“The Wheel” by Jerry Garcia

"The Wheel" rolls out of Garcia, the first solo album Jerry Garcia made away from the Grateful Dead, released in January 1972 after Warner Bros. offered the Dead's members the chance to cut records of their own. Garcia took the idea literally: he plays everything here but the drums, stacking acoustic and electric guitar, bass, piano, organ and pedal steel himself, with Bill Kreutzmann behind the kit. Kreutzmann shares the music credit with him, and Robert Hunter supplied the words.

Betty Cantor-Jackson and Bob Matthews produced and engineered it, with Ram Rod lending a hand on the mix, and it floats along with an unhurried, open-road ease. It didn't stay a studio curio for long: the Dead folded it into their shows, where it became a standard played more than 250 times.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.