The Grateful Dead - The Seven - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

So far, I've posted a few Grateful Dead albums here and there, mostly from their earliest era (1965 to 1966). I've got a lot more from them to post, and I'm going to try to move forward more chronologically from here on out. There isn't much in the way of stray tracks from 1967, so this is what comes next.

This album is a mix of studio and live material, with nearly all of the performances being unreleased, despite the band having a seemingly infinite number of official albums, the vast majority of them live. The first song here, "Clementine," is an obscure Phil Lesh/Robert Hunter original that was released on the "So Many Roads" box set. The second song, "Dark Star," is of course very well known to any Deadhead, but this is the studio B-side version. It's less than three minutes long, which sounds absurd for that song, but this version has its charm.

Another highlight is "The Eleven," a Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter original that only appeared on the live album "Live/Dead." But this is an unreleased studio version. "The Seven" is an even rarer original instrumental. Both it and "The Eleven" are named after the unusual time signatures the songs are played in.

The rest of the songs are cover versions. Since the songs are ordered chronologically, one can see a shift over the course of the album from psychedelic music to country and folky music. So this mirrors the dramatic shift in styles from the album "Aoxomoxoa" in 1969 to "Workingman's Dead" in 1970.

By the way, I named this album "The Seven" since that's the title of one of the songs. But I chose that song title because I thought it has a nice double meaning: for most of the 1960s, the Grateful Dead has six band members, but from November 1968 to January 1970, which covers most of the time of this album, they had seven, thanks to the addition of Tom Constanten. 

Note that this version of the blues classic "Big Boss Man" wasn't exactly performed by the Grateful Dead, but it sure sounds like it because the lead vocals and lead guitar were done by Jerry Garcia. It was recorded at the San Francisco home where most of the members of the Jefferson Airplane lived. Garcia was joined by fellow Dead member drummer Mickey Hart, as well as Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady from the Jefferson Airplane. The Dead played this song from time to time, but the lead vocalist always was Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. This is an interesting version because Garcia sang it.

This album is 54 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

Speaking of the bonus track, "What's Become of the Baby" was included on the band's 1969 studio album "Aoxomoxoa." But that version is so distorted with studio effects that it's kind of a mess. The song was only done live once, in 1969. That version is more interesting, in my opinion, so that's the bonus track version here.

01 Clementine (Grateful Dead)
02 Dark Star (Grateful Dead)
03 Death Letter Blues (Grateful Dead)
04 The Eleven (Grateful Dead)
05 Who's Lovin' You Tonight (Grateful Dead)
07 Seasons of My Heart (Grateful Dead)
08 The Seven [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
09 Big Boss Man (Jerry Garcia with Mickey Hart, Jorma Kaukonen & Jack Casady)
10 I'm a Lovin' Man (Grateful Dead)
11 He Was a Friend of Mine (Grateful Dead)

What's Become of the Baby (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118720/TGratefulD_1968-1969_The_Sevn_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a 2015 Grateful Dead concert poster. I made some significant changes, especially squishing the entire image vertically to get a rectangular poster into a square frame. I also changed the coloring of certain parts, and of course changed the text.