The 100 Best Grateful Dead Songs

The launchpad for countless interstellar inner-eyelid psychedelic journeys and untold dashes to arena restrooms and beer stalls, the second-set, double-drummer, free-form instrumental jam to be forever known as “Drums>Space” was a welcome touchstone of Dead concerts, and it deserves status as a song unto itself. Indeed, it “became some of the most far-out moments of the Grateful Dead music,” as Kreutzmann wrote in his memoir. Sure, there were drum solos and spacey improvs dating back to ’68. But it was early ’78, with Hart back in the fold, that “Drums>Space” became a fixture, a multiarmed beast of beats sculpted with percussion devices from around the world and, increasingly, electronics. Some ‘Heads maintain latter-day “Drums>Space,” even recent Dead & Company excursions, bested the 20th-century ones — only proving that the best Dead songs, then or now, are the ones that blew your mind and heart wide open. —Will Hermes

The title of Shakedown Street’s Side Two opener became a popular phrase in the Deadhead lexicon. A “miracle” meant a free or extra ticket for a Dead show. The ticketless would put an index finger in the air, maybe make a sign, and hope for the best. The miracle concept is explored at the end with a gospel refrain that repeats the title, adding, “Everyday.” But the lyrics that precede that (penned by Barlow) are head-scratchers about a man seeking a woman “’bout twice my age,” “’bout twice my height,” and finally “’bout twice my weight/A ton of fun who packs a gun with all her freight.” Garcia takes a nimble midsection solo, and Matthew Kelly adds harmonica wails worthy of the late Pigpen. —Steve Bloom

Another folk cover the band reanimated, this swingin’ ragtime number was first recorded in 1928 by Henry Thomas, a.k.a. Ragtime Texas, for the Vocalion label. It was in the repertoire of the proto-Dead Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, and the Dead released it in 1966 as their first single (backed with another ‘20s jug-band tune, “Stealin’”), on the short-lived Scorpio Records. It didn’t do much. But they revived and rerecorded a more polished version for 1980’s Go to Heaven and released it once again as a single. It still didn’t do much, never denting the charts. But it reentered the Dead’s live sets, and it never failed to rock the house — one reason why Dead & Company designated it a go-to over the years. —W.H. 

This lonesome folk song was first recorded in 1958 by Bill Browning with his bluegrass group the Echo Valley Boys, but the Dead might’ve actually learned it from the British group Pentangle, who did a variant titled “Cold Mountain” when they opened some fabled Fillmore West shows for the Dead in 1969. They began playing their “Dark Hollow” in 1970, and it was both an acoustic and electric favorite, landing on the History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear’s Choice) album and the acoustic Reckoning. (It also turned up in live sets by Garcia’s ’70s bluegrass side hustle Old and in the Way.) The song was deep enough in the Dead’s DNA that Hunter echoed the line “where the sun don’t ever shine” in what turned out to be one of the final Dead songs, the wistfully self-referential “So Many Roads.” —W.H.

With its snarling guitar tone, sideways chord progression, and kazoo intro, this Anthem of the Sun smoker is among the most delightfully weird early Dead jams. It’s also the first of their songs to feature Hunter’s lyrics. (“Alligator,” by the way, was New Orleans slang, sometimes pejorative, for a white jazz musician.) Among Pigpen’s greatest non-covers, and surely his wildest, it was an early live staple he owned so fully, the band never played it after his death, though it resurfaced in latter-day Dead revival projects. The Allman Brothers Band always cited Anthem of the Sun-era Dead as a formative influence, and you can hear the shared DNA clearly in “Alligator” — i.e., the allusion near the jam’s peak to Donovan’s “There Is a Mountain,” which became the root of the Allmans signature “Mountain Jam.” —W.H.

“Greatest Story Ever Told” is a crazed Biblical fable where Weir begins with the line, “Moses come riding up on a quasar.” (Hunter originally wrote “on a guitar,” but Weir tweaked it.) Moses ends up sharing wine and wisdom with Gideon, Abraham, and Isaac. It’s one of the classics the Dead debuted at their famous Feb. 18, 1971, show at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York — the same night they introduced “Bertha,” “Playing in the Band,” “Loser,” and “Wharf Rat.” (It was also Hart’s last show for three years.) “Greatest Story” became a standout on Weir’s solo gem Ace, as well as Hart’s Rolling Thunder as “The Pump Song.” But the Dead loved it — they chose this tune to kick off the first show of their Europe ’72 tour. —Rob Sheffield

During summer tour in 1988, the Dead began workshopping the initial batch of songs that they would record for their final studio album, Built to Last. Unlike “Foolish Heart,” “Blow Away,” or even Weir’s long-gestating “Victim or the Crime,” all of which garnered steady rotation, this late career Garcia-Hunter ballad never quite found its footing and received only seven total plays. The band did briefly slot it in its rightful place as the heartrending Garcia tune after “Drums/Space,” but he reportedly didn’t feel altogether comfortable with the song’s raw sentiment. This is unfortunate, as the tune (eventually released on the 1999 box So Many Roads) has the appeal of a country classic, with lyrics that Hunter has described as “reminiscent of the kind of stuff I remember hearing coming from tavern jukeboxes in 1948, when my father would stop in to have a few while I waited out in the car.”—Dean Budnick

In 1968, the Dead started closing shows with a version of the traditional Bahamian funeral song “I Bid You Goodnight,” which they’d heard performed by Joseph Spence and the Pindar Family on a collection of music from the Caribbean island that was popular in folk circles. On Live/Dead, it’s just under 40 seconds, but it evolved into a kind of psychedelic a cappella jam over the next few years, a ritual of their sets that stretched out to three and a half rapturous minutes with their joyous crowds clapping along. They didn’t do “We Bid You Goodnight” very often for about 20 years but revived it in the late Eighties, sending home enrapt stadiums of Deadheads who’d grown up with Live/Dead and greeted it like any other beloved Dean anthem.—Jon Dolan

A live staple of the Dead in the early Seventies — before Pigpen died in 1973 — this tune never appeared on a studio album but was famous for its inclusion in the Europe ’72 tour and LP. The band played it at every one of those Europe shows, but the term “Mr. Charlie” is an American construction, used by slaves to describe the boss or plantation owner. In the case of Hunter’s lyrics, the protagonist appears to be working for the man. “Gonna scare you up and shoot you,” Pigpen growls. “’Cause Mr. Charlie told me so.” Played as a shuffle, Garcia pitches in a bluesy solo, and Pigpen finishes by repeating for emphasis, “Mr. Charlie told me, Mr. Charlie told me so.” —S.B.  

By the time they got into the studio to cut it for 1980’s Go to Heaven, “Alabama Getaway” had already been road-tested. Indeed, it had become one of the group’s tearaway numbers: Its late-’79 live versions featured the Dead tossing solos back and forth on it with aplomb. The album it was on was the Dead’s return to the studio after two years, and AOR’s strictures had tightened considerably compared to the band’s early-Seventies freedom. “Alabama Getaway” reflected that shift. The song was startlingly radio-ready and propulsive, with hooky organ swells thick in the mix. It plateaued at Number 68 on the Hot 100, but it remained in their repertoire till the end. —M.M.

Before “Dark Star” and “China Cat > Rider,” this was the Dead’s signature jam vehicle — you can see them rocking it out in the ’68 film Petulia, while the light show bubbles and the hippies frug. Retooled with their hearty train-wreck harmonies, it’s a cover of a late-1920s acoustic nugget by Cannon’s Jug Stompers, a touchstone for the early Dead, who also tapped their “Big Railroad Blues” and “Minglewood Blues” (remade as the twice-removed “New, New Minglewood Blues”). “Viola Lee” was always a party starter. At the seminal 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, the band opened with a 14-minute version, after Weir told the crowd: “You know what the foldin’ chairs are for, don’t you? They’re for foldin’ up and dancin’ on!” And Phishheads may recall a pistoning version from Sept. 17, 1999, with the dueling basses of Lesh and Mike Gordon. —W.H.

Another song that shares its title with a Neil Young joint (see “Comes a Time”), the Dead played this deep cut live just five or six times. A shame, since its full-tilt boogie tempo and juicy CSNY harmonies brighten Side Two of American Beauty like a fireworks bloom, and it could surely have set hippie skirts a-spinnin’. The song finally got its due in the 21st century, reborn in sets by Furthur and other latter-day Dead projects, albeit without the benefit of Garcia’s sweet high tenor voice in the mix. Hunter’s shaggy lyrics (“‘til we all fall down …”) riff on the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie,” a move later repeated memorably by Weir and Barlow in their apocalyptic “Throwing Stones.”—W.H.  

Written and recorded first by bluesman Tampa Red in 1940 and defined by Elmore James, who recorded it multiple times and had a hit with it in 1963, “It Hurts Me Too” is one of the best-loved and most widely covered blues songs. It became a Dead staple, a languorous blues sung by Pigpen, who blew harp on it as well, beginning in 1966. The high-lonesome version, with Keith Godchaux’s piano fills urging him from the back, that the band included on Europe ’72 was one of Pigpen’s, and the band’s, last. When he died in 1973, they retired this number. —Michaelangelo Matos

There was no way Garcia was going to achieve the kind of bone-rattling shout that Reverend Gary Davis declaimed on this song in his original version from 1960. But Davis’ plainspoken lyric gives a singer many options, and Garcia’s pained empathy, from a whisper to a cry, communicated them with deep commitment. So did his stinging guitar — the Live/Dead version, recorded in early 1969, contains some of Garcia’s most deeply felt blues playing as well as singing. —M.M.

Weir indicated that the rousing final verse to “Saint of Circumstance” came to him while experiencing a rogue lightning storm atop a Wyoming mountain. Weir’s sense of exhilaration entwined with the inscrutable design of nature informed the song he was writing with Barlow. “Saint of Circumstance” began its existence as the younger twin of “Lost Sailor,” which was completed earlier in the same session and premiered live a few weeks ahead of “Saint” in August 1979. The two selections both reference the “dog star” Sirius and collectively relate a journey that begins amid roiling weather conditions and eventually finds rapturous purpose. The songs were juxtaposed on Go to Heaven and then in concert to such a degree that “SailorSaint” became common Deadhead parlance until Weir dry-docked the former tune in March 1986. “Saint” soon embarked on swelling solo excursions, typically building momentum early in the second set. —D.B.

Released as the B side of their first single after signing to Warner Bros. Records, “Cream Puff War” is explosive garage rock that’s faster and more raw-sounding than pretty much anything else the Dead recorded. Driven by Garcia’s bracing guitar leads and Pigpen’s swirling organ, the song could have easily fit in next to the Electric Prunes and the Seeds on the classic garage band compilation Nuggets. The Dead began playing it in 1966 (a version from the Fillmore West appears on the 1999 box set So Many Roads), and they cut it for their self-titled 1967 debut. “This is the only song that I claim totally,” Garcia said in a 1967 interview. “This is mine from beginning to end.”—J.D.

Hearing how this song evolved exerts a fascination of its own. An alternate studio version from 1984 approaches, but stops short of, the high-gloss rock sound of other California rockers of the era (compare it to, say, Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry”). The official version from In the Dark, the Dead’s full commercial arrival, rides a far slipperier groove, with buoyant percussion touches and the synthesizers more fully integrated into the Dead’s sound. As for the lyric, it’s one of Hunter’s most overtly cynical — as much an artifact of the Eighties as “Dark Star” was of the Sixties. —M.M.

The bridge between the multipart, tripping-balls pileup of Anthem’s “That’s It for the Other One” and the sublime architecture of the “Terrapin Station Medley,” “Weather Report Suite” is the Grateful Dead melding songs compositionally like they did onstage through improvising. Written by Weir and Barlow, with a lyrical assist from veteran folk singer-songwriter Eric Andersen, it’s the finale of Wake of the Flood. And with its Renaissance-flavored guitar overture, Spanish melodies, and mariachi-tinged horn arrangements, it was the most sophisticated Dead presentation anyone had heard at the time — so much so it barely scanned as Dead music. At least until the back end, a.k.a. “Part 2 (Let It Grow),” when Weir and Donna Godchaux emerge from the wintry darkness of “Part 1” into summer sunshine. Recorded in 1973, “Weather Report Suite” was only played in full that year and the next. The “Let It Grow” section, however, surfaced regularly as a first-set closer, always offering Garcia a beautiful flight path for extended solos. —W.H.

The penultimate song the Grateful Dead performed at their final show in 1995, this mournful ballad would have been the last of the night had bassist Lesh not called an audible, insisting that the band play “Box of Rain” rather than end their final date on such a melancholic note. The song’s protagonist seeks solitude, a luxury Garcia privately longed for. Thirty years of being the ringmaster of the high-flying circus that was the Grateful Dead had left Garcia feeling alienated and isolated, even when he was onstage in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans. His vocals on the dozens of live versions performed between its 1986 debut and the band’s final performance are fragile, vulnerable, and desperate: “I will walk alone by the black muddy river/And sing me a song of my own.” They would be the last words Garcia would ever sing live.—B.E.

Long before he made a full album of cowboy songs with 2016’s Blue Mountain, Weir had been a cowhand. In his teens, he worked on the Wyoming cattle ranch run by the parents of his future collaborator, John Perry Barlow; the two would later write songs on the same land. Weir’s attraction to cowboy songs led him, naturally, to Marty Robbins’ classic “El Paso” — a pop and country Number One in 1960 — which the Dead started playing in 1970 and would continue to, on and off, until 1995, making it “official” with the live Steal Your Face (recorded in 1974, released in 1976). There and elsewhere (Cornell May 8, 1977), Weir’s droll delivery and the double drummers at their friskiest stamped it as a classic Dead change of pace. —M.M.

Befitting the Grateful Dead story, “So Many Roads” could have been one of the band’s biggest and greatest hits, but almost every live version is flawed, and no finished studio recording exists. It transcends its imperfections as a wabi-sabi artifact of the Dead’s final days. Like so many of their beloved late-era ballads, it is impossible to hear “So Many Roads” without imagining Garcia co-opting the lyrics for something that veers more toward the tragic than the romantic: “So many roads I know/All I want is one to lead me home.” Rarely had Garcia sung so earnestly or vulnerably. The band knew it created something striking, and from the song’s debut in 1993 to the group’s final bow in 1995, the Grateful Dead performed “So Many Roads” at nearly 20 percent of their shows — almost as often, rotation-wise, as their biggest commercial hit, “Touch of Grey.”—B.E.

This might be Weir’s greatest cowboy song, alongside the Marty Robbins cover “El Paso” and his self-penned (with Barlow) “Mexicali Blues.” Though it sounds like a standard, “Me and My Uncle” was in fact written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas during a tequila drinking session and popularized by Judy Collins, who released it on The Judy Collins Concert in 1964. (Joni Mitchell covered it in her early days, too.) The Dead, who probably learned it from the Collins LP, sped it up, played it in 1966, and never took it out of rotation. It’s widely considered the most-performed cover tune in the band’s repertoire (600-plus shows, by some accounts). And while it never got a studio recording, a definitive version was minted on Skull & Roses. More recently, it has turned up in live sets by Billy Strings. And The Lone Bellow covered it on the excellent Bryce and Aaron Dessner-curated Dead tribute Day of the Dead. —W.H.

“Loose Lucy” debuted during the Dead’s remarkable Feb. 9, 1973, concert at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, alongside future classics including “Eyes of the World,” “Row Jimmy,” and “China Doll.” Released the following year on From the Mars Hotel, the track pairs Garcia’s warm, fluid guitar work with Hunter’s characteristically vivid storytelling. Set to an infectious, New Orleans-inflected groove, “Loose Lucy” is both a tale of romance and infidelity and, some say, a sly nod to the seductive allure of LSD. Either way, its narrative slipperiness has only served to deepen its enduring appeal. With playful good humor and a sense of easy mischief woven into the track’s loping, cool-guy strut, this is the Dead embodying their Trickster archetype to the hilt. After disappearing from the band’s repertoire for 16 years before finally returning in 1990, “Loose Lucy” remains a fan favorite, celebrated as much for its unflappable swagger as its wit.—Jessica Hundley

“Crazy Fingers” is an elusive entry into the Dead canon that earns its spot more on feel and suggestion than on jams or meaning. The lyrics have often been mislabeled by Deadheads as “haikus,” due to haiku-like qualities (nature imagery, juxtaposition, ambiguity), and the music has been mischaracterized as reggae and grouped in with other Caribbean influenced mid-1970s Dead songs like “Estimated Prophet” and “Fire on the Mountain.” The song is a confluence of classic Grateful Dead elements from that time period, where seemingly disparate sections are delicately woven together under a storyline absent a narrative. The ambiguity has led many a Deadhead to feel like the song is relatable, even if they couldn’t articulate what it’s about, exactly. Garcia and Hunter seemed to place value on just such a predicament, hence the lyrics, “Gone are the days we stopped to decide where we should go, we just ride.”—B.E.

Weir sings the U.S. blues of a long-haired American kid on the road, feeling like a stranger in his own country. “Black-Throated Wind” is one of the loneliest tunes he ever wrote — he stands out on the interstate, trying to hitch a ride. But his only company is the headlights of the buses and truckers who pass by without picking him up. It’s a standout of his solo Ace, but the Dead played it constantly in 1972, with a groove inspired by New Orleans R&B king Allen Toussaint. Barlow based the lyrics on a bleak cross-country motorcycle trip. It’s a long, cold night on the highway, with no direction home, but Weir sends out a Jack Kerouac-style prayer to “Mother American Night.” It never sounded colder or windier than the definitive Aug. 27, 1972, version in Veneta, Oregon, in the 100-degree sunshine.—R.S.

One of Merle Haggard’s greatest hits, “Mama Tried” was a country Number One in August 1968 and entered the Dead songbook almost a year later, in June 1969. Weir always kept his ear to country radio, telling a reporter, “There wasn’t a huge difference — still isn’t, for that matter — between the country presentation and the rock & roll presentation.” The song helped augur a new direction for the Dead, into the acoustic opening sets that became prominent in the early Seventies, with “Mama Tried” sealed in the repertoire thanks to its appearance on 1971’s live double-LP Skull & Roses. —M.M.

No, not the Neil Young song. This Garcia/Hunter tearjerker debuted in fall 1971 at pianist Keith Godchaux’s first show with the Dead — where he was basically replacing Pigpen, sidelined from liver disease tied to his alcohol consumption. A handsome but heavy song about a benumbed man in a dark place, with echoes of Oedipus and poems by Dylan Thomas (“Was There a Time”) and Yeats (“The Empty Cup”), Garcia rarely performed it. But it took on new meaning in the wake of his addiction struggles, which included a band intervention and a subsequent arrest in January 1985 for possession of heroin and cocaine. After being retired from the repertoire for a half decade, its return for the band’s 20th anniversary run at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, California, that June — just as Garcia was getting clean — was profound, especially when he keened lines like “Never in my mind/To cause so much pain” and “the day may come when you can’t feel at all.” —W.H.

On this highlight from Side One of Workingman’s Dead, Pigpen and Hunter set the down-and-dirty tone with the opening lines, “I been ballin’ a shiny black steel jack-hammer/ Been chippin’ up rocks for the great highway.” Like “Casey Jones,” also on the album, it’s about riding a locomotive — ”ballin’ that jack and drinkin’ my wine.” Pigpen (on harmonica) and Garcia team up on a swampy middle section that features one of the guitarist’s greatest recorded solos. A concert rarity, the Dead only played it 43 times. —S.B.

One of the oldest and most remarkable covers in the Dead oeuvre, best as we can tell, it first turned up in a live set in 1966. That same year, the Young Rascals had a Number One pop hit with their own version (itself a cover of the 1965 release by the Olympics, an excellent Black doo-wop group who had worked with Billy Preston). Notwithstanding lapses, “Good Lovin’” never fell from rotation, yet somehow didn’t surface on a proper album until 1978’s Shakedown Street. If that recording lacked the fire of the Sixties versions, it was probably worth the wait — released as a 7-inch single with another oldie (“Stagger Lee”) on the B side, it was certified gold in the U.S., and the band got to play it on its Saturday Night Live debut that year, along with “I Need a Miracle” and — fittingly, given the then-cast members’ drug habits — “Casey Jones.”—W.H.

The second single off the Dead’s double-platinum In the Dark, this Weir/Barlow collaboration dates back to its 1982 live debut. Inspired by the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Roses,” the chorus repeats, “Singing ashes, ashes all fall down.” That’s preceded by, “And the politicians throwing stones.” Railing against “petty wars” and “rudies looking for a fight,” the song builds to a crescendo with Garcia nailing several solos. As one of the Dead’s most political songs, “Throwing Stones” continued to resonate through the years; in 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Dead & Company played the song with the phrase SAVE OUR RIGHTS projected on a screen behind them. —S.B.

This Robert Hunter stunner first appeared on Garcia’s 1976 solo album Reflections, but those roses kept blooming with the Dead, who delivered the country-folk ballad onstage from 1974 to the very end. Its finest moment arrived in 1980, when the band performed it all four nights at Radio City Music Hall that fall, with one of those versions landing on their live acoustic masterpiece Reckoning. It’s severely underrated, though musicians like Norah Jones, Sierra Ferrell and Lukas Nelson, and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings (on their recent, fantastic Reckoning Tour) have helped keep it alive. Come for the lines that possibly nod to The Odyssey (“Ten years the waves rolled the/Ships home from the sea”), stay for Annie and those ribbons in her long brown hair. —Angie Martoccio

“Days Between” was the final song that Garcia and Hunter wrote together and, in Hunter’s view, it felt like the two had unlocked a new level that should have been the first of a new batch instead of the last of all of them. As far as swan songs go, “Days Between” has a haunting prescience to it, binding the passage of time to life’s major milestones. “And there were days I know/When all we ever wanted/Was to learn and love and grow/Once we grew into our shoes/We told them where to go,” Garcia sang with the appropriate weight. After its release in 1999 on the So Many Roads box, “Days Between” took on added significance and complexity: Weir’s many post-GD renditions served as a requiem for Garcia that felt personal, and fans have adopted the title for the calendar days between Garcia’s birthday on Aug. 1 and his death on Aug. 9.—B.E.

An exercise as much as a song — a skipping romp through 11/4 time, the double drummers keeping everyone on their toes — “The Eleven” was part of the core late-Sixties Dead repertoire, but effectively retired by mid-1970. Still, its placement on side two of the February 1969-recorded Live/Dead has put it high on the fans’ live list, and just for the hell of it, the double LP’s lyric sheet included some differing Hunter-written lines than the band sung. “I wrote this stuff out to be printed on this and I just did it out of my memory,” Hunter said. He continued to perform the song himself: “I throw in all those extra verses that are on that Live/Dead thing.”—M.M.

Over the 15 years following its live debut on March 31, 1980, “Feel Like a Stranger” opened more Grateful Dead performances than all but two songs. (“Jack Straw” is in first place, followed by “Hell in a Bucket.”) In part this can be attributed to the nature of Barlow’s lyrics, as Weir intones, “So let’s get on with the show …” Beyond this, the song, which appears on 1980’s Go to Heaven, Brent Mydland’s first album with the group, manifests the potency and potential of the Mydland era, as his contributions on organ and background vocals elevate the tune. “Feel Like a Stranger” is funk-infused Dead, in which Mydland and Weir would sometimes get frisky and pledge, “It’s going to be a long, long, crazy, crazy, tour” (instead of night) as they did at Hampton Coliseum in October 1989 during the version that appears on Without a Net. —D.B.

The opening guitar emulates the sounds of a motorcycle starting up and is bookended by the sounds of roaring engines and a snarling dog that was rumored to have belonged to Hart. Written by Weir, Barlow, and Brent Mydland, “Hell in a Bucket” is the story of a reckless man who embraces life with confidence and humor, even when things seem to be falling apart. The famous line “At least I’m enjoying the ride” captures the song’s message of living in the moment despite uncertainty — and has become a cross-generational Deadhead anthem. The video for the song has gone on to cult status, too. Starring a tiger, duck, and all the members of the Dead appearing (some more prominent than others), it was filmed at the San Rafael biker place George’s Bar. Pigpen probably would have loved it. —Alison Weinflash

Almost but not quite a reggae tune (though onetime Wailer Judy Mowatt suggested otherwise in a cover), this swaying Hunter/Garcia ballad was debuted by the Dead at a Stanford University gig in 1973, and eventually got a studio recording for Reflections, Garcia’s second solo LP. It’s a song beloved by many musicians outside the Dead family — perhaps because it’s got less baggage than an official Dead number, or maybe just because of its sweet, simple beauty. It’s turned up in sets by the Yonder Mountain String Band for years, and it was a fave of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood; lately, it’s surfaced in sets by Leftover Salmon and the Infamous Stringdusters.—W.H.

The blind bluesman Reverend Gary Davis was one of the most widely admired and copied performers during the Sixties blues boom, and the Grateful Dead hopped on that train, too. Weir told Acoustic Guitar that Davis’ fingerpicking style inspired him to be “a lot freer on the fretboard” when “he abandoned the open strings when he went up the neck.” You can hear what he means on Davis’ 1960 version of the old blues standard “Samson and Delilah,” which the Dead began playing in 1976, committing to it in the studio a year later on Terrapin Station. But that polite take was superseded almost immediately by the looser versions onstage, and it remained a hardy perennial through their last tour. —M.M.

To listen to Bobby “Blue” Bland’s original “Turn on Your Love Light,” from 1961, in light of the Dead’s maximal in-concert versions a decade later, is to hear a blueprint as well as a classic. The riff and counterpoint are laid out in the first 15 seconds; there’s a drum-and-vocal breakdown at the top of the second verse, with Bland’s shouts in the dark begging to be responded to; and an energetic breakdown that Pigpen would turn into extended monologues — or, as they were called at the time, “raps.” Sometimes these were indulgent, but when Pigpen was feeling the spirit, they could soar. And even after Pig’s passing, Weir resurrected it — and a pair of jazzmen, Branford Marsalis (Nassau Coliseum, March 29, 1990) and Ornette Coleman (Oakland, Feb. 23, 1993), would make it glow anew. —M.M.

For Deadheads, 1972 was a bonanza year: Europe ’72 documented the big tour on three LPs, while Garcia and Weir both issued solo LPs full of material that the Dead would assimilate in due haste. A country-rock ballad full of juicy chord changes and suffused with heartache, “Looks Like Rain” is one of the most mature love-on-the-rocks songs of its era — when Weir and lyricist Barlow consciously nod to Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” their own song’s gravitas earns it. It was a live favorite after that; the version from Without a Net, recorded March 29, 1990, at Nassau Coliseum, offers a lived-in but nevertheless showstopping treatment, accented by highly (and entertainingly) era-specific synthesizer pads, as well as Weir nodding to another weather-related classic, Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” —M.M. 

“Let It Grow” initially came together in the studio, rather than the live setting, where it originated as the concluding segment of “Weather Report Suite” on Wake of the Flood, initially titled “I Am the Rain.” Weir has said that this was a rare instance where he and principal lyricist Barlow wrote words and music simultaneously, which perhaps accounts for its elemental energy. When the Grateful Dead trotted out “Let It Grow” for its early concert paces ahead of Wake’s release in the fall of 1973, the group was accompanied by the two-person horn section of Martín Fierro and Joe Ellis, who also appear on the album. The song remained part of “Weather Report Suite” through 1974, but when the band returned from hiatus in 1976, “Let It Grow” became a standalone, most commonly an expansive first-set closer and occasional fan-welcomed reference to a deluge during an outdoor gig. —D.B.

When it comes to early Dead, “Cold Rain and Snow” is among the band’s barn burners. An old murder ballad done up as a garage-rock stomper, it features a snarling riff a la the Rolling Stones. Of its lightning-like tempo, Garcia would later reveal that it was attributed to the band coming into some “Dexamyl? Some sort of diet-watchers speed,” which led to “some hyperactive music.” Garcia’s partner Mountain Girl jumped in: “Man, it’s so fast, it’s just blinding!” But although it never reached the first rank of Dead standards, the group would reach for “Cold Rain and Snow” again and again, a few times a year until 1993, typically at a far more moderate tempo. It was also a set list favorite of Dead & Company. —M.M.

This celebration of “a band out on the highway” that’s “high-steppin’ into town” is a Weir/Barlow alternate version of “Uncle John’s Band,” and a continuation of Weir’s similarly self-referential party-pleaser “Playing in the Band.” Recorded for Blues for Allah and debuted at the legendary 1975 comeback show at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall (see One From the Vault), this was a road song with mileage accrued and a measure of road weariness, to judge from the rearview-mirror lyrical references. “Crazy rooster crowin’ midnight” echoes a verse in Pigpen’s song “Tastebud.” There’s a  “calliope,” echoing “St. Stephen” and “Cosmic Charlie,” and a “rainbow,” echoing “The Eleven” and “That’s It for the Other One.” A staple of the band’s repertoire henceforth, “The Music Never Stopped” remained one of Weir’s shining moments. —W.H.

This sublime Hunter/Garcia love ballad was recorded for Garcia’s first solo album, in a stirring arrangement for piano, organ, and pedal steel, all played by Garcia, with clocklike timekeeping by Kreutzmann. The lyrics had been born months earlier, on a magical writing day for Hunter, a sunny afternoon in London with a bottle of Greek retsina that also produced “Ripple” and “Brokedown Palace.” “It remains in my mind as the personal quintessence of the union between writer and muse [sic],” he’d reflect, knowing he’d found his path as a lyric writer, “a promising past and future prospects melding into one great glowing apocatastasis in South Kensington, writing words that flowed like molten gold onto parchment paper.” The song reflects Hunter’s reunion the previous day with an old girlfriend, and Garcia’s music radiates love. The song was a relative rarity in the Dead’s live sets, but always a blissful surprise. —W.H.

This high-stepping boogie casts Garcia — who famously rocked a flag-patterned top hat on the cover of the Dead’s first album — as Uncle Sam, a slippery dude who will “drink your health/Share your wealth/Run your life” and “steal your wife.” The Mars Hotel highlight was initially titled “Wave That Flag” and performed in 1973 with alternate verses (among them: “Stretch the truth/ pull the tooth/ feed the poor/ start the war”). Lore has it that Hunter wrote 300 verses, which Garcia cherry-picked for the 1974 studio recording. “It’s a matter of carving them down to ones that are singable,” Garcia said. Like “One More Saturday Night” (a song Weir wanted to title “U.S. Blues”), Garcia would flip lyrics based on current events; in 1979, “Charlie Chan” became “the Shah of Iran.” “U.S. Blues” stayed in rotation, often popping up as an encore — a perfect soundtrack for ruefully shuffling-out-the-door and back to reality. —W.H.

Garcia had a fragility in his voice that lent authenticity to the words he was singing. So when he took on Hunter’s unwitting counterargument to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” about a homesick astronaut, Garcia owned the metaphor. The song was released in 1989, right after the ribbons and bows on the Grateful Dead’s late-career surge started to unravel. The band’s dizzying new success left Garcia feeling increasingly isolated, as he was escorted from private planes to stadium stages and kept far away from anyone not in his immediate circle. The chorus, “Standing on the moon, but I would rather be with you,” hits differently in that context. That wouldn’t stop countless Deadheads from viewing it as one of the band’s most romantic offerings. Thanks to its San Francisco shout-out, it is also often interpreted as a love song to the city. —B.E.

Everybody rewrote the Bo Diddley beat in the Fifties, but no one did it with more sheer ebullience than Buddy Holly, whose adaptation of the signature count, “Not Fade Away,” grazed the Top 50 in 1957 for him and the Crickets. (The A side, “Oh, Boy!,” went Top 10.) The Dead played it as early as 1966, by some accounts; the first officially recorded performance was in June 1968, and they kept burning the barn down with it till the end. It was a surefire way to climax the second set — a reminder of the elemental power of rock & roll, and of the lasting bond between band and audience — and would often be echoed by fans as they exited the venue. “Jerry had written ‘boogie’ on his pedal steel guitar,” Hunter told RS, “so he wouldn’t forget to boogie.” —M.M.

This slow-churning, mid-Seventies outlier never quite sounded like a Dead song, which is part of its appeal. With a nod to George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun,” the title imagery would be reused in “Built to Last,” its pool-table-long-shot metaphor would resurface in “Keep Your Day Job,” and its opening line gave Wake of the Flood, the LP it appears on, its grateful-survivor title. Hunter grew up partly in foster homes; he never wrote a formal memoir, but a cryptic footnote to the song in his collected lyrics (A Box of Rain) hints at autobiography: “Remembering the great Vanport, Washington, flood of 1949, living in other people’s homes, a family abandoned by father; second grade.” It was played live just a handful of times before being retired for nearly 20 years, revived in the early Nineties at the behest of then-keyboardist Vince Welnick, who was not alone in his fondness for it.—W.H.

This traditional song and its variants (“Pretty Peggy of Derby,” “Fennario,” “The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie-O”) are a key element in the Dead’s DNA. Hunter saw “Fennario” — the “mythic territory” that backdrops the drama of “Peggy-O” — as the same imaginary region that backdrops “Uncle John’s Band,” a place where Scottish, English, Welsh, and Irish folk-song traditions were remade by immigrants in Appalachia before heading west to California to be reimagined again by LSD-gobbling folk-rockers. (Fennario also backdrops the lyrical action in “Dire Wolf.”) The Dead started playing “Peggy-O” live in the early Seventies; it remained a staple through 1995, continuing in near-every post-Garcia incarnation — Weir even played it with Goose in 2023. The Dead weren’t along in their admiration: Simon & Garfunkel recorded a version, as did Bob Dylan on his debut LP, and the National more recently. But while it exists in outtakes, the Dead never did fit it onto a studio album. No matter; “Peggy-O” will endure. —W.H.

This delightfully dopey rock & roll song began life as a Hunter/Weir collab that, according to band historian Dennis McNally, soured when Weir rewrote Hunter’s lyrics. After a few notable successes (see “Sugar Magnolia,” “Jack Straw,” “Playing in the Band”), Hunter walked away from Weir collaborations entirely and washed his hands of “Saturday Night,” giving sole writing credit to Weir — although Hunter vetoed Weir’s move to call it “U.S. Blues,” a title Hunter would soon put to use elsewhere. Nevertheless, with a musical framework drawing heavily on classic Chuck Berry-isms, and verses pliable enough for Weir’s ad-libs (Ronald Reagan would occasionally be name-checked in the line about the president), “Saturday Night” became one of the Dead’s staple end-of-concert rave-ups, albeit not exclusively for Saturday night shows. And soon enough, Weir would reconnect with his old prep school pal Barlow, a literary wild man with whom Weir would have a fruitful and longer-lived songwriting partnership. —W.H.

Written in the transitional period between the Dead’s vision of the Wild West (Workingman’s Dead) and a more modernized American mythology that they had a hand in creating (Wake of the Flood), “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” has distinct musical sections, echoing a kind of defiant journey (perhaps as a fugitive) that its nameless protagonist has embarked on. Lyrically, it has all the Hunter hallmarks: philosophical advice, personal liberty, card games, hard liquor, and come-hell-or-high-water determination: “Lost my boots in transit babe, pile of smoking leather/Nailed a retreat to my feet and prayed for better weather.” Garcia initially took issue with Hunter’s use of the word “styrofoam,” fearing that it dated the song to post-war America (as if “half a cup of rock and rye” didn’t). Hunter won that argument. —B.E.