herton California, who had his trouble with school also, and had been expelled from seven different private schools. He was excellent in sports, and was smart and talkative, and when he wanted to he got great grades. He suffered from Dyslexia, where his reading ability would be greatly handicapped. He along with Garcia, he had played the guitar since mid-teens, when he got his first guitar. They got together and formed a little jug band, with the banjo, guitar, harmonica, and washboard. They found a guy, a local DJ at the radio station named Ron McKernan also called Pigpen. He had a great blues voice, rough and strong. Pigpen dressed in jeans, sunglasses, cowboy hat, and leather or denim jacket, so frequently that is was basically a uniform. They named themselves, “Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions.” Within a year they had earned a substantial local following. Ron urged Jerry and band mates to go electric. They ditched the washboard and kazoo and decided to go all out to play rock and roll. They searched out for a drummer and percussionist, they found a young drummer named Bill Kreutzmann. He had always played percussion instruments, ever since his mother urged him to. She was a Stanford dance teacher, who used his beat to practice her steps. Bill later got a set of drums his dad sent to his boarding school in Arizona. Early on he was teaching people older then him how to play. He was married and working stocking shelves when Garcia and crew discovered him. Last they signed on the son of the music store’s owner, and he provided necessary equipment to play. They renamed themselves the, “Warlocks.” In the crowd of their first performance, a friend of Jerry was present, his name was Phil Lesh. Phil has been around music ever since his parents brought him to Symphonies as a kid. He immedia...
