Wake of the Flood by The Grateful Dead

Wake of the Flood, released on October 15, 1973, was the Grateful Dead's first studio album in nearly three years and the first on their own Grateful Dead Records label, and it's the sound of the band reinventing itself after a loss. Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, the founder who kept them tethered to the blues, had died, and the new keyboard man, Keith Godchaux, pulled them somewhere else entirely, toward bebop and the cool, floating modes of jazz. His wife, Donna Jean Godchaux, joined too, and her voice is on the record.

So Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann went looser and lighter. "Eyes of the World" is the proof: a buoyant, rolling groove that feels like it could spin on forever, while "Row Jimmy" drifts along at a lazy summer pace. It's folk and jazz and psychedelia knitted into one easy stride, and it did better on the pop charts than American Beauty, reaching No. 18.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.