“Jack Straw” by The Grateful Dead

Bob Weir and Robert Hunter wrote "Jack Straw", and the Grateful Dead lived with it on stage. It made its debut in Minneapolis on October 19, 1971, the same night new keyboardist Keith Godchaux first played with the band, and the version on Europe '72 was caught at the Olympia Theater in Paris. Early on Weir sang every word; by the Paris show he and Jerry Garcia were trading off.

Weir later said the lyrics lean partly on John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and the song rides the rails through the Great Depression and its hobo camps, dusty and restless. After Brent Mydland joined in 1979 it became the band's near-permanent first-set opener, the jam after the second verse often stretching it past six minutes.

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