Jerry Garcia Pizza Tapes CD

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Full performer name: Jerry Garcia/David Grisman/Tony Rice.
Personnel: Jerry Garcia (vocals, guitar); Tony Rice (guitar); David Grisman (mandolin).
Recorded at Dawg Studios, Mill Valley, California on February 4 & 5, 1993. Includes liner notes by David Grisman and Tony Rice.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.
Jerry Garcia and David Grisman released two albums on the latter's Acoustic Disc label during the last years of Garcia's life, and since his death in 1995, Grisman has culled a series of albums from other sessions the two recorded together. Shady Grove (1996) presented traditional folk and country material, while So What (1998) contained jazz compositions. The Pizza Tapes (so named because Garcia' s cassette of the sessions supposedly was stolen by a pizza delivery boy and circulated clandestinely) chronicles two nights worth of sessions that Garcia and Grisman shared with guitarist Tony Rice. The Grisman albums with Garcia have become increasingly informal as he has delved into picking dates that may have been intended as rehearsals or just get-togethers, and The Pizza Tapes carries that trend further. There's lots of conversation (delineated by the five "Appetizer" titles), along with false starts, mistakes, and fragments of songs, and there is some repetition of tunes (though not performances) from previous albums. "Shady Grove" and "Louis Collins" from Shady Grove are here, as is "So What" from So What. But the two guitarists show a genuine rapport as they range from pop/jazz standards like "Summertime" to folk songs like "Man of Constant Sorrow" and folk-rock fare like "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." "I'm having a great time," declares Garcia enthusiastically, and his pleasure comes across. Dead Heads long ago found that Garcia was at his best away from the formal restrictions and pressures of recording, and the same thing seems to hold for the Garcia/Grisman albums. Rice, meanwhile, more than holds his own. ~ William Ruhlmann
The setting is February 1993, at mandolinist David Grisman's Dawg Studios in Northern California. Grisman has gathered Jerry Garcia and newgrass guitar wizard Tony Rice for an informal jam session, bringing the two pickers together for the first time. Soon thereafter, a local pizza delivery boy pilfers a cassette of mixes left out on Garcia's kitchen counter... and so begins the years-long, bootlegged journey of the recording dubbed THE PIZZA TAPES.
Unlike the popularly traded version, this official release offers excellent sound quality and editing, including some wittily-placed bits of banter. Indeed, the Garcia-Rice repartee offers a window into an offhand and intimate musical encounter in a very specific time and place. The chosen material evidences Garcia's late-'80s/early-'90s revisiting of the American folk and bluegrass songbook. Doc Watson's "Shady Grove" opens with copious space-noodling before yielding to a hot-blooded jaunt rife with quick-picking. The three continue their spirited improv duel as they delve loosely into the jazz songbook with George Gershwin's "Summertime" and Miles Davis' classic modal vehicle, "So What." Favorite spirituals such as "Drifting Too Far From the Shore" and "Amazing Grace" take on a special, bittersweet overtone as sung by an ailing Jerry, while the summery "Rosalee McFall" is as sweet as ever.

Mojo (Publisher) (7/00, p.105) - "...The sound is superb, the vibe warm and easy-going, the performances - as Garcia pronounces - 'smokin'....A gem."