Jerry Garcia was born August 1, 1942, in San Francisco, California.[5] His father was Jose Ramon Garcia, a Spanishimmigrant. His mother, Ruth Marie Clifford, named him after her favorite composer, Jerome Kern.[6][7][8] His father was a jazz musician who bought a bar.[5] As a child Garcia took piano lessons.[9] When he was four he lost part of a finger chopping wood.[10][11] A year later his father drowned. When his mother took over the bar, Garcia went to live with his grandparents. They introduced him to the Grand Ole Opry.[12] This along with his brother's collection of Chuck Berry records gave him an interest in country music.[13] In 1953 his mother remarried and Garcia moved back with her. Garcia attended several different schools in and around San Francisco.[2] But he had little interest in school until 1957 when he attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute).[2] At age 15 his mother gave him a guitar. In high school he played in several bands. At age 17 he quit school. He joined the Army in 1960 but was given a general discharge a few months later.[2]
Music career
Garcia returned to San Francisco. He spent time teaching acoustic guitar and playing bluegrass music.[13] He met up with poetRobert Hunter. Together they started playing in the city's coffeehouses.[14] Hunter later became the lyricist for the Grateful Dead and Garcia's lifelong songwriting partner.[15] Garcia started becoming famous around San Francisco between 1962 and 1964. He was known for his Folk and bluegrass performances.[14] Garcia tried a new drug LSD for the first time in 1964. From that time on he became a lifelong advocate of psychedelicdrugs.[3] Musically he began experimenting outside the basic folk music formula and trying out new styles of music. This included jug band, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions.[16] A year later they changed their name to the "Warlocks".[16]
On August 9, 1995, after years of health problems and drug abuse, Jerry Garcia died of heart failure.[20] He was 53 years old. He had checked into a drug treatment center and his body was found during an early morning bed check.[3]
↑Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and, ed. Jacqueline Edmondson (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2013), pp. 480–481
↑ 5.05.1Scott Schinder; Andy Schwartz, Icons of Rock; An Encyclopedia of the Legends who Changed Music Forever (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), p. 328
↑Nick Talevski, Rock Obituaries - Knocking On Heaven's Door (London: Omnibus, 2010), p. 196
↑ 13.013.1Jeremy Simmonds, The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars: Heroin, Handguns, and Ham Sandwiches, ed. Jeremy Simmonds (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2008), p. 337
↑ 17.017.1Blair Jackson, Garcia: An American Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 168
↑ 18.018.118.2All Music Guide to Country: The Definitive Guide to Country Music, eds. Vladimir Bogdanov; et al. (San Francisco: Backbeat Books 2003), p. 269
↑ 19.019.1Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories that Shaped Our Culture, ed. Jacqueline Edmondson (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2013), pp. 480–481