Grateful Dead – "U. S. Blues" (1971)

Red and white, blue suede shoes

I'm Uncle Sam, how do you do?

[NOTE: The late Ronald Reagan used to tell a joke about a very optimistic young boy who was given a big pile of horsesh*t for Christmas.  After receiving his gift, the child smiled, grabbed a shovel, and began digging.  When his father expressed his surprise that the boy wasn't disappointed with the present, the youngster replied, "Dad, with so much horsesh*t, there has to be a pony in here someplace!"  Today's featured recording – the 10th and last member of the 2025 class of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME – is one of the rare ponies to be found in the very large pile of horsesh*t produced by the Grateful Dead.  Here's a slightly edited version of my original July 5, 2012 post about "U. S. Blues."] 

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When I was a senior in college, I remember my girlfriend asking me why we had never been "into" the Grateful Dead.  (We were at a party at the time, and the host was playing a Grateful Dead song, and we probably somewhat impaired – which is almost a necessary condition to being into the Dead.)  She was almost as big a music fan as I was, but I don't think either of us owned a single one of their albums.

Chick magnet Jerry Garcia (circa 1974)

I did buy a Jerry Garcia solo album (Garcia) when I was in college on the strength of a couple of tracks I had heard on the radio, but I'm not sure I was even aware that Jerry Garcia was in the Grateful Dead.  (Hey, we didn't have the internet back then.)

I still have never listened to an entire Grateful Dead album straight through, and I'm not conversant with very much of their prolific recorded oeuvre.  But that won't stop me from expressing authoritative-sounding opinions about their body of work.

My impression was then (and remains today) that the Grateful Dead produced a few really good songs, but that life is too short to listen to much of their music.

I would say the same thing about Bruce Springsteen and Elton John – and Paul McCartney and John Lennon as solo artists.  Each of them produced a little gold but a lot more dross.  I don't think any of them has produced a CD's worth of worthwhile music.

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Along with "Bertha," "Truckin'," "Casey Jones," and a few others, "U. S. Blues" is a Grateful Dead keeper.  The song (which was the first track on the group's seventh studio album, From the Mars Hotel) is peppier than the usual Grateful Dead dirge -- the honky-tonk piano makes all the difference -- and the lyrics are clever and funny and not too political.  

The song's lyrics really remind me of rap lyrics – it's more about the way the words sound and fit together than their meaning:

Gimme five

I'm still alive

Ain't no luck

I learned to duck

The singer seems to be some kind of hustler, but he's a charming, lovable hustler – think Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man – and he's very, very cool under pressure:

Check my pulse

It don't change

Stays seventy-two

Come shine or rain

Saying "shine or rain" instead of the more familiar "rain or shine" to make the line rhyme is a very hip-hop thing to do – the rhyme is paramount, and inverting the usual word order gets your audience's attention.  (It's certainly true to say that the Grateful Dead's pulse "don't change" – it may get up to 72 in this song, but it's usually much lower than that.  Much of the time, it's barely perceptible.)

Wave the flag

Pop the bag

Rock the boat

Skin the goat

Now we're really rolling – that verse is 100% sound and . . . not fury, exactly . . . but it sure signifies nothing.  (Which is OK with me.)

I'm Uncle Sam

That's who I am

I hear a hint of Popeye's "I yam what I yam, and that's what I yam" in that line.

Shake the hand

That shook the hand

Of P. T. Barnum

And Charlie Chan

P. T. Barnum began his career as a showman in 1835, when he bought and put on display a slave who claimed to be 161 years old (and George Washington's nurse to boot).  He went on to exhibit General Tom Thumb (a midget who was less than three feet tall) and Chang and Eng, the original Siamese (conjoined) twins, and organized "The Greatest Show on Earth."

P. T. Barnum with Tom Thumb

Given Barnum's history as a mountebank and his utter contempt for the common man – his famous catchphrase was "There's a sucker born every minute" – it's no surprise that he went into politics, becoming mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and then entering the Connecticut legislature.  

I'll drink your health

Share your wealth

Run your life

Steal your wife

Of course he'll drink your health – especially if you're picking up the tab – because there's no better way to make a sucker out of you than by getting you drunk.

And of course he'll share your wealth – Uncle Sam shares your wealth every time you get a paycheck, but especially on April 15.

(Don't worry if he steals your wife.  If she's anything like most of the wives I know, he'll probably insist on giving her back to you very soon.)

We're all confused

What's to lose?

Wave that flag

Wave it wide and high

I hope none of you find it offensive that this song portrays Uncle Sam as a bit of a con man.   As the saying goes, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

That certainly doesn't mean all patriots are scoundrels, of course.  But it does mean that scoundrels often exploit patriotism – or religion, or economics, or science – so they can pull the wool over your eyes.  When all else fails, wave that flag!

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The Grateful Dead has to have been one of the most overrated live bands in history.  

Click here to see a 1978 performance of "U. S. Blues" at Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University.  It was included on a live Dead album – an official one, not a bootleg – so the group must have thought that performance was a particularly good one.  Plus it appears to be the closing song of that show, so you would think the boys would have pulled out all the stops.

Despite all that, this is a pretty ho-hum rendition of the song.  Jerry Garcia keeps forgetting to sing into the microphone, and the band reduces the volume when they get to the chorus instead of belting it out – just the opposite of what they should have done.  (The verses are sung by Garcia, but the the backup singers join in for the chorus – usually, more voices equal more volume, but not here.)  

I'm not the first person to come to this conclusion: the popularity of the Grateful Dead as a live band can only be explained by the fact that about 90% of their typical audience was as high as a kite.  (Have you heard the old joke about the Dead?  What does a Deadhead say when the drugs wear off?  "This music sucks!")

Click here to listen to "U. S. Blues."  (The animated part of this video was produced by the U. S. Information Agency around the time of the Bicentennial, and it's very trippy – it will remind you a little of Yellow Submarine, but patriotic.)

Click here to buy "U. S. Blues" from Amazon.