pistol packin’ mama
PISTOL PACKIN’ MAMA BY THE GOOD OLD BOYS
When the Grateful Dead founded their own Grateful Dead Records label in 1973 (along with the subsidiary Round Records for non-Dead projects), they had an incentive to develop a catalog of releases, and it was not surprising that group members' eclectic musical tastes were indulged, among them Jerry Garcia's affection for bluegrass, expressed early on with his work with the bluegrass supergroup, Old & In the Way.
The Good Old Boys' Pistol Packin' Mama is in the same vein, even though Garcia restricts himself to twisting the knobs in the control booth as the album's producer. The group is a combination of old hands and young guns this time around. Banjo player Don Reno of Reno & Smiley was at loose ends after Smiley's death in 1972, and fiddler Chubby Wise, a Bill Monroe alumnus, had ended a lengthy association with Hank Snow, so both were available to be recruited for the January 1975 session. So was veteran mandolin player Frank Wakefield, and they were joined by the more youthful devotees, guitarist David Nelson of the New Riders of the Purple Sage and bassist Pat Campbell.
