Jerry…

was born August 1, 1942 in San Franciscoand grew up in the Excelsior district. He became interested in guitar because of his idol, the legendary rock pioneer Chuck Berry, and recieved a Danelectro guitar and miniature Fender amplifier for his 15th birthday, despite losing the middle finger on his right hand during a wood chopping incident ten years earlier.

One biographer said he was too arrogant to take lessons, so he taught himself. He left home at 17 and joined the Army. Stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco with little to do, he practiced acoustic guitar by listening to the radio and copying finger positions from books.

After the Army he met Robert Hunter, who was to become the Grateful Dead's lyricist, and they joined up for a time of pre-hippie hand-to-mouthing and folksinging. In 1960, he survived a serious car accident and spent the next three years learning the five-string banjo. Teaching guitar and playing bluegrass banjo in Bay Area coffeehouses, he met folk guitarist Bob Weir. In 1964, the two joined up with blues harmonica player and organist Ron McKernan to form Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. That semi-popular band quickly broke up and Garcia went to the South to study bluegrass more seriously.

With the Beatles-led rock generation birthing, Mother McCree's reformed as an electric blues band, making its debut at a pizza house in 1965 as The Warlocks. Rhythm and blues drummer Bill Kreutzmann signed on and so did jazz trumpeter-composer Phil Lesh, the latter as a beginning bassist.

They developed what the age would know as psychedelic rock and the rest, as they say, is history. Moving to the Haight Ashbury to become the house band for the hippie takeover there, they balanced paid gigs at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium and the Family Dog's Avalon Ballroom with free concerts in Golden Gate ParkŠ

ŠThe Dead lived communally in San Francisco and played many free concerts, soon working their way up to the city's ballrooms and the Fillmore West. The band signed a contract with MGM Records in 1966, but its efforts were shelved. In 1967, the Dead signed with Warner Brothers, and while their first albums sold modestly, their reputation spreadŠthe Dead were known for the latest in sound systems as well as for their music. The group performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and at Woodstock in 1969. By 1970, the Grateful Dead had made five extraordinary albums in a row: "Anthem of the Sun" in 1968, "Aoxomoxoa" in 1969 and "Live Dead," "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty" in 1970. Its 1971 live album, "Grateful Dead," became its first million-seller, and it continued to play to larger and larger audiences. In 1973, it was one of the three groups (with the Allman Brothers Band and the Band) to perform for half a million people at Watkins Glen, N.Y. Jerry also worked outside the Grateful Dead, as a musician and a producer. He recorded with the Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; he produced the first album by the New Riders of the Purple Sage, adding parts on an instrument he was just learning, the pedal steel guitar.

Outside the Dead, he pursued some of the styles that were tucked into the Dead's music. In the early 1970's, he played jazz-rock with the keyboardist Merl Saunders and bluegrass with a group called Old and in the Way; he also recorded his first album as a leader in 1971, playing rock songs tinged with country. Through the years, he toured (between Grateful Dead tours) with his own band, and he collaborated with musicians including the keyboardist Howard Wales and the mandolinist David Grisman.

His most recent recording, released in 1993, was an album of children's music, "Not For Kids Only." Yet most of his time was devoted to the Grateful Dead. While the band had touched on funk and jazz, and had incorporated some of the new sounds made available through synthesizer technology, its music remained immediately recognizable, with a folksy, homespun tone that belied the size of its audiences. Grateful Dead concerts are among least overbearing in current rock; the band's customized sound systems emphasize clarity and warmth, not sheer volume.

Through the years, the Dead's tour circuit expanded, including a 1978 series of shows at the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The band toured with Bob Dylan in 1987 a collaboration that resulted in a live album.

Unlike many bands, the Dead encouraged their fans to tape their concerts, even providing a place near the sound engineer's booth for fans to set up microphones and tape recorders. The group also kept ticket prices low and maintained contact with fans through the newsletter and, more recently, electronic mail. In return the Dead have held on to what is probably the longest-lasting mass following in rock history and often toured with his side project, the Jerry Garcia Band.

In an interview for Joe Smith's book "Off the Record" (1988), Jerry said "To the kids today, the Grateful Dead represents America: the spirit of being able to go out and have an: adventure.

"There's no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player," said singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, who has toured with The Grateful Dead. "He really had no equal. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There's no way to convey the loss."

JerryGarcia also was active in the group's Rex Foundation, a philanthropic organization that gave grants to a variety of cultural, social and environmental efforts.