May 13, 1977 — Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, Illinois By May of 1977, the Grateful Dead were operating at one of the highest peaks of their entire career. The spring tour that year has become the stuff of legend, and for good reason: Jerry Garcia's tone was crystalline and singing, the rhythm section of Bill Kreutzmann and Phil Lesh was locked in with a telepathic precision, and the Garcia-Weir-Lesh vocal blend had reached a kind of effortless authority that the band would never quite replicate. Keith Godchaux was still at the keys, his understated, jazz-inflected touch providing a harmonic cushion that gave the whole ensemble a warmth and spaciousness you can hear on every tape from this period. This was two weeks after the epochal Cornell show, and the band was clearly riding a wave of extraordinary confidence and cohesion through every stop on the itinerary. The Auditorium Theatre in Chicago is one of the great concert halls in America — a Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler masterpiece from 1889, with acoustics so naturally resonant and a sightline so intimate that the room essentially does half the work for you. The Dead played it a handful of times in the late seventies, and each visit benefited from that architecture in ways you can actually hear on the recordings.
Chicago crowds were always reliably warm and knowledgeable, and the Midwest faithful had a way of pushing the band toward something a little deeper and a little more earnest. The one song we can confirm from our database for this show is Bertha, the Garcia-Hunter opener that the band had been using to kick off sets since the early seventies. A well-played Bertha is a statement of intent — it establishes the band's energy and Garcia's voice right out of the gate, and in the spring of 1977 context, you can expect the guitar work to be bright and precise, with those characteristic modal runs Garcia had been refining all tour. It's worth paying close attention to how the band locks in during the instrumental breaks, and to whether that crowd energy translates clearly onto the tape. Speaking of which, recording quality for Chicago shows from this era varies, but the Auditorium Theatre's natural sound worked in tapers' favor, and a number of sources from this venue circulate with decent fidelity. However you come to this one, you're hearing the Dead at their spring 1977 finest — and that alone is reason enough to press play.