Jerry Garcia and his guitar 'sound'

Wow. That is a great solo and at no holds barred tempo.
That is an amazing off the cuff series from 4:19-4:24.
It shows his rockabilly influences. He sounds like Cliff Gallup at times on the solo.

 

This non-musician can only think "Wow, hot solo."

 

Probably Touch of Grey and Truckin' on FM radio, but the thing that really blew my doors off was hearing "Europe 72" sometime in my late teens (this would have been 1989 or so). Wow......right from the burning playing on Cumberland Blues I was hooked.

 

Your post lead me to discover that there is a GD music video for Foolish Heart...

 

I agree with you, up to a point - I'd put the obvious change in tone a little later, to when he switched to Tiger in Aug '79 (I actually really like the gnarly Wolf tones from '77-'78) and that's is where I find that thin, uninvolving hi-fi tone starts to take prominence. It really reaches its apogee in the early 90s, when the Tophat and Cripes guitar have such a thin, washed-out sound that's near to an electro-acoustic tone.

It's not a sound I like at all - I have no issue with clean tones (some of his nicest sounds are the Nash Strat in '72-'73 and then the Wolf in '74), but the more his rig got sophisticated, the less interesting his basic clean tone got. Married to that is the fact that he basically had one distorted tone in his late career - that rough, obviously-fuzzy pedalboard-derived sound - compared to the wonderful range of amp-derived drive early in his career (the Les Paul, SG & LP Special).

It seemed the more money, gear & choices he had later on, the more he took his sound away from something beautiful & natural-sounding and into something anonymous & hi-fi - that said, this was Jerry's choice, so I only hope he got what he heard in his head.

 

I forgot the name of that song that came out sometime in the 90's. Everyone thought it sounded like Jerry on guitar. I posted that in the random youtube clip thread awhile back.


Ah, I remember now- Blind Melon- No Rain

 

I think the same thing, by the way. I think I need to correct myself, however. Having had a couple more listens, those voicings he messes around with so effortlessly from 4:19-4:24 sound more like Dom7 voicings than Dom9s. In any case, it really is a hot solo. I also love the repeated low As at 4:15-4:17, which remind me quite a bit of one of their firsts attempts (perhaps their first?) of this tune from the 5/16/72 Radio Luxembourg soundcheck where Jerry Sings lead and Billy can't find the "1" during the first verse. Really slinky groove on that one from Jerry.

 

I thought so after playing along with it but I was not sure. You can really hear that 7th as he finishes the solo.
However as you pointed out, the rhythm he plays it in is stunning regardless of the notes.

 

Rick James?

 

I think Jerry's Bluegrass and Banjo playing had a big effect on his electric guitar style. Early in the Grateful Dead he had a dry hollow tone with the Guild starfire, but he played extremely fast, listen to "Sitting on top of the world" from the 1rst album. During the GD's next two albums Jerry used a Gibson SG or Les Pauls with humbuckers to get a over driven sustain on St Stephen. Then Jerry goes to a single coil pickup Strat sound on American Beauty and Workingman's Dead especially Cumberland Blues. Later Jeryy would use custom alembic/Doug Irwin guitars some with midi/synth to get a horn wah tone.

 

Robert Hunter was a fan


Also:
http://www.beemelon.com/html/articles/1993/rapping_with_blind_melon_101993.html
Hunter int. with Melon

 

I agree. The way he applied somewhat equal rhythmic value to all of the notes sometimes was his bluegrass influence showing through.

 

I agree too, in fact I mentioned his banjo playing as an influence on the first page.

What a talent, driven and dedicated.

 

I had no idea of that. I love Blind Melon (Soup, particularly). Thanks!

 

Thanks for the geekiness!

Man that is sick and as we are all saying he did stuff like that out of nowhere all of the time.

 

I prefer the sound he got from Gibsons & Fenders. I have been listening recently to recordings from 1968-69. Lots of nice thick tones, sometimes really nasty-sounding.

 

I wrote about it amid some nonsense post about something else, "I still vividly remember the exact high-school freshman year French class that a Senior year stoner, now that I think about it I don’t think it was his first time in that class, handed me “One Size Fits All” because I would not shut up about the first Pretenders album. Or how in senior year of high school the guy across the hall was completely fed-up with me playing Police cassettes at full volume on stereo version 2.2. I thought Stewart Copeland was just the bomb. He says to me, dude give it a rest with that s^&t and come in here, sit down for f%^k sake, damn you are a jumpy kid; he unscrews the woofer and pulls out some ground up foliage that, while I of course politely declined his offer, I was happy to huddle with him behind the bed couch dresser combo he set up to block the view from the room door at the same time underneath a black and white photo that he had pinned to the wall of some rotund old guy in a beard with lightly tinted sunglasses holding a guitar and straining at a microphone, listening to a tape of a concert the guy tells me he wished he had attended all of this only after having screwed the woofer back in. I guess I did not know it at the time but I would go on to wish I had attended plenty of shows listened to on plenty of cassette tapes even after having seen sixty or seventy of them in person; I lost count now."

To not answer your question it was only after spending a good many more freshman-year college dorm room hours listening to a dozen or so tapes before I figured out exactly what I was hearing... gun to my head Cumberland Blues was the first one that stuck the refrigerator that was my head.

 

I was going to add to this along with @jimtek's post that I don't think he ever dug deeper than with those Gibsons.

 

I love Jerry on the Strat and Twin Reverb in '72. Start about 14 minutes into the video to see him moving back and forth in front of his 3 pickups to get the desired sound. Classic Garcia.

 

Yes, I watched the whole video not long ago. Great stuff. I assume that he's just playing through the Fender amps since it's TV & the full concert rig wasn't needed. He's using a Colorsound wah-wah & there is a small box on top of the amp that the guitar input seems to run through. The one time I saw the Dead was here in Oct. 1972 & Jerry was playing the same guitar.

 

Here they are in late August of that year using Fender Twins, I understand with JBLs.



In Europe they seemed to use additional JBL loaded cabinets

 

Bobby is telling him, hey where is my guitar 'sound' thread? Here have a banana anyway.

 

This picture shows that he could just about use that finger !

 

I asked my guitar teacher how to play different Grateful Dead and Jerry's songs and when we got to the "Eleven" he said, "Jerry's just noodling around" and that was what Jerry did, play around with songs in different ways. The intro to Candyman and Cryptical Envelopement and the instumental break of Uncle John's Band.

 

Yea - the Graham Nash Strat period is my favorite Jerry guitar sound.

1957 Fender Stratocaster

Purchased from a Phoenix pawnshop for $250 in late 1970, Graham Nash gave this Fender Strat as a gift to Jerry for playing on a number of his songs. It was composed of a 1957 swamp-ash body and a 1963 maple neck.

Over the years, the guitar was repeatedly customized and updated. Along with these structural modifications, this Strat was easily identified by its prominent stickers–namely the alligator holding a knife and fork, dancing across the pick guard.