In the early years of the Grateful Dead, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan played keyboards, harmonica and frequently sang lead with the band he co-founded in 1965. A member of the pre-Dead groups Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions and The Warlocks, Pigpen was a teenager when he befriended his bandmate in all three of those bands, guitarist Jerry Garcia.
The first t-shirts the Grateful Dead printed had an image of Pigpen whose motley style “looked like a biker’s nightmare” according to Garcia. Pigpen paired a rough exterior and intense stage presence while singing the blues with a raw and deep inflection. Unlike his bandmates, Pigpen preferred alcohol as his vice, avoiding the psychedelic drugs his cohorts were frequently experimenting with.
Garcia described Pigpen, who sadly died on this date 50 years ago at the age of 27, explaining one of his bandmate’s roles in the Dead by stating:
“He was our anchor. We’d be out of our minds, just YOWWWGOINNNNNNGG, and we’d be tethered to Pigpen. You could rely on Pigpen for a reality check. ‘Hey, man, is it too weird, or what?’ He’d say, ‘No man, it’s cool.’ Everybody used him on that level. He was like gravity. Hell’s Angels would be sitting around his room fucked up on acid and Pigpen would be taking care of them. It was so great. Pigpen was like a warm fire, a cozy fire.”
Pigpen wrote or co-wrote several songs in the Dead’s early repertoire including “Mr. Charlie,” “Two Souls In Communion,” “Operator” and “Chinatown Shuffle,” among others. Cover songs were more of Pigpen’s specialty, particularly those by bluesmen like Lightning Hopkins and Howlin’ Wolf, and exemplified by his signature performances of the Bobby “Blue” Bland popularized “Turn On Your Lovelight.”
One rare exception to Pigpen leading the Grateful Dead in covering a blues song was on two occasions in 1969 when he instead fronted the band while performing a song by The Beatles. On February 11, 1969, and again on March 1, the Dead encored with “Hey Jude,” sung by Pigpen.
The Beatles released “Hey Jude” as a standalone single in August 1968. The seven-minute-long song written by Paul McCartney was an instant classic, topping charts around the world. In December of that same year, the song entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart but this time it was a recording by soul singer Wilson Pickett. Record in Muscle Shoals, Alabama at Rick Hall’s FAME Recording Studio, Pickett’s version of “Hey Jude” featured a then relatively unknown Duane Allman on guitar.
In February 1969, only six months after The Beatles released it, the Grateful Dead first covered “Hey Jude.” Pigpen, who had previously sung lead on Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour,” led the group through an arrangement more akin to Pickett’s than the original by The Beatles.
The first attempt by the Dead was a bit loose in its application but, the second, and final time it was played with Pigpen at the helm, the performance turned out more successful than the time prior. “Hey Jude” was only performed those two times with Pigpen and it was the only song by The Beatles he played in the band.
Decades later, when Brent Mydland was the Grateful Dead’s keyboardist, “Hey Jude” – at least its familiar singalong coda – was brought back into the band’s setlists, tagged onto the end of Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy.”
Listen to the two times “Hey Jude” was sung by Pigpen with the Grateful Dead in 1969 below:
