Robert Hunter’s The Silver Snarling Trumpet, part 1

Summary

GOOD OL' GRATEFUL DEADCAST: Episode Summary - "Robert Hunter’s The Silver Snarling Trumpet, Part 1"

Release Date: November 21, 2024

Introduction

In the 100th episode of “The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast,” hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarno embark on an in-depth exploration of Robert Hunter’s newly released manuscript, "The Silver Snarling Trumpet." This pivotal episode serves as the first part of a two-part series delving into the formative years of the Grateful Dead, particularly focusing on the vibrant pre-band scene in Palo Alto, California.

1. Unveiling Robert Hunter’s Manuscript

The episode opens with Rich Mahan celebrating the milestone 100th episode and introducing the main focus: Robert Hunter’s "The Silver Snarling Trumpet." This manuscript offers a firsthand account of the early days that shaped Hunter and Jerry Garcia’s friendship and, ultimately, the genesis of the Grateful Dead.

Notable Quote:

"The Silver Snarling Trumpet is the new, recently released manuscript written by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and it's loaded with tales of the pre Grateful Dead scene down the peninsula from San Francisco in Palo Alto."
— Jesse Jarno [05:04]

2. Insights from Key Contributors

Dennis McNally, the band's longtime publicist and official historian, joins the conversation to shed light on Hunter’s writing process and the manuscript's significance. He emphasizes that Hunter penned the book in 1962, capturing the events while they were still fresh in his mind.

Dennis McNally:

"Hunter was very, very kind to me. So when Jerry invited me to be the biographer fairly early on, we were talking and he shared the manuscript with me and I looted it as any good scholar would."
[06:33]

Brigid Meyer, a central figure in the manuscript, shares her personal experiences and the impact of Hunter’s vivid storytelling. She highlights how Hunter's portrayal of Jerry Garcia is strikingly accurate, making Jerry almost appear as a "hologram" from the dialogue.

Brigid Meyer:

"The main thing that Hunter nailed was the pitch-perfect dialogue. Particularly with Jerry. It was almost eerie because Gerry kind of came up off the page like a hologram from the dialogue and from these conversations."
[07:32]

Alan Trist, head of Ice 9 Publishing and a key character in the manuscript, discusses the blend of documentary and novelistic elements in Hunter’s work. He speculates that Hunter referred to it as a novel to streamline the narrative and maintain a workable through-line.

Alan Trist:

"Hunter called it a novel because I suspect he was limiting the range of activity and personnel that he was going to talk about. A novelist has to have a through line that can be workable in some way."
[08:44]

3. The Palo Alto Bohemian Scene

The heart of the episode delves into the early 1960s Palo Alto, a hotspot for bohemian and beatnik culture. Central to this vibrant scene were key locations such as Kepler's Books, The Chateau in Menlo Park, and St. Michael's Alley. These venues became the cradle for the relationships and experiences that would later influence the Grateful Dead.

Kepler's Books:
A pivotal hangout where young bohemians, including Garcia and Hunter, congregated. Alan Trist recounts the bookstore as a "hangout space and a place to read books, borrow books, catch the winds of the time."

The Chateau:
A rambling party house in Menlo Park where creative and often chaotic gatherings took place. It was here that Garcia befriended Paul Spiegel, whose tragic death in a car accident profoundly impacted Garcia.

Notable Quote:

"He was such an extraordinarily different kind of person and they had all these skills painting and he was amazing for a 16-year-old high school dropout."
— Alan Trist [22:35]

St. Michael's Alley:
A café and art gallery that served as another central hub for the early scene. Jesse Jarno highlights its role in fostering community and creativity among the young artists.

4. Formation of Early Musical Collaborations

The podcast explores the early musical endeavors of Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia, notably their brief stint as the duo Bob and Jerry Garcia. This collaboration marked the beginning of their deep musical and personal bond.

Notable Quote:

"When the odds are saying you never win, that's when the grin should start."
— Jerry Garcia [26:36]

Influence of the Folk Revival:
The folk music scene, heavily influenced by icons like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, played a crucial role in shaping the musical direction of Garcia and Hunter. Their engagement with folk music laid the groundwork for the improvisational style that the Grateful Dead would later become famous for.

5. Pivotal Events Shaping the Scene

A significant turning point discussed is the 1961 car accident that resulted in the death of Paul Spiegel. Jerry Garcia describes the traumatic experience, stating:

Jerry Garcia:

"My life started there. I was fucking around till there really. I was a mom. I was just, I was just a dumb kid."
[24:25]

This event not only marked a personal transformation for Garcia but also instilled a sense of urgency and purpose that would drive his future endeavors with the Grateful Dead.

6. Literature and Political Influences

The episode underscores the profound impact of Beat literature and left-wing politics on the early Dead scene. Works like Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road" and Allen Ginsberg’s "Howl" were instrumental in shaping the ethos of the group.

Dennis McNally:

"The proper expression is roman a clay, which means a novel that's fictionalized. But I think most of the stories actually happen and uses the real names throughout."
[08:50]

Robert Hunter’s anti-consumerist and inclusive values, though subtly presented, are evident throughout the manuscript, reflecting the broader countercultural movements of the time.

7. Building Community and Connections

The podcast highlights how places like Kepler's Books and the Peace Center facilitated the formation of a tight-knit community. Figures like Willie Legate provided essential support, offering lodging and creating a safe space for the young bohemians.

Willie Legate:

"We became very aware of the depths of iconoclasm that he represented. You know, it was a great discovery, you know, with Willie Strange oracle."
— Alan Trist [56:39]

8. The Role of Key Characters

Several pivotal characters emerge from the manuscript:

• Joan Baez: Her rise as a folk icon and her interactions with Garcia and Hunter.
• Ron "Pigpen" McKernan: Although not extensively covered in "The Silver Snarling Trumpet," Pigpen's early influences are touched upon.
• Joe Novakovich: A lesser-known figure who played a crucial role in supporting the early members.

Notable Quote:

"We were all writers at Kepler's bookstore. I would have my notebook out on one table and he'd have his notebook out on another table and Jerry would have his guitar notebook out on another table."
— Alan Trist [40:15]

9. Conclusion and Teaser for Part 2

The episode concludes with a reflection on the intertwining lives and experiences that set the stage for the emergence of the Grateful Dead. The hosts tease the continuation of this rich narrative in the upcoming episode, promising to delve deeper into the transformative period that solidified the band’s legendary status.

Notable Quote:

"We're going to pause our story with one final image from the Chateau off camera in the silver snarling trumpet, but certainly not in Searching for the sound."
— Jesse Jarno [69:44]

Final Thoughts

This milestone episode of "The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast" provides an engrossing look into the early influences, relationships, and events that shaped the Grateful Dead. Through Robert Hunter’s candid manuscript and insightful contributions from key figures, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the band’s origins rooted in Palo Alto’s bohemian and beatnik culture.

Key Takeaways:

• Authentic Narratives: Robert Hunter’s firsthand account offers an authentic glimpse into the formative years of the Grateful Dead.
• Influential Relationships: The friendships and collaborations between Hunter, Garcia, and other key figures were instrumental in shaping the band’s ethos and musical direction.
• Cultural Context: The intersection of literature, politics, and music in early 1960s Palo Alto created a fertile ground for the birth of one of rock music’s most enduring legends.

For listeners eager to explore the full depth of this narrative, Part 2 of this series promises to continue unraveling the intricate tapestry that led to the creation of the Grateful Dead.

Transcript

[Rich Mahan]

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 not only to season 10 of the good old Grateful Dead cast, but the 100th episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. Can you believe it? I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you so much for tuning in and supporting us. It makes us happy to know you all are enjoying the ride. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. We open the new manuscript from Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, the Silver Snarling Trumpet and dive into its incredible tales of the early pre Grateful Dead scene down in Palo Alto, California. There's so much to cover. This episode will be part one of a two parter the 2025 season of Dave's Picks is on sale now and the Early Bird subscription period is ending soon. Dave's Picks, the quarterly Vault releases of classic Grateful Dead concerts, is now heading into its 14th season. Subscriptions to Dave's picks are open now at dead.net Subscribing is a great way to ensure you'll be well stocked with killer sounding, professionally mast Master Dead shows to help celebrate the dead 60th anniversary year. Check out the benefits of being a subscriber. You get four limited edition numbered releases, the highly collectible bonus disc, which you can't get if you aren't a subscriber, free domestic shipping. They're delivered throughout the year and right now you can get early bird pricing of 99.98 which saves you 39 versus purchasing a la carte. There's only 25,000 copies of each show printed and once they're gone, they're gone. The only way to ensure you get a copy of each is to subscribe now. And Early Bird pricing does end this Friday, November 22nd at 9pm Pacific time. So head on over to dead.net and subscribe to the 2025 Dave's Pick series now while you're over at dead.net go to dead.net deadcast and check out all of our past Deadcast episodes including including the complete seasons one through nine. And you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how you like to listen. Help this podcast by subscribing. Share us with your friends Share an episode on social media. Hit that like button and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you very much. Do you have a great tour story you'd like to share with us or, well, do it over at stories.dead.net Record yourself telling about that epic road trip. Best show you ever saw. You never know. You just may hear yourself on a future episode of the Dead cast. And as always, we do have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Those are over at dead.netdeadcast-index head on over there and check them out. The Silver Snarling Trumpet is the new, recently released manuscript written by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and it's loaded with tales of the pre Grateful Dead scene. Down the peninsula from San Francisco in Palo Alto, get ready to hear tales about the key people in their group. Find out what they were up to and how their early experiences shaped them and led them from the beat scene to down the path to hippydom and ultimately to form the greatest band in the world. Can you dig it? We knew you could. Here's Jesse Jarno.

[Jerry Garcia]

There were days and there were days and there were days between.

[Jesse Jarno]

The days between was the final original Jerry Garcia Robert Hunter song, debuted by the Grateful Dead, performed between February 1993 and the band's last shows in 1995. This is the rehearsal from the so many Rhodes box. Hunter's lyrics channeled youth.

[Jerry Garcia]

When all we ever wanted was to learn and love and grow.

[Jesse Jarno]

For this 100th episode of the Dead Cast, we're going back to the very earliest spark of what became the Grateful Dead, the extended moment channeled in Hunter's lyrics for the days between.

[Jerry Garcia]

Once we grew into a shoe.

[Jesse Jarno]

We.

[Jerry Garcia]

Told them where to go.

[Jesse Jarno]

This fall, Hachette Books published a remarkable work of nonfiction by late lyricist Robert Hunter called the Silver Snarling Trumpet, about his and Jerry Garcia's very earliest days as friends in Palo Alto. It's got a subtitle added more recently, the Birth of the Grateful Dead. And though the book ends several years before the Dead started, it's still an accurate subtitle. Please welcome back to the Dead Cast, the band's longtime publicist and official historian, Dennis McNally.

[Dennis McNally]

He once said to me something like, you know, the Grateful Dead started a long time before they got instruments. And what I think he was referring to is this year in particular 1961, where he had just arrived in Palo Alto and Jerry had beaten him by about two months. They fell together with this click that's reverberating to this day.

[Jesse Jarno]

Perhaps the second most remarkable thing about the Silver Snarling Trumpet, aside from the book itself, is that Robert Hunter wrote it in 1962 when the events were still fresh on his mind.

[Dennis McNally]

He wrote it, put it away. I'm not aware of him trying to publish it at the time. I think he at that point wrote it for himself.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was his first draft, but Dennis had an in.

[Dennis McNally]

Hunter was very, very kind to me. So when Jerry invited me to be the biographer fairly early on in 81 or so, we were talking and he shared the manuscript with me and I looted it as any good scholar would.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Silver Snarling Trumpet provided the background for the first sections of Dennis Essential biography. A Long, Strange Trip. And he wrote an introduction to this edition. Over these next few episodes we'll be hanging out in the world of the Silver Snarling Trumpet, which I absolutely can't recommend enough just as an incisive, well written book. So my eyes are spinning today to welcome two of the book's co stars. Please welcome first Brigid Meyer.

[Brigid Meyer]

I would really like to dedicate this interview to Steve Silberman. He was a dear friend and he was so eager to. To read this book and talk about it.

[Jesse Jarno]

Bridget wrote an afterword to the new edition. She got her copy from Hunter's wife, Maureen.

[Brigid Meyer]

I did not read this until a year ago when Maureen sent me the Xerox copy.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hunter had revisited the book briefly in 1982, wrote a new introduction and put it away again.

[Brigid Meyer]

And she went to the storage locker and they had to get bolt cutters and cut it. And she said it was astounding. It was just full of stuff and all these trunks. And I guess they pulled out about three or four of them. The first one she opened, it was right on top.

[Jesse Jarno]

And we're delighted to welcome back. Often a backstage character in the Grateful Dead, but one of the main characters in the Silver Snarling Trumpet, the Longtime head of Ice 9 Publishing, Alan Trist.

[Alan Trist]

I had left in the end of 1961, so I was certainly not aware of anything at that time. A little bit later in 82, it came around again to a few of us. Although I didn't really read it then, what I was looking at, the mice had eaten it away in one corner and there were some words missing.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hunter himself sometimes referred to the book as a novel.

[Brigid Meyer]

It wasn't a novel. It was reportage, cinema verite.

[Dennis McNally]

The proper expression is roman a clay, which means a novel that's fictionalized. But I think most of the stories actually happen and uses the real names throughout.

[Jesse Jarno]

To me, the book feels like nothing less than a documentary with scenes full of dialogue, as if someone had filmed everybody hanging out. Alan Trist there Are things in the.

[Alan Trist]

Book like that that don't quite connect up. Which I think has to do with this interesting question about whether Silver Snarling Trumpets is a. Is a documentary type of book or a novel. Hunter called it a novel because I suspect he was limiting the range of activity and personnel that he was going to talk about. If he take into account everyone and all the connections, it would have been too complicated. A novelist has to have a through line that can be workable in some way. So I think that's what Hunter was working with and why some things were left out.

[Brigid Meyer]

I don't call it a novel. I call it creative nonfiction or memoir. Because there's no fiction in there, really. He wrote it down as it played, as he saw it. That was a genius move. I mean, for someone so young to have that kind of prescience. I think it's pretty cool.

[Dennis McNally]

I don't think he even appreciated how actually very important it was. He made an author's note in the book about how it really is a document about the transition from beat to hippie as a historical document. But I don't think he held it with the reverence that I do.

[Brigid Meyer]

I was astounded primarily by how evocative it was. It was like smelling your grandmother's perfume or something. It takes you back to an era that had been kind of just stored in your subconscious. I guess the main thing that Hunter nailed was the pitch perfect dialogue. Particularly with Jerry. It was almost eerie because Gerry kind of like came up off the page like a hologram from the dialogue and from these conversations. Like, oh, my God, that's exactly what it was like. That was exactly how he came across, how he spoke. And I suspect the dialogue he has there for Alan is pretty true. But the dialogue he has for me I don't recognize. I think he may have used me as kind of the female lead, as it were, and then conflated other conversations. There's some of it I recognize. Doesn't sound like he took verbatim notes of that. Whereas with Jerry, it sounds like verbatim notes. Jerry was always Jerry. He didn't become Jerry. That's who he was. And he started off that way and ended up that way. It was the same. Oh, my God. Fully formed. Straight out of the head of Zeus or something.

[Jesse Jarno]

We're not going to read too many passages from the book itself today. But there's a few paragraphs we have to share. To give you an idea, I'll stop pointing it out eventually. But remember that this was written in 1962. Jerry smiled victoriously and continued to play, his ill combed bearded head intent over his guitar. He played the guitar anywhere from 24 to 38 hours a day, which would tend to be unnerving even if he were Sahovia. However, he was not Sahovia, he was Jerry. And the very act of being Jerry was in his estimation an excuse for almost anything. He had the easygoing self assurance of a person who is used to being forgiven for any gaucheness he might choose to perpetrate on his contemporaries. So he committed them with an amazing regularity and a completely innocent conscience. This attitude was made bearable only by the virtue of the fact that it worked both ways. He forgiving easily anything but innate grossness, mental or physical. Gross was Jerry's ultimate condemnation. A sin without possibility or intercession of forgiveness.

[Dennis McNally]

Really the subject of the book is the scene, but really in particular it's Jerry. Jerry was this charismatic, if that's quite the right word to use for any 18 year old, but it's true. The guy with the personality that everybody just went, hmm, I want to know this guy better.

[Jesse Jarno]

He was the stellar example of practical bohemianism. From the hand wrought laurel wreaths that often graced his haggy mane to down to what one might expect to be cloven hooves sheathed in incredibly aged socks. There was an essential joie de vivre in him that always lurked pan like behind his something the cat dragged in appearance. His philosophy of life was quite untenable since he drastically changed it at least every three days to fit his particular frame of mind.

[Dennis McNally]

It's a memoir except that really his focus is on everybody else and he really, he sees himself as the observer does not give himself away so very much compared to what he reveals about Jerry and Alan and Willie in particular.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Willie in question is Willie Legate, a slightly older friend we'll reintroduce shortly. The Silver Snarling Trumpet doesn't have much of a plot in terms of events that pull the story along. So there's not too much we can spoil in that way. It's more of a mood piece.

[Dennis McNally]

But Jerry said he thought that his portrait of everybody was pretty spot on. But he kind of leaves himself out and you know, that's it's allowed.

[Brigid Meyer]

What's so poignant for me is to recall how morose Hunter was. He was a real melancholy kind of guy.

[Jesse Jarno]

We would maybe now describe teenage Robert Hunter as kind of emojis. The book's afterward features a poem that Bridget wrote at the time.

[Brigid Meyer]

But nevertheless, something happened with the four of us that then expanded and was in the air. It was astounding. It was amazing. I still can't understand why or how or what happened. But on my little high school poem, I said, we are all in love with life and each other.

[Jesse Jarno]

Several times in the book, this flash of bohemianism is described as the love scene. And this is a solid half dozen years before the so called Summer of Love in 1967. But from a lot of perspectives, the stories we're about to tell are the beginnings of the social formation that evolved into the Grateful Dead.

[Dennis McNally]

There was a central group of five people. These were further friends who would obviously become even more important over the coming years. But at that earliest point in 61, it's Jerry and Willie and Alan and Hunter, of course. And then I call them their protege, Bridget Hunter.

[Brigid Meyer]

And I did some photographs in one of those little photo booths. I'm wearing one of those peace signs, right?

[Jesse Jarno]

You can see those photos in Amir Barlev's Long Strange Trip.

[Brigid Meyer]

Yeah, I suppose we were baby beatniks. We, we didn't know what we were. We were just having a good old time. Didn't matter. We weren't defining ourselves something that. That's something that comes later.

[Jesse Jarno]

The scope of the silver snarling trumpet is incredibly short.

[Brigid Meyer]

It was literally about March 61 till early 62. So it was a brief moment in time, but it spawned so much and gave rise to so much.

[Jesse Jarno]

In March of 1961, both Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter were 18 years old. For some pretty intense reasons. We'll get to. Jerry Garcia would later define these months as the moment his life began. He'd been discharged from his eight month stint in the army on December 14, 1960, where he'd been stationed in San Francisco's Presidio. He found a place to crash through friends of his girlfriend. And when they moved to Palo Alto, he stayed in their spare room, though didn't stay there long. Here's how Garcia described his post army existence in 1974, an outtake from the Grateful Dead movie.

[Jerry Garcia]

I never paid the rent. If I didn't have rent, I didn't live in a house. I scuffled, you know, I hustled, I scammed. I didn't want to work, I didn't want to have a job. Just didn't want to live that life. And I didn't care what I had to do to not do it.

[Jesse Jarno]

This is who Jerry Garcia was. When the silver snarling trumpet opens, I'd.

[Jerry Garcia]

Sleep in the bus depot Man. Or, you know, I didn't give a fuck, man. Theater lobbies, you know, behind the place where they give you the tickets. You know, I got into all those trips just because I didn't want to make myself into somebody or something like that.

[Jesse Jarno]

In Palo Alto, he'd found an easier place to get by than say, New York City.

[Jerry Garcia]

You don't have to really get indoors for the winter here. You don't have to lock up. So that's like a. That's a pass on that level. So it's easier to scuffle here. So you could scuffle for years, man. Have no money, no gig.

[Jesse Jarno]

Almost all of the locations we'll mention in this episode were walkable, or at least bikeable. There was a lot of hitching rides too. We'll soundtrack this next segment with some pieces from Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain, released in 1960 and popular among the baby beatniks of Palo Alto. One of the first people Jerry Garcia befriended was Alan Trist, who was then spending a gap year in Palo Alto while his father did a fellowship at Stanford. They met at Kepler's Books, one of the central locations for today's action. The left wing bohemian bookstore that gave rise to the Grateful Dead. Kepler's was the place. Alan Trist.

[Alan Trist]

I think it was just a hangout space and a place to read books, borrow books, catch the winds of the time, you know. And we were pretty penniless. We didn't go and buy tickets to concerts or things like that. Immediately before I came to Palo Alto, which was November of 60, I think I had spent the summer in Paris as I had been doing for several years in the 50s. I would go over from London to Paris in the summer, vacation at school and hang out on the Left bank and Place St. Michel and Little Garrett, Rue de l'rendelle that I used to stay in. So I. And that was part of the Anglo, French, early pre hippie thing, you know, it was like bohemianism. Well, that was in Paris, wasn't it? I didn't experience music so much in Paris as just a feeling that was in the air, you know, I mean, there was one to go back to that. I mean, I. I did go to the, the Beat Hotel in Rouge Le Coeur, where Corso and Ginsburg and Orlovsky and they were all there at that point, you know, youngster like, like me didn't have much of a footing in that scene, but, you know, that was definitely tangible. So we went to Paris and that's where I, I got My early experience in the bohemian world. And so, you know, I was full of all this when I went to Palo Alto. And there I found, not immediately, but as soon as I connected with Kepler's there was the San Francisco version of bohemianism.

[Jesse Jarno]

Another hangout was the rambling party house in Menlo park called the Chateau, where rent was cheap and rooms were plentiful. One of the people that Garcia and Trist encountered at the chateau was a 16 year old high school dropout named Paul Spiegel.

[Alan Trist]

He was such an extraordinarily different kind of person and they had all these skills painting and he was amazing for a 16 year old high school dropout.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was through Paul Spiegel that Garcia got a part time job doing lights for musicals at the Commedia Theater. Though Bridget Meyer hadn't met Tristan Garcia yet, she knew Paul Spiegel too.

[Brigid Meyer]

He was a classmate of mine at Menlo Atherton High School and I knew him. He was an incredibly flamboyant, he loved outraging people. He used to flounce around in a cape quoting Rambo. His friend Lowell Clukas used to pretend that they were gay sometimes and just anything to outrage. But he was notorious that way and he did a lot of somewhat notorious paintings. El Greco. Ish.

[Jesse Jarno]

Late on the night of February 19, 1961, Garcia, Trist, Paul Spiegel and another friend left the Chateau all a bit drunk. This is Jerry Garcia Speaking with Dennis McNally from Dennis's Jerry on Jerry audiobook available from Hachette.

[Jerry Garcia]

I mean, at 90 miles an hour, things happen fast. It was, he was, I mean it was like that. They were going that fast? Oh yeah, we were hauling, we were going fast. It was a Studebaker Golden Hawk, you know, with a blower in it.

[Jesse Jarno]

The driver lost control, went through the windshield.

[Jerry Garcia]

It was so violent, so furious that I don't even know. I have no, nothing, you know, for me it was. There was an unbroken moment between being in the car and being in a field. I was literally thrown out of my shoes. That was what the force of it was like. It was a sobering sensation.

[Jesse Jarno]

Understandably. It was a powerful and transformative moment in Jerry Garcia's life.

[Jerry Garcia]

My life started there. I was fucking around till there really. I was a mom. I was just, I was just a dumb kid. I mean, I had a few half formed ideas, but my life, that is the slingshot boom. That's what got me going. That's what gave life that urgency.

[Alan Trist]

And he wasn't very much in our scene, you know, and Then he was gone. Yeah, it was like a flash.

[Jesse Jarno]

Very powerful.

[Jerry Garcia]

That stuff is hard when you're young. The grief, you know, when you lose a brother, you know, when you lose a pal, you know, this was something new to me. The thing of using a com, losing a comrade in it. He was like a new friend too. It's like we were just getting chummy, you know, we were just getting to be to really fond of each other, you know, and you know how it is when you're young and there's that excitement.

[Jesse Jarno]

Paul Spiegel's death comes up a few times in the silver snarling trumpet and looms in a literal way over the whole book in the form of one of Spiegel's paintings called the Blind Prophet, which becomes a character by itself.

[Dennis McNally]

Jerry, of course, has the whole scene where he talks about the death of his friend Paul Spiegel in the car accident that made him decide that what he was going to do was to seek out day to day and not do the practical thing and get a job and make a living and blah, blah, blah. When, you know, he didn't know if he was going to live another day, literally was blown out of his shoes and through a windshield. That'll give you a different perspective.

[Jesse Jarno]

A few weeks later, Robert Hunter arrived. Jerry Garcia had gotten involved in the local Comedia Theater through Paul Spiegel and had an occasional job doing lights. And that's where Robert Hunter ended up one evening. He was an enormous Broadway fan from his 195758 days on the east coast catching the season's newest shows. Most accounts have Garcia and Hunter meeting at a production of Damn Yankees. You gotta have heart. All you really need is heart.

[Jerry Garcia]

When the odds are saying you never win, that's when the grin should start.

[Jesse Jarno]

But it seems like Damn Yankees ran the Commedia from July to November 1960. And they were performing from their repertory throughout March 1961, when the main musical they were performing at the time was Kiss Me Kate.

[Jerry Garcia]

Strange, dear but true dear when I'm close to you, dear the stars fill the sky so in love with you am I.

[Jesse Jarno]

I'll leave it to another scholar to dive deeper into the Dead's secret roots in show tunes. Because Robert Hunter had just finished a stint in the National Guard. And very soon Jerry Garcia and Alan Trist whisked him away to a party where he learned about something new and strange called jazz. Here's how Hunter described it in 1970 to the hard hitting interview team of Bobby Peterson and Hank Harrison doing preliminary research for Harrison's dead book. As always, sorry for the cruddy audio quality, but it's a cool clip.

[Jerry Garcia]

I've only been around two or three days. Right out of the Army I ran into Garcia, Alan Frisk and met Dale X and went up to Lee's band. I heard jazz for the first time. I heard Barnett Tolman record. You know what to think of it. Like all these people got drunk and integrated. It wasn't a jazz.

[Jesse Jarno]

Talk about getting thrown into the thick of it. Ornette Coleman's this Is Our Music had just been released in March 1961. If their jazz head friends were on top of their game, Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter became fast friends. As Hunter remembered to WLIR in 1978, he had an extremely key asset.

[Jerry Garcia]

I had just gotten out of the army and I bought myself, I think it was a 1940 Chrysler straight eight, really fine car. So I had a car and nobody else had. When I ran into Garcia and trist at St. Michael's Alley about a night later and they found out I had a car. So they came banging on my door the next day wanting me to take them to Berkeley. And the three of us were pretty inseparable after that for a long time.

[Jesse Jarno]

Here's how Garcia described their early friendship in 1970.

[Jerry Garcia]

He's brilliant. Robert Hunter is really a far out guy. He's like. See, he and I used to. We used to live in a couple of wrecked cars in a vacant lot in East Palo Alto together. And we ate this crushed pineapple man that he stole from the army and plastic. I had a glove compartment full of plastic spoons in my car. I had been doing folk singing at service clubs while I was in the Army. It's a six month hitch, so I just fell into it naturally. I was at a party with Garcia and there was one guitar there. So, you know, me being the folk singer, I didn't know he played, you know, I snatched it up and began singing my folk songs as I would do at parties. And he said, give me that guitar, right? So I was gracious and I let him have it. He never gave the damn thing back.

[Jesse Jarno]

Yeah, you're not getting that guitar back, Bob. Whenever Garcia comes up as a character, just imagine he has a guitar with him. It's easier than explaining it every time. If their social group hung around Stanford, though they decidedly weren't of Stanford. Even if they weren't college students, however, they enthusiastically assembled their own reading list. Jack Kerouac's on the Road had been published four years earlier. Dennis McNally on the road was Jerry's.

[Jerry Garcia]

Bible I was traveling west one time at the junction of the state line of Colorado, its arid western one, in the state line of poor Utah. I saw in the clouds, huge and massed above the fiery golden desert of even fall, the great image of God with forefinger pointed straight at me through halos and rolls and gold folds that were like the existence of of a gleaming spear in his right hand which saith, come on boy, go thou across the ground. Go moan for man.

[Dennis McNally]

It is a perfect document of young bohemians, that is to say, people very much influenced by the Beats from the age of 16, going down to City Lights and getting on the road. And it was his bible. It was his bible for the rest of his life.

[Jesse Jarno]

Alan Trist on the Roadhead I read.

[Alan Trist]

That before I came. I read how I think I found out, first in Keplers and then from there to Gary Snyder and the New York beats and so on. It all followed seamlessly from my Paris experience through the American experience while Jerry.

[Jesse Jarno]

Garcia and others devoured on the Road. One point that Robert Hunter made in his online journals is that he didn't actually become a Jack Kerouac reader until decades later. I had read no Kerouac at the time. I went on the road in 1967, he wrote. Didn't need to read him. His way of looking at what there was to look at had already seeped to the bone of the rebel culture. On the other hand, Allen Ginsberg's Howl did have a profound impact on Robert Hunter.

[Dennis McNally]

Hunter talks about reading Howl at Alan Trist's house, thinking somebody was going to burst in and arrest him.

[Jerry Garcia]

Angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night who poverty and tatters and hollow eyed and high set up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold water flats, floating across the tops of cities, contemplating jazz.

[Dennis McNally]

They were very explicitly children of the beast. He, I think wisely doesn't go into detail about all that because where they are is somewhere halfway in between Beat and what would become hippie. They were in the interregnum.

[Jesse Jarno]

This period going from beat to freak, as Dennis has said, is the subject of his forthcoming book from Hachette.

[Dennis McNally]

It'll be out mid May. The Last Great Dream. How Bohemians Became Hippies and created the 60s.

[Jesse Jarno]

We've posted a [e-mail] deadcast we'll let Miles Davis soundtrack this next segment too from Kind of Blue. Please welcome back Brigid Meyer.

[Brigid Meyer]

So March 1961. A friend of mine, her name was sue, get a Volkswagen. And I was out in the junior parking lot. She said, do you want to go for a ride? I met this guy and I said I'd pick him up. I said, I'd love to. And so we went to the art supply store and there's this guy on the porch, shaggy looking guy. And she goes up to get him and she says, I hope it's okay I brought this friend of mine with me. And he looked in the car and the first. The first thing he said is, oh, tell her I love her. Ridiculous. But. So Jerry. So anyway, the three of us were in the car and we drove up to what's called Los Los Trankos Hills. We hike around and probably get poison oak. And then on the way back, he's sitting in the back seat, I'm sitting in the passenger seat. Sue is driving, and he starts playing Silver Dagger. Joan Baez's son.

[Jerry Garcia]

Don't sing love songs. You'll wake my mother. She's sleeping here, right by my side. And in her right hand a silver dagger. She says that I. I can't be your bride.

[Brigid Meyer]

He's looking at me underneath those eyebrows, and it's like, oh, my God, with a goatee and a little beard. And I was devouring all the beat literature that I could. Whatever came out, poetry on the road, all of that. There was one in the flesh. It's really pretty amazing. And he's singing the song to me, and obviously with nefarious intent. It was very, very seductive. Very. It was wonderful. Really, really great. And so that was my introduction and that kind of incipient seduction and whatever was in the air there, that was kind of put on the back burner between me and Jerry. We. It didn't come to fruition for several more months. All that energy was kind of diffused into a larger group, a larger scene, which is what Hunter was writing about.

[Jerry Garcia]

Go court another tender maiden and hope that she will be your wife. For I've been warned and I've decided to sleep alone all of my life.

[Brigid Meyer]

It was kind of like, well, we're going to be, you know, later we're going to go. I went to Kepler's anyway, with other friends. I guess we all kind of just coalesced there. That was the spot. That was the place where we hung out, where we met.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dropping out in a college town had been a tried and true bohemian strategy for decades. And even without setting foot on the Stanford campus, Palo Alto was resource rich for inquiring minds. Kepler's books had opened in 1955 and became the kind of place that readers dream about, especially in the pre Internet age. They might not have had any money, but they were already in the thick of the profoundly left wing counterculture that created the Grateful Dead.

[Alan Trist]

It was like a scattershot at Kepler's. Everybody was picking up things from the shelves. Roy and Ira had a lot of publications that were contemporary, left wing or something that we would be looking at because there was definitely a bookstore that was open to very current events and future looking. The advent of the cheap paper bound book which they specialized in that made all kinds of translations of eastern literature and from all over the world. And it was an amazing place. You could find anything that you had never thought existed before.

[Jesse Jarno]

The front cover of the Silver Snarling Trumpet contains a lovely and very Grateful Dead like image of skeleton hands reaching up to behold a rose amid psychedelic lettering. But I also wonder what the Silver Snarling Trumpet would look like had it been on sale as a pocket paperback at Kepler's in the early 60s.

[Brigid Meyer]

And I'm afraid we were little sticky fingers with Keplers, you know, helped ourselves terribly and they knew it and they were bemused, I suppose.

[Jesse Jarno]

In other memories, Roy Kepler would let the young beatniks use the place like a library so long as they returned the books to the shelves. Within a day or two the back area became the domain of Garcia Hunter, Trist, Brigid Meyer and their friends.

[Brigid Meyer]

It was like an area with little tables and bentwood chairs and you could take your coffee and sit back there.

[Alan Trist]

We were all writers at Kepler's bookstore. I would have my notebook out on one table and he'd have his notebook out on another table and Jerry would have his guitar notebook out on another table, you know, so who was. What was was indeterminate at that time. We were all sort of looking for art as a way forward. He would pass things around for sure.

[Dennis McNally]

As you read the book. The one thing that he's emphatic about, which is a very deep thing, not so much politics, but specifically anti consumerism. Whatever they were doing, it didn't involve making money.

[Brigid Meyer]

Even though Hunter kind of denies in the book that there were any political leanings. I don't know, I mean I felt very connected. One of the main things that we met in Kepler's bookstore and Roy Kepler was one of the very early people in the War Resisters League and Iris San Pearl was his kind of right hand person and he actually formed the Institute for Nonviolence with Joan Baez and he Was the guy behind the cash register and giving us free coffee, et cetera, and answering the phone call when my mother would call and say, is she still there? Is everything okay? You know, would you tell her we're going to come pick her up in a few minutes?

[Jesse Jarno]

This is perhaps one of the ways that the early scene mapped onto the later Grateful Dead. They were so immersed in an intensely political environment that they themselves didn't orient themselves as quote unquote, political. But the scene that Robert Hunter describes in the Silver Snarling Trumpet was unquestionably grown from a left wing milieu. Dennis McNally, he leaves the politics pretty.

[Dennis McNally]

Much out of the Silver Snarling Trumpet. But that is the culture of palo alto in 1961. The bookstore, St. Michael's Alley and the Peace center and then the Chateau for more outrageous parties.

[Brigid Meyer]

We were a big pain in the neck to the store, we really were. But now it's part of their lore. It's part of their street cred or something. They advertise that we took over the back room and made a ruckus. I don't think they ever kicked us out, but for whatever reason moved to this place called St. Michael's Alley, which was a coffee house on University Avenue, downtown Palo Alto. So it was a Movable Feast.

[Jesse Jarno]

St. Michael's Alley was a nearby cafe and art gallery, the site of lots of fun ensemble scenes in the Silver Snarling Trumpet. A few years later, Robert Hunter would work there as a waiter, and the current art on the wall would provide some inspiration for the Grateful Dead. The bird song image came from a beautiful collage someone had constructed and hung on the wall. When I was a waiter at St. Michael's Alley on University Avenue in Palo Alto, he wrote in 2004. The collage had a picture of a bird and a quote, All I know is something in me sang. That in me sings no more. The Edna St. Vincent Millais line stuck with.

[Jerry Garcia]

All I know is something like a bird within her s All I know she sing a little while then flew on. Tell me all that you know I'll show you storm and rain.

[Jesse Jarno]

But as fun as it got at St. Michael's Alley, the back of Kepler's books was hardly a silent reading room.

[Brigid Meyer]

We commandeered the space. We came in like a horde of viscos or something, you know, Just came in and took over and started playing. So we were just loud and raucous and it was kind of hilarious.

[Jesse Jarno]

Folk music was booming and building on and around college campuses. Just before the start of the Silver Snarling trumpet In the fall of 1960, an alum of Palo Alto High School, Joan Baez released her massive selling self titled debut, which reached number 20 on the pop charts.

[Jerry Garcia]

Oh fare thee well I must be.

[Brigid Meyer]

Gone and leave you for a while.

[Jerry Garcia]

Wherever I go I will return if I go 10,000 miles.

[Jesse Jarno]

Probably both Garcia and Hunter attended. When Baez returned to play two shows at Pali High in June 1961, which Hunter mentions cryptically in the Silver Snarling Trumpet, Garcia sat near the front, according to one friend, coming to the realization that he was at least just as good a guitarist as Joan Baez, giving him the confidence to pursue his own music. Baez was a relative newcomer to the folk revival, whose biggest pop stars of the era came from right nearby and.

[Brigid Meyer]

Kingston Trio, who were also there in Menlo park at the same time. They were the happening our local rock stars, I guess you could say.

[Jerry Garcia]

Wish I was a headlight on a westbound train I'd shine my light on cool Colorado rain Out where them chilly winds unpleasant.

[Jesse Jarno]

Like left wing politics, the folk revival was inescapable in palo alto in 1961.

[Dennis McNally]

The folk revival, which they were certainly profoundly part of and the underlying message of the folk revival was really, it was very kindred to the Beats in the sense that a. It was seeking something more authentic than the commercial world of so called music business. And it had values very distinct, left wing, not necessarily always stated, but left wing values of inclusion, anti racism, the wider connection of human beings.

[Brigid Meyer]

That was why we went to Kepler's, because we were going to sing along. What better way to create community, huh? But everybody's singing so wonderful, such a wonderful sense of connection and it's hard for me to believe that this book is out and, and others are going to get a little, well, hopefully a little bit of a contact high from it, you know, in the sense of like get a little taste of it and be somewhat exhilarated and connect with their own youthful yearnings and aspirations.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Beatles hit American shores in early 1964, but the energy that became the next wave of American rock and roll was pretty palpable. In the back room at Kepler's.

[Brigid Meyer]

You've heard the record of the Birthday Party. I mean we were raucous.

[Jesse Jarno]

Ah yes, the Birthday Party tape.

[Brigid Meyer]

It's Jerry and Bob, boys.

[Jerry Garcia]

Hey, why don't you do Santiano? Well, we're singing down the river to the Liverpool evil way Santiano.

[Jesse Jarno]

In the midst of all of this, in the spring of 1961, Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia teamed up to become the Folk duo of Bob and Jerry Garcia on guitar, Hunter on upright bass. There's more about this in the Long Strange Trip documentary. But the only surviving audio of Bob and Jerry, and the earliest known tape of either comes from a tape at Brigid Meyer's 16th birthday party on May 26, 1961. Most of it is now on the before the Dead box set, which we'll be using to soundtrack this next segment.

[Jerry Garcia]

So it's heaven.

[Brigid Meyer]

Hard to play jazz on the guitar and have a scene with it. So folk music was readily available and easily learnable. You could pick up those chords of those Weavers songs pretty easily and then we could all sing along.

[Jesse Jarno]

There's some really vivid descriptions of Bob and Jerry's brief gigging career. In the Silver Snarling Trumpet.

[Brigid Meyer]

They talk about going to the private school in the old house. That's Peninsula School. And I actually went there for the first couple years of kindergarten and first grade. My father worked as a janitor there to pay my tuition.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Peninsula School was home to lots of local history. In addition to the early Bob and Jerry gig, possibly in the very same room a dozen and change years later. The Peninsula School also hosted early meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, attended by young Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

[Brigid Meyer]

But that was a hotbed of Weaver type energy. Real lefty and Pete Sager was. He was an important person who would come through and play there.

[Jerry Garcia]

She's a fast leper ship and a fully good crew. Gave away Sandiano, a Downey Yankee border captain too. Live on the California.

[Jesse Jarno]

You knew we'd get to Pete Seeger sooner or later with his band the Weavers.

[Jerry Garcia]

Pete.

[Jesse Jarno]

Pete Seeger had scored a series of unlikely top 10 hits in 1950 and 1951.

[Jerry Garcia]

Irene, good night Irene Good night Good night, Irene Good night, Irene I'll see you in my dreams.

[Jesse Jarno]

But in 1952, the Weavers were blacklisted for mainstream American media, accused of being socialists and communists, which they were. But that wasn't what made them dangerous so much as their discovery of music as a community building tool. They became underground heroes. Guitarist Fred Hellerman would produce that top 20 Joan Baez album we've been hearing from. Plus, the blacklist certainly didn't stop Pete Seeger, who built a new touring network of elementary schools, colleges, summer camps, unions and festivals. Palo Alto is very much prime Pete Seeger territory.

[Brigid Meyer]

I remember going to concerts of his at Peninsula School when I was a child or younger, certainly maybe 11, something like that. So they had a foothold in the community. As a bastion of, well, left ring thinking, hey, we gotta sing this.

[Jerry Garcia]

Even better than this. We gotta sing it so they hear it down in Washington D.C. in London, Moscow, Peking, Tokyo, everywhere else. Sing this song. Till the land runs down once more for the whole world round Pharaoh's army got drowned o verde.

[Jesse Jarno]

Robert Hunter especially had fallen under Pete Seeger's spell during his brief time at the University of Connecticut in 1958.

[Brigid Meyer]

He imitated him when he would sing the calling out over the top of the melody like Pete Seeger did. I think he was really palpable.

[Jerry Garcia]

One more time home.

[Jesse Jarno]

Nearly all the songs in Bob and Jerry's songbook had roots in Pete Seeger's enormous repertoire. One song that didn't make the cut was the Weaver's anti fascist anthem. Wasn't that a time a song considered so scandalous that the Weavers couldn't perform it during their years as top 10 pop stars. Thanks to Bridget for letting us play this. Garcia's singing lead here.

[Jerry Garcia]

The fascists came with chains and war to imprison us in hate and many a good man fought and died to save the stricken famous that at times. At times not. Not a time, a time to try the Son of Man was not a terrible time.

[Jesse Jarno]

To find out why that song was so scandalous, I'll have to direct you to my book, Wasn't that a. The Weavers, the Blacklist and the Battle for the Soul of America. Like all the fine books we've mentioned so far today available from Hachette. But as much as I can personally get down with Pete Seeger, Robert Hunter's Pete Seeger imitation isn't really the highlight of the tape.

[Jerry Garcia]

I'm trouble in mind I'm blue but I won't be blue always. You know, the sun on my back door someday.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dennis McNally.

[Dennis McNally]

The first six songs of before the Dead, which is Bob and Jerry, you can hear. And granted they were, you know, it was somebody's living room and they were all friends, but you can hear the way Garcia runs the room.

[Jerry Garcia]

I'm Jerry and that's Bob. I play guitar, he doesn't. I'm Bob, that's Jerry. I sing, he doesn't. Anybody got any rejections?

[Dennis McNally]

It's fascinating. There was just this, you know, charisma seems like such a fancy word, but there was just this personality.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hunter writes about Garcia's charisma almost explicitly in the Silver Snarling trumpet, describing how 18 year old Jerry Garcia could make the people around him feel, in Hunter's word, magical. And Jerry's magical. People would often believe him and think that perhaps they really were magical in some way that they had never perceived and would love Jerry for letting them know about it, shielding him and feeding him in hopes that he would allow them to remain magical.

[Jerry Garcia]

Very good. Thank you. Me play rock and roll? No, that never happened.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jerry made friends easily, which helped with getting shelter. Along with Keplers was another locale that became a literal home to their early scene.

[Alan Trist]

The Peace center on the other side of the Stanford campus to Kepler's.

[Jesse Jarno]

Just as Joan Baez's activist collaborator Ira San Pearl worked the register at Kepler's, the young bohemians found a benefactor in the person who worked the register at the Peace Center, Willie Legate.

[Alan Trist]

We became very aware of the depths of iconoclasm that he represented. You know, it was a great discovery, you know, with Willie Strange oracle. I mean, just to be around Willie without necessarily much conversation was an adventure and an education.

[Jesse Jarno]

Willie Legate is a spectral presence in the silver snarling trumpet, an inscrutable weirdo who's unquestionably one of them.

[Dennis McNally]

Willie's room, where they're crashing on the floor is at the Peace center and, you know, connects with Iris Amperel and Joan Baez and all that. He doesn't go into this, Hunter does, which is a noticeable omission.

[Jesse Jarno]

In the summer of 1961, as Joan Baez became a megapop success, she returned to California, moving to Carmel. When in Palo Alto, she would make a point to stop by both Kepler's and the Peace center, often offering donations to Ira Sandpearl, which is to say Joan Baez helped subsidize the Peace center, which in turn subsidized Willie Legate, which in turn gave a place for Hunter and Garcia to crash.

[Alan Trist]

That was at the Peace Center. Yeah, you have mattresses all over the floor and orange crates of books. And it was a great place to.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hang out when the silver snarling trumpet opens. This is where Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia are sleeping most of the time. In Willie Legate's room at the Peace Center. Watching them from the wall as they slept was the late Paul Spiegel's painting the Blind Prophet in the care of his friend Willie the blind Prophet.

[Alan Trist]

I remember it was at the shadow. It was up on the wall there for a while. I mean, we've been reading Cal Gibran's book. I remember Hunter and I in particular had some discussion about that. And then along comes Paul Spiegel's painting, you know, what a synchronicity, because he Didn't. He was in the same domain of thinking there, but separately was also at the Peace center for a while. I remember seeing it up there as dropouts.

[Jesse Jarno]

Garcia and Hunter existed between worlds, making friends as they went. In that last interview clip, Hunter mentioned.

[Alan Trist]

David x. David X, McQueen was a connector there between the black population of East Palo Alto and us. Or we would be bohemians in Palo Alto and we would go over there many times. David used to sing the blues with Jerry playing the guitar.

[Jerry Garcia]

Like hell.

[Alan Trist]

Don't you lie to me.

[Jerry Garcia]

Anywhere we stay tonight in the pines in the pine where the sun never shine and I shiver the whole.

[Jesse Jarno]

That was David X singing with Jerry Garcia on guitar. Thanks again to Brian Mixis for identifying this long circulating recording. Playing Harmonica is another Palo Alto teenager that David X introduced Garcia to Ron Pigpen McKernan Pigpen isn't a character in Hunter's book, though. Can be imagined just off screen during certain scenes. Between them they had all kinds of friends, younger and older.

[Brigid Meyer]

There was a guy in our kind of extended scene who was friends with Lenny Bruce and we would go to parties at his house. He was also unfortunately into smack, right? And I remember one party that, oh my God, the police came and I had to climb over the back fence and I broke a heel on a pair of shoes. That was terrible. They were a trip. They were sort of like Charles Adams looking couple and family.

[Jesse Jarno]

Though the gang had no direct contact with Lenny Bruce, he was another figure that loomed large over the young Californians.

[Jerry Garcia]

If you've never seen this bit before, I want you to tell me. Stop me if you've seen it. I'm going to piss on you.

[Jesse Jarno]

Still can't play that on the radio. Arrested for obscenity after a San Francisco performance in 1961, Bruce's trial in the spring of 1962 was at the forefront of underground news. A few Years later, in 1964, Garcia would have a job transcribing Lenny Bruce routines as part of Bruce's ongoing trials. Another older friend was Grace Marie.

[Brigid Meyer]

Hattie then that woman, Grace Marie. Now, she was a piece of work. Grace Marie, she was older, like 35, and really, you know, had that kind of Dorothy Parker arch sense of humor.

[Alan Trist]

Her house was one of those places where we often convened, you know, and she was a little older too, and so she had more stuff. We had no stuff.

[Jesse Jarno]

You see, among that stuff was a prized copy of the Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, edited together by the filmmaker and alchemist Harry Smith.

[Jerry Garcia]

All the cuckoo is a pretty bird she wobbles as she flies she never hollers Cuckoo tail of four days, you know.

[Brigid Meyer]

Well, it was kind of like a bomb. Wasn't just. You heard that and it's like, oh, you know, gateways into other worlds. I mean, it was huge. That was huge. Huge, huge, huge.

[Jesse Jarno]

Released in 1952, the Anthology of American Folk Music consisted of three double LP sets and didn't sell many copies. It helped change the course of the American folk revival, though, as musicians discovered it. Imagine yourself a Kingston Trio fan.

[Dennis McNally]

Hang down your head Tom Dooley Hang.

[Jerry Garcia]

Down your head and cry Hang down your head tongue Dooley Poor boy, you're.

[Jesse Jarno]

Bound to die now imagine suddenly getting exposed to the Anthology of American Folk Music.

[Jerry Garcia]

No, I don't like a railroad man no, I don't like a railroad man finds a railroad man they will kill you when he can drink em your.

[Jesse Jarno]

Blood like wine how you gonna keep em down on the farm once they've heard? Bascombe, Lamar Lunsford, the In Between Baby Bohemians had friends who were older and friends who were younger. They were essentially Palo Alto townies, and an increasing number of their gang were malcontent high school students rather than Stanford students.

[Alan Trist]

Bridget was. Was young and there were a number of sort of high school, not so much dropouts, although actually Paul Spiegel, who we talked about before in the car accident, was a dropout from high school. But others were high schoolers a little younger, looking for something too, you know, so they were around and they very much understood that this was a scene that they could connect with or learn something from.

[Brigid Meyer]

I think we had our instincts clear. I think we had our values fully formed by then, and they were intact. It wasn't just intuition on many levels. Like I say, we had the tutelage of Roy and Ira at Kepler's. They really did try to, well, educate us about what really meant.

[Jesse Jarno]

One of the other occasional high school students that became part of the scene was Ron McKernan, soon to be nicknamed Pigpen.

[Brigid Meyer]

Pigpen. Ron and I were both in high school. My God, we were precocious and pretentious and insufferable. I'm sure. I'm sure we were insufferable.

[Jesse Jarno]

But probably pretty fun if you were keyed in.

[Brigid Meyer]

My father built a little study, a little house. He put in a little wood stove and a big writing desk and there was an upright piano out there. And that was sort of his refuge. I guess he was still trying to work on this novel. Ron used to come over and try to give me Piano lessons, which is pretty, you know. Anyway, anything, just any excuse to just hang out, you know, and rave. Basically, we just like to talk. We were all big talkers.

[Jesse Jarno]

We got pretty deep into Pigpen's corner of Palo Alto during the first part of our Adventures of Pigpen episodes. One character that came up there was Joe Novakovich.

[Alan Trist]

Joe Novakovich was definitely an interesting character.

[Brigid Meyer]

And there's another guy which nobody ever talks about, Joe Novakovich. And Joe Novakovich had some sort of, I believe, thalidomide birth defect. His fingers were almost non existent. He had very deformed fingers, or if he had any at all. Anyway, he was also kind of like an early adopter. Beatnik guy was in on everything. And he had a Vespa, right. He used to pick me up and take me to Kepler's. I mean, I was always looking for a ride. Everybody was. We were all looking for rides, but Joe was between Joe and Roger, or Cool Breeze, rather. There were these. What could I say? They weren't. They were never boyfriends or anything. They were friends and very helpful and kind of pivotal in terms of like, making it easy to connect, easier to connect. He's always looking for a ride home or a ride to the party or whatever.

[Jesse Jarno]

Joe Novakovich played a hidden role in Grateful Dead history, responsible for bestowing Pigpen with his first harmonica.

[Brigid Meyer]

He was a couple years older. I don't even know if he was still in high school. But he was generous and helpful and funny.

[Jesse Jarno]

Just a friendly older dude and character of ill repute who helped encourage teenage Garcia and Pigpen. There are some characters that don't figure in the silver snarling trumpet missing from Bob's account.

[Alan Trist]

There are Phil and Bobby Peterson and Laird Grant, all three of whom went on to be major players in the Grateful Dead world. Laird was the first road manager and so on, you know, And Bobby was definitely a bit like that. He was hip in a way that we were. We were looking, looking to find.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jerry's old middle school buddy. Laird Grant makes a cameo near the end, but isn't one of the Seekers that Hunter covers. It's in this window that another character entered the story. Phil Lesh had also been radicalized by a soiree at Kepler's while a student at the nearby College of San Mateo.

[Jerry Garcia]

One of these parties was my first introduction to the underground, defined as that alternate culture surrounding any great center of learning. Mostly composed of former students, perennial students and non students. I was continuing in school at the College of San Mateo. My friends from school told me about all the cool scenes in Palo Alto. So off I went, exploring, spelunking, you might say, or just trolling in deep waters.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's from the audiobook to Phil Lesh's wonderful memoir, Searching for the Sound, available from Little Brown wherever you get your audiobooks.

[Jerry Garcia]

It was the temporary home of many who would become good friends and newfound brothers, and also a way station on a new kind of underground railroad. People traveling to or from scenes connected to other schools up and down the coast would stop at Kepler's and often spend the night at the Chateau before moving on. At the very least, it's the place where I first met Jerry Garcia when first I came to town. They call me Robin June now they've changed their tune. They call me Katie Crude.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's Garcia at the Boar's head in later 1961 from before the Dead, his guitar playing rapidly improving. We have a lot more to say about the period of the silver snarling Trumpet, which we'll return to in our next episode. We're going to pause our story with one final image from the Chateau off camera in the silver snarling trumpet, but certainly not in Searching for the sound.

[Jerry Garcia]

One of the music rooms was crowded with people listening to a bearded fellow play guitar and sing folk songs. I'd seen this guy around a few times. Everyone seemed to defer subtly to him, and this made me a little nervous. Nobody could be that cool. This was at the very beginning of the folk revival, and I hadn't heard a lot of the music. I confess my reaction was probably superficial, but it didn't grab me right away. I would soon discover that I just hadn't been listening. Later that evening, I was introduced to the singer guitarist hey, Phil, this is Jerry. He's a musician, too.

[Rich Mahan]

Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode, Alan Trist, Bridget meyer and Dennis McNally. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz 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 Doran Tyson. All rights reserved.