City Ramblers Song Book. New York: Oak Books.
Garcia is known to have played. This does not include the Elizabeth Cotten tunes (I have considered them separately) and has not been carefully vetted, since pre-Dead is beyond my ken. Sharp-eyed readers may spot more.
Truly Understand
First To This Country
Rocking Chair
Maggie
Grimes, the Rover
Pound Hammer
Boss
Peter
of Constant Sorrow
Corn
Men Went A-Hunting
Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms
Dog Blues
Grove
Black Chicken
Traveler
No Bugs on Me
House Blues
also:
of Carlisle
Let Your Deal Go Down
Song Book, records or combination of them was the only source that Garcia
would have encountered for lots of these songs – everybody knew and did a bunch
of these. In my rummaging around some, well, folkways, I have come across all
kinds of “floaters”, fragments of idea, characters, narratives, or
scenes that appear and reappear throughout the folk tradition. But an awful lot
of Garcia et al.’s pre-Dead repertoire
is reflected in the NLCR Song Book, a
lot more than the Smith Anthology. Whether it was Hunter, Nelson, Leicester,
Pigpen, Garcia, any or all of them together, they were certainly drawing from
this source.
They’d continue to do so: David Grisman had a copy handy
when he and Jerry were working up the material that would appear on Not For Kids Only (Acoustic Disc ACD 9, 1993): of the twelve songs on that release, one of
the finest explicitly white roots engagements of Garcia’s career, seven
figure in the list above (see Smith 1994 for Grisman discussing this). But, really what we see here is the core of Garcia’s
acoustic repertoire, as played from folkie days before the Dead through Old And
In The Way, Great American Music/String Band, Garcia-Kahn, Jerry Garcia
Acoustic Band (JGAB), and Garcia-Grisman.
BTW, love these headings: Old Love Songs, Dance Tunes, Take Warning, News & Occupational Hazards, Lonesome Blues, Bible Tales, Wild Men & Murder, Songs, Whoop ‘Em Up, Rave On, The Great Depression.
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