Grateful Dead Hour #982

Week of July 16, 2007

Part 1 33:55
Grateful Dead 4/15/89 The Mecca, Milwaukee WI
PLAYING IN THE BAND->
TERRAPIN->
DRUMS

Part 2 21:00
Grateful Dead, Three from the Vault (2/19/71)
SMOKESTACK LIGHTNIN’
Jerry Lawson and Talk of the Town
WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

Jerry Lawson was for decades the lead singer of The Persuasions. I met him in 2000 when my friend Rip Rense asked me to help him persuade Grateful Dead Records to sign the Persuasions up to record a CD of Dead songs. Having enjoyed the Persuasions many times, and having heard the band’s fantastic collection of Frank Zappa songs, I happily joined the campaign. GD Records accepted the proposal, and much to my surprise, I was engaged to co-produce the CD with Lawson, and with Rense as executive producer.

The experience was a life-changing one for me, as documented in my Persuasions studio diary. The CD, Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead, is currently out of print, but that could change. It’s a truly magnificent collection of performances.

Lawson left the Persuasions a while back, and he surfaces now with a new band, Jerry Lawson Talk of the Town, on this eponymous CD. For this week’s GD Hour, I chose a song that Jerry Garcia also covered with the JGB: “What a Wonderful World,” made famous originally by Louis Armstrong.

Support for the Grateful Dead Hour comes this week from the Sleeping Bear Dunegrass & Blues Festival, August 2-5 in Northern Michigan on the shores of Lake Michigan, with Dark Star Orchestra, Particle, Yonder Mountain, Keller Williams, the David Grisman Quintet, Railroad Earth, Peter Rowan, and dozens more. Dunegrass Festival tickets, directions and more information are available at dunegrassfestival.com.