06/15/2026
The Grateful Dead’s fourth studio album, ‘Workingman’s Dead,’ released on this day in 1970, kicked off what would prove to be a two-record deep-dive into the themes of Americana music.
This is where the Dead developed a new facet to their music—beyond the blues band they were in their infancy, beyond the psychedelic, new wave acid jazz cats they had become. ‘Workingman’s Dead’ is full of instant classics from front to back, starting off with “Uncle John’s Band,” “High Time,” “Dire Wolf,” and “New Speedway Boogie.” The B-side has some underrated winners, too, from “Black Peter” to “Cumberland Blues”.
The way these songs sound on the record is vastly different from the way they would sound live during the band’s sets for years to come. Granted, that was the Dead’s whole thing—making live music that goes beyond the studio recordings—but ‘Workingman’s’ took it to a whole new degree by employing different instruments that the band didn’t actually use on stage, like the prominent pedal steel line on “Dire Wolf.” This simultaneously showed the stylistic range of which the band was capable and presented fans with a reality that they would never see live, save for a smattering of acoustic sets in 1969–1970 and 1980.
