Grateful Dead

Blues For Allah 50:King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt or Milkin’ The Turkey supplementary notes

by Jesse Jarnow

In 1975, the Grateful Dead remained fascinated by the connections between their music and emerging technology. We pick up from our two-part Long Strange Tech episode (part 1, part 2) with very special guest Eugene Dolgoff, who partnered with the band to research holographic sound reproduction, a laser-driven technology that would’ve have resembled a prototype CD player, albeit in pyramid shape. Gene Dolgoff would continue to have a distinguished career, inspiring Star Trek’s holodock, inventing a prototype LCD projector, as well as credit card holograms.

In Phil Lesh’s wonderful memoir, Searching For the Sound (available as an audiobook, from Simon and Schuster), he writes that the title of “King Solomon’s Marbles” was inspired by Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” (which itself blurs the connections between the Pharaoh Ramses II and King Solomon).

Though there’s not a direct musical line, some of Lesh-led instrumental jams from 1973 and 1974 seemed to provide the core idea behind “King Solomon’s Marbles,” catalogued as the Proto-Solomon Jazz Jam.

Enormous thanks to the scholars who have pulled together chronologies for the solo activities of the various Dead family members in 1975, including Jerry Garcia, the Keith and Donna Band, Kingfish (part 1, part 2), and Ned Lagin.

More on longtime album designer Bob Cato, who designed a scrapped prototype cover for Blues For Allah when the Dead were considering titling the album King Solomon’s Marbles.