Why is The Grateful Dead’s Cornell show on May 8, 1977 considered their greatest performance?

If you ask Deadheads to name their all-time favorite Gratefully dead show, a clear answer would probably be 05/08/77 at Cornell University Barton Hall in Ithaca, NY. Of course, choosing a favorite Grateful Dead concert is extremely subjective and ultimately influenced by personal experience more than any other factor. But for many, May 8, 1977 stands alone – so much so that an entire book, Cornell ’77: The Music, Myth and Splendor of the Grateful Dead Concert at Barton Hall (Conners, 2017), was written on it.

Why is that? First, you have to consider the point in the band’s career. The Grateful Dead had evolved from a psychedelic novelty into a groundbreaking force in musical creation in the 1960s, releasing albums like Workingman’s Dead And American beauty at the beginning of the 1970s. However, tragedy struck when the beloved keyboardist and founding member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan died from a series of health complications. His death came shortly after the band’s famous European tour in 1972 and left the members heartbroken. While 1973 and 1974 were great in their own right, the band went on hiatus shortly after, playing only four concerts in the entire year of 1975.

The free time was good for the band members as everyone could work on their own music without the pressure of their collective creative unit. When they returned, the Grateful Dead were freshly armed with and released new music Terrapin Station album towards the end of 1977. Several tracks from this release were already in circulation, including “Terrapin Station” and “Prophet” – songs that would become legendary in the Dead’s canon.

That more or less brings us to the 5/8/77 Cornell show. By mid-spring 1977, the Grateful Dead were at their true peak. Their line-up was set and their catalog was packed with so many wonderful songs. What makes this show semantically different from similarly strong performances on the following days is its distribution. A soundboard recording by Betty Cantor Jackson made it to tape and magically landed in the hands of Grateful Dead fans across the country. Because of the widespread access to these high-quality recordings, the show became a well-known go-to among Deadhead connoisseurs.

The show itself is flawless and packs so much energy into the opening tracks like “Jack Straw” and “Brown Eyed Women”. The second set contained pretty much every song a fan could want, including “Scarlet > Fire,” “timated,” and “St. Stephen > Not Fade Away > St. Stephen > Morning Dew” run, which is just great. The band ended the show with their classic exclamation point “One More Saturday Night.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone in May 2017, guitarist Bob Weir talked about the mythical status that the 5/8/77 Cornell show has achieved among fans.

For me it was just another tour. I remember we felt hot at the time. But for example, the Cornell show that people are talking about, I can’t remember that clearly. I didn’t notice it on this tour. The whole tour was like that for me. I think what made this show notable was that it made a particularly good audience video. And word got around. I think it was due to the good quality of the recording and the man’s excellent location. And whoever made this recording made every effort to get it out there so people could hear it.

According to Weir, “(Our label) was freaked out that tapers were showing up at our shows. They insisted that we put a stop to it. And we just didn’t want that. We didn’t feel comfortable doing it, so we didn’t do it. (Laughs) And through simple benign neglect, we get the credit for inventing viral marketing.”

Below you can listen to the full audio of the show, consisting of Betty’s Boards (remastered by Rob Eaton), peppered with audience recordings from Taper Steve Maizner at archive.org, as we’ve heard it for over a decade.

Grateful Dead – Barton Hall – 05/08/77

(Audio: Jonathan Aizen)

Seven years ago, on May 5, 2017, the band released an official remastered version of the show: Cornell 5/8/77, as a 5-LP (vinyl), 3-CD special remastered release of engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson’s soundboard recordings of the fabled performance. You can listen to the newly remastered audio below Spotify:

Fans can delve deeper into the famous performance with a mini-documentary that interviews several attendees of the 1977 Cornell show and discusses their unforgettable experiences.

Grateful Dead – Cornell ’77 (Fan mini-documentary)

Set one: New Minglewood Blues, Loser, El Paso, They Love Each Other, Jack Straw, Deal, Lazy Lightning > Supplication, Brown Eyed Women, Mama Tried, Row Jimmy, Dancing In The Streets

Set Two: Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain, Beloved Prophet, St. Stephen > Not Fade Away > St. Stephen > Morning Dew

Encore: Another Saturday evening

(Originally published May 8, 2017)