Essay Archive - Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead
Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead
Jerome John Garcia was born in 1942, in San Francisco's Mission District.
His father, a spanish immigrant named Jose "Joe" Garcia, had been a jazz
clarinetist and Dixieland bandleader in the thirties, and he named his new son
after his favorite Broadway composer, Jerome Kern. In the spring of 1948, while
on a fishing trip, Garcia saw his father swept to his death by a California
river.
After his father's death, Garcia spent a few years living with his
mother's parents, in one of San Francisco's working-class distric....
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