Song · The Grateful Dead
“China Cat Sunflower” by The Grateful Dead
From the album Aoxomoxoa (1969)
“China Cat Sunflower” by The Grateful Dead appears on 7 radio countdowns from 3 stations between 2007 and 2026. It was first released in 1969 on the album Aoxomoxoa. Its best result is #190 on the WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #1,156 indie & aaa song of all time.
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Jerry Garcia wrote the music and Robert Hunter the words for "China Cat Sunflower", which the Grateful Dead cut for Aoxomoxoa, their 1969 album for Warner Bros. Records. The band produced and arranged it themselves, with Betty Cantor-Jackson engineering and Owsley Stanley and Dan Healy among the extra hands at the board.
It kicks off with two guitars tangling: Garcia sets one riff spinning and Bob Weir threads a jittery second one right over it. Hunter's lyric is a head-spinning collage, dropping nods to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Edith Sitwell's "Polka"; he has said a cat served as his launch pad for a trip between the planets while writing it. Garcia usually sang it, and on stage it found a steady partner: the first live take, on Europe '72, runs right into "I Know You Rider".
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 361 | WTMD | WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time | 897 |
| 2009 | 520 | WYEP | WYEP 913 Essential Songs | 913 |
| 2009 | 190 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
| 2014 | 599 | WXPN | WXPN 885 All-Time Greatest Songs (2014) | 885 |
| 2020 | 698 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
| 2022 | 836 | WYEP | WYEP Countdown to Fall 2022 | 603 |
| 2026 | 1053 | WYEP | WYEP Greatest Songs of All Time | 1180 |
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