Rhino High Fidelity has reissued the Grateful Dead's 1970 album, Workingman's Dead, with limited-edition numbered audiophile Vinyl and Reel-To-Reel versions, plus Mickey Hart's 2023 Atmos mix, available on Blu-ray for the first time.
Workingman's Dead (Rhino High Fidelity) was cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. It features glossy gatefold packaging with newly written liner notes by author and Grateful Dead historian David Gans. The album is limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and is available exclusively at Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores internationally.
In the liner notes, Gans says the songs reflect a more direct, stripped-down approach, calling them "concise, countrified, and catchy as hell." As bassist Phil Lesh recalled in his autobiography "Searching for the Sound," the shift moved the Dead "from the mind-munching frenzy of a seven-headed fire-breathing dragon to the warmth and serenity of a choir of chanting cherubim."
The Reel-to-Reel edition is limited to 300 copies worldwide and available exclusively at Rhino.com.
On June 14, 1970, the Grateful Dead released Workingman's Dead, their fourth studio album. With eight songs - like "Casey Jones" and "High Time" - the album solidified the Jerry Garcia-Robert Hunter songwriting tandem as one of the best and most important songwriting collaborations in music history. The album reached the Top 30 and included the single "Uncle John's Band," which climbed to No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Workingman's Dead (Rhino High Fidelity) LP Tracklist:
Side One
1. "Uncle John's Band"
2. "High Time"
3. "Dire Wolf"
4. "New Speedway Boogie"
Side Two
1. "Cumberland Blues"
2. "Black Peter"
3. "Easy Wind"
4. "Casey Jones"
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