Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist born on August 1, 1942. He is best known for his lead role in the Grateful Dead, though he also recorded and performed with several other bands and as a solo artist. Garcia was influenced by music at an early age, taking piano lessons for much of his childhood. His father was a retired professional musisician and his mother enjoyed playing the piano and singing. Jerry was introduced to rock and roll and rhythm and blues by his brother Clifford, and enjoyed listening to the likes of BB King and Chuck Berry. He was gifted an accordian on his fifteenth birthday, but complained until it was exchanged for a guitar. He dropped out of school at age 17 and served nine months in the US Army before being discharged for poor conduct. He then began to play folk and blues guitar in clubs within the San Francisco area while working as a salesman and music teacher. In early 1961 Garcia got into a fairly serious car accident in which he was thrown from the vehicle and one of his friends was killed. He later cited the event as a turning point in his life, stating; "That's where my life began. Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance. Then I got serious." It was then he decided to fully commit himself to playing guitar, and sought out a career in the music industry.
Over the course of the next four or five years Garcia met many lifelong friends and eventual bandmates; Robert Hunter, David Nelson, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Bill Kreutzmann. Garcia, Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and several of their friends formed a jug band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions which would become the Warlocks and later the Grateful Dead. Garcia served as lead guitarist, as well as one of the principal vocalists and songwriters of the Grateful Dead for their entire career. He was well known for his soulful extended guitar improvisations, which would frequently feature interplay between him and his fellow band members. His fame, as well as the band's, arguably rested on their ability to never play a song the same way twice. Garcia's mature guitar-playing melded elements from the various kinds of music that had enthralled him. Echoes of many different styles of music can be heard in his playing, ranging from bluegrass to contemporary blues and jazz.
Jerry was also a part of several side project bands, most notably the Jerry Garcia Band, but also acoustic and bluegrass based groups such as Old and in the Way, Legion of Mary, and New Riders of the Purple Sage. He recorded four albums as a solo artist and lent guitar parts to many other artists including Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Garcia toured with the Grateful Dead almost constantly from their formation in 1965 until Garcia's death in 1995, as well as with his other bands during off periods. Periodically, there were breaks due to exhaustion or health problems, often due to unstable health and/or Garcia's drug use. According to fellow Bay Area guitar player Henry Kaiser, Garcia is "the most recorded guitarist in history. With more than 2,200 Grateful Dead concerts, and 1,000 Jerry Garcia Band concerts captured on tape – as well as numerous studio sessions – there are about 15,000 hours of his guitar work preserved for the ages." He died on August 9, 1995, eight days after his 53rd birthday, at a drug rehabilitation clinic. The cause of death was a heart attack. Garcia had long struggled with drug addiction, weight problems, sleep apnea, heavy smoking, and diabetes—all of which contributed to his physical decline and eventually his death.
