Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast
Season 8, Episode 9
Wake of the Flood 50: Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (6:18-6:38)
JESSE: Friends, we’ve got a weird one today, as you may’ve sussed out already by the title of this episode and that little excerpt of music we just heard. And as such, we’re going to structure things slightly differently than usual in this episode because it looks like what we’ve got on our hands is a Lost Tape. I’m going to set up a few details, then we’re going to listen to it in full, then double back and fill in as much of the story as we can fill in. What we’re about to hear is something that defies categorization, even in the extended and bizarre canon of tapes that exist around the Grateful Dead. We did find one very important participant in the session who remembers it pretty vividly, though. Welcome back, Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: What my son, Zion, said when he heard this tape, he said, “Mom, this is this is pretty much like it might have been at the Acid Tests.” And for me, it was very cool because I wasn't there during the Acid Tests — [that] was before I left Alabama and came to San Francisco and got into the Grateful Dead. And so to me, it was just like: bring it on! I loved it. I loved it.
JESSE: I’m going to start with a very brief description of how I first experienced it. Over the summer, we got the first transfers of the complete Angel’s Share session tapes from Wake of the Flood and set to listening. I tried to pace myself and go through the sessions one by one, but one day I loaded the rest of them onto my phone and went for a long walk around my neighborhood. A lot of what I experienced were the sounds and the smells of a hard-working rock band in the studio.
BOB WEIR [8/15/73]: Can I suggest that we do the —
PHIIL LESH [8/15/73]: Hey, what’s happening —
BOB WEIR [8/15/73]: Oh, what the…
JERRY GARCIA [8/15/73]: There’s a delay on Weir’s vocal for some obscure reason.
JESSE: But we got more, a lot more. I wasn’t totally paying attention at first when the last sounds of the last “Weather Report Suite” sessions faded and something new began. First there’s the sound of a flexatone, a bendable metallic percussion instrument often used for cartoon sound effects.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (0:00-0:07)
JESSE: And then a voice that you don’t often hear on Dead tapes — drummer Billy Kreutzmann, saying something you don’t especially often hear on Dead tapes.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (0:10-0:15)
BILLY KREUTZMANN [11/6/73]: Hey, Phil, come out here and play some rhythm instruments!
JESSE: The band starts into noodling.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (0:44-0:52)
JESSE: There’s piano, some guitar that’s not Jerry Garcia, and some stray percussion, not playing much of consequence at first.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (1:04-1:11)
JESSE: But then…
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (1:32-1:52)
JESSE: Things continue in this mode, and I was more than a little intrigued, but it wasn’t until this happened that I finally realized what was going on and my brain snapped in a nice way.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (4:22-4:38)
ROBERT HUNTER [11/6/73]: Titled variously, is this vermouth, or just a loose tooth? It’s hard to synthesize without explainin’...
JESSE: That is unmistakably the voice of Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and it was here that I did a double-take and had to restart the whole track. The title of the file was simply “Prelude,” which didn’t explain a lot by itself. Thankfully, the paperwork for the session survives and offers a little bit more context. On Thursday, November 1st, 1973, the Dead finished up the second leg of a four-part fall tour in support of Wake of the Flood, performing at Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois, now on Wake of the Flood 50.
AUDIO: “Playing in the Band” (part 1) [Wake of the Flood 50, 11/1/73] (2:34-2:44) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: The band returned home and Jerry Garcia got right back to his side trips, playing gigs with Merl Saunders and Old & In the Way that weekend. The Old & In the Way show from November 4th has just been released by Acoustic Disc, David Grisman’s label.
AUDIO: “Catfish John” [Old & In the Way, 11/4/73] (0:30-0:46) - [Acoustic Disc]
JESSE: On Tuesday and Wednesday, November 6th and November 7th, 1973, the Grateful Dead returned to the Record Plant in Sausalito, where they’d recorded Wake of the Flood in August, which had been released in mid-October. Ostensibly, they were there to edit “Eyes of the World” down to a length suitable to be the second single from the album, which they did on Wednesday. But the day before, Tuesday, November 6th, all of the Grateful Dead assembled at the Record Plant without Jerry Garcia. According to paperwork found by the great Joe Jupille, this is the week that Old & In the Way was working on their lost studio album. But along for the evening at the Record Plant was Robert Hunter, whose handwriting appears on one of the tracking sheets, and who was orchestrating the evening’s session, such as that was possible. The box is labeled with two titles — “Prelude” and “Tuesday Night Jam.” That’s the info we’re going to start you with, though you can skip forward 34 minutes if you’d like to hear the story first. Let Rich Mahan thread up the virtual reel-to-reel, and away we go.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (0:00-34:09)
Prologue to Prelude
JESSE: Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: Before I get into the session itself, it has to be about Robert Hunter. He was the most unusual specimen of humanity. He was like a mystical leprechaun, darting in and out like a sprite. He didn't make much of himself. He was not gregarious and all of that. He was the most incredible human being. I can't even… there are not words to describe this guy. Keith and I adored him. I adore him to this day. In Europe—this was Europe ‘72—Keith and I were getting to know the guys in the band. And then talking with Hunter—I always called him Hunter, never Rob or Robert or Bob or anything—and getting to know him… and Keith alluded to Hunter being this intellectual. And Hunter, like the sprite that he was, he quickly reduced Keith and said: “I’m no intellectual. I’m a street cat!” And that’s how he described himself: a street cat. And he really was! It was incorporated in everything that he wrote — musically, lyrically.
JESSE: Though Robert Hunter’s partnership with Jerry Garcia, the Dead as a whole, and its other individual members would continue for decades, this session represents the closest the band and lyricist ever got in some ways. Nicholas Meriwether is the founder of the Grateful Studies Association and wrote liner notes for the new 50th anniversary edition of Wake of the Flood.
NICHOLAS MERIWETHER: What I hear is a remarkable project in collective band improvisation and Grateful Dead community, really. What I hear is all of them coming together under Hunter’s direction, which is itself absolutely fascinating to me: Hunter as musical director, and getting amazing input and participation from everyone. The kind of conviviality and collegiality and willingness to court the muse collectively and together, and just let things go where they want to go. It's almost like the spirit of Aoxomoxoa, but a little bit more grown up and a little bit more focused. But still, that same sense of a quest, for wherever the spirit and the muse are going to guide them.
JESSE: Perhaps the only session that remotely resembles Prelude is the infamous Aoxomoxmoa outtake called the “Barbed Wire Whipping Party,” which pretty much sounds like exactly that.
AUDIO: “Barbed Wire Whipping Party” [Aoxomoxoa sessions] (0:16-0:28) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: The truth is out there, ask a taper, but Hunter didn’t like the results. Not that Hunter and the band didn’t collaborate musically again. Garcia and other band members would appear on a few Hunter solo albums in the later ‘70s, and Hunter would appear onstage with the Jerry Garcia Band a few times in 1980 to sing “Promontory Rider” and other songs, like this version from February 28th, 1980, released on After Midnight.
AUDIO: “Promontory Rider” [Jerry Garcia Band ft. Robert Hunter, After Midnight, 2/28/80] (1:40-2:11) - [Spotify]
JESSE: But Hunter recording experimental music in the studio with the Dead wasn’t the norm before or after. And, despite the fact that Jerry Garcia isn’t there, this is very much a Grateful Dead session, both formally and spiritually. As mentioned before, the tape box has two titles on it, “Prelude” and “Tuesday Night Jam.” Both have resonances with the Dead. Tuesday Night Jam was the weekly soiree in 1968 at the Carousel Ballroom, the venue that Dead operated with the Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service, and where session engineer Dan Healy worked on sound. Makes sense. “Prelude” caused confusion, though. Brian Kehew transferred all of The Angel’s Share tapes, including the “Prelude.”
BRIAN KEHEW: I think the huge discovery is this track called “Prelude.” It feels like some chemically altered moments, and it feels like it's worked out but certainly less structured, less composed. And it’s a real… it’s really long! It’s like 36 minutes long! Unbelievable. And it’s not talked about, it’s not even a rumor.
JESSE: “Prelude” is the name the Dead used for one of the instrumental excerpts of the May 26th “Other One” jam on the final disc of Europe ‘72, and actually does sound a little bit like how the 1973 “Prelude” starts, though the Europe version had Jerry Garcia.
AUDIO: “Prelude” [Europe ‘72] (1:11-1:27) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
BRIAN KEHEW: This piece, which has the same name as some other piece of music—that's confusing—but we were assuming it was the wrong title, and then maybe something comes up which is another tape that says, ‘Here's a rough mix of it with the same title.’
JESSE: Obviously, this isn’t that. But as Donna Jean described, Robert Hunter mostly kept to the background, and this piece of music fits perfectly within that role.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: I think, in Hunter’s mind, the conception was that — this is something that was recorded impromptu, and it'll be played during the hour before the Grateful Dead concerts.
JESSE: As we’ll learn, this is exactly what happened.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: I don't know how many times they played it, but I know that was the Hunter way of doing something different that he could participate in — musically, as well as lyrically. To play it for the audience who was coming into a Grateful Dead concert, it was the perfect thing.
JESSE: Well, that certainly explains the title “Prelude” — something that came before the main event. We have some ear-witnesses to at least one airing of the tape that we’ll get to shortly. The piece of music came at a fascinating point in Hunter’s own career. He’d started writing lyrics for the Dead in late 1967 and had explored several roles that allowed him to find a place somewhere between public and private. In the spring of 1970, when Workingman’s Dead was released, Hunter spent time promoting the LP, visiting radio stations and even recording a radio ad.
AUDIO: Robert Hunter Workingman's Dead promo spot
ROBERT HUNTER [1970]: The Workingman’s Dead, by the Grateful Dead — available on Warner Bros. Tapes and Records. You should be able to get your copy by May 15th. Workingman’s Dead, by the Grateful Dead. Steal one…
JESSE: He tried a different experiment in Dead Head communication in the fall of 1971. When the Dead released Skull and Roses, Warner Bros. bought the band air-time on a number of radio stations to broadcast full Dead concerts. At at least the tour opener in Minnesota, they also broadcast this Robert Hunter tape during the set break.
AUDIO: “A Message For Roger” [Robert Hunter] (0:00-0:26)
JESSE: This Hunter tape, a five-minute piece apparently titled “A Message For Roger,” is one sonic prelude to “Prelude,” and certainly a conceptual prelude.
AUDIO: “A Message For Roger” [Robert Hunter] (1:14-1:44)
JESSE: And when the Dead launched their newsletter in late 1971, Hunter found himself with a new platform. The Grateful Dead are often given credit for their early use of direct marketing with their newsletters. They’re loaded with useful information, but they’re also really, really weird. Alan Trist of Ice Nine Publishing told us about the band’s early efforts.
ALAN TRIST: I was the editor of those newsletters in the 1970s, at Fifth and Lincoln. Eileen Law, she supplied some material from the Dead Head office, which she oversaw. Marianne Meyer, who was a great photographer as part of the older light show world, she was a great graphic artist. But most of the written material I got from Hunter. Occasionally from Garcia, too. I leaf through some things that he would leave with me [and ask], “Can I use this?” Some of the newsletters included Hunter’s Hypnocracy drawings.
JESSE: The Dead’s newsletters in 1972 and 1973 were filled with the utterings of St. Dilbert mixed with odd doodles and collages that were often collaborations between Hunter, Trist, and Garcia. They were one of Hunter’s communication methods with Dead Heads. Nicholas Meriwether has done some incredible work transcribing the poems from the Dead Head newsletter, eight in all. They’re included in a program for the 2020 edition of the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus.
NICHOLAS MERIWETHER: This is really the height of his Dead Head newsletter collaboration and communication, where he's really talking directly to Dead Heads. And in the process, he's really acting as kind of the voice of the Grateful Dead communities. He’s shepherding those communications, he's sharing, he's being funny — but he's also being serious, he’s also being poignant. It's easy to get distracted by the whimsy of his St. Dilbert drawings and parables. The poetry is much more serious. The poetry is much more expressive. The poetry is really about how he sees things. It's kind of the start of what I see as Hunter… the role that he increasingly adopts over the long-term, which is not only the prophetic, poetic, vatic voice, but also the conscience, in some ways, of the scene. Even in the height of what critics and fans would call the Dead’s turn to Americana/Marin County/pastoral era, they’re still reminding people, ‘Hey, these are our roots.’
JESSE: That is, the Grateful Dead had embraced what’s now called “roots music,” but their roots ran weirder.
KEN BABBS [1/8/66]: The Acid Test is everywhere in this spaceship! Everywhere you are, you’re all acid testing and acid tasting!
JESSE: Their early albums had attempted to carry that vibe into the studio somewhat on tracks like “What’s Become of the Baby.”
AUDIO: “What’s Become of the Baby” [Aoxomoxoa] (0:36-0:53) - [dead.net] [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: Thinking about all of these elements together—the newsletters, “A Message For Roger,” and this tape—it seems like Robert Hunter was thinking about the project of the Grateful Dead as something bigger than just a band that made albums and played shows, but was recognizing the community that had engaged around them and figuring out new, abstract ways to communicate them through forms that weren’t just songwriting. Or, to put it another way — do you see what happens, Roger? This is what’s become of the baby.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (6:07-6:12)
JESSE: Yet, it was also the same window that Hunter was assembling songs for his solo debut, Tales of the Great Rum Runners, a project he was deep into by the time of the Tuesday Night Jam, though it wouldn’t come out until June 1974.
AUDIO: “Rum Runners” [Robert Hunter, Tales of the Great Rum Runners] (0:14-0:27)
JESSE: Musically, I hear the “Prelude”’s structural roots in another Hunter-involved project recorded at the same moment as “A Message For Roger.” Jerry Garcia made his first solo album at Wally Heider’s in San Francisco in the summer of 1971 with a small crew that included co-producers Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, crew member Ram Rod, and lyricist Robert Hunter. Some of the songs had been worked out in advance, but—for what became the album’s second side—they rolled tape, then overdubbed and shaped the results. This is how Bob Matthews described the process to us when we visited him back in 2018.
BOB MATTHEWS [2018]: I was happy to say that was one of the times when I recorded more than I erased. So they came back in to listen to it, because it really was the first complete arrangement framework of “The Wheel.” And while we were listening to it, Bob Hunter—this was back in Studio D, second floor, where there was enough room for a peanut sneeze— was writing words on his notebook with his notebook on the wall, because there wasn’t anywhere else to sit or stand, as we went through the first playback. He was an example of spontaneous improvisation that just felt so good. It was… that smile that I was able to give Jerry when he said, “Did you happen to record that?” It was a great feeling.
AUDIO: “The Wheel” (Alternate Take #1) [Garcia expanded edition] (1:01-1:31) - [Spotify] [YouTube]
JESSE: From the sounds of things, that was the basic working process behind the Tuesday Night Jam, as well.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: The foundation was totally improvised. Nobody knew what the hell was happening from one second to the next, and that was quintessential Grateful Dead. I was near delivering Zion when we did that, and I really do have a remembrance of how extraordinary it was and how different it was than anything that we had done. It was so impromptu. When I say the music started from scratch, nobody knew anything about what was gonna happen. Nobody knew anything. It really was an experiment.
JESSE: There are two sheets of paper with the “Prelude” tape. The first is a tracking sheet, either written by engineer Dan Healy or assistant engineer Tom Anderson, indicating what instruments were on which tracks. It includes piano, synth, percussion, congas, drums, and spots for vocals. Guitar and bass aren’t listed, but I hear them, too. The other sheet is, I think, in Robert Hunter’s handwriting and seems to have been written in the studio while tape rolled, with timings that either map to a studio clock or the tape reel itself, marking down different sections and giving them names. Without Hunter or his notebook to know for sure, I’d guess there was a round of studio improvisation, with Hunter taking notes. Comparing the tracking sheet and what are probably Hunter’s notes, the piece had eight or nine parts. The first part was called “What Ever It Is.”
“What Ever It Is”
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (1:40-1:56)
JESSE: “Whatever It Is” also happens to be the name of the final big psychedelic happening in San Francisco before LSD became illegal in October 1966, but that’s probably a coincidence.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (3:00-3:19)
“Titled Variously…”
JESSE: The next segment is labeled “Titled Variously…”
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (4:17-4:38)
JESSE: There’s lots of weird wisdom coming.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (4:54-5:02)
“The Point”
JESSE: I hear the track break happening here, when Hunter starts to speak-sing. The next piece is called “The Point.”
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (5:03-5:17)
JESSE: It comes to a refrain with some familiar voices coming in to buoy Hunter.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (5:34-6:00)
JESSE: Those voices, best as I can discern, are Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Donna Jean Godchaux, and Keith Godchaux. One thing to ponder when listening to this tape is that it was intended for people to listen to in the background as they entered a Dead show, so any messages would really have to cut through the crowd noise to stick out.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (6:02-6:16)
JESSE: It’s very Grateful Dead thinking, and very Merry Prankster-y too.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: Their perceptions were so keen. They defied being defined. And that's what made him the extraordinary writer that he was. His brilliance was that nothing had a fine point on it, and that was his point.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (6:43-6:58)
JESSE: Nice counterpoint, Phil.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: In his writing, anybody could get anything out of any lyric. And that's what gave him such a wide berth and such a deep volume when it came to his music — having everything to do with everybody. It didn't matter who you were, what color you were, no matter what you believed. It all translated to somebody, some time, somewhere. And that was Hunter's strength. And how he did that, managed that… no one was excluded from having access to it, meaning whatever that was. It meant something to everybody individually and personally. Just brilliant.
“Floatin’ Down”
JESSE: “Floatin’ Down” begins around 8:45 into the recording, as the overdubs dissolve back to the original improvisation.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (8:45-9:15)
JESSE: Then we get a pretty wonderful new piece with Donna Jean at the center.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (9:26-9:56)
JESSE: Donna’s voice is in the middle. I’m pretty sure that’s Hunter’s voice in the right channel and Keith Godchaux’s voice on the left.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (11:31-11:58)
JESSE: What’s funny about the next bit of tape is that it seems to mirror the form of Drums into Space about a half-decade before that became a regular feature of Dead shows. There was a drum breakdown.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (14:06-14:20)
JESSE: But the mystery synth comes back.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (15:17-15:36)
JESSE: They actually do build to some pretty inspired improvisation.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (18:46-19:15)
“Gone To The River”
JESSE: From that comes a new piece of music. Keith and Donna sing first, it’s lovely to hear them together.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (23:45-24:06)
JESSE: The first male voice here is Weir, followed by Keith Godchaux.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (24:06-24:23)
JESSE: What intrigues me about this segment of performance is that it seems to provide an early hint at both the Keith and Donna album from 1975, as well as the gospel influence that would move into Jerry Garcia’s solo music in the next years. Hunter gets to do it, too.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (26:04-26:19)
JESSE: Nicholas Meriwether.
NICHOLAS MERIWETHER: The wonderful gospel touches that you find in this tape… the fact that the Dead and Hunter would all embrace this notion of… think about the range of musical styles and motifs that are being presented and compressed into this tape. It's pretty much a statement that, for the Dead, this is all one seamless continuum.
“Sweet Inspiration”
JESSE: A continuous flow from space to gospel. But then comes the piece of the tape that grounds our story in numerous ways.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (27:47-28:07)
JESSE: We spoke with DeadBase co-founder Mike Dolgushkin during our “Dead Freaks Unite” episode a few years ago.
MIKE DOLGUSHKIN: It was November 10th, 1973, actually. We got in line early — it was 10 o'clock, we were fourth or fifth in line or something, at Winterland. In the afternoon, it started raining, so first, they let us all come in under the overhang. And then about four in the afternoon, they let us inside.
JESSE: This would be the middle Saturday of the three-show weekend that’s now on the Winterland 1973 box set. Michael Parrish got there early, too.
MICHAEL PARRISH: There are people who got there for a lot of shows two or three days early, but I never did that. Probably 11 to noon would be the standard.
MIKE DOLGUSHKIN: They opened the doors. There was a soundcheck going on, but it wasn't the Dead. It was the roadies’ band, which was known as Sparky and the Ass Bites From Hell. I have no idea what they were playing. I think it may have just been old rock and roll songs. But it was somewhat of an effort to sit through it, I have to say.
Then, after they were done, we heard a tape over the PA of an instrumental “[The] Other One” into “Sweet Inspiration,” with Donna singing. It was done by the Sweet Inspirations, who were Aretha [Franklin]’s backup band.
MICHAEL PARRISH: They usually did play some kind of music at Bill Graham’s shows before the show started, but it was almost unheard of to hear members of the Dead playing stuff. I think the people I was with, we were speculating if they were just backstage doing it, because it just seems so weird. But it also sounded like studio [quality].
JESSE: Looking through the scene reports at dead.net, it seems like this was maybe the only night of the three that people were let in early.
MICHAEL PARRISH: Bill Graham had done that before. I went to I think it was the first of the four Rolling Stones shows at Winterland. It was a matinee, but they let people in at like 10 in the morning or something. We got there really early for that. I remember they showed The TAMI Show.
JESSE: If you haven’t seen The TAMI Show, a 1964 concert film with the Stones, James Brown, the Beach Boys, The Barbarians (starring Moulty the Drummer), it’s highly recommended. Our Michaels Parrish and Dolgushkin both remember the “Prelude” tape being featured as part of an afternoon of bonus entertainment — Sparky and the Ass Bites From Hell, the “Prelude” tape, and then some cartoons.
MICHAEL PARRISH: All I can remember they showed were a bunch of Roadrunner and other Warner Bros. cartoons.
JESSE: All fun ways to set up some heads for a night of righteous Grateful Dead music. I don’t know whether the tape was played before the shows on the 9th or the 10th. If you were at any Dead shows in the fall of ‘73 where you think you may’ve heard an odd-sounding tape, get in touch with us at stories.dead.net. The “Prelude” has one even more forgotten precursor, when the band played an experimental tape by their friend, the young composer Ned Lagin, during the intermission of a show in Boston in 1971, noted by the Harvard Crimson, but unknown to Ned until I forwarded him their review. It’s entirely possible that the Dead used the airspace created by their concerts to air other tapes in the early years, transmitted ambiently into individual and collective Dead freak consciousness. This is from the expanded Seastones, maybe not the same as what audiences heard at the Boston Music Hall, but it’ll do for now.
AUDIO: “Seastones 38” [Ned Lagin, Seastones expanded edition] (0:00-0:13)
JESSE: Michael raises a point I hadn’t considered about the “Prelude” tape.
MICHAEL PARRISH: That's probably the first time most Dead Heads heard Robert Hunter's voice. No one would know it because his albums hadn't come out yet, so there was no context really for what he sounded like. And he’s very prominent in that thing.
JESSE: Nicholas Meriwether.
NICHOLAS MERIWETHER: It is also really interesting and worth pointing out: he's doing all of this at the same time that he is remaining resolutely out of the limelight. So he's doing all of this, but he's really not putting his face out there. Even though he's beginning to think of himself very much as an independent recording artist.
JESSE: Even when “Tales of the Great Rum Runners” came out in 1974, Hunter refused to let his photo appear in the media.
NICHOLAS MERIWETHER: He did a really hysterical self-portrait sketch that he sent to the Oakland Tribune when they did a Sunday magazine feature on him. It's this hysterically abstract sketch and that's what he gave them instead of an author photo.
JESSE: Though they might not have known it was Robert Hunter, both Michael Parrish and Mike Dolgushkin instantly identified the tape as a product of the Dead.
MIKE DOLGUSHKIN: I really wish that would surface sometime…
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (28:16-28:40)
JESSE: “Sweet Inspiration” was a hit single for the Sweet Inspirations in 1968.
AUDIO: “Sweet Inspiration” [The Sweet Inspirations, s/t] (0:07-0:40) - [Spotify]
JESSE: But it had an incredibly deep connection to Donna Jean Godchaux. By now, you probably know that Donna was a studio singer in Muscle Shoals, singing on some of the biggest hits of the mid-’60s. We did a whole episode about her during our fourth season. In addition to performing musicians, Muscle Shoals was also home to some of the era’s greatest songwriters.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: The song “Sweet Inspiration” was written by two of my best friends, Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn. I was there when they were writing the song. I was some of the office furniture! It was insane. I was around all the time, and they would be, both of them, sitting at the piano, insane and smoking cigarettes and writing songs. It was just what was happening then. It was no big deal back then.
JESSE: The song made its way to Memphis and became a huge hit in 1968.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: And those were the girls that Elvis chose to take on the road with him when he went to Vegas instead of us. I think, if i’m not mistaken, that he asked us and we declined because we were right in the middle of a bunch of session work. That was our gig, doing sessions, and it was coming up with a lot of different artists. And then the Sweet Inspirations came into play, and I'm sure that had a lot to do with Elvis’s choice of sending them with him.
JESSE: That certainly would’ve been a different timeline, if Donna Jean and the group sometimes known as Southern Comfort became Elvis’s backup singers. The Sweet Inspirations would sing with Elvis for the next few turbulent years. The impression I get from Peter Guarlnick’s authoritative Elvis biography is that joining the Grateful Dead would have been a lot more fun. This is Elvis with the Sweet Inspirations, February 19th, 1970 in Las Vegas, featuring Ronnie Tutt on drums, feeling the boogie slightly differently than he would in a few years with Jerry Garcia.
AUDIO: “See See Rider” [Elvis Presley, On Stage, 2/19/70] (0:02-0:37)
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: How crazy is that… and everything that we did, vocally, the Sweet Inspirations did with him — like, every note. Everything was the same. That’s a cool thing to be able to remember in your life… that, with Elvis Presley, you had an ounce of influence on anything that happened with him.
JESSE: Or you know, the Grateful Dead for that matter.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: When Keith and I got together, one of the first songs that we actually sang together, and Keith played and I sang and we both sang together, was that song, “Sweet Inspiration.” It was just a moment that kind of defies natural thinking, and it happened to be written by two of my best friends. When we auditioned just with Jerry that first time, without the band, he invited us to come to Grateful Dead rehearsal. But rehearsal had been called off, so he didn’t know that. It was just Jerry and Keith and me. Keith and I had recorded on this reel-to-reel some things that we had done: me singing, Keith playing. And that’s how it all started, was with this introduction, and “Sweet Inspiration” was one of the songs that was on that tape. I wish to God I still had that.
JESSE: There’s now this lovely tape of them singing it together in the studio.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: Just getting to hear him sing in that format, just spontaneously and everything… that just brought me to tears, I have to say.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (28:41-29:08)
JESSE: It’s such an unlikely song to emerge from this session.
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: I don't know how it happened. Because most of everything that's on that session was just impromptu. There was no direction, there was no nothing. It was just from scratch. So I really can't tell you anything more about that, how that came to pass.
JESSE: But it did. The song stayed in Keith and Donna’s rotation. It’s not on their 1975 album, maybe because they’d just recorded it, but if you’ve ever checked out a tape by the Keith and Donna Band, there’s a good chance it’s on there. This is from the band’s debut in San Anselmo in April 1975. Ask a taper if you’d like to hear the rest of their smokey late-night version of the song.
AUDIO: “Sweet Inspiration” [Keith and Donna Band, 4/17/75]
DONNA JEAN GODCHAUX-MACKAY: When the Keith and Donna Band were playing in San Francisco, it just so happened we were singing “Sweet Inspiration” in the Keith and Donna Band, and Spooner and Dan Penn—who were the authors of that song—were walking right by, and heard us singing that song. And they were walking right by that club in San Francisco, and Keith and I were singing “Sweet Inspiration”! I can’t remember the name of the club, but we played there several times.
JESSE: They played it with the Ghosts, and Donna’s kept singing it, too. The version on the “Prelude” tape makes a left turn, though.
“Jezebel”
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (29:11-29:22)
JESSE: From “Sweet Inspiration,” Bob Weir sings a segment from the traditional spiritual, “Jezebel.” The Golden Gate Quartet recorded it in 1941.
AUDIO: “Jezebel” [Golden Gate Quartet, Golden Gate Quartet Sings Golden Gate Quartet] (0:46-0:56) - [Spotify]
JESSE: It’s certainly an escalation from the bliss of “Sweet Inspiration.”
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (29:22-29:52)
JESSE: But then they modulate into something new.
???
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (29:57-30:21)
JESSE: There are three quick verses or stanzas, depending on how you want to define them. All of them sound Biblical, but using the publicly funded World Wide Web to search, I can’t find anything that matches. Any ideas?
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (30:22-30:39)
“Last Blast”
JESSE: On the proper tracking sheet, the last segment is labeled “Last Blast,” and it’s the sound of the studio session coming to land.
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (32:10-32:40)
JESSE: In some ways, the studio session at the Record Plant would prove to be a last blast for Hunter himself. After the band’s December 1973 newsletter, his regular dispatches abruptly disappeared from their pages, the last one filed probably around the same time as this session. Sometime in early 1974, he began a relocation to England, where he would remain part time during the next years. The reasons were complicated and many. He would speak of a vibe shift inside the Grateful Dead as the road crew assumed more influence. But it was also in these years that Hunter started a family, all topics just outside our purview today. I assume Hunter was at Winterland on November 10th when they played the tape, but I can’t say for sure. It’s a beloved Dead show, now on the Winterland 1973: The Complete Recordings box set. It features a classic sequence of “Playing in the Band” into “Uncle John’s Band” into “Morning Dew” back into “Uncle John’s” and back into “Playing.”
AUDIO: “Playing in the Band” [Winterland 1973: The Complete Recordings, 11/10/73] (5:33-5:43)
JESSE: So now, when thinking about this classic Dead show, we might also think about the very strange tape they also debuted that night. And at the very end, Robert Hunter returns, which is of course how we’re going to end our epilogue to the “Prelude.”
AUDIO: “Prelude/Tuesday Night Jam” [11/6/73] (33:46-34:06)
ROBERT HUNTER [11/6/73]: It’s all over. Stop the tape. That’s it…