Track Listing

1. Uncle John's Band
2. High Time
3. Dire Wolf
4. New Speedway Boogie
5. Cumberland Blues
6. Black Peter
7. Easy Wind
8. Casey Jones

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29705 in Music
• Released on: 1999-10-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Workingman's Dead and its successor American Beauty from later in 1970, are the Dead albums even non-Deadheads embrace. With these two new-decade statements, the group reigned in its demonstrative instrumental side in favour of a pithier presentation of prize tunes. The opener, "Uncle John's Band", signalled that this was a relatively streamlined Dead. "Dire Wolf", "Cumberland Blues" and "Casey Jones" hammer the point home: the Grateful Dead could set aside the jams for a while and make a great album. --Steven Stolder

CD Description
The Grateful Dead's first four albums reinforced their stature as a performing group, with a loose improvisational feelrooted in the blues, rock & roll, and modern jazz. But withthe 1970 release of WORKINGMAN'S DEAD, Garcia, Weir, Lesh, McKernan, Kreutzmann, and Hart reined in their many spatial musical elements and found their true stylistic niche in thestudio with an engaging blend of country, blues, and folk. Where earlier studio releases strove to recreate the kind offreeform group improvisations that won the Dead a fanaticalcult following in the Bay area, WORKINGMAN'S DEAD drew upona rural American vernacular that was in many ways analogousto that of the Band.
The resulting music has a rootsy, timeless quality, with tight instrumental arrangements, concise solo breaks, and a carefully wrought style of vocal harmonising. The Dead won extensive airplay with tuneful songs like "Uncle John's Band" and "Casey Jones", while expanding their following well beyond San Francisco. Garcia's slitheringpedal steel counterpoint and twangy banjo rolls make for a charismatic new style of bluegrass on "Dire Wolf" and "Cumberland Blues", while "New Speedway Boogie", featuring some ofRobert Hunter's best lyrics, is a pointed personal metaphorfor the tragic chaos at Altamont the summer before. This remains one of the legendary band's most concise and beautifully executed records.

Customer Reviews

A Perfect Transition From Psychadelia To Country-Rock
First off, Workingman's Dead is a brilliant album. Disregarding all the other factors that make it such a masterpiece, that it was the beginning of a whole new direction for the Dead, or even that it affirmed the Dead's place in rock-music history, by proving to the world what the Dead were capable of. Even ignoring all those factors which make it such a significant piece of work, purely on the music alone is one of the finest records ever made. But despite it's beautiful, laid-back, country-rock atmosphere, and Robert Hunter's lyrical wizardry, Workingman's Dead is not only a good album, but an extremely important one, in the development of the Grateful Dead, and the development of music as a whole. What makes the album all the more amazing, is what an incredible change of direction in style it represented for the Dead. Only a few months earlier, the Dead had released Live Dead, a double vinyl album, of transcendental, jaw-dropping psychedelia, which had once and for all set the Dead apart from the other, similarly styled, bands who emerged from the San Francisco scene, in 1966/67. In contrast, Workingman's is a rustic culmination of blues, country and bluegrass, combined with the Dead's own indefinable sound. It also brought the Dead a whole new audience, once which had largely ignored the band since their inception in the mid-60's, and who had little time for 35 minute long, spacey, psychedelic odysseys. This is not to say the Dead sold out to their psychedelic "roots" with the release of Workingman's Dead. Concert tapes from the time show that they were blending their new CSNY-sound, with long (almost) lyric-less, acid-rock trips. Workingman's allowed Robert Hunter's ability as a lyricist to shine. With lyrically intense songs like High Time, Black Peter, and New Speedway Boogie, the Dead were able to convey real feeling in their songs, through the words, rather than relying mainly on the music. The album segues from carefree optimism to tragedy and despair to hard travlin' blues, from one track to the next. Going from the gentle comforting of Uncle John's Band to the anguish-filled High Time to the cheery hopefulness of Dire Wolf to a tale of disaster tinged with the possibility of better times ahead, New Speedway Boogie to the fast-paced country-twang of Cumberland Blues to the bleak, death-ballad of Black Peter to Pigpen's railroad-blues Easy Wind finishing finally with Casey Jones. While there are perhaps better individual songs on other albums, and better live versions of the songs on Workingman's Dead than the one's present on the album, taken as a whole, it is still the finest studio album in the Dead's canon.

return to the roots
The Dead had been know as the house band for Kesey's acid tests. Now here they are playing Red-Kneck music?? Well, not quite - the Grateful Dead were purveyors of American music, be it folk, blues or whatever. They did, however, always retain the essential element for any group of musicians - they always sounded like the Grateful Dead. Having heard Working Man's Dead, I went along to see them in London (at the Lyceum) hardly expecting to hear songs from this album played live - Uncle John's Band and Casey Jones were not songs I expected to hear them play live but there they were, and with near perfect (for the Dead) harmonies.
This is one of the essential GD recordings, along with... well, that's always a difficult one with so many being essential.