Question about Grateful Dead.

[japple]

Who is the off-key singer in the group? I'm thinking it must be Jerry Garcia as I have also heard him playing/singing with Peter Rowan/David Grisman/Vassar Clements "Old and In the Way" recordings. I am not much of a musician, but something about Grateful Dead and Old and In the Way's music has always caused a bit of discomfort. The songs are great, the arrangements and instrumentals are awesome, the playing is top notch, but the vocals sound just a bit off-key to me.

Please don't crucify me. I have wanted an answer to this for many years, but never posed the question for fear of being stomped.

ETA: I listen to a fair amount of bluegrass music and am a fan of Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley and the high-lonesome sound, but their voices and pitch always sound pure to me.

Thank you.

[NightWatcher]

1. Was this during the Donna Godchaux years 1972-79?

She and her husband were the worst things the band ever experienced. She couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, and Keith was so stoned he had to write "don't forget to breathe" on his keyboard.

Depending on the year, it could've been that Jerry was too stoned or Bobby, or Phil's mic was too high (because others were too stoned to sing).

Sorry to be so mean....and I'm a fan.

[japple]

2. No. This is a male singer. There was an off key singer in the days when there were only males

in the band. This is based on a lifetime of hearing the band and also listening to Jerry playing with bluegrass musicians on the Boardinghouse recordings.

[Brother Buzz]

16. Donna Jean could carry a tune in the studio, her bailiwick

Just get in a time machine and ask Elvis Presley or Percy Sledge, or even Jerry Garcia, her biggest supporter in the band. On the stage with the Grateful Dead, she was lost; the Dead's Wall of Sound wasn't kind to her (the drugs didn't help, either).

[peacefreak]

3. Phil had a reputation

Of not having the best voice. I remember people always yelling "let Phil sing!"

[GoCubsGo]

4. That was going to be my guess.

During their last concert on July 5th, there was apparently a huge Twittergasm of people calling for Phil to stop singing, and let Trey Anastasio take over the vocals. For the encore, Bob even came out wearing a t-shirt that said "Let Trey Sing." Bob has never tended to sing off key.

That being said, the person in question could just as easily have been Jerry. If one listens to any of the concerts just prior to his death, it's often obvious how much he was deteriorating. He forgot lyrics on a somewhat frequent basis, and wasn't always in key.

[The Second Stone]

5. Any of them who sing are not strong singers. And I'm a big admirer of the music

Phil Lesh has never had long breaths, so his vocals can't really draw out a note. He is, however, close to being on key. Bob Weir is not off key, but more of what I would describe (as a non musician) as being a tinsy bit flat, and without depth. Jerry Garcia had a beautiful, rich and varied voice, but could be off key. Donna Jean Godchaux was horribly off key much of the time. Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (first keyboardist) was a fantastic blues singer, but drank himself to death. I didn't really care for the singing of the other keyboardists, although I cannot speak to Tom Constanten as I could not tell him apart (I'm only going to pick on the dead ones) and Bruce Hornsby is a very good singer.

I could not stand the singing of Brent Mydland or Vince Welnick (both deceased keyboardists). Keith Godchaux may have been terrible too, but his wife was much, much worse making the rest sound like angels by comparison. (Sorry Donna. You had some wonderful moments, but geez, why did they let you do this? )

I can't speak to Mickey Hart of Phil Kreutzman's singing. Their dual drummers.

If it's a male voice and off-key, it's probably Jerry or one of the deceased keyboardists. Jerry singing off key usually worked for the material. At least for me. Generally speaking, Jerry's singing for me was like Duane Allman's sour guitar. An acquired taste. Give a listen to Brokedown Palace sometime and tell me that is not wonderful as is, and pure vocals would only screw it up.

A good Jerry vocal really makes a Grateful Dead show. I saw him live only once in 93 and he was good, but not great. I've got most of their live albums (over 100) and some are really great music.

Go to their website and try to buy Dick's Picks volumes one through four. These are the very best hidden gems in my opinion.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

6. I agree with just about all that. Except for Brent Mydland.

I liked Brent's raspy voice - Hey Pockey Way anyone? And absolutely loved his keyboards - whaling on the Hammond? Forgetaboutit.

We just don't discuss Donna's inadequacies in polite company. She is a very classy and beautiful lady - my boyfriend always mocks her wailing and I tell him to knock it off or I'll call my old Deadhead friends to kick his ass. THIS MOCKERY WILL NOT STAND!

God bless him but I just can't stand Vince's toy keyboards.

[The Second Stone]

9. I hated Vince's tinny keyboards. Didn't much care for his voice

Donna at times did wonderful, wonderful work. But many of her live performances were dreadful. Some of her vocals on a Terrapin Suite were transcendent, and I'm glad we still have them. I have no qualms with she is a wonderful human being. That doesn't mean the boys should not have asked her backstage after the first set to sing a few bars to see if she was up to it that night and change the program if she wasn't.

[Scuba]

23. +1 for Dick's Picks

[BlueJazz]

7. I'll join in with my stuff: As someone blessed/cursed with perfect pitch, the whole band was..

..not in tune with each other plus was usually a little sharp in their tuning.

Not saying that they didn't make people happy...and that's what matters most.

Not my thing though.

PS: The auto-tune thing in these modern times drives me #@%$#$ Nuts. I can hear the person's vibrato change when the auto-tune corrects the pitch. AAAGGG!

[mackerel]

8. auto tune has destroyed music

[The Second Stone]

11. It has hurt professional music a great deal and the artistry behind it

But it does get people out to karaoke night to sing. And people singing in front of their friends is a good thing.

[The Second Stone]

10. I'm tone deaf in my singing much of the time, and I cannot imagine how someone with perfect

or even good pitch could stand the GD when singing. When it is bad, it is distracting even to me. But I also get that real people don't sing perfectly, or play in perfect tuning when at a festival. Jerry Garcia, while off key as a singer much of the time, was a virtuoso on the guitar, with ever warble being quite intentional, up until the final years when he could not feel his fingertips due to diabetic neuropathy. As Garcia himself knew, he could shape the texture and color of his playing to do exactly what he wanted, and it was unique. Not to say that others were not virtuosos too, but nobody did what he did. And usually his singing hit the mark for what the band was trying to do.

The joy of a GD concert (I've only been to three) isn't really the music, which is too loud and with acoustic characteristics of the individual venue, but rather the crowd coming alive as part of the music. The many recordings available live usually have quite good sound quality from their private mixing board recordings that do capture a musical moment that is separate from the audience experience.

[BlueJazz]

13. You get it. Music is supposed to bring joy to the listener. We don't like exactly the same food ...

...as others and the same goes for our other tastes...

[cemaphonic]

12. I'd guess Jerry too

For most of their stuff, it doesn't stand out too bad for me, but it's really noticeable when they do the bluegrass-style close harmony singing on some of their songs.

[japple]

14. That was my thinking as well. When they sing some of the bluegrass standards,

there's always that one voice that sings a "high lonesome" part similar to Bill Monroe or Dr. Ralph Stanley. Monroe and Stanley never sounded off-key though.

[Enthusiast]

15. Hi, japple!

Listen carefully to this. See if you can identify the culprit. I kid. For many years I was a lukewarm Grateful Dead fan. Now, for some reason I have fully embraced their music with all the built in foibles. I love these guys.

I will often put on a concert from this site and find myself completely enjoying it despite the various deficiencies. The concerts are rated by the listeners.
https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead

[antiquie]

17. Peggy-O

~sob~

[Enthusiast]

18. Yes, Peggy-O is a favorite.

[japple]

19. I listened to a bit of this and couldn't tell who sang which part!

I like a lot of their music and the songwriting is great, but those off key bits are like nails on a chalkboard to me.
Sorry to all of their admirers.

[Enthusiast]

20. Your opinion of the Grateful Dead

is a very common one. The rest of us are the unusual ones.

[kwassa]

21. I thought they all were off-key.

Just kidding.

My mental block against this band forever has been the weak singing. Voices make it or break it for me, and there is a lot of poor singing throughout the rock world. There is no one with a strong or really interesting voice in this band, in my opinion.

I do like some of their individual songs.

[Munificence]

22. I'm a big Dead fan

and I have been playing guitar for dam near 30 years.

Just like Dylan, Neil Young, Prine, Vanzandt, they are/were entertainers, not some pitch correction bullshit "Hollywood" artist.

With all that said, I think the problem with The Grateful Dead is that most are not used to hearing someone harmonize outside of using the 3rd or the 5th of a triad. You can still harmonize and use the 6th and this is what throws a lot of folks off. Another thing that the Dead tried to do was "cross over"in their harmony singing...there are not many that can do this and fool the audience as dissonance takes over. If your lead is singing in say "G" and you are singing in "D" then crossing over for each is very difficult.

The Grateful Dead was a "jam band", one has to realize this and realize that it's not about the vocals, it's instead feeling and not even attempting to be perfect, it's real shit man, not some canned bullshit like is out there today.

[japple]

25. Honey child, I wasn't dissing the Dead, so don't get your feathers

Last edited Mon Aug 10, 2015, 07:23 PM - Edit history (1)

ruffled. I am a life-long student, having begun piano lessons in 1956, guitar lessons in 1966. I play by ear because I cannot "read" music.

I have been listening to this music for a whole lot of years and can't tell who is singing which part.

ETA: I don't liked canned music either, past or present and despise autotune and the majority of current popular music. Most of the time I listen to old standard bluegrass and Americana artists like Jason Isbell, Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Patti Griffin, Buddy & Julie Miller, Paul Thorn, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Carolina Chocolate Drops, JJ Grey and Mofro, and other diverse groups such as Pink Martini. I know REAL music when I hear it.

I appreciate the contributions that Grateful Dead made to the music world and have fond memories of listening to their music over the past decades. I just wanted to know who was singing off key.

[astral]

24. x

i love Donna's voice with the Dead! i read or heard somewhere that the monitor feedback was sometime set up to where she could not hear her voice on stage. in my early Dead days i used to wonder how come Jerry got to sing the lead on most of the songs (lol!) whereas he did not seem to have the best voice. And they all had their bad sound days and sometimes it sounded as if they couldnt carry a tune at all and didnt give a damn. But listening to Bobby sing (songs be didnt write) I believe he is the off-key culprit. i love Bob's voice, though, and also Phil's. sure i learned to love Jerry's voice too, but not really til he started to grow on me, and also i started to hear the Jerry Garcia Band.

i am mystified anyone doesnt adore the Grateful Dead. they make me sing, although its not something i would torture anyone with hearing, some of their songs give me goosebumps, and often make me cry. perhaps having seen them live and having heard and tried to play their music and having it associated with younger periods of my life, sometimes I go through periods where i don't want to hear the Dead, in their many versions and combinations, bc i dont want to feel things deeply and i dont want to cry, and some songs it is near impossible to not sing along to and i just dont want to go there. other times, it’s all I listen to. there's so much variety to what they do. did. do. (Donna's music after the dead is pretty cool, too! although her voice is different.)

like i heard perfectly described (somewhere?) -- there is the Grateful Dead and then there's everybody else.

if you dont love them yet, just listen some more (LOL!) I do not love *all* their songs, but then the great instrumentals can also be hidden in the songs i dont like... depends on the day, the hour of the version of the song...

[Miles Archer]

26. At times, they were ALL the "off-key singer in thr group."

DUers who know me know that I am as close to a card-carrying Dead Head as you can get without actually being one. I say that because I never attended a concert and do not have boxes of tapes in my room, BUT...I own pretty much every commercially released Dead CD. That includes all of the box sets released after the band's demise.

Now...to your question.

Jerry: When he was "on" he was REALLY "ON"...beautiful, emotive voice...but health issues, some accellerated by drugs and some not, occasionally made his voice a little raspy and off-key. Recent stories about the "Fare The Well" shows have stated that Bruce Hornsby left the final edition of the Dead largely because of the erratic nature of Jerry's performances during his tenure.

Phil Lesh: Maybe the most consistently off-key and tuneless singer in the band. Has a couple of signature songs like "Box of Rain" and "Unbroken Chain" that make it necessary for him to take a lead vocal from time to time. Not always a "standing-O" moment.

Bob Weir: Had the nickname of "Showboat" bestowed upon him by certain Dead Heads because sometimes his enthusiasm exceeded his ability to hit the note. MOST of his performances of Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" have clusters of off-key notes in the first line.

Pigpen: More of a "blues growler" than a singer. Many people LOVE the guy. Some do not. But he never really "sang" in a traditional sense so all of his stuff worked because he was Pigpen.

Donna Godchaux: This is where the trouble really begins. She personally claims it was a mixture of the drugs and not being able to hear herself in the monitors. On virtually ANY Keith & Donna era live release, on "Playing In The band," she lets out a banshee wail right before the jamming section that was painfully off key on 95% of the performances I've heard. Her voice...especially on the studio recordings...wasn't bad at all. But she got the lowest grades of any band member when it came to onstage vocals.

Brent Mydland: No disrespect intended to someone who is no longer with us, but I never cared for Brent. His keyboard style often leaned toward brittle, synth-y stuff lacking in warmth. And from Day 1 I called him a "poor man's Michael McDonald" in regard to his vocals. Didn't hear a lot of bad notes but I have personally made around 50 Dead Mix CDs, and while only several of them are from the Brent era. none of them have a song with Brent taking lead vocals (or one where his vocals are up front in the mix, for that matter).

[olddots]

27. the Deads strength was in their accessibility

I will leave it at that .

[Rumbustious]

28. Off key,

So how come Jerry Garcia is off key if he supposedly has perfect pitch? Or maybe he is just in a different key and prefers dissonance? To me, whether purposeful or "he can't help it," it makes the music seem accidental, unrehearsed, and off-putting. And impossible to sing along with.

[gopiscrap]

29. welcome to DU