The Warlocks

The Warlocks were formed in Palo Alto at the end of 1964 when Jerry Garcia, Ron "PigPen" McKernan and Bob Weir, who were members of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, decided that they wanted to play "electric" music. They added a rhythm section, Dana Morgan Jr. on bass and local drummer Bill Kreutzmann. The first Warlock performance was in Magoo's pizza parlour in Menlo Park in May 1965. After a handful of performances Phil Lesh replaced Dana Morgan on bass.



The Warlocks recorded one demo session for Autumn Records in early November 1965. The music from this session was not released at the time but has appeared on subsequent collections. At around the same time they discovered that there was at least one other group in the country using the Warlocks name. The Warlocks played their last show in November 1965 and thereafter adopted the name the Grateful Dead. For the occasional show in later years the Grateful Dead were billed as the Grateful Dead (formerly The Warlocks).



Six songs exist from the Warlocks recording session on November 3, 1965 at Golden Gate Recorders in San Francisco; Early Morning Rain, I Know You Rider, Mindbender (Confusion's Prince), The Only Time Is Now, Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) and Can't Come Down.



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Technically, the performances from 1966 are from the Grateful Dead, they just changed their name, but what the hell, all pre-Warner stuff is awesome. Cheers!