Listen To The Only Known Live Recording Of Jerry Garcia Playing This Miles Davis Classic

Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia was born on August 1, 1942 and died on August 9, 1995 at the age of 53. Each year, the “Days Between” Garcia’s birthday and the anniversary of his death mark a period of time to reflect on and celebrate the beloved musician’s life and career.

Legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis famously opened for the Grateful Dead at two shows held in April 1970 at San Francisco’s Fillmore West. Promoter Bill Graham facilitated the lineup that at the time seemed to be made up of disparate acts.

Psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll and experimental jazz were still seen as different ends of a spectrum. though over the coming decade, with the expansion of fusion led by Davis and others, as well as the Dead and Garcia’s exploration of jazz themes, the two styles saw common ground.

In his autobiography Miles, Davis wrote about his experience supporting the Dead.

“So it was through Bill [Graham] that I met the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia, their guitar player, and I hit if off great, talking about music — what they liked and what I liked — and I think we all learned something, grew some. Jerry Garcia loved jazz, and I found out that he loved my music and had been listening to it for a long time. He loved other jazz musicians, too, like Ornette Coleman and Bill Evans …

“Looking back, I think Bill Graham did some important things for music with those concerts, opened everything up so that a lot of different people heard a lot of different kinds of music that they wouldn’t normally have heard.

Garcia was also a fan of Davis’ music and his approach to performance. Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally wrote about how Davis influenced what Garcia deemed “open playing.”

“I got part of that from Miles, especially the silences. The holes. Nobody plays better holes than Miles, from a musician’s point of view. In Indian music they have what you call ‘the unstruck’, which is the note you don’t play. That has as much value as the stuff you do play.”

Davis’ well-known composition “So What” served as the title track of an album recorded in the early-1990s by Garcia and David Grisman and posthumously released in 1998. The record began and ended with takes on “So What,” with two takes on Davis’ “Milestones” among the other tracks. Garcia and Grisman played “Milestones,” which was later taken up by Dead & Company, on three occasions in 1992 and three more times in 1994.

The other Miles Davis song besides “So What” and “Milestones” known to have been performed in public by Jerry Garcia is another of the jazz master’s best-known songs. “All Blues,” from the landmark 1959 album Kind Of Blue, was among the most influential works of its era. The song is one of Davis’ most distinct and identifiable melodies, and outstanding composition that continues to stand the test of time.

The endlessly informative JerryBase.com notes only one instance of Jerry Garcia covering “All Blues” in a public (or private) setting. The rarity took place on June 4, 1974, at a Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia concert at Lion’s Share in San Anselmo, California. Saunders had jammed with Miles Davis at the San Francisco jazz club Jacks of Sutter sometime in the late-1950s or early-1960s.

The rest of the band that night consisted of Garcia’s Grateful Dead bandmate Bill Kreutzmann on drums, Martin Fierro on saxophone and Saunders’ son, Tony Saunders on bass. Vocalist Alice Stuart also accompanied the band on a song.

Perhaps driven by the presence of Fierro’s horn, the show’s second set started with Garcia & Co. playing “All Blues” for the first and only known time. Esteemed recording engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson was at Lion’s Share that night and captured the marvelous performance of what’s become a jazz standard. Listen below: