Fans of the acoustic Dead will be familiar with “Monkey and the Engineer,” a delightful ditty that turned up in many of the fall 1980 acoustic sets and the album derived from those shows, Reckoning.
The song was written by Jesse “The Lone Cat” Fuller, who also contributed “Beat It on Down the Line” to the Dead’s eclectic catalog. Both songs are on this album:
I just got a copy of a new kids’ book based on “Monkey and the Engineer,” with illustrations by David Opie. There’s biography of Fuller in the back of the book, along with the sheet music so you can play the song yourself.
The drawings are charming and warm. My wife, a kindergarten teacher and a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art, approves of this book as both a teacher and an artist.
You can get the book from the publisher’s web site.
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