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- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season 11 of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. In this bonus episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we take a look at the 1975 studio album by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, Tiger Rose, which was produced by none other than Mr. Jerry Garcia and has just received the Deluxe Edition reissue treatment. The Tiger Rose 50th anniversary editions are available now@dead.net and are available as a 2 CD Deluxe Edition as well as a 1 LP Vinyl version and digitally. Tiger Rose features contributions from Garcia, Mickey Hart and Donna Jean Gotsho and have been remastered from the original analog tapes by Grammy Award winning engineer David Glasser. Using plangent processes, tape restoration and speed correction. The 2 CD Deluxe Edition introduces a freshly remastered version of the original album alongside nine previously unreleased alternate versions of album tracks and include liner notes written by none other than my co host Jesse Giano. Robert Hunter's Tiger Rose rarities will also be available as a 1Lp exclusively at select independent music retailers as part of record store day 2025 on April 12th. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons 1 through 10. You can link from there to your favorite podcasting plat so you can listen how, when and where you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing, sharing us with your friends on social media, hitting that like button and leaving us a review. Thank you very much. It really helps. Folks, do you have a great tour story you'd like to share? Do it over@stories.dead.net and record yourself telling about that epic road trip. Best show you ever saw. The time you got miracled when you met your significant other. You may just hear yourself on a future episode of the Dead Cast and make sure to Record yourself. Because we can't use written words in a podcast, we have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast-index and check them out. 1975's Tiger Rose was recorded not long after Robert Hunter's previous release, Tales of the Great Rum Runners, but it's definitely a different vibe, namely due to the production and excellent guitar work of Jerry Garcia. It's celebrating its 50th anniversary and we are here for the celebration. Here's your master of ceremonies, Jesse Jarno.
- [03:56]
Robert Hunter
They laugh at her connections, but they don't say no.
- [04:00]
Jesse Jarno
In the spring of 1975, Round Records released Tiger Rose, the second solo album by Robert Hunter.
- [04:07]
Robert Hunter
Gently roll me honey while I sing your song on the bank where the children playing a Leo Come on and show me something I don't know it.
- [04:19]
Jesse Jarno
Came just nine months after Tales of the Great Rum Runners, Hunter's solo debut in the studio alongside Hunter was his old pal Jerry Garcia, a new kind of collaboration for the longtime creative partners who once performed together as Bob and Jerry. Here's how he described Tiger Rose on WLIR in 1978.
- [04:41]
Mickey Hart
Under the auspices of Round Records. This time I knew that my album would be released with Rim Runners. I didn't know that. And there was I though I think I really could have sold that album if I didn't have my own record coming, because there's. It doesn't meet professional standards for recording. It's quite dirty in some respects.
- [04:59]
David Gans
All right, Rum Runners, take C.
- [05:07]
Robert Hunter
Here's a taste of the great Rum Runners. Ships that sailed on the belt harbor.
- [05:12]
David Gans
Crews that broke the jug and poured.
- [05:13]
Robert Hunter
Your blood like a flowing rum upon the sand.
- [05:17]
Mickey Hart
Tiger Rose is produced by Garcia. He mixed Runners for me. He said it was just a real monster. I made such a mess in my tracks that he got in there and did the best he could.
- [05:31]
Robert Hunter
Sinking down, down down upon the sand upon the sea on the hills of.
- [05:36]
David Gans
Liquid green Their eyes could follow their eyes again Their dreams a tattered sail.
- [05:42]
Mickey Hart
And the wind Tiger Rose. He decided that he would like to be in there on the laying down of the tracks.
- [05:47]
Jesse Jarno
The album was recorded in Marin county at Rolling Thunder, the Barnes studio of Mickey Hart. Here's how Mickey remembered it to us in 2020.
- [05:56]
David Gans
The second one was Tiger Rose. Those were good days. They were sweet Jerry and Bob working together and having fun and doing Bob's music.
- [06:06]
Jesse Jarno
Tiger Rose marked the first time since 1961 when where Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia performed side by side. And though Hunter had been in the studio contributing to Garcia's solo debut and tweaking lyrics on Dead albums, Tiger Rose perhaps marks their most complete collaboration as musicians.
- [06:37]
Robert Hunter
Oh Marie, Marie, Marie My fine line, you're my mom Marie, Marie, Marie, Marie.
- [06:52]
Jesse Jarno
Marie Tiger Rose picks up at a fairly precise moment in the collective Grateful Dead timeline, winding together a few threads that have come up previously on the Dead cast. Sometime in late 1973 or early 1974, Robert Hunter and his partner Christie relocated to England. He returned to the states in early 74 to put the final touches on Tales of the Great Rum Runners, which we spoke about in its own episode last year, Black Train don't run here.
- [07:21]
Robert Hunter
Anymore not like it used to run before when it brought land into the city when it brought stranger from the shore now doesn't run here anymore.
- [07:40]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter went back to England and Rum Runners came out in June 1974, around the time of Hunter's 33rd birthday and midway through the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound year, which we discussed at length in our from the Mars Hotel season. We last left the Grateful Dead on stage at Winterland in October 1974, where they performed five shows and filmed what became the Grateful Dead movie.
- [08:03]
Robert Hunter
All you've got to live for is what you left behind. Get yourself.
- [08:17]
Jesse Jarno
Virtually the next day Jerry Garcia split town for a week on the beach in Orange county, playing at the Golden Bear with Merle Saunders. And thanks to the meticulous note taking of Steve Brown and others, we know that the preliminary work for Tiger Rose began on Garcia's return with a day at Mickey Hart's studio in Nevada, followed by a day of rehearsals at Jerry Garcia's house in Stinson beach on October 29th and 30th. A week and a half after the Dead so called retirement at Winterland, Jerry Garcia and Merle Saunders had a two week east coast tour and when they returned from that, it was time to get to business. According to the session notes, Tiger Rose proper got started on Friday, November 22nd with the album's title song tracked on the very first day.
- [09:02]
Robert Hunter
There's my day breaking window shaking at the cabin door Love me like you did last night just one time only I know it don't make sense but then it don't intend if you keep coming by we'll make it up again.
- [09:27]
Jesse Jarno
Ron Racquett was the president of Round.
- [09:29]
David Gans
Records, so I thought Tiger Rose was sensational. First of all, it had the best cover. I I think it's one of my five favorite covers of all of that whole era. You know that beautiful rose with the beautiful head of the tiger coming out of it? It was far out.
- [09:46]
Jesse Jarno
The COVID art for the album was by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly's Monster company, located a few blocks away from the Dead's offices in San Rafael. Frankly, it's wise to take some of Robert Hunter's stories with a prankster sized dose of salt. But if this next story is true, it seems as if the artists actually had a hand in getting Hunter to rewrite his material. This is Robert Hunter in Dallas in October 1986.
- [10:10]
David Gans
That song is neither about a tiger nor a rose. It's a secret symbolism. Has to do with the time that I was bitten by a spider. Original title of that was Spider Rose and it was about a spider that came up, but it wasn't an attractive enough title. I went to Stanley Mouse and Kelly and I talked about, could you make this spider in this rose? And they said, that's a pretty dark image. You sure you want that out? And so I thought about it a little bit.
- [10:36]
Jesse Jarno
If I had to guess, this story took place somewhere in early November 1974, while Jerry Garcia was touring the east coast just before the start of the sessions. It wasn't the first time Hunter altered the title of a song in progress.
- [10:49]
David Gans
Sugary was originally Stingery and then that was a little hard too. Shake it, shake it Stingery. No, no.
- [11:13]
Jesse Jarno
By the time of the session, the song's final title had been locked in, written as Tiger Rose on the session tracking sheet, and it became what Hunter considered to be one of his signature songs, like Sugary, which resonated with Elizabeth Cotton's great song. The phrase Tiger Rose had earlier resonances as well.
- [11:36]
Robert Hunter
Maybe that's the reason I just don't say no you can't hike it down low you my rodeo we don't care what Mama don't allow here anymore.
- [11:48]
Jesse Jarno
Tiger Rose was a 1917 Broadway play and a 1923 silent film, remade with sound in 1929. Only the 1923 version seems to survive in full, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast. Also recorded on the first day of the proper sessions was the album's second song, One Thing to Try, which appeared immediately after Tyga Rose on the final project.
- [12:12]
Robert Hunter
But if you're in a hurry and really got to go.
- [12:20]
David Gans
If you're in.
- [12:21]
Robert Hunter
A hurry Might have to find out slow.
- [12:29]
Jesse Jarno
During the first few days of the sessions, the musicians at hand needed to clarify some boundaries and division of labor. Here's Robert Hunter speaking to WLIR in 1978 about the album's production. Incidentally, we've been drawing extensively on this rather low fidelity interview for a while now. And we have our buddy Eric Zieler to thank for cleaning it up a bit.
- [12:50]
Mickey Hart
You know, even I was at the part. Okay, Garcia, you're the producer, you know, like. And I would argue about it and everything like that. He'd mutter about, you know, they always like that. They don't understand my true genius. So finally I sat back and, you know, we came to the agreement. Okay, you can produce this work. You know, I'll see what you can do with my work.
- [13:14]
Jesse Jarno
Robert Hunter had his own band of sorts, Roadhog. But he temporarily stopped playing with them about a year before the Tiger Rose sessions, a story we'll drop into later. One of Garcia's production decisions was to bring in a ringer to play most of the guitar on the album, namely himself. The bonus tracks on the new edition are almost entirely just alternate mixes, but there's a solo version of Rose of Sharon that gives a glimpse of what the material sounded like before it got to the studio.
- [14:06]
Robert Hunter
This one parted water that will walk the pond. Perhaps I'll call his child Rose of Sharon.
- [14:17]
Jesse Jarno
The sessions also included one song that featured only Hunter, somewhere between an outtake and an oddity. It wasn't included on Tiger Rose itself, but was actually released before the album. It joins the 11 and some of Hunter's earlier songs that fall into the category of what Skeleton Key files under cat dictation.
- [14:36]
David Gans
I'd like to play a little tune my cat wrote.
- [14:46]
Robert Hunter
Late last night Laying in bed I found the answer to all my ills A great big tree growing green and free full of $10,000 bills.
- [14:53]
Jesse Jarno
Talking money Tree came out as a promotional single on Round Records, sent to the Deadheads mailing list backed with a little bit of Ned Legion's Seastones.
- [15:01]
Robert Hunter
I went downtown to buy some wheels Bought every car in town I bought all the gas and all the oil so we all could drive around Then I bought the big department store and everything inside you could back up truck and fill it up. Cause the doors were open wide. It was company policy, we did it all the time.
- [15:18]
Jesse Jarno
When Hunter began performing live, Talking Money Tree became a staple of his concerts. Re recorded for the UK only LP Jack O Roses in 1980. This is the even rarer 1974 version now on the Tiger Rose Rarities LP.
- [15:33]
Robert Hunter
I bought that park and I hired a band to play every day for free. I bought the bars and the Trolley cars and the telephone company. You could call all day, say, how's it going? Never have to pay. Send telegrams to your wife and friends so you don't have to work today. But after a while we got so bored, sold the whole town back. All I kept was a bar and grill by the northbound railroad. You can stop by here anytime of night or any time of day. The second cup of coffee's free, but the first one you got to pay.
- [16:04]
Jesse Jarno
The studio's owner, Mickey Hart, had been furloughed from the dead in 1971, a week and a half before the start of the Tiger Rhodes sessions. Though Hart joined his old bandmates on stage for the final night at Winterland in October 1974, a story we told in our Ship of Fools episode. It was the beginning of the drummer's nearly year long re entry into the grateful bed. Here's how he remembered Tiger Rose to us in 2020.
- [16:55]
BD Shot
I don't know how long it took.
- [16:56]
David Gans
Us to make that. It seems like it was really quick.
- [16:59]
Jesse Jarno
The album was made mostly over the last two weeks of November 1974, with some overdubs in very early January 75, and was in some ways a smoother process than the sessions that yielded tales of the great rum runners. But the smoothness might be an illusion. The album had several people overseeing it. Producing was Jerry Garcia. Engineering were the Dead family's great team of Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor Jackson. But it was Mickey Hart's studio. Here's how Hunter recalled it to WLIR in 1978.
- [17:31]
Mickey Hart
Oh, Mickey Hart is the most wired cat you've ever met in your life. He has so many ideas and we had to like put him in a bag and tie it up and put him in the corner he'd beaten against it with ideas.
- [17:43]
Jesse Jarno
Ultimately, Hart got a credit as anti Producer, a title he explained to David Ganz in 1984.
- [17:49]
BD Shot
I was my studio and I was in it all the time and kibitzing. And that would be the anti Producer label. I was producing it in my own twisted way. It was all in good fun. I made a contribution to it. And this is what you would call an honor. This is an honorable title in this world.
- [18:05]
Mickey Hart
It got to the point where I just finally sat over in the corner myself, you know, like that. I don't have the energy either those cats have in a certain way in the studio, you know, to fight for a production idea. So I just finally sat back and let him let Mickey and, and Bob Matthews and Garcia slug it out over, over, over what the production was that was going to be. And I could not get a word in edgewise. I just couldn't. I mean, those guys are champion rappers, all three of them. And. And I'm being a double cancer. I finally have a tendency to go off in the corner. Introvert. I just come out when it was time to do my vocals.
- [18:43]
Jesse Jarno
The songs on Tiger Rose were mostly pretty new in 1975, though a few have origin stories to claw back into slightly. Here's how Barry Melton described the vibe at Mickey's Studio to us when we spoke for the Tales of the Great Rum Runners episode.
- [18:56]
David Gans
I don't think we did any of our recording out there with commercial plans for them. I mean, we were just playing. Ended up somewhere. That was great. And if it didn't, that was great, if that makes sense.
- [19:09]
Jesse Jarno
Mickey Hart was constantly recording, creating a few unreleased follow ups to Rolling Thunder over the course of 1973 and 1974, and Hunter was a fixture there, as was Barry Melton.
- [19:20]
David Gans
I was going through a divorce. I had a place to live in San Rafael, but I was spending a lot of time at Mickey's house.
- [19:27]
Jesse Jarno
There were lots of loose sessions out at Mickey's. It was during one of these that Mickey and Hunter first developed Fire on the Mountain.
- [19:34]
Robert Hunter
Cut up in sections Squirming alive Lost to the world on that 50 cent jive fireman this isn't a blaze Just a hog in the log fire on the mountain it's running around what doesn't go up.
- [19:59]
Jesse Jarno
And it was in this window that, according to Hunter, another piece of music emerged, featuring Barry Melton on lead guitar. The music brought to mind a poem Hunter had written a decade earlier while living in palo alto in 1964. Sung in 1972 or 1973 by Barry Melton on the original unreleased version of Ariel.
- [20:37]
Robert Hunter
There is no night like this night where candles burn through day daylight, mighty stream black golden tenders Fade, fade, fade, fade away the sun Objects with mighty sadness around the highways they silence Sink like gray V Into dreams of other days they fade away.
- [21:12]
Jesse Jarno
Though Robert Hunter employed many voices as a lyricist, the images of Ariel seem pretty different than his usual bag and explains the song's unusual rhyme scheme. It probably wasn't meant to be sung originally.
- [21:26]
Robert Hunter
There is no night like this night where candles burn through daylight Minds restrained by golden tethers Fade, sleep, fade away the sun Objects with smiling sadness Roman highways laced in diamonds Sink like grave Atlantis into dreams of other days they.
- [21:52]
Jesse Jarno
Fade away With Donna Jean Godshow's vocals, it would become the closing song of Tiger Rose.
- [21:59]
Robert Hunter
Ariel, Ariel, Ariel, Ariel, Ariel, Ariel and.
- [22:16]
Jesse Jarno
One other song predated the sessions as well. Though Bobby Weir and Robert Hunter somewhat infamously had some falling outs over the lyrics to Sugar Magnolia in 1970 and Greatest Story Ever Told in 1971, the two actually continued to work together on and off throughout the subsequent decades, with nearly a half dozen songs that exist in various drafts and rumors. And there's an uncirculated soundcheck recording of the Dead doing Yellow Moon, with different lyrics, slightly different music by Weir, and gorgeous vocals by Donna Jean Godshow. Hunter told Blair Jackson that Yellow Moon dated to around 1971, but he told Mary Eisenhart in 1988 that when he recorded it for Tiger Rose, he'd just written it the night before, which I take to mean he just finished updating his own version whenever it was written. It's probably my favorite thing on the album.
- [23:07]
Robert Hunter
Born, born, born upon the world the restless heart keeps flying Trying to become the heart of home Love, love, love Picks you up, spins you round Sits you right back down where you belong.
- [23:27]
Jesse Jarno
That'S the sound of Garcia and Hunter on acoustic guitars. Garcia and I sat down in the studio one morning and just played it, hunter told Mary Eisenhart.
- [23:36]
Robert Hunter
Now if I go a dancing out across the yellow wood I'll be home by morning if it doesn't come too soon if you seek protection go and find a safety man if he can't give you what you need, come on.
- [23:54]
David Gans
By again.
- [23:57]
Jesse Jarno
There'S an alternate mix of Yellow Moon among the expanded tracks of Tiger Rose, but it's just Hunter's take with Garcia's guitar potted down, the album has this lovely acoustic break. The bulk of Tiger Rose featured an all star cast of Bay Area musicians, mostly familiar to dead freaks who'd studied liner notes over the previous decade. Playing bass on a few tunes was Dave Torbert, who'd left the New Riders of the Purple Sage earlier that year and would soon join Bob Weir's Kingfish.
- [24:48]
Robert Hunter
Rolled away the half blind vision Dressed in stars by weather light Closed the doors to crippled highways Song by song that filled the night Blend it into unclear spaces Save the eye but lose the sight.
- [25:08]
Jesse Jarno
On bass and occasionally keyboards and vocals was David Fryberg, late of Quicksilver Messenger Service and more recently a member of the Jefferson Starship, playing both piano and celeste here on Rose of Sharon, along with Garcia's pedal steel and Hunter himself on mandolin.
- [25:24]
Robert Hunter
Or will he want a house with many pillars and fire of a night to keep him warm and if a stranger comes for troubled shelter with hounds and torchlight on his midnight trail Will he find a moment free of madness there and ears that still can hear.
- [25:50]
Jesse Jarno
To tell his tale on the session sheet, Garcia's pedal steel contribution is written down as Blackjack, his nickname from the Bobby Ace and his Cards from the Bottom of the Deck era, one of his last pedal steel appearances for a decade. Also doing double duty on bass and keys from the Starship was Pete Sears, formerly of Stoneground. I think this is Sears on sparkling stereo panned Yamaha synth on Dance a.
- [26:16]
Robert Hunter
Hole Roll away the half blind vision Dressed in stars by weather light Close the doors to crippled highways Song by song that filled the night Bend it into unclear spaces Save the eye but lose the does it matter when it's over if the truth was even right.
- [26:45]
Jesse Jarno
Here'S Sears playing piano on Last Flash of Rock and Roll.
- [26:51]
Robert Hunter
A jack beat bogey with a two stroke roll the last flash Rock and roll Catch air quick as it rolls along Last Flash.
- [27:02]
Jesse Jarno
That'S Donna Jean Gotcha singing on a few tracks, too.
- [27:06]
Robert Hunter
Last flash, Last flash, Last flash Laugh.
- [27:14]
Jesse Jarno
Flash, laugh splash Last flash Plane mandolin Overdubbed in January was Garcia's old buddy David Grisman, their last recorded project together until they reunited in the early 1990s.
- [27:30]
Robert Hunter
Shove a hole through the hand of Michael Miller as he crept up behind Wild Bill. She said, now share a little of the lap I'll save you where you know you can relax and not get killed. Jacob milled the ladder to the floor.
- [27:51]
Jesse Jarno
It was one of Hunter's favorites.
- [27:54]
Mickey Hart
Wild Bill was an excellent tune. I really like that tune. I like my sets with it a lot.
- [28:00]
Robert Hunter
Jacob nailed the ladder to the floor and now we can't move the ladder round no more. Sunday is the day we go to church and praise the Lord who'll take us when we die to go ashore. Monday's the day we go to work and pay our bills. Saturday we go and spend what's left diamond reels yeah, that's the day we.
- [28:29]
Jesse Jarno
The original tracking sheets show that Garcia played some banjo, but it didn't survive into either of the mixes, opting for electric guitar instead. It's brief, but I love hearing Garcia and Grisman playing together over Pete Sears bubbling Clavette. During this last break on Cruel White Water, there are possibly as many as three David Grismans spread around the stereo mix. Filling out the band on drums was a musician that would have been unfamiliar to even the most studious of bay area discographers, B.D. schott.
- [29:35]
Robert Hunter
That's not the sound of your regular drummer when drive to a nail and ford to the bar I know that people like I know my own heart what were you thinking when you played that part? It went over the hills and far away A drummer drumming up the break of the day Playing a woman lady, oh, my soul Play a warm.
- [29:59]
Jesse Jarno
Here's how Mickey Hart remembered BD's shot to David Ganz in 1984. You can read the full interview in David's great book Conversations with the Dead, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast.
- [30:10]
BD Shot
I was going through a catharsis here with Hunter because Hart, Mickey Hart, as Mickey Hart knew Mickey Hart could never play on Bob Hunter's record. Play straight drums. He couldn't play bass drums near a drum. And I had the cymbals because Hart didn't play like that. He wasn't a straight drummer. Hart was a space drummer. Hart played around it all up until that point. I was faced with an inner decision here. So what I did was I split my personality. And I knew BD Shot, bass drum, snare, hi hat overhead. And Tom. Tom was a basic signature of bass drum, snare drum, hi hat. And that was the track. So it became BD Shot. Now, Shot's consciousness wasn't anything like Hart. Shot could play the straight. He played that all day because he wasn't Hart and it was no threat to Hart. Well, why can't Hart handle the idea of. He couldn't then.
- [31:03]
Robert Hunter
Couldn't then.
- [31:03]
BD Shot
No, he couldn't then play with the New Riders, though. Of course. But that wasn't that later. No, that was 71. Right. Right. Okay. But I did. But it was a lot more spacey than what Hunter's stuff was. Hunter's was really. Even the New Rioters. I was stretching it. Cruel White Water and all that stuff. Yeah, I was stretching it, but this was really straight ahead stuff. And it had to be. And I didn't want to play this for the rest of my life. And Hart wouldn't do anything he didn't want to do. You couldn't even make Hart to it. Ain't nothing like that in this body. Whatever it was, I had to deal with it in my own space and time. And so I made myself BD Shot. But there had to be percussion and Hart. So then Hart met Schott on one of these records. Yeah, I think it's on the credits that way. Did you like each other? Oh, we finally made peace and then Hart and Shot became one after that.
- [31:51]
Jesse Jarno
And indeed both the names Mickey Hart and BD Shot appear on the session sheets in various credits. Here's how Mickey remembered it to us in 2020.
- [31:59]
David Gans
I think that was the one where I covered all my drums with a sheet and I played the drums really dry with a bed sheet over them or something like that taped around them in shape. I kind of remember that Jerry.
- [32:16]
BD Shot
It was like he taped me with gaffer's tape.
- [32:20]
Jesse Jarno
However they chose to restrain BD Shot. It worked. But perhaps the most versatile player of the sessions was Garcia himself, adding texture on a number of instruments. Obviously he plays some sweet lead guitar, but listen to that guitar break again while squinting your ears. And then listen for the tack piano in the far background and the bass Arp synth that comes in at the end. Both Garcia as well. On a few songs, Garcia plays Roland in Arp synths. Last heard on the Deads from the Mars Hotel on Over the Hills. He's playing both. On the tracking sheet for over the Hills. Hunter is credited with orally articulated string ensemble, but it seems to be half erased. The longer alternate mix of Dance A Whole has a few things to point out. Like the alternate intro.
- [34:14]
Robert Hunter
The prize is not worth taking.
- [34:24]
Jesse Jarno
You can see why they went with a different version. You may notice that the role in synth on Dance a Hole kind of sounds like bagpipes.
- [34:32]
Robert Hunter
Protected dreams, jealousy Leave nothing will forsaking judge the matter how you will that price is not worth taking.
- [34:53]
Jesse Jarno
You might also notice the little synth that burps up and cuts out just before the end of the song.
- [34:58]
Robert Hunter
Dance a hole right through the floorboard Dance a hole right through your shoe in the alt tween Blood and roses what else have you got to do?
- [35:08]
Jesse Jarno
But the alternate mix proposes that maybe that little synth shouldn't cut out in the altuin.
- [35:13]
Robert Hunter
Blood and roses. What else have you got to do?
- [35:21]
Jesse Jarno
I kind of wonder if Dance A Hole is maybe meant to close the album, because after a little bit more synth comes a full bagpipe coda by Hunter with BD shot on field, drums sounding like a final statement, which in turn is followed by a proper Hunter sign off tying it back to the top.
- [36:09]
Robert Hunter
The prize is not worth taking.
- [36:13]
Jesse Jarno
Perhaps not coincidentally, Dance A Hole is the only song on Tiger Rose that Robert Hunter isn't known to have performed live. Some of the synth overdubs are pretty ambient. Blink and you'll miss the Arp odyssey under the third line of the prechorus to cruel White Water.
- [36:30]
Robert Hunter
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- [36:44]
Jesse Jarno
The chorus invokes the mysterious Marie Helena.
- [36:55]
Robert Hunter
Maria Mar. Maria Maria Mar.
- [37:03]
Jesse Jarno
Some Robert Hunter songs had their roots in old folk traditions, but Marie Helena was born at a powerful Mexican radio station in 1932. The song Maria Elena was written by Lorenzo Barcelota at the 50,000 watt XEW in Mexico City. Known as the Voice of Latin America, the original had a slightly different title than what Hunter ended up. Maria instead of Marie Elena instead of Helena. But like dig this, a few Years later, in 1941, it became a massive American hit in translation for bandleader Jimmy Dorsey.
- [38:13]
Robert Hunter
For the answer to a Prayer. Maria Elena care you see how much I care.
- [38:32]
Jesse Jarno
Not only was Maria Elena a massive hit the year Robert Hunter was born, it was in the year as Robert Hunter was born. In Hunter's online journal in 2003, he wrote of a trip through Southern California where he and his wife stopped through the town of his birth, Arroyo Grande. I was only there long enough to get born. My parents were living in a motel in Pismo beach at the time. My mother says a guy was strolling past the hospital's open window whistling. Marie Helena, then popular while I was being born. Sounds like a blessing. The song has always had special significance for me.
- [39:06]
Robert Hunter
A love like mine is great enough for two to share. This love is really all I ask of you.
- [39:24]
Jesse Jarno
It was a name that clearly stuck with Robert hunter.
- [39:33]
Robert Hunter
You my mo. Marie, Marie, Marie, Marie, Marielle.
- [39:43]
Jesse Jarno
A decade later, in 1985, Hunter recorded the album length epic, the Flight of the Marie Helena, where she lent her name to a massive seagoing vessel.
- [39:52]
David Gans
The Marie Helena. Our lady of the Tide, largest raft the world has known. Rests upon the blue sand shore, grounded in low ebb, tethered by a silver cord to a seaside carousel.
- [40:06]
Jesse Jarno
It was a ship of fools of sorts.
- [40:08]
David Gans
The Maria Elena glides upon the bright white ocean of our second day. Everyone aboard her is a stowaway. There were no tickets for the passage.
- [40:19]
Jesse Jarno
So who was Marie Helena? As you may have gleaned from the invocation at the start of Terrapin Station, Robert Hunter was a believer in the classical idea of the Muse.
- [40:29]
Robert Hunter
Let my inspiration flow in token lines suggesting rhythm that will not forsake me till my tale is told and done.
- [40:45]
Jesse Jarno
Robert Hunter took his muses very seriously and very literally. He talked to David Ganz about them at length in 1977. Some of this conversation is in David's majestic conversations with the dead, linked as usual@dead.net deadcast I have one set of.
- [41:04]
David Gans
Muses which always comes in threes and is composed of mostly sunlight. Very, very transparent, Feminine, very feminine. Very, very full. Full of Brilliance and very loving and mischievous. And then there's a rather solemn, loving, overriding, who's definitely the overlooker of all the others.
- [41:33]
Jesse Jarno
And then there were what Hunter called the son of a bitch muses, the low muses.
- [41:38]
David Gans
Wharf Rat basically is a description of one of the low muses. And. And yet the war frat evokes one of the other muses, which is the pearly blue, which is a muse.
- [42:07]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter had good reasons to both take his muses seriously and celebrate them.
- [42:12]
David Gans
I'm pretty much driven by them in the way that I have to adopt certain habits in life, certain things that I can and can't do, because I've learned through practice that they'll go away. And when they go away, you have nothing to say. You can sit at the typewriter, but all you feel is like an empty vault in yourself. We don't like you anymore. You can't act like that. Screw you, Jack. See you later. You know, let us know. Ring the bell when you cool out. Be nice to somebody or, you know, whatever.
- [42:40]
Jesse Jarno
I'd suggest that Marie Helena was maybe one of Robert Hunter's muses. And if not that, at least some kind of extended presence in his musical life. One way I can hear Cruel Whitewater is as a story about what Hunter just described. Trying to reconnect with a muse.
- [42:57]
Robert Hunter
Leftover pieces weren't exactly what I needed they didn't have much meaning on their own Some talk a deviation but from what was never mentioned so I set out to find the wrong way home Home inside the hour I was tuning my guitar When I thought the sudden verge I know too well Finished my rendition of Don't Pity My Condition Then looked around to find I couldn't sit.
- [43:27]
Jesse Jarno
In 1978, Hunter told WLIR that cruel white Water was one of the vocal performances that he stood by crew.
- [43:34]
Mickey Hart
White Water is probably the best tune on that, in the point of view of a good vocal delivery.
- [43:40]
Robert Hunter
Left to arm Easily caught the black iron steamer Cross the barren waste to your arcade Saying take me to your leader in my strangest country town but the bit I've been made halfway made.
- [43:55]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter didn't have a lot of time to overdub his vocals onto the album. Here he is speaking with monte deam. In 1979, my son was being born.
- [44:04]
David Gans
In England, and I got all my vocals down and split and left the record in Jerry and Matthews and Mickey's hands and got over to England just in time to get into the delivery room, you know, just as my son was being born. That Was what Rose of Sharon was all about. Oh, I suppose.
- [44:28]
Robert Hunter
What you gonna call that pretty baby? You must call it one thing or another. This one Parted water that will walk the calm.
- [44:45]
Jesse Jarno
The Rose of Sharon is mentioned in the Bible, but biblical scholars don't agree on what kind of flower it actually was. Some candidates include crocuses, lilies and tulips, but no actual roses, making it a unique specimen in Hunter's songwriting. Many learned scholars have argued that a rose is a rose is a rose. But this song perhaps answers the musical question, when is a rose not a rose?
- [45:09]
Robert Hunter
Then you could call that child the Rock of Ages. You could call him Raft upon the Flood. He has been the face of many races. He has been the palace in the blood.
- [45:28]
Jesse Jarno
When everything was assembled, the results were a bit slicker than tales of the great Rum Runners, glistening folk pop for 1975. Here's how Hunter assessed it to WLIR in 1978.
- [45:40]
Mickey Hart
I'm afraid that the tracks sound more like Garcia music than Norin, which may be good or bad, depending on where you're coming from. It has that. That kind of narrowed out sound that he's into, Whereas Runners is real rap and the luddy, which is my lifestyle.
- [45:59]
Jesse Jarno
Yeah. Well, Robert Hunter may have recorded the album with his All Star pals, but he actually had a band of his own. Hunter was quite fond of the phrase rough and ready to describe his musical stylings. And if you want the rough and ready versions of Tiger Rose, seek out some live tapes by Roadhog. We're going to use this Tiger Rose episode to briefly frame this period of Robert Hunter's career, up until he shifted into his next phase. Because it's a little confusing and I don't think it's ever been spelled out before. In our Tales of the Great Rum Runners episode, guitarist Ted Claire joined us to tell us how Robert Hunter began showing up to play live with Rodney Albin's acoustic band, the Liberty Hill Aristocrats, probably sometime in 1972, performing pseudonymously as Lefty Banks and eventually writing the theme song that helped them transform into the electric band Roadhog. I'm a straight a driver I'm a.
- [47:05]
David Gans
Neon mark Gotta make I'm a roadhog.
- [47:08]
Jesse Jarno
I got hood made I'm a half hour late Gotta make a date with a dead dog I'm a road home yeah I'm a road hog on paper, it all seems to make sense. Robert Hunter began performing live with a band in 1972, then launched his solo career with a pair of albums in 1974. And 1975, while that band gigged relentlessly around the Bay Area in Northern California. And while all those words are true, it's also true that Tales of the Great Rum Runners came out in June 1974 and Tiger Rose in April 1975. But Hunter himself effectively left Roadhog in late 1973 and didn't really return until the spring of 1976. Hunter had even been a somewhat inconsistent participant during his first stint in the band. Joining us today to fill in more pieces of the story, we're delighted to welcome Roadhod vocalist V.A. vaughn.
- [48:13]
V.A. Vaughn
Bob just wanted to have somewhere where he could come up and play anytime he felt like it. That was the main thing. So wherever we went, he would come if he felt like it and not if he didn't. So that was really great. The idea was we'd do the songs and if he came, great, and if he didn't, it would be fine. We did our own strange psychedelic cowboy songs, original things, and we did bluegrass and we did blues. Because Jeff was a great blues guitar player and also an incredible five string banjo player.
- [48:50]
Jesse Jarno
Sometimes they did Hunter songs without him.
- [48:54]
Robert Hunter
Walking in the mountain singing Rock of Ages Walking in the mountain Mountain where I belong Walking in the mountain singing Glory, glory Now carry on back where it belongs I'm on my way to the greenbrier shore to the greenbrier shore and I don't expand and I don't expect I have to work no more.
- [49:14]
Jesse Jarno
That was the new Greenbrier Shore from the only known recording of the 70s iteration of the Liberty Hill Aristocrats from a syndicated radio program just called Guitar by the Standard School Broadcast. You can find used copies somewhat easily.
- [49:28]
V.A. Vaughn
So we did a few, like Rum Runner things off of Rum Runner. One of my favorites was when I sang It Must have Been the Roses. He really liked the way I did that one. I think that was one of my favorites.
- [49:41]
Jesse Jarno
I'm sad. There don't seem to be any tapes of either the Aristocrats or the early version of Roadhog, but they had their own thing going on.
- [49:48]
V.A. Vaughn
A lot of what we did was travel way up the coast to these little bars, Point arena, wherever there was a little bar to play. We would travel up there. We went to Tahoe. We were up in the snow and Donner Pass in the van.
- [50:06]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter didn't really take too many road trips with the hogs, but was certainly around for some of the shenanigans.
- [50:11]
V.A. Vaughn
That was one of the times I think that that Bob did show up. But Rodney, we had a coffin on stage and he comes out of the coffin and then he breaks into a battle of New Orleans on the fiddle.
- [50:37]
Jesse Jarno
That was Robert Hunter and comfort in 1978. The one constant between the two groups was the late bassist and fiddler Rodney Albin, Hunter's chief musical lieutenant in his bands.
- [50:47]
V.A. Vaughn
And Rodney was the most straight person. He never did any drugs ever of any kind. We had that music store, it was called Birds that Sing. First re rehearsed in the music store but. And then it was called acoustic music. After that, Rodney built this amazing instrument called the Neander Lynn. It was a pedal steel banjo. When we did the bluegrass, Jeff wanted to be able to bend the notes so Rodney built a pedal steel banjo for him. So it was electric banjo with pedals and they named it the Neander Lynn.
- [51:32]
Jesse Jarno
It's hard to know the precise order of things, but Kathy Vaughan left roadhog in early 1974, around the time that Robert Hunter moved to England. The band gigged harder than ever that year, but there's no evidence of Hunter turning up with them again until late 1975 at a one off gig at the Klamath Potato Festival. It sounds like he was back in California more full time by early 1976. But now that he had his own band and two albums, Hunter decided he no longer wanted to sing his own songs. As he told Monty Deam in 1979.
- [52:04]
David Gans
I wasn't performing my own tunes at that point with them. I wanted to do other people's tunes until I got a chomps down and felt comfortable on stage for a while. I stood there like a stick for the first couple of gigs with my knees shaking and people kept saying to me, why don't you do your own tunes? I didn't want to. I wanted to get into something entirely different because I guess I knew that just as soon as I started doing those then it was blam, blam, blam right to hear.
- [52:35]
Jesse Jarno
So he picked some brand new tunes to learn, both on albums that came out in the second half of 1975.
- [52:41]
David Gans
Born to run, I think is like one of the all time numbers, you know, from the last couple years. That's maybe the one tune that I played over and over in the last couple years. Must have played that thing till I drove my old lady out the wall. Even learned how to play it on guitar and do a pretty good imitation of Springsteen.
- [53:03]
Robert Hunter
A roll away American Dream all right we ride Divisions of glory all suicide machines strong from cages on Highway 9 grown wheel feeling checked Stepping over the line the sound breaks the Bones from your back It's a death trap It's a suicide Ra we gotta get out while we're young let's tramps like us baby, we.
- [53:31]
Jesse Jarno
That was a live version from 1979. There don't seem to be any Roadhog tapes, Born to Run, nor of this next song.
- [53:39]
David Gans
I worked out that in Free Money.
- [53:41]
Jesse Jarno
Patti Smith's thing every night before I.
- [53:46]
V.A. Vaughn
Could sleep.
- [53:51]
Robert Hunter
Find a ticket, win a.
- [53:54]
Jesse Jarno
Lottery.
- [53:59]
Robert Hunter
Scoop the pearls up from the.
- [54:03]
Jesse Jarno
Sea.
- [54:07]
Robert Hunter
Cash them in and buy you all the things.
- [54:12]
Jesse Jarno
There aren't that many Roadhog tapes, period, really only a handful of audience recordings, none of them terribly high fidelity. It was during this period, in summer 1976, a full year after Tiger Rose's release and more than three years after he began his live career, that Robert Hunter began to publicly identify as Robert Hunter for the first time. And audience members would understand that the person on stage singing all those Grateful Dead songs was actually the person who co wrote them. It could be a mixed bag. In his online journal, Robert Hunter wrote, I remember an early roadhog gig where I sang Friend of the Devil and It Must have Been the Roses. A fellow came up to me after the show and said, I don't think I like hearing you sing those songs. When I asked why, he replied, I like to believe Jerry wrote them. That remark hit deep, but it was the first time many Deadheads got to see Hunter in person, or at least recognize that they were seeing Hunter in person. Over@dead.net deadcast we've posted links to Cory Arnold's great work reconstructing the band's performing history in 1975 and 1976, as well as some photos of Roadhog in action. As you can imagine, the information is far from complete. Howie Levine was a Fillmore east vintage head and caught Hunter with Roadhog at the Euphoria Tavern in Portland, Oregon, on a date that we've not been able to pin down yet.
- [56:08]
Rich Mahan
I remember it being, you know, like springtime 76. I was going to school in Oregon.
- [56:16]
Jesse Jarno
And the album came out the year before.
- [56:20]
Rich Mahan
Somebody said, hey, you know, Hunter's playing up in Portland.
- [56:23]
Jesse Jarno
Took a ride up there and tiny bars.
- [56:26]
Rich Mahan
Couldn't have been more than 50 people.
- [56:28]
Jesse Jarno
It was the epitome of bar band.
- [56:31]
Rich Mahan
This was guys just having fun, playing.
- [56:34]
Jesse Jarno
People were calling out for songs. Buy me a beer, we'll play that one. Okay. Played, you know, some songs, you know.
- [56:38]
Rich Mahan
Four or five times. Tiger Rose, for sure, he played multiple times.
- [56:59]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter continued to balance Dead songs with tunes from his own career, but his stint in Roadhog lasted probably through late 1976. In 1977, he started the band Comfort, also featuring Rodney Albin on bass. A story will hopefully continue some other day, and we'll use this occasion too to send a farewell to Larry Klein, who passed away this January and who accompanied Hunter in both Comfort and the first few years of his solo career on a very early alembic six string electric bass. And in case you were wondering, not the same Larry Klein who played bass for Joni Mitchell, the songs of Tiger Rose had all kinds of additional lives. The last time Garcia had helped Hunter with a solo album, he poached one of the tunes for the Grateful Dead's repertoire, Luster Bear.
- [58:04]
Mickey Hart
The Roses I had thought of as my signature tune and Ol Jarrah decided we wanted to do it. And I was not too happy about it because I had recorded it already because I knew what a monster he is, that that song would no longer be identified with me once he did it. So I almost think it was a dead tune when I do now.
- [58:23]
Robert Hunter
I don't know. It must have been the roses. The roses or the ribbons in a long brown hair? I don't know. Maybe it was the Roses. All I know I could not leave her there.
- [58:58]
Mickey Hart
Then he wanted to do Tiger Rose and I said, well, come on, don't do that. I finally said, okay, Dune must have been the Roses. I'm not going to be a dog in a manger about the whole thing. I didn't sell it. Maybe you can. But Tiger Roses are the only my other signature to them like this. I got to keep one. So he's agreed that he won't touch Tiger Rose anymore.
- [59:18]
Robert Hunter
Tiger T Tiger T My jingle O Gently roll me honey while I sing your song on the back where the children play Ring a leafy O Come on and show me something I don't.
- [59:34]
Mickey Hart
Know so it's a recognition tune. People don't even have to have heard it. They've at least seen the album cover. So when I sing Tiger Rose, they're plot a little bit.
- [59:43]
Jesse Jarno
A few years later, in spring 1980, when Hunter opened for a few Jerry Garcia band shows, he joined the group on stage each night to do Tiger Rose.
- [59:51]
Robert Hunter
Tiger G Tiger G U My Tiger Rose Turn the royal children they ring, leave you show me something I don't know.
- [60:07]
Jesse Jarno
This is from February 28, 1980, released as After Midnight Tiger, the album is the very asterisked answer to one of my favorite bits of Hunter Garcia trivia. It's about to get slightly more asterisked in the late 60s and early 70s, Hunter was often a presence when the Dead and Garcia recorded in the studio. He appears on the Dark Star single, was very likely present in the studio from the beginning to end of the Working Man's Dead in American Beauty sessions, as well as Garcia's solo debut, where Hunter served various musical roles, including tuning the radio on the side two sound collage Spider God. Garcia did some mixing on Tales the Great Rum Runners, but doesn't really play on the album. So with all of those caveats, one way to describe Tiger Rose is as the only album that Hunter and Garcia made together from start to finish, and Yellow Moon is the only time they played together more or less in their original Bob and Jerry configuration. But there's an asterisk there too. When researching this episode, I came across this 1981 interview clip with Robert Hunter that appeared online last year, dropping a few very alluring sentences.
- [61:51]
David Gans
I've just finished trying to do a record with Garcia playing lead acoustic guitar on it and replaying acoustic. We had John Kahn and Mickey and Billy and we came near to completing it, but then I went off to England because the Grateful Dead had commandeered the studio in order to finish their album.
- [62:13]
Jesse Jarno
This would have been probably about a year after Hunter's live appearances with the Jerry Garcia band in the brief window after the Dead returned from Europe in late March 1981, and when they had to start mixing Dead Set, their upcoming live album we were recording for.
- [62:27]
David Gans
My Touch of Grey album was the title of it. I had Herbie Green in San Francisco do a cover for it and all the artwork and stuff perhaps.
- [62:41]
Jesse Jarno
Obviously Robert Hunter never released an acoustic album called Touch of Gray featuring Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzman. But it's nice to think about and hope it surfaces someday. But that's a few lost albums away. Hopefully we'll get to circle back sometime with more information. Tiger Rose was to be Hunter's last officially released album of new material until 1984's Amagamalin street, and he remained justly proud of it. But he lingered on one particular issue.
- [63:09]
Mickey Hart
My excuse for the vocals on this thing. I always have to excuse them. So my kid was being born over in England and I had to I got my vocals down as quick as I could over the tracks and split. And I had to I really wish I'd had more time.
- [63:26]
Jesse Jarno
No, he really lingered on it. Here he is speaking with Monte Deem.
- [63:30]
David Gans
A year later that I'd like to take a week with that Tiger Rose Basics. Go back in there and cut the vocals right on it. Maybe I should consider that water under the Bridge. Maybe not. But I love the songs on that. I. I think that's one of the best batches of songs I've ever gotten together. And I don't think I treated him right. You know, I howled and spitted and cracked.
- [63:50]
Jesse Jarno
And that's exactly what happened in 1989 when Tiger Rose was reissued on CD.
- [64:08]
Robert Hunter
Get out high Kick it down low get your heels and toes we don't care if vomiting or loudest anymore it.
- [64:17]
Jesse Jarno
Was a style of the time Sometime a little regrettable. Just ask Rubin and the Jets. Though Hunter wasn't a fan of the original vocals. I like them just fine. And we hope you do too, because that's what's on the newest release. Point yourself to the world of Marie Helena and Ariel Wild Bill and Diamond Lil, Handsome all and Tiger Rose.
- [64:42]
Robert Hunter
Tiger Rose got new clothes to Ladies love her so they laugh at her connections but they don't say no get down high, get down low get your heels in toe we don't care what Mama don't allow here anymore Tiger teeth.
- [65:04]
Rich Mahan
Thank you very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode Kathy, Vita Von Bogart, Mickey Hart, Barry Melton, Ron Rakow and Howie Levine. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Gans, for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Doron Tyson. All rights reserved.