On June 14, 1970, the Grateful Dead released Workingmans Dead, an album that was unlike anything they had ever done, one that showed the world a new side of the Dead. It was clearly the same band as before, but now with a distinctly different sound and approach to the music, pivoting from psychedelic improvisation to folk-rock storytelling for the everyman, as the albums title suggests.

While the Deads first three studio albums appealed to many, the group didnt yet have the mass breakthrough that would make the entire world take notice of this band of misfits from the Bay Area.Workingmans Deadchanged all that. With eight perfect songs likeCasey JonesandHigh Time the album solidified the Jerry Garcia-Robert Hunter songwriting tandem as one of the best, and most-important, songwriting collaborations in music history.

Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron Pigpen McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart recorded the album in about 10 days at Pacific High Recording Studio in San Francisco with Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor the bands live-sound engineers as producers. Fifty years on, every song onWorkingmans Deadsounds fresh, alive, and new.