Hart Valley Drifters

Formed in San Francisco during 1962, the Hart Valley Drifters stood as one of Jerry Garcia’s earliest folk ensembles and the first project of his to receive documentation on record. Drawing influence from the New Lost City Ramblers, the Stanley Brothers, and the performers featured on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, the lineup placed Garcia on banjo, guitar, and vocals alongside Robert Hunter on bass, David Nelson on guitar, Norm Van Maastricht on Dobro, and Ken Frankel on guitar, fiddle, and banjo. Although Garcia and Hunter had already been working together since 1961, the sole documented appearance by the full group occurred in November 1962 at a folk festival held in nearby San Mateo. Around the same period the musicians captured a session at Stanford University’s KZSU radio station that later aired on the Folk Time program that month. Their set mixed old-time traditional numbers with contemporary folk-revival material. Hunter would eventually serve as the Grateful Dead’s longtime lyricist, while Nelson would later reunite with Garcia in the New Riders of the Purple Sage, yet the 1962 session remained the Hart Valley Drifters’ only recording as a unit and Garcia’s first known appearance on record. The tapes were long presumed lost until former Stanford studio engineer Ted Claire, who had produced the original session, recovered them in 2008. ATO Records issued the material in 2016 under the title Folk Time.