Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo

How is it possible to love a song by the Dead when the Dead never played it all that well?

Long before I knew who Duke Ellington was, I adored a Grateful Dead song vaguely named after one of his early hits. I was most attached to the Brent-era version on Without A Net:

This is not the Dead at their absolute best. Jerry sounds like he's about 95 years old, and some of those drum fills are like sneakers tumbling in a dryer, as critics of the band often put it. But it gets the idea across well enough for my teenage self to be enraptured.

Only much later did I hear the studio version from Wake of the Flood.

The arrangement on this recording is as cluttered and unfocused as the live versions, but it has a compelling groove to it, and it features Vassar Clements on fiddle. (I’m surprised they didn't use fiddle more often.) I also enjoy hearing Jerry's sweet tenor before it got turned to sandpaper by cigarette smoking.