Would the Grateful Dead have existed without the Civil War?

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Whereas our country FINALLY started to contend with the enormous issues of civil rights and racial equality in the 1960's - after 100 years of wholesale denial;  and whereas part of said generation evolved as a more enlightened counter culture - providing a broader context for social revolution; and while the Grateful Dead were not overtly political, were they still not riding out the eye of the same national hurricane of "coming to terms with the remnants of the battle to abolish slavery from our country"?

Put another way:  would the "60's" have been different if there was never slavery in the US?

It would have been more jazz oriented,

With out the strong blue grass, post civil war blues- elements & would have gotten lost in the dust of Qucksilver and others cut from the same clothe in the 1960s & would not have safely migrated into the 1970s

The answerer is no, in brief.

90% of the best songs in their repertoire involve being arrested and going to jail.

No good Prison songs any mo.....

The CW was inevitable, given that slavery was allowed to flourish in the South.

Therefore, the question is moot.

 

If no slavery, then no civil war, but then also no blues or jazz or soul or R+B, so no GD.

Jazz & Ragtime were pre civil war and improvisation was inevitable & concurrent in Europe.

Folk music also.

{The answer from me is in relation to the Dead's music}

This was a minor for me in college, mostly in 1984. 

Did well in tha class & performed Mystery Train -Jerry style for them on my Guild Acoustic for the class on the last day. lol

 

I think the  Mexican Cession after the American Mexico war had a greater impact.  It could have been way different with the Dead playing only Mexican Polkas.   

Is there anything a man don’t stand a lose…

was jazz pre-civil war?

Some people think playing random notes on 43 plastic harmonicas is like jazz, so, if jazz is "stupid," well that's something that would be pre-civil war, for sure.

I'm sure around that time, oompas, polkas, and maybe some bawdy barroom piano music, all slayed on the charts.

I can see Weir diggin the fashion... he likes culottes

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A Civil War / Jerry connection:

Two Soldiers -  A song from the American Civil War played by Jerry Garcia 

Two Soldiers was performed about 10 times by the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band in 1987 and 1988 and a similar number of times by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman between 1990 and 1994.

In Bob Dylan's liner notes for the 1993 World Gone Wrong album he acknowledges that Jerry Garcia showed him Two Soldiers;

Jerry Garcia showed me TWO SOLDIERS (Hazel and Alice do it pretty similar) a battle song extraordinaire, some dragoon officer's epaulettes laying liquid in the mud, physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating and revolting thing) love is not collateral.....

Two Soldiers appears to be derived from a longer ballad which was published in the 19th century. This earlier song is usually called The Last Fierce Charge though versions have also been published with the titles The Battle of Fredericksburg and Custer's Last Charge.

http://www.deaddisc.com/songs/Two_Soldiers.htm

"Two Soldiers" is a traditional song from the American Civil War, collected in Kentucky and Arkansas. It seems likely that Jerry Garcia learned it from a 1964 Mike Seeger recording (it was also recorded in 1973 by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard--Mike Seeger's wife). Jerry Garcia in turn taught it to Bob Dylan (who recorded it on "World Gone Wrong" in 1991).

The song derives from a longer ballad, often titled "The Last Fierce Charge" (though that is normally set to a different tune). The lyrics fill in the background to the truncated version of the story that Jerry Garcia sang.

'Twas just before the last fierce charge...

lots of lyrics:

https://www.whitegum.com/introjs.htm?/songfile/TWOSOLDI.HTM

Although I don't think the Dead played it, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" probably wouldn't have ended up in JGB's repertoire if it wasn't for the Civil War.   The struggles of southerners dealing with the aftermath of defeat and the destruction the war brought is a common theme you hear in a lot of bluegrass, old time, and country songs.   

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There would have been no Led Zeppelin, with out World War One.

& The Band drew more from more the Civil War, then any type of artist, photographer (almost), author, poet, ever will.

 

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