Jim and Jesse went on to legendary status in the bluegrass world with more than 45 years at the Grand Ol’ Opry, Grammys, and membership in any Hall of Fame that means anything to this music.Īnd the world spins round, and now Jesse (alas, Jim is no longer with us) has completed the circle with Jerry by recording a tribute to the Grateful Dead’s music, Songs of the Grateful Dead – A Tribute to Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. One of the groups they most wanted to see was “Jim and Jesse” (McReynolds), of Dothan, Alabama. In 1964, Jerry Garcia and his buddy Sandy Rothman packed up a tape recorder and took off for the American South on a bluegrass pilgrimage. Watch it! …and tell folks about it.įor more information and to buy the DVD, go to Dear Dead Heads: And now he has, a rough little beast of a story called Everything Must Go, which combines slacker comedy and a looming environmental disaster, one consequence of that 1988 benefit.Įverything Must Go is yet another weird installment in the ongoing saga of the Grateful Dead’s larger impact on America.

His first major show was the band’s Madison Square Garden benefit for the Rainforest, and the experience left Len thinking about the environment for a good long while.Īfter finishing his work with the Dead, he went on to produce concert films and music videos for people like Sara Vaughan, Herbie Hancock, the Allman Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Ray Charles, and Carlos Santana.īut like any filmmaker, what he really wanted to do was to make a story-type movie.

The result was Dead Ahead, which went on to become a platinum home video.Ī couple of years later, Garcia reached out to Dell’Amico to suggest that they do another video, which evolved into a second major success, both commercial and critical, So Far.īy then, 1988, it was clear that the band would be needing video reinforcement at their larger shows, and Len signed on as the band’s “video guy” into the early ‘90s. They brought a guy named Len Dell’Amico out to San Francisco for an interview, and he managed to navigate through one large Hell’s Angel and some fat, potent spliffs sufficiently well to persuade Jerry Garcia that he was the guy for the job. In 1980, the Grateful Dead needed a director to shoot the planned multi-city broadcast of their Halloween show from Radio City Music Hall.

Playa fly movin on sampled