Grateful Dead Guide. I’ve put together a list of all the songs the Grateful Dead covered. Here you will find the most complete list available, along with notes on the Dead’s sources and the songs’ earlier histories. The list is divided into several sections: the main cover songs; songs only played with guests; songs played with Dylan; songs played in soundchecks, rehearsals, or studio jams; and the instrumentals and “tunings” the Dead frequently played; along with a few mysteries, unknown songs, and lost songs. Dr. Beechwood has provided a chart and spreadsheets of the songs to download – without his work I would probably never have attempted this list. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. This list would not have been possible without the indispensable sites of Alex Allan and Matt Schofield.
Ouça músicas de Grateful Dead como 'Ripple', 'Box Of Rain', 'Morning Dew', 'Truckin'', 'Brown-Eyed Women', 'He's Gone' e todas as outras músicas.
The research here was done by them and many others before them, so this is very much a collective project. I’ve made a few corrections here and there, and even a few small discoveries. The main difference with this list is that I wanted to put as much information as I could about the Dead’s cover songs onto one page, for easy access. Sites that give each song its own page have the advantage of being able to write at length about each song, whereas the song histories here are very condensed; so I recommend checking them for more complete info.
The internet abounds with song histories – almost every song mentioned here, you can find on youtube; and many even have their own wikipedia page, or other webpages and blog posts devoted to them. It is much easier to research song sources today than it has ever been before.
One very useful site for tracking cover versions and their originals is here. Folk songs have an especially long and tangled history – one good place to look them up is here. And another place to look up lyrics and origins is this forum. This is another useful site that gathers recording histories for many folk and blues songs.
The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics Dedicated to the memory of Jerry Garcia.
- Lyrics to 'Built to Last' by Grateful Dead. There are times when you can beckon / There are times when you must call / You can take a lot of reckoning but you.
- I’ve put together a list of all the songs the Grateful Dead covered. Here you will find the most complete list available, along with notes on the Dead’s sources.
- Rock's longest, strangest trip, the Grateful Dead were the psychedelic era's most beloved musical ambassadors as well as its most enduring survivors, spreading their.
- Till the Morning Comes by the Grateful Dead from their album American Beauty. Uploaded by request of herbplummer.
Live album: 'History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice)' (1973).
Another place to look into a few of the Dead’s sources is this site (last updated twenty years ago). Those are just a few of the resources available, so this list has benefited immensely from all the song information available online. In general I didn’t provide links to Dead shows or the original songs, since hundreds of links would have been overwhelming. You can look up the Dead’s versions easily enough on deadlists. Graph by Dr. Beechwood. You can sign into scribd.
Dead’s covers. It can be sorted by song, by artist, by original date or Dead dates, or by times played, which makes it a little more useful than a plain- text list. I know there are a few mistakes in the spreadsheet, due to constant revisions.
As I update the text of this post, the spreadsheet will become a little out- of- date in spots.). Some explanations of the list. Songs played only once from 1. This includes shows that may be considered only quasi- Dead, like 1. Standalone instrumentals are included – there weren’t many. The Dead did instrumental jam versions of other songs, of course, but I’ve grouped those separately, considering them to be more quotes than covers. Songs played only with guests, or not in live shows, have a separate list below.
The numerous “tunings” also get their own section. Songs are listed by their original titles. Sometimes they go by different names in Dead setlists, so I provided a list of alternate titles below.). I decided to list the performer, rather than the composer (so, for example, you’ll find Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, but not Willie Dixon who wrote their songs). Partly this is because the names are more familiar, and it makes it easier to look up their recordings.
Also this is because so many songs on the list are folk and blues, which (as you’ll read) almost never have a single ‘composer,’ instead many people adding to the songs over time. In fact, many composer credits for the folk, blues, R& B, and early rock songs here are complete make- believe. So I’ll focus on the performers. Not all of these will be familiar after all – frequently the best- known version of a song was a later cover version, while the original remains obscure. In some cases I give dual attribution, when two artists have equal claim on a song (at least in public recognition), and go into more detail in the notes. Though I usually listed the first artist to release a song, often the Dead wouldn’t have heard that version, only later covers.
Many of these songs have extensive pre- histories.) So you’ll find details in the notes about which artists the Dead heard the songs from. Usually we know which records the Dead heard, but in some cases (particularly the folk songs done by many performers), it’s still unknown which versions the Dead used – some songs were learned in person, not from records. There’s a section on some of these uncertainties below. I generally tried to order songs by the year they were released, rather than when they were recorded (which could be a year or two earlier in some cases). Sometimes other people would cover a song before it had been released by the original artist (learning it from a demo or performance), making the “first version” a tricky question. The traditional songs are the most complicated. Folk songs often circulated for decades (or in a couple cases here for over a century) before being recorded, with lyrics changing and evolving over time; so for the “earliest version,” I chose the first printed or recorded version that’s close to the Dead’s.
For the earliest folk songs, the date used here is the date of printing, not the first recorded date or the (unknown) date the song originated. For instance, the first entry you see is ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot,’ which was printed in 1. That’s also why you see a few 1. Cecil Sharp’s book English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians was published. A couple later entries are from printed song collections as well.) I decided to do this because for many songs (like ‘I Know You Rider,’ or the 1.
I couldn’t find any known recordings until the ‘5. I went with the first versions printed in the US. Some folk songs effectively disappeared between being printed in the early 2. Many blues songs as well were frequently changed or rewritten by successive artists, and often include floating verses that passed from song to song interchangeably, so that there’s no single composer and it’s debatable which song version is the “first.” A couple examples are ‘Sittin’ on Top of the World,’ originally written in 1. It Hurts Me Too,’ originally from 1. Dead covered versions with new verses written in 1. I decided with much hesitation to list the later dates when the familiar verses were written, but of course the original songs are much older.
So some dates can be placed earlier – on the other hand, if you were to list the recordings the Dead actually heard and used, a lot of the early 2. A list of examples follows the notes.). So the dates on the list are full of inconsistencies and compromises.
Ideally the blues songs could be listed under a date range, for instance “written 1. In general I picked the first song version that included the lyrics the Dead sang, but brief song histories are included in the notes so you can find and compare earlier versions. Since many of the older songs were composed decades before appearing in print or recordings, the true chronological order of the “traditional” songs on the list is unknown. Given that, what were actually the oldest songs the Dead sang? The two ballads from the British isles, ‘Peggy- O’ and ‘Jack- a- Roe,’ are easily the oldest, going back in their original forms to the early 1.
They were considerably shortened after they reached America, though.) ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ follows in the mid- 1. American collectors bothered printing non- religious “folk” songs until the early 2. Crime ballads like ‘Little Sadie’ and ‘Tom Dooley’ probably originated in the late 1. Goodnight Irene’ and ‘We Bid You Goodnight’. Blues verses started coming into being around the turn of the century, so many primordial versions of blues songs may date back to that time. Unfortunately, the blues originated in darkness and obscurity, since the music was considered beneath notice, no whites at the time would bother recording it, and only a few song collectors printed any lyrics. Appalachian music was also generally ignored until the 1.
As a result, when the record companies finally discovered that blacks, ‘hillbillies,’ and other poor people actually bought records, they produced an apparent flood of “new” songs from the mid- ‘2. It’s generally impossible to tell just how far back many of the songs go – but given how much songs could change even in the recording era, with different performers singing different verses, altering tunes, or patching different songs together as they pleased, I doubt that many songs had a “fixed” form much earlier than the first recordings. The list starts with 1. Covers played only in 1. Many of the songs brought back later had first been played that year (or by Mother Mc. Cree’s in 1. 96. 4), which I’ll mention in the notes; but the Warlocks’ repertoire is discussed in a separate post.
For our purposes here, post- ‘6. Satisfaction’ or ‘Little Red Rooster’ or ‘Gloria’ or ‘The Last Time’) will be counted in their revival years. But all the songs that snuck onto setlists or tapes in 1. The year the Dead first covered a tune can be tricky sometimes.
For instance, on 6/1. That’s All Right Mama’ and ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh’ with the Allmans, which would normally count as “guest covers; ” the Dead didn’t play That’s All Right again til 1.
Dylan song until 1. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ is another example of a song played once in a 1. Dead acoustic set, but not heard in a regular Dead show til 1.
La Bamba’ entered the setlists in 1. Dead had played a snatch of it back in 1. So I’m afraid the dates I chose may be inconsistent. There is also a column listing the difference in years between the original song date and when the Dead covered it.