greetings, all:
i have been trying to have my question answered for a couple of years now, without success. finally, i decided a grateful dead blog may hold my answer.
a few years back, i came across an lp – a saint-saens recording, and on the cover was bertha.
so what i am trying to figure out is the origin of bertha. does bertha predate the grateful dead?
did the grateful dead borrow bertha, or did the producers of the saint-saens lp borrow from the grateful dead?
please help.
thanks,
vg
Hey Dave, when you say “on the cover was bertha” do you mean the fan? That’s the only picture I could think of that would be on an album cover, from Dodd’s Annotated Lyrics:
“Bertha was the name give to a large fan in the Dead’s office.”
I’m probably talking like a fool over here but thought I’d throw that in.
Cliff e-mailed so now I know he was talking Bertha, as in Bertha the skull which totally escaped my vacant mind.
So then the skull and roses was originally an illustration by Edmund J. Sullivan in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a Persian spiritual text. The design was utilized by Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse as the center piece of an Avalon Ballroom poster for the band in 1968.
In the immortal words of Jerome, the percussion guy on Bo Diddley’s early records, “I don’t what he’s talkin’ ’bout, but I believe the man is right!”.
Mike.