Grateful Dead
USA, 1965–1995
San Francisco band formed in 1965 around Jerry Garcia. They built their work around extended live improvisation and permitted audience taping, which produced an unusually large body of concert recordings.
MusicRoots documents 7 artists who influenced Grateful Dead and 1 artist Grateful Dead influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.
Who influenced Grateful Dead?
- Muddy Waters — Muddy Waters and Chicago blues were where Jerry Garcia's electric playing started.
- John Coltrane — Coltrane showed Garcia that improvisation could be simultaneously infinite and spiritual.
- Lead Belly — Lead Belly's folk tradition informed the acoustic side of Grateful Dead's eclectic repertoire.
- Hank Williams — Country was Garcia's first music, not a later detour — it surfaces in full on Workingman's Dead and American Beauty.
- Miles Davis — Miles Davis was Garcia's model for fearless musical reinvention over a career.
- Jimmy Reed — Three Jimmy Reed songs went into the Dead's repertoire, as many as they took from Muddy Waters.
- Chuck Berry — Garcia's phrasing owed as much to Chuck Berry as to Coltrane — the rock and roll half of a guitarist usually described through jazz.
Which artists did Grateful Dead influence?
- Bruce Hornsby — Hornsby's improvisational, jam-friendly approach is bound up with the Grateful Dead — he played over 100 shows as a member of their live band in the early 1990s.