Ron McKernan grew up in the Palo Alto area. His father was a rhythm-and-blues disc jockey, and Ron was immersed in blues and R&B records from childhood. He taught himself harmonica, piano and guitar by playing along with Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Reed and other bluesmen, and built a serious record collection while still a teenager. His rough-edged style and love of the blues earned him the nickname “Pigpen,” and he became a familiar figure in the Palo Alto coffeehouse scene. He sat in on harmonica with Jerry Garcia and others at Kepler’s Books and the Top of the Tangent and sang with the Zodiacs, a loose local R&B band.
In 1964 Pigpen joined Garcia and Bob Weir in Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. He was the member who pushed hardest for the jug band to go electric, and in 1965 the Warlocks were born with him on organ, harmonica and lead vocals. In the Grateful Dead’s early years Pigpen was the band’s frontman and its connection to the blues. He sang Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf and Bobby “Blue” Bland songs, and his Vox and later Hammond organ gave the early Dead much of its gritty texture.
His greatest showcase was “Turn On Your Love Light,” which could stretch past twenty minutes as Pigpen improvised rapid-fire, preacher-style raps with the crowd and the band behind him. “Good Lovin’,” “In the Midnight Hour” and “Smokestack Lightning” worked the same way. He also wrote and sang originals, including “Operator” on American Beauty, and he sang Robert Hunter’s “Easy Wind” on Workingman’s Dead. As the band moved further into psychedelic experimentation in the late 1960s, his role shrank and more keyboard duties went to Tom Constanten. He returned to the forefront around 1970–72, when the band came back to roots music.
Pigpen’s health declined in his mid-twenties, and his last performance with the Grateful Dead was on June 17, 1972, at the Hollywood Bowl, shortly after the band’s Europe ’72 tour. He died in March 1973 at 27.
Although his time with the band was short, Pigpen defined the early Grateful Dead as a blues band at heart. His love of blues, his commanding stage presence and his insistence on plugging in set the course for everything that came after. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Grateful Dead in 1994.
