May 22, 1977 finds the Grateful Dead deep in what many consider the single greatest sustained run of their career. The spring '77 tour is the stuff of legend — Cornell on May 8th, Buffalo on the 9th, the entire Northeast swing crackling with a kind of focused electricity the band had been building toward for years. By the time they rolled into Hollywood, Florida and the Sportatorium, they had been on the road for weeks and were in the kind of road-honed shape that only comes from relentless nightly performance. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Keith and Donna Godchaux made up the lineup — the classic second-keyboard era, with Keith at his most fluid and attentive, weaving fills through the architecture of every song with a touch that never overcrowded and always complemented. The Sportatorium was a South Florida institution, a sprawling indoor arena in Pembroke Pines that hosted everything from wrestling to rock and roll throughout the '70s and '80s. It wasn't a prestige room by any stretch — the acoustics were more workmanlike than wonderful — but it drew enormous, devoted crowds from across the region, and the Dead played it regularly enough to have a genuine relationship with the Florida faithful. There's something a little wild about a Dead show in South Florida heat, even in May, and that regional energy has a way of showing up in the tape.
What we have confirmed from this date includes "Sugar Magnolia," which in 1977 had become a reliable set-closer capable of transcendent moments. Weir's delivery of that song at this peak of the band's powers is worth seeking out — the band would often stretch the Sunshine Daydream reprise into something almost devotional, Garcia's guitar shimmering over the locked-in rhythm section. A hot version of Sugar Magnolia is one of the clearest windows into just how good this band was night after night in '77. Recording information for this date is limited in our database, so listeners should approach the tape with an open ear for whatever circulates — audience recordings from this era can range from murky to surprisingly vivid depending on the taper's position and equipment. But even a rough recording of the Dead in May '77 is worth your time. The band was simply playing at a level where the music comes through regardless. Press play and let 1977 do the rest.