Blues For Allah 50: Crazy Fingers supplementary notes
by Jesse Jarnow
“Crazy Fingers” evolved into a piece of delicate songcraft as tumult threatened to envelop the Grateful Dead’s peaceful world in spring 1975. Beginning life as an instrumental known as “Distorto,” it changed radically during the band’s sessions at Ace’s.
Two days after recording the basic tracks for “Crazy Fingers,” Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh joined Ned Lagin for the full debut of Seastones at San Rafael’s Dominican Hall, a concert also featuring David Crosby and Mickey Hart, who would shortly contribute overdubs to Blues For Allah. Ned Lagin’s visual art, music, and writing is collected at his site Spirit Cats (including his more recent album Cat Dreams and the 2018 iteration of Seastones), and NedBase provides a chronology of his musical activity in the early 1970s.
We drew on an August 1975 interview with Jerry Garcia, conducted by Mary Travers of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Christopher Coffman speaks of the haiku roots of “Crazy Fingers” in this episode, and is the author of the forthcoming Clowns in the Burying Ground: The Grateful Dead, Literature, and the Limits of Philosophy.
The Grateful Dead appeared as Jerry Garcia and Friends at the Bob Frid Memorial Boogie at Winterland in June 1975, a celebration of the late poster artist Bob Fried, who passed away earlier in 1975, to help with medical expenses.
Compare early drafts of “Crazy Fingers,” preserved by the great Steve Brown.
