seeing them on the TV the year before. I was backstage with all of that going around, and then taking acid for the first time probably an Owsley acid. It was quite an amazing experience, really. I've never at some point… you know, they used to have the explosions backstage. And I was standing right next to the guy that was, you know, didn't think about it. Anyway, he slips off, sets off the explosion. Right next… and all of a sudden, I'm just thrown back and the universe is just totally white. Just like, pristine, as far as… right. Then I think I started over again from that point.
AUDIO: “Jam” [The Closing of Winterland bonus disc, 12/31/71] (1:40-1:52)
AUDIO: [fireball whooshes]
BRIAN GODCHAUX: When Keith joined the Grateful... he was absolutely still. He was absolutely without ambition. None. There was no… what will be will be. But it was devoid. Very egoless. My brother never told me very many things about music, but I will tell you one story. This is kind of odd. When I was a child and I had first learned how to play the vibrato — when you're a string player, you kind of want to be able to play vibrato. I remember being 11 years old, and actually I remember the day. It was 1961, and it was the day my great grandmother died. It was a very heavy day, my great grandmother died. But my teacher’s there, and I learned to play the vibrato, and like wow, I do that then — my great grandmother dies. But shortly after that, I was kind of into, you know, I could do this. And my dad was a cello player. He tried to play cello. Not well, but he loved the cello. And he just was not really somehow a string player. But his vibrato was never very good. And so I realized, well, I can't play the cello, but I think I can make this tone on the cello, right, with this nice singing tone and vibrato. And so my dad was playing and I said, “Let me do this.” And then I did that. [sings tone] Right? Just that, and I give it back to my dad. Didn't say anything, but I thought I could do that. And a little while later, my brother said: “Never do that again. Never do that again.” That's all he said. And I thought: what did I do? He said, “You know what you did.” And, like, I was 11, but what I had done was show off, in music. Show off, heard something. Make myself look better, make someone else look smaller, by using music. Right? Never. And I never forgot that. I remember like trying to say: well, how do you, you know, trying to guess… some direction on how to improvise and all about chords. He was just like, he couldn't really help me. He couldn't verbalize it, yeah. Couldn’t verbalize it. That was his whole thing with music. It was a very unique musical mind. It was like, how do you do this? Where is this coming from?
JESSE: Let’s rewind to a fairly subtle aside Brian offered before.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: He didn't talk much… often.
JESSE: But sometimes he did.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: He could get quite talkative, usually about strange philosophical things, like what is going on in this, what is really going on here in the spiritual sense or mystical — aside from this plane. Aside from this, what else is going on, I remember long conversations about that. I wish I really… it would be hard to recall them. But he was very animated and interested in that.
JESSE: Keith’s personality extended to his music.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: When he was a kid, he rented a bass, or actually bought an amp, a little bass amp, this little… and that’s the only amp he ever owned.
JESSE: In the Dead, he was content to play piano. As with everybody else in the Dead, though, he needed some special gear. On his first outings with the Dead, Keith played an upright piano but soon graduated to Steinways with a special pickup designed by Carl Countryman, the noted microphone designer from Menlo Park.
As I said, there really weren’t that many interviews with Keith, and even fewer that circulate as audio. In part so we can hear Keith’s voice, we’ve got the tiniest sliver of him here from a 1973 interview on WAER in Syracuse, a group conversation with Donna Jean, Bob Weir, and manager Jon McIntire. The interviewer—clearly a Dead Head—notes that on Keith’s first tour he had a Hammond B3 organ, alongside his piano.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: Yeah, I didn't know how to play it.
JESSE: But by spring 1973, he’d added a Fender Rhodes electric keyboard to his set up.
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: Yeah I'm starting to get turned on to different textures.
AUDIO: “Eyes of the World” [Dave's Picks 38, 9/8/73] (12:24-12:54)
JESSE: That was the “Eyes of the World” outro jam at Nassau Coliseum, September 8th, 1973, from the recently released Dave’s Picks 38. Great textures. That night, the band also debuted the only song ever sung by Keith with the Dead, “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away.”
AUDIO: “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away” [Dave's Picks 38, 9/8/73] (0:41-1:03)
KEITH GODCHAUX [9/17/73]: [Robert] Hunter and I wrote that. Never had a chance to — we never practiced it. Nobody could sing it or play it at the same time.
JESSE: Released on Wake of the Flood that fall, it marked the serious beginning of Keith’s songwriting, which Brian contributed to as well, as a lyricist. But that took a minute.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: At some point I quit school, and we're gonna do some work. I think it was 1972 or 3. I was working in a bookstore and going to school and I would prefer to be concentrating on music. So I quit school and kind of started hanging out with Keith and Donna. And I was living out with them out in Forest Knolls, they had a place that had been Kreutzmann’s house. By the creek, very kind of rustic. And I started kind of seriously trying to write. They were gone a lot, on the road. So it was like they would be gone, and they'd come back and… never really happened. Keith didn't really have that much energy for doing that. I could see that now. In the middle of everything, you're going to write? So it didn't happen. My time floating through that world was not all an easy float. Just because of… I would say I didn't really feel that comfortable, oftentimes. It's not really my world. Trying to keep up with that whole crowd. Here's all these incredible people, just like one after the other — remarkable, brilliant minds, all of them. I was more or less… Keith was kind of shy, and I was kind of Keith’s even shyer, quieter. But I did see amazing stuff — just seeing them sit around, like out in Forest Knolls, Garcia would come over and just play with his guitar. And they would sit around and play, right, or work on a thing like that. It's very cool to see, hanging out with Garcia was very cool.
RICH: Would Garcia bring an acoustic or an electric guitar?
BRIAN GODCHAUX: He would bring an acoustic [guitar]. Certainly I probably hung out more with Garcia than the other people in the band. Just because I don't know, Keith, he was there. Keith and Donna were quite close to Garcia.
JESSE: And Garcia encouraged Brian in his transformation from a violinist into a fiddler.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: We talked about it, Jerry and I. At some point, he knew that I was trying to learn how to play fiddle. And so we talked about that, and he offered to get together and show me all these tapes of all the stuff which he had collected.
JESSE: He didn’t take him up on it.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: The tapes actually did get... years later, when I ran into Sandy, and Sandy has essentially given all those tapes to Garcia. So I got them from Sandy.
JESSE: But it was an era when Garcia was regularly playing with Old & In the Way and Brian could pick up tips just by watching the great Vassar Clements.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Before I saw Vassar, I was playing very hard. So I was getting fiddler's elbow, playing very hard. And then I saw Vassar playing. And it was like you look at him, and he’s hardly moving his right arm. What’s going on there? So that was a real eye opener with Vassar. He seemed like he had this really relaxed thing where I think he would string a lot of notes together on the bow, rather than—[makes bowing sound]—he would string, very controlled bow and could string and phrase notes together very quickly, with minimum energy on his right arm. And then it just all flowed so beautifully.
AUDIO: “Kissimee Kid” [Old & In the Way, Breakdown] - [Spotify]
JESSE: That was Vassar Clements with Old & In the Way — “Kissimee Kid.” Eventually, Keith and Brian did get some writing done together.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Then I started actually playing in bands. I just realized, well, I don't know if I can really… I don't think I'm the lyricist. I would have liked to have been, like somebody like Hunter. My gosh, what an example. But just a prolific writer, just a writer in general, writing all the time. So I got started playing in different bands and getting into playing more. And then at some point, I went over there and they were there, Keith and Donna were home, and we just started hanging out. And I wrote a couple sets of lyrics within an hour, to “Showboat” and “Farewell Jack.” Just like, in an hour. Kind of that, how does that work where you can do that?
AUDIO: “Farewell Jack” [Keith & Donna, Keith & Donna] (2:22-2:50)
JESSE: That was “Farewell Jack” from Keith and Donna’s 1975 album, Keith & Donna, recorded during the Dead’s year off from touring and released on Round Records. Check out this part.
AUDIO: “Farewell Jack” [Keith & Donna, Keith & Donna] (1:44-2:14)
JESSE: Tracked mainly at Keith and Donna’s house in Stinson Beach, Garcia played on nearly the whole album, which also included drumming by Denny Seiwell of Wings and, on one song, the legendary Bernard Purdie. Brian shared writing credits on three tunes, including the closing “Every Song I Sing,” on which he played violin as well. Here are the Godchaux brothers jamming together.
AUDIO: “Every Song I Sing” [Keith & Donna, Keith & Donna] (5:01-5:31)
JESSE: One of the songs, “Showboat,” even made it as far as a Grateful Dead soundcheck later that year. This is from the technical rehearsal at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on August 12th, 1975, the day before the performance that became One From the Vault, released on the Beyond Description box set.
AUDIO: “Showboat” [Beyond Description, 8/12/75] (0:31-1:02)
JESSE: They put together the Keith and Donna Band, featuring Bill Kreutzmann on drums, Ray Scott—of the unnamed R&B Godchaux garage band—on guitar, and with occasional full-show sit-ins by Garcia. There are some great live tapes out there. Here’s a little bit of Art Pepper’s “Straight Life” with Keith, Garcia, and Ray Scott trading phrases, recorded exactly a week after One From the Vault at the same venue, August 20th, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall.
AUDIO: “Straight Life” [Keith & Donna with Jerry Garcia, 8/20/75] (16:46-17:16) - [YouTube]
JESSE: In the spring of 1977, Keith began playing a Polymoog synthesizer occasionally, most notably on “Estimated Prophet,” and that fall traded a Steinway Grand for a Yamaha electric keyboard—which was a subtle but also drastic change in the Dead’s sound—though often kept playing piano in the Jerry Garcia Band, which Keith and Donna played in from 1975 through late 1978. Here’s Garcia and Keith conversing on Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate” late in the Godchaux years, from Pure Jerry, Volume 9.
AUDIO: “Simple Twist of Fate” [Jerry Garcia Band, Pure Jerry, Volume 9, 2/19/78] (7:47-8:17) [Spotify]
JESSE: Keith and Brian’s lives branched in different directions in the late ‘70s, each working through the struggles of adulthood in the worlds around them. Keith’s last years with the Dead were plagued by addiction and other problems. Keith and Donna Jean left the Grateful Dead by mutual agreement in early 1979.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: It was quite a surprise, quite a shock. It was quite... wow. You could imagine, I would say… everyone who could say they are a Dead Head comes from a different place. No two are identical. It gets very personal for everyone, really. It can get quite deep. And it certainly did with me. And so the breakup was quite difficult. I couldn't... what does that mean? And, at the same time, I had not been close to Keith for a while. I think just my life was going through different things, and his were both difficult. And so we never really talked about it after that. I saw him when he would play the Keystone with The Ghosts, with Greg Anton. This group, The Ghosts. Those were difficult times, but he was at that time playing again. And then he started playing when Steve Kimock entered the picture, all of a sudden, things seemed perhaps, musically, something could happen.
JESSE: Following their departure from the Dead, both Keith and Donna Jean returned to a more level horizon. And though Keith would only outlive his tenure with the Dead by a year-and-a-half, it was a productive year-and-a-half — first joining up with a band that had been calling themselves The Ghosts. On drums was Greg Anton, who would go on to co-found the group Zero.
GREG ANTON: Keith was a genius musician. He was just one of the best musicians I've ever had the honor of playing with. Just a magnificent piano player. He just always seemed to play just what was right. And he had so much excitement in his playing, but didn't overplay, didn't underplay. He just was a master. It’s just so much fun playing music with him. And he’s a great guy. Really smart guy. Very unusual, just a real enigmatic human being. But generally, he was quiet. He rarely looked up from the keyboard when he’s playing. He just was deep, deep into music.
JESSE: Though Keith and Donna had left the Dead, they remained close with their former bandmates.
GREG ANTON: Keith was really tight with Garcia. Those two guys really had a good musical connection and also a friendship.
JESSE: In early 1980, Keith went on the road with the Healy-Treece Band, co-fronted by Dead sound engineer Dan Healy and featuring Bill Kreutzmann on drums. Later that spring, when Keith and Donna and The Ghosts went out on tour, they did so with Robert Hunter, with Hunter sometimes fronting the band.
GREG ANTON: At one point, we kind of morphed from The Ghosts into the Heart of Gold Band. I think Donna coined the name, taking it from the song of course. And we were looking for a guitar player. Keith wanted to try somebody else and guitar and bass. And so Dino Valenti from Quicksilver, he had a studio in Novato in Marin County, California. So we were rehearsing there and trying to work up some material. And one day, it was Keith, Scott, John Kahn, the bass player. And so it was me and John, and Keith and Donna, and we were playing in the studio. And in walks Steve Kimock. And how he showed up there or who got him over there, I'm not sure about that. That wasn't me. But somebody brought him over because they heard we were looking for a guitar player, and brought Steve over. So Steve just walked in with his Boogie amp in one hand and a Stratocaster in the other hand, and the magic happened. The musical connection between Keith and Steve was just amazing to observe. They had a great musical connection. I never thought about it like this, but the musical connection that Keith had with Garcia, I think he recognized that same connection with him with Kimock, that they really clicked. And so he was so excited about playing with Steve and the little bit that we ended up doing together. It was just great, those two guys playing. And so we just started playing, and it was really working. They had a bunch of material, Keith and Donna had a whole repertoire of material. They had a bunch of Jerry Garcia Band kind of material, some Grateful Dead stuff. And Donna had a lot of gospel songs that we added our own kind of rock and roll interpretation of. It was really exciting.
AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Heart of Gold Band, Heart of Gold Band] (5:31-6:01)
JESSE: That was Keith Godchaux and Steve Kimock in the Heart of Gold Band, playing “Scarlet Begonias” at The Back Door in San Francisco on July 10th, 1980, part of the Heart of Gold Band CD, what would sadly be Keith’s last performance.
GREG ANTON: So at one point right before then, or right when… we were playing a lot, just in a studio and working up a repertoire. And one day, Keith just picked up the phone and called Garcia and told them about the band and said, “We want to go record at Front Street,” which was the Grateful Dead studio. Before those sessions started at Front Street, me and Keith and Courtney Pollack, who did all the tie-dyes for all the amplifiers, the Grateful Dead amplifier covers and all that stuff. He's kind of invented tie-dye I think. So it’s me and Keith and Courtney at Front Street late one night, going over some songs, listening to some different songs that we were going to do and. And we were there forever, and it was getting really late. I think it was getting light outside. And Courtney and Keith, and I said, “I’ve got to go home. I'm so tired.” And Courtney and Keith said, “Come on, Greg, just hang out for a little more. Let's listen to that one other song we wanted to check out.” And I said, “No, I’m just beat and I’ve got to get home.” And I left and went home. And then shortly after that, Courtney and Keith left and got in the car accident.
JESSE: Keith Godchaux died on July 23rd, 1980 of injuries sustained in the car accident, a year and five months after playing his last show with the Grateful Dead. Here’s Keith singing “Ride Out,” featuring John Cipollina on guitar, recorded in December 1979, released posthumously on the Heart of Gold Band CD in 1998.
AUDIO: “Ride Out” [Heart of Gold Band, Heart of Gold Band] (0:56-1:26)
GREG ANTON: Shortly after that, Keith died. But then Heart of Gold Band, we continued on, we decided to carry on. Me and Steve and Donna, without Keith. We got a couple of different guys. I think Pete Sears played some piano, and a couple different guys. And we carried on playing as the Heart of Gold Band. And we got David MacKay on bass, who himself is a wonderful musician. And Donna married him — Donna married our bass player. And they're still together.
JESSE: The Dead, of course, continued after Keith and Donna left, and their own legacy continued to evolve. For Brian, a Dead fan close to the inside, and then very far on the outside, less than long and strange, it’s been real, and surreal.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: Bands are very strange things. I don't know, if you didn't… I’ve played in many bands, and they're kind of each… each entity is different. And each has… and if you can, if you're involved in a band for a long time, it's just like, wow. You'd have to be there to know what that was.
JESSE: In recent years, one of Brian’s musical projects has been with Sandy Rothman, an anchor of the Bay Area bluegrass scene since the early ‘60s when he shared stages and road trips with Jerry Garcia, as well as a garage with Keith Godchaux, and later a member of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. As a duo, Brian and Sandy released the great album, The Red Fiddle and The Silver Banjo in 2015.
AUDIO: “Over the Waves” [Brian Godchaux and Sandy Rothman, The Red Fiddle and The Silver Banjo] (2:38-3:08)
JESSE: That was from “Over the Waves.” In recent years, Brian’s joined Donna Jean, Greg Anton, Steve Kimock, and others in a new version of the Heart of Gold Band. One member is Keith and Donna’s son, Zion, seen on the cover of Keith & Donna, and also, more recently, co-founder of the band BoomBox.
BRIAN GODCHAUX: My nephew Zion is doing quite marvelous. BoomBox. Yeah, he plays all over. They play at Red Rocks. He plays guitar and sings and does the writing. And he works with a blend of electronic and real instruments.
JESSE: The Godchaux family tradition continues. This is “Woody Guthrie Dub,” recorded live in Denver, New Year’s 2019, available on the BoomBox Bandcamp page.
AUDIO: “Woody Guthrie Dub” [BoomBox, BoomBox feat. BackBeat Brass LIVE in Denver - NYE 2019] (1:33-1:50) - [Bandcamp]
JESSE: We’ll ride off into the sunset today with a little more of that “Scarlet Begonias” from Barton Hall ‘77. Jerry Garcia gets a lot of the attention and, you know, fair. But zone in on Keith Godchaux and it’s like getting a whole new Dead...
AUDIO: “Scarlet Begonias” [Get Shown the Light, 5/8/77] (7:08-7:38) - [dead.net] [Spotify]