Jerry Garcia, Marshall Leicester, and Robert Hunter

In the summer of 1961 Garcia played informal sets with Robert Hunter and Marshall Leicester, a friend from Garcia’s pre-Army days in the Bay Area who was deep into old-time string-band music. Leicester’s banjo playing and record collection opened a door for Garcia: within a year he had largely set the guitar aside to teach himself three-finger banjo. A July 1961 performance at the first Boar’s Head coffeehouse, then operating above the Carlos Book Stall in San Carlos, was recorded and later appeared on the Before the Dead collection. Leicester and Garcia kept playing together off and on as the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers and the Badwater Valley Boys.