Jerry Garcia And The Grateful Dead Essay examples -- essays research p

Jerry Garcia and The Grateful stillborn     Jerome John Garcia was born in 1942, in San Franciscos Mission District.His father, a spanish immigrant named Jose "Joe" Garcia, had been a jazzclarinettist and Dixieland bandleader in the thirties, and he named his new son afterward his popular Broadway composer, Jerome Kern. In the spring of 1948, whileon a fishing trip, Garcia cut his father swept to his death by a Californiariver.      subsequently his fathers death, Garcia spent a few years living with hismothers parents, in bingle of San Franciscos working-class districts. Hisgrandmother had the habit of listening to Nashvilles Grand Ole Opry radiobroadcasts on Saturday nights, and it was in those hours, Garcia would later say,that he developed his fondness for country-music forms-particularly the deft ,blues-inflected mandolin performing and mournful, high-lone whatsoever vocal style ofBill Monroe, the principal founder of bluegra ss. When Garcia was ten, hismother, Ruth, brought him to live with her at a sailors hotel and bar that sheran near the citys waterfront. He spent much of his quantify there listening tothe drunks, fanciful stories or sitting alone teaching Disney and horror comicsand pouring through science-fiction novels.     When Garcia was fifteen, his older brother Tiff - who years earlier hadaccidentally chopped off Jerrys right-hand middle find while the two werechopping wood - introduced him to early rock & enfold and rhythm & blues music.Garcia was quickly drawn to the musics funky rhythms and raving mad textures, butwhat attracted him the most were the sounds that came from the guitarespecially the bluesy "melifluousness" of players such as T-bone Walker and ptyalize Berry. It was something he said that he had never perceive before. Garcia valued to take up how to make those same sounds he went straight to his motherand told her that he wanted an ele ctric guitar for his next birthday.     During this same period, the beat period was going into secure swing inthe Bay Area, and it held great predominance at the due north Beach arts schoolwhere Garcia attended and at the citys coffeehouses, where he had heard poetslike Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Rexroth read their best works.     By the early... ...80, a year after leaving theband and Brent Myland, of a morphine and cocaine dose in 1990 neverreally took away from the Deads momentum as a live act.     After the 1986 summer shows with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and theHeartbreakers, Garcia passed turn out at his home in San Rafael, California, andslipped into a diabetic coma. His body was non agreeing with all the years ofroad-life and drug abuse. When he came out of the coma the Dead made a tributesong to growing old gracefully and bravely, "Touch of Grey."     Unfortunately, though, Garcias health was going nowhere but downhill,and according to some people so was his drug problem. He collapsed fromexhaustion in 1992, resulting in many cancellations in their tour that year.After his 1993 recovery, Garcia devoted himself to a nutrition of diet andexercise. At first it worked and he wound up losing cardinal pounds. There wereother positive changes at work He had sire a father again in recent yearsand was pass more time as a parent, and in 1994 he entered into his threemarriage, with filmmaker Deborah Koons. Plus, to the pleasure of numerousDeadheads