''Ace'' is an album by

Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...

singer and guitarist

Bob Weir Robert Hall Weir ( ; né Parber, born October 16, 1947) is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the group disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead ...

. His first solo album, it was released in 1972. Weir's fellow bandmates in the

back him on the album, and all but one of the songs became staples of the band's live shows.

Recording and release

The album's origins were an offer by the Dead's

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

label to have band members cut their own solo records, and it came out the same year as

Jerry Garcia Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician best known for being the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and a vocalist with the rock band Grateful Dead, which he co-founded and which came to prominence ...

's '' Garcia'' and

Mickey Hart Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman, September 11, 1943) is an American percussionist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 until February 19 ...

's '' Rolling Thunder''. However, in the case of ''Ace'', Weir's backing band was the Dead itself (minus

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan Ronald Charles McKernan (September 8, 1945 – March 8, 1973), known as Pigpen, was an American musician. He was a founding member of the San Francisco band the Grateful Dead and played in the group from 1965 to 1972. McKernan grew up he ...

), and all songs except "Walk in the Sunshine" became concert staples of the Dead. The album is essentially a Grateful Dead recording in everything but name. In fact "Mexicali Blues" later appeared on the Grateful Dead album '' Skeletons from the Closet'', and "One More Saturday Night" was first issued as a European single, in the guise of ''"Grateful Dead with Bobby Ace"'', to promote the band's then-imminent Europe '72 tour.The Grateful Dead: "One More Saturday Night"
at

Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...

. Retrieved February 25, 2016. Likewise, a live version of "Playing in the Band" had been released the previous year on ''

'', having already been added to the band's repertoire. Dead bassist

Phil Lesh Philip Chapman Lesh (born March 15, 1940) is an American musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career. After the band's disbanding in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of ...

explained "One by one we sidled into the studio, saying things like 'Bob, I really like that tunegot a bass player for it yet?' or 'Hey Bob, need some keyboards on that ballad?' Drawn in by the new songs, we eventually assembled the whole band (minus Pig, who was still trying to regain his health) at Wally Heider’s tudioand finished the album in a burst of enthusiasm. Bob’s songwriting had taken a great leap forward". Versions of "Greatest Story Ever Told" and "Playing in the Band" also appear on percussionist Mickey Hart's '' Rolling Thunder'', as "The Pump Song" and "The Main Ten", respectively, both of which were also sung by Weir. The album initiated Weir's writing partnership with his old schoolmate from

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

, John Barlow, as lyricist.

Critical reception

Reviewing in '' Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981),

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

wrote: "Weir can be preachy and screechy, but Robert Hunter's

homiletics In religious studies, homiletics ( grc, ὁμιλητικός ''homilētikós'', from ''homilos'', "assembled crowd, throng") is the application of the general principles of rhetoric to the specific art of public preaching. One who practices or ...

('Playing in the Band') make up for John Barlow's

post-hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

know-nothingisms ('Walk in the Sunshine'), and 'One More Saturday Night' isn't any less a

rockabilly Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the Southern United States, South. As a genre it blends the sound of Western music (North America), Western music ...

epiphany because it strains Bobby's vocal chords—that just adds a note of authenticity. With Barlow redeeming himself on the elegiac pre-hippie fable 'Cassidy' and Keith Godchaux sounding like a cross between

Chick Corea Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", " 500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and ...

and

Little Richard Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020), known professionally as Little Richard, was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Described as the " ...

, this is the third in a series that began with ''

Workingman's Dead ''Workingman's Dead'' is the fourth studio album by American rock band Grateful Dead. It was recorded in February 1970 and originally released on June 14, 1970. The album and its studio follow-up, '' American Beauty'', were recorded back-to-back ...

'' and '' American Beauty''."

Track listing

Personnel

–

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

and acoustic

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

– lead guitar, production;

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

on "Looks Like Rain",

backup vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are used ...

on "Greatest Story Ever Told" *

Keith Godchaux Keith Richard Godchaux (July 19, 1948 – July 23, 1980) was a pianist best known for his tenure in the rock group the Grateful Dead from 1971 to 1979. Biography Godchaux was born in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in Concord, California ...

–

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

, organ, production *

Bill Kreutzmann William Kreutzmann Jr. ( ; born May 7, 1946) is an American drummer and founding member of the rock band Grateful Dead. He played with the band for its entire thirty-year career, usually alongside fellow drummer Mickey Hart, and has continued ...

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, production *

–

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, production; backup vocals on "Mexicali Blues" ;Additional personnel *

Ed Bogas Edgar Noel "Ed" Bogas (born February 2, 1942), sometimes credited as Edward Bogas, is an American musician and composer whose work has been featured in films, animations, and video games. Career Bogas' contributions span four decades and several ...

– string

arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orches ...

on "Looks Like Rain" *Snooky Flowers, Luis Gasca and The Space Rangers –

horns Horns or The Horns may refer to: * Plural of Horn (instrument), a group of musical instruments all with a horn-shaped bells * The Horns (Colorado), a summit on Cheyenne Mountain * ''Horns'' (novel), a dark fantasy novel written in 2010 by Joe Hill ...

on "Black-Throated Wind", "Mexicali Blues" and "One More Saturday Night" *

Donna Jean Godchaux Donna Jean Thatcher Godchaux-MacKay (born August 22, 1947) is an American singer who was a member of the Grateful Dead from 1972 until 1979. Biography Donna Jean Thatcher was born in Florence, Alabama. Prior to 1970, she had worked as a sessi ...

– production; backup vocals on "Greatest Story Ever Told", "Walk in the Sunshine", "Playing in the Band" and "Cassidy" *

Dave Torbert David Edwin Torbert (June 7, 1948 – December 7, 1982) was a Bay Area musician, best known for his associations with the Grateful Dead and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. He played bass for the latter group, replacing Phil Lesh during the se ...

– bass guitar on "Greatest Story Ever Told"

References

{{Authority control 1972 debut albums Bob Weir albums Grateful Dead Grateful Dead Records albums Warner Records albums Albums recorded at Wally Heider Studios