For decades, passionate fans of the Grateful Dead have speculated about the contents of a "lost manuscript"-a sort of holy grail to the origin story of a band that is practically a religion for many.Indeed, THE SILVER SNARLING TRUMPET: The Birth of the Grateful Dead-The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter, has been pulled from the attic after more than 50 years. It will be published with a foreword by John Mayer (Dead & Co), an introduction by Dennis McNally (renowned historian of the Dead) and an afterword by Brigid Meier (a close confidant of Jerry Garcia's and core member of the early scene described in the book).
As McNally writes in the foreword: "The subculture that became known as the Grateful Dead began as a cluster of relationships long before there as a band; Trumpet is the story of that earliest community."
Essential reading for Dead Heads and anyone with an interest in early 60s counterculture, THE SILVER SNARLING TRUMPET is as Mayer puts it in the foreword, "a lost box of film that, when developed, reveals some of the most striking images you've ever seen, the kind that make you go slack jawed and your heart race." In these pages, readers are privy to the early days of Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and their cohorts, who sit at the coffee shop passing around a single cup of bottomless coffee because they lacked the funds for more than one. "We created our own culture simply by being friends and allowing that circle of friendship to expand organically," writes Hunter's friend Brigid Meier in a heartfelt Afterword. "If you thought you were one of us, you were welcome to join in."
With the publication of this long awaited manuscript, we get to follow Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and the rest of the band into the stacks at Kepler's Books, to rent instruments at Swain's House of Music, and through the countryside on road trips. We witness impromptu jams, inspired intellectual pranks, and a dialogue that is, by turns, amusing and brilliant and outrageous. Hunter shares his impressions of his first gig with Garcia for a college audience, along with descriptions of his most intense dreams and psychedelic explorations. All of it is enlivened by Hunter's visionary spirit and profound ideas about creativity and collaboration.
This is an exciting season for fans of the Dead: Robert Hunter's career-spanning archival series recently launched through Rhino; Dead & Co. just finished an engagement at The Sphere, and the band will be honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in December.

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