Uncle John's Band

Infobox Song
Name = Uncle John's Band


Border =
Caption =
Type =
Artist = Grateful Dead
alt Artist =
Album = Workingman's Dead
Published =
Released = June 14, 1970
track_no = 1
Recorded = Pacific High Recording Studio
San Francisco, California
Genre = Rock
Length = 4:42
Writer = Robert Hunter
Composer = Jerry Garcia
Label = Warner Bros.
Producer = Bob Matthews
Betty Cantor
Grateful Dead
next = "High Time"
next_no = 2
Misc =

"Uncle John's Band" is a song by the Grateful Dead that first appeared in their concert setlists in late 1969. The band recorded it for their 1970 album "Workingman's Dead". Written by guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter, "Uncle John's Band" presents the Dead in an acoustic and musically concise mode, with close harmony singing.

The song, one of the band's most well-known, is one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. In 2001 it was named 321st (of 365) in the Songs of the Century project list.

Music and lyrics

"Uncle John's Band" has one of the Dead's most immediately accessible and memorable melodies, set against a bluegrass-inspired folk arrangement with acoustic guitars. The song's close harmony singing was inspired in part by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Both the music and the lyrics summon up the Dead's feel for Americana, with the song making allusions to both past - Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" - and present - the fate of the American counterculture at the turn of the decade. [ [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=33:5lu67ub0b0jw Allmusic song review by William Ruhlmann] ]

ingle and album history

Warner Bros. Records released "Uncle John's Band", backed with "New Speedway Boogie", as a single in 1970, but got limited airplay because of length issues. Garcia worked with Warners to cut it down, though he later called the mix "an atrocity.""Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip" . Jake Woodward, et al. Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2003, pg. 120.] "I gave them instructions on how to properly edit it and they garbled it so completely," Garcia commented. The original album version ended up getting more air play than the revised Warner Bros. version. ["Garcia: An American Life" by Blair Jackson, Penguin Books, 1999, pg. 190.]

In any case, the single reached only number 69 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart. Nevertheless it had a greater impact than its chart performance indicates, it did receive good airplay on progressive rock radio stations and others with looser playlists. At a time when the Grateful Dead were already an underground legend, "Uncle John's Band" (and to some degree its albummate "Casey Jones") was the first time many in the general rock audience actually heard the band's music. [Jackson, p. 188.]

Moreover, the song had an impact on the mainstream because of first using the word "Goddamn" in the unedited single, which many radio stations played instead of the edited version; together with the reference to cocaine in "Casey Jones", the two songs made the band a "thorn in the side of Nixon that became a badge of honor to the masses." [Jackson, p. 190.]

To this day, "Uncle John's Band" is one of the Grateful Dead's most frequently played tracks on classic rock radio.

Cover versions

*It was covered (with lyrics intact) by Jimmy Buffett on his 1994 album "Fruitcakes" along with another classic rock cover, the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon".

*It was covered by the Indigo Girls for the Grateful Dead tribute compilation "Deadicated". The recording also appeared on their album "Rarities".

References