Grateful Dead: ‘Blues For Allah’ – 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (ALBUM REVIEW)

A fleeting glance at the 3CD package aside, the 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of the Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah is quite different from many of its milestone predecessors. But then the creation of the group’s eighth album was really unlike most other such efforts in the iconic band’s discography.

Informality notwithstanding, reissue producer David Lemieux’ notes correlate to Nicholas G. Meriwather’s erudite essay; spanning most of the twenty-pages inside the booklet enclosed with the triple-fold Rhino Records set, the University of California Santa Cruz scholar cum archivist makes a legitimately clear distinction between the 1975 album and its two immediate predecessors, 1973’s Wake of the Flood and the next year’s From the Mars Hotel.

But there’s also a readily discernible continuity between all three LPs in terms of the original material that comprises the bulk of each one’s playing time. Songs such as “Eyes of the World,” “Scarlet Begonias,” and “Crazy Fingers” sound like passages lifted directly from a lucid Grateful Dead jam, then crystallized through the application of the enlightened metaphysics of Robert Hunter’s poetry.

Even so, the inclusion of live material on this collection looks redundant, at least in a cursory inspection. Taken from the era immediately following the work at Bob Weir’s home recording facility–dubbed  Ace’s and built by Stephen Barncard, engineer for the 1970 album American  Beauty–material from the first shows since the famous Winterland concerts of autumn 1974 (source material for The Grateful Dead Movie) takes up most of the second disc. 

And this performance finds the band, especially guitarist Jerry Garcia, in his otherworldly, sleight-of-hand, still deeply enthralled by the potential of material such as “Help On The Way”/”Slipknot”/”Franklin’s Tower.” Proceeding from its gently spine-tingling opening chords through constantly shifting form, this triptych appears twice in soundcheck and rehearsals from August 1975 at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco (the concert comprised the very first Grateful Dead vault release out in 1991).

Concert content juxtaposed with that material actually predates it. With keyboardists Ned Lagin and Merl Saunders in tow alongside Keith Godchaux on 3/23/1975, the psychedelic warriors showed up at late impresario Bill Graham’s SNACK Benefit event at Kezar Stadium in ‘Frisco. Especially with five decades of retrospect, it’s a miraculous sighting because, following the aforementioned autumn run of the previous year, the future of the Grateful Dead was anything but certain. 

More surprising still is the courageous choice of material: the title song from Blues For Allah bookends an altogether enlightening suite comprised of the percussion-based compositions “Stronger Than Dirt (Or Milking The Turkey)” surrounding a “Drums” interval featuring both Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart.

Naturally eliciting the most robust crowd response, the abbreviated but lively section follows dark, mysterious sounds that hint at how the latter bandmember, having returned to the lineup in full after popping in at the final Winterland ’74 performance, had made integral contributions to the atmospheric nature of the studio project. 

Foreshadowing the stage segments designated “Space,” this uncanny recreation of the intimate ambience arising from the newly constructed studio facilities confirms the unusual air was, in fact, a direct reflection of the Grateful Dead’s own abiding chemistry.

Previously released only with commercial pre-orders of the massive box of 2004, Beyond Description, the passage acts as an introduction to a roughly half-hour section of concert recordings from successive nights in June of 1976, when the septet returned to regular touring after their self-imposed hiatus. 

More impeccable work from Betty (Cantor-Jackson) further documents the Dead’s continuing fascination with the most recently recorded music. Within approximately two and a half hours of extras is the most conventional of those selections, the Weir collaboration with lyricist John Perry Barlow, “The Music Never Stopped.” 

Self-referential as it is, the song resonates with even greater authority in front of the audience at the Tower Theater in Pennsylvania. Chief curator David Lemieux and his team skipped through both that night’s setlist and the next to feature numbers from the source of this collection. There are, however, some telling culls from earlier in Grateful Dead canon: “Comes A Time” speaks to the risks the band took in its recent timeline and, in that light, these twelve minutes plus of “Eyes of the World” have never sounded so autobiographical. 

Or, for that matter, anywhere near so chipper. In brisk fashion, it immediately precedes, then segues into, a rendition of Martha and the Vandellas’ Motown gem “Dancing In The Streets” of almost identical duration and pace. Commandeered in the Dead’s early days by the late, beloved ‘Pigpen,’ aka Ron McKernan, this interpretation allows Keith Godchaux to continue demonstrating his nimble facility on the ivories.

It’s a long way from there to the invocation of the muse that is the ever-so-delicate instrumental “Sage & Spirit” at the homestretch of the previous disc. But it’s hardly more revelatory than the dulcet tones of Donna Jean Godchaux during the incantation intervals of that title song: has she ever harmonized more sweetly?

It’s an epiphany echoing the enlightened philosophizing of lyricist Hunter on the bulk of Blues For Allah. Likewise meaningful in its own way is hearing the studio record in its remastered form courtesy David Glasser: the alluring audio turns into an enrapturing experience by the end of the forty-four plus minutes. 

As that absorbing sensation unfolds, it becomes a natural extension of admiring this variation on the deceptively familiar Blues For Allah cover art. While the slipcover is not adorned with 3D graphics like some of its counterparts (see the 2018 compendium of Aoxomoxoa), that nicety isn’t really necessary: the contrasting glossy and flat finish, along with the raised imprint of the skeleton image at its center, sufficiently highlights Phillip Garris’ painting. 

As such, it is of a piece with more than a few Grateful Dead album covers, constituting a reliable gateway into the musical journey of (re) discovery that materializes straight from perusal of those graphics.