After a swing through the Deep South, they turned north, heading to Monroe’s Brown County Jamboree in Bean Blossom, Ind. Reintroducing themselves to the bandleader, Garcia just couldn’t pull the trigger and ask for an audition, later saying he’d been “too chicken.” Instead, they continued east, and a parking-lot jam with the New York mandolinist David Grisman in Pennsylvania proved to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Five years later, Grisman’s mandolin would animate one of the Grateful Dead’s best-known recordings, “Friend of the Devil,” and they would continue to collaborate from time to time for the rest of Garcia’s life, most notably with “Old & in the Way.”
They split up in Bloomington, where Rothman stayed on for the summer and eventually did land a gig with Monroe, while Garcia drove back to Palo Alto. Noting that their trip was Garcia’s first beyond the West Coast, Rothman wondered if Garcia’s inability to ask for an audition wasn’t so much a lack of nerve as a deeper discomfort. “He just turned pale when he saw whites-only drinking fountains,” Rothman, who had been horrified at the sight of them the year before, said, “and I think that helped to seal the deal on him saying this is not my culture.”
Katz said there was a feeling of failure for Garcia, “because he had set off wanting to play with Bill Monroe and realized that just wasn’t going to happen and that he had to get home. Partly to get back to us, but mainly to figure out what came next.”
An answer appeared when a Boston-based group, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, performed in nearby Berkeley. A brief blip on the folk revival scene, jug bands played loose, rollicking versions of Depression-era tunes, often focusing on old novelty records and bawdy blues. Katz remembered going with Garcia to hear Kweskin every night. “They were just so delightful and fun and kind of crazy,” she said. “I think Jerry needed a release and this was just perfect.”
In short order Garcia and several friends including Ron McKernan, known as Pigpen, and Bob Weir formed Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, an acoustic band that later went electric, changing their name first to the Warlocks and later to the Grateful Dead.
And then?
“And then,” Katz said, “came LSD.”
Fred Goodman
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