Posted On: Monday - January 12th 2026 8:27PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead
There were the 2 drummers, Mickey Hart and Bobby Kreutzmann, and a few solid keyboard players came and went. Their keyboards are ingrained in the sound of all my favorites. However, the core of The Dead were Jerry, Bob and Phil.* I remember reading that these 3 played something like 1,500 shows in a row without any of them missing one.
We lost Jerry 30 years ago this past summer. Phil died a year and a quarter ago, and now Bob Weir has died. I ran into a lady today who saw my Deadhead Steal Your Face sticker and remarked "It's been a really bad time lately." Well, these guys were playing their music in 1965 as The Grateful Dead, they'd already been playing together and were young adults then, so what would you expect the year 2026 to bring? We all get old. Hopefully, we will be grateful when dead. I just answered "Yeah."
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I don't think many Deadheads would deny that Bobby had a better singing voice than Jerry, at least after the early years of the band before Jerry's kind of deteriorated. (It was his guitar playing that was his gift anyway.)
Our reader G. Anderson picked the following And the Music Never Stopped from 2/3/78, University of Northern Iowa UniDome, Cedar Falls, Iowa**, and he knows his stuff. (I think Phil's bass line in this song is one of his best too.)
I really like Bobby's voice on Estimated Prophet. There are probably great live versions that would beat this, but this studio version, from the album Terrapin Station. Gerry's guitar with the wah-wah (envelope filter) is sublime!
My time coming, any day, don't worry about me, no.I hope he ... we all... go find a paradise beyond that Golden Door... maybe even better than the Grateful Dead era Paradise that was California.
Been so long I felt this way, I'm in no hurry, no.
Rainbows and down that highway where ocean breezes blow.
My time coming, voices saying they tell me where to go.
Don't worry about me, nah nah nah, don't worry about me, no
And I'm in no hurry, nah nah nah, I know where to go.
I could paste in a hundred other songs, but I wouldn't know where to start. We'll have to feature The Grateful Dead more regularly, as we used to.
PS: Thanks go to Adam Smith for the artwork!
* That'd be Jerry Garcia, vocals and lead guitar, Bob Weir, vocals and rhythm/lead guitar, and Phil Lesh, bass guitar and occasional vocals.
** You don't just specify Dead SONGS - you specify Dead songs as played in a certain SHOW, as they played them differently.
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