Cornell '77: The Music, the Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead's Concert at Barton Hall

by Peter Conners Narrated by Johnny Heller

Overview

On May 8, 1977, at Barton Hall, on the Cornell University campus, in front of 8,500 eager fans, the Grateful Dead played a show so significant that the Library of Congress inducted it into the National Recording Registry. The band had just released Terrapin Station and was still finding its feet after an extended hiatus. In 1977, the Grateful Dead reached a musical peak, and their East Coast spring tour featured an exceptional string of performances, including the one at Cornell.



Many Deadheads claim that the quality of the live recording of the show made by Betty Cantor-Jackson (a member of the crew) elevated its importance. Once those recordings-referred to as "Betty Boards"-began to circulate among Deadheads, the reputation of the Cornell '77 show grew exponentially. With time the show at Barton Hall acquired legendary status in the community of Deadheads and audiophiles.



Rooted in dozens of interviews-including a conversation with Betty Cantor-Jackson about her recording-Cornell '77 is about far more than just a single Grateful Dead concert. It is a social and cultural history of one of America's most enduring and iconic musical acts, their devoted fans, and a group of Cornell students whose passion for music drove them to bring the Dead to Barton Hall. Peter Conners has intimate knowledge of the fan culture surrounding the Dead, and his expertise brings the show to life. He leads listeners through a song-by-song analysis of the performance, from "New Minglewood Blues" to "One More Saturday Night," and conveys why, forty years later, Cornell '77 is still considered a touchstone in the history of the band.



As Conners notes in his Prologue: "You will hear from Deadheads who went to the show. You will hear from non-Deadhead Cornell graduates who were responsible for putting on the show in the first place. You will hear from record executives, academics, scholars, Dead family members, tapers, traders, and trolls. You will hear from those who still live the Grateful Dead every day. You will hear from those who would rather keep their Grateful Dead passions private for reasons both personal and professional. You will hear stories about the early days of being a Deadhead and what it was like to attend, and perhaps record, those early shows, including Cornell '77."

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

07/10/2017
Conners (Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead) is an adept music critic who brings his knowledge and insight into all things Grateful Dead to this study of one of the band’s most legendary concerts, a performance at Cornell University in May 1977, “the show to give to someone who’s never heard of the Grateful Dead and wants to see what the fuss is all about.” Conners combines interviews with people who attended the concert, reporting about “the inspired, diligent work” of the Cornell students who made it happen, and a song-by-song analysis of the sometimes surprising set list (with a version of “Dancin’ in the Streets” showing the Dead “at their god-almighty funkiest”). Most importantly to both fans and historians, Conners details the work of crew member Betty Cantor-Jackson, whose live recordings of the Dead are considered among their best, and explains how her tape of the Cornell show became one of the most listened to and shared shows of their career. The tape itself was sold at a public auction, lost for a number of years in a barn, and rediscovered in amazingly good condition; it’s been released on CD so that new generations of Deadheads can hear what one fan quoted in the book calls “clearly the best-quality recording of one of the best performances of their career.” (Apr.)

No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music - Greg Yost

Cornell ’77, the new book written by Peter Conners and published by Cornell University Press, is not only a well-researched volume, like exceptional album liner notes on steroids, it is the ideal companion to the Barton Hall recording.

Los Angeles Review of Books - Eric Gudas

I recommend Cornell ’77 to anyone, Dead fan or not, who would like to know how one three-and-a-half-hour concert can, apparently, disappear into the mists of time for the musicians who played it, but stay vivid for decades in the memories of at least some of the almost 5,000 attendees, the concert’s organizers, and the Dead’s road crew, as well in the imaginations of untold listeners who only experienced the show through Cantor-Jackson’s recording on cassette tapes and CD-Rs.

High Times - Michael Simmons

Cornell '77 is a smart history.... It's also a lot of fun.... And in his exegesis of the Dead classic 'Dark Star,' Conners's own writing becomes psychedelic—a challenge for any scribe, and one he meets with a poet's lyricism and insider's experience.

All About Jazz - Doug Collette

Peter Conners' writing is the silver lining of intelligence in this book and the author carries on stylishly entertaining the reader as he enacts the ratification of his premise: that this late Seventies spring show at the institution of higher learning in Ithaca, New York was/is the ultimate Grateful Dead performance.

Nicholas Meriwether

"For years, fans and critics have raved about the Grateful Dead's concert at Cornell's Barton Hall on May 8, 1977. Yet for all of the accolades, this celebrated show has never been fully explored and explained— until now. Peter Conners tells the story of this remarkable event with zeal and precision, teasing out the magic from the myth and showing how this night became a legend."

Peter Richardson

"Peter Conners draws on an exceptionally wide range of sources—musicians, sound engineers, ticket takers, tapers, groundlings, record executives, archivists, journalists, and historians—not to argue that the Barton Hall event was the best Grateful Dead concert ever, but rather to show how it encapsulated the Dead's unique project and its extraordinary reception. By situating this remarkable concert in its place and time, Conners also demonstrates why the Dead's project continues to matter today. Cornell '77 will show aficionados and casual readers alike how the Ithacan part stands for the Dionysian whole."

From the Publisher

"Peter Conners draws on an exceptionally wide range of sources—musicians, sound engineers, ticket takers, tapers, groundlings, record executives, archivists, journalists, and historians—not to argue that the Barton Hall event was the best Grateful Dead concert ever, but rather to show how it encapsulated the Dead's unique project and its extraordinary reception. By situating this remarkable concert in its place and time, Conners also demonstrates why the Dead's project continues to matter today. Cornell '77 will show aficionados and casual readers alike how the Ithacan part stands for the Dionysian whole."—Peter Richardson, author of No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead

"For years, fans and critics have raved about the Grateful Dead's concert at Cornell's Barton Hall on May 8, 1977. Yet for all of the accolades, this celebrated show has never been fully explored and explained— until now. Peter Conners tells the story of this remarkable event with zeal and precision, teasing out the magic from the myth and showing how this night became a legend."—Nicholas Meriwether, Director, Center for Counterculture Studies

Library Journal

03/01/2017
The only Grateful Dead recording to be enshrined in the Library of Congress--the concert at Cornell University's Barton Hall on May 8, 1977--is considered by many to be their finest performance ever. However, original Dead archivist Dick Latvala has famously claimed that there were at least 20 performances from 1977 alone that were better. Not so much a history of the Barton Hall show as a history of the events surrounding it, music and counterculture writer Conners's (Growing Up Dead; White Hand Society) book takes on these controversies and more while making a strong claim for the lasting power of this particular concert. One reason May 8 became so highly regarded is that it was very well recorded and circulated. The author's discussion of the early taping scene is intriguing, but it seems to be largely derived from Jesse Jarnow's absorbing and uneven Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Still, original interviews with the people who attended Barton Hall, as well as Deadhead writers, add a good deal of insight into the performance's importance within the Dead canon. VERDICT While essential reading for Deadheads, this title will be of little interest to the unconverted.--Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169872958
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	11/27/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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