“Summertime Done, Come And Gone, My, Oh, My. . .”: Happy Labor Day

Wishing everyone a happy Labor Day weekend. Here in the United States, Labor Day is the psychological, if not actual, end of summer. This leads me to the clip below. A video of the Grateful Dead playing U.S. Blues as the encore of a show at Duke University in Durham, N.C. on April 4, 1978. While never a big favorite of mine, U.S. Blues can be a fun song and that’s the best way to describe this performance that luckily was captured on video.
Garcia was apparently in a real good mood. You can see it from the way he’s bopping along from the very start of the song. The way he sings “I’m Uncle Sam, how do you do?” in the first verse or the way he belts out “Steal your wife” later on. I have never seen him this animated. By the end of the song, Jerry is doing rock star moves that should inspire the air guitarist in many an old deadhead. “My, oh my” indeed.

Grateful Dead – U.S. Blues (encore) , 1978-04-12, Duke University, Durhan, N.C.