If you care about the Dead at all, you need their first record. Word was that Jerry didn't really want to release this album because he didn't think the band was ready. In retrospect it's clear that Jerry was ready. At this point the band was a quartet with deep roots in the blues and American folk music. That was their reputation even before they had a reputation. One night when I was at the Matrix, a San Francisco club, one of the customers urged Garcia to play some blues, meaning some more formally identifiable 12-bar blues or a Chicago blues, and Garcia told him, "The last four songs were blues." And they were. The Dead were never far from blues as this collection shows. From Jesse Fuller's "Beat It on Down the Line" the effect is present. Pigpen's "Good Morning, Little School Girl" would play well in Chicago's South Side, particularly with his harmonica, and "Sitting on Top of the World" is practically a standard. The band was ready. Listen to Lesh's base line and Kreutzmann's drums and Pigpen's organ on "Cold Rain and Snow" and the tight shuffle in "Sitting on Top of the World." And hear Garcia's guitar--clean and quick even as it fades off into the recording studio. This was a band ready to become, and this debut album announced that to the world. The only question was what they were to become. Despite the impressive lead work, "Cream Puff War" is a little too much like the lesser San Francisco sound (psychedelic, anyone?), but "Morning Dew," "New, New Minglewood Blues," and "Viola Lee Blues" are benchmarks--songs that remained in the repertoire for the life of the band. In some respects, the band was never as ready as on this album because despite the reported hastiness of the recording, their music is careful and planned. Garcia may have surpassed the inventiveness of the solos on this album, but I'm not sure that he was ever more disciplined in his playing.