22 Years of Trying to Forget One Sound

Pigpen died in March 1973. The Grateful Dead spent 22 years trying to leave his ghost behind. The setlist data says they failed — 791 times. That's not metaphor. From 1973 through 1979, zero performances of Pigpen's narrow blues-and-R&B basket — Smokestack Lightnin', Turn On Your Lovelight, Little Red Rooster, Wang Dang Doodle. From 1980 through 1995: 791 performances. Including the second song of their final show at Soldier Field on July 9, 1995. This is the case that the Grateful Dead spent 22 years trying to escape Ron "Pigpen" McKernan's blues vocabulary and failed. Not as nostalgia. As structural fact. Keith Godchaux's piano couldn't hold those songs. When Brent Mydland arrived at Spartan Stadium on April 22, 1979 with a Hammond B-3 — the same instrument family Pigpen had played — the door reopened. By 1984 the flood was on. By 1995 the band couldn't frame either set of their last show without returning to Pigpen's musical world. Featuring Jerry Garcia on what the band lost, Bob Weir's "good friend of mine" line in Good Lovin', Betty Cantor-Jackson hearing the Leslie speaker on the 1974 Winterland tapes, and what Howlin' Wolf and Chess Records had to do with the way the Grateful Dead actually formed. Chapters: 0:00 Betty Hears Pigpen's Ghost in '74 1:30 The Argument: A 22-Year Musical Haunting 3:00 The Blues Foundation Pigpen Built 5:00 March 1973: Garcia's Broken Leg 7:00 Seven Years Without Pigpen's Songs 9:00 Brent Mydland Brings Back the B-3 11:00 The 791 Tributes: The Ghost Returns Sources: \- The Grateful Dead Live Music Archive: https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead \- Ron "Pigpen" McKernan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron\_%22Pigpen%22\_McKernan \- Brent Mydland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent\_Mydland \- David Gans, "Conversations with the Dead" (Da Capo Press) \- Rock Scully, "Living with the Dead" (Little, Brown) 🎙️ The Shakedown Archives — thesis-driven Grateful Dead documentary #GratefulDead #Pigpen #BrentMydland