Folk duo of Jerry Garcia and Sara Ruppenthal, the Stanford student who became his first wife in 1963.
Sara Ruppenthal was a Stanford student and folk singer when she met Garcia on the Palo Alto coffeehouse circuit. Within months the couple had married, in the spring of 1963, and they were also performing together as a duo. With Sara on guitar and lead vocals and Garcia moving between guitar, banjo, mandolin, autoharp and fiddle, they played gentle traditional folk: ballads, hymns and old-time songs. Their May 3–4, 1963 shows at the Top of the Tangent are the best documented, and a recording from that weekend appears on Before the Dead. The couple’s daughter Heather was born that December. The duo faded as Garcia went deeper into bluegrass and then jug-band music in 1964.
