| Grateful Dead – Cold Rain and Snow [#] Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| This song, [Cold]'' Rain and Snow',' the version the Dead adopted into their repertoire was written and preformed as I understand by a woman in the Appalachian Mts. in 1916. There is a copy of it on the internet and when you hear you'll understand just how much the Dead had to re-work it to make it the song that it is. The original version is done in a virtual one or two note style, I assume the woman's voice heard signing is the woman who wrote it. Her voice is high-pitched and her delivery is what's known as ''plainchant'',or 'plainsong'' which is a kind of chanting. It doesn't resemble what the dead made of it at all. The basic melody is one that has been around for centuries , mainly from the time of the Renaissance. Songs like "Greensleeves'' for instance and a much later folk song ''500 Miles'', a tune made popular by ''The Kingston Trio'' and ''Peter,Paul&Mary''. It's a rather straight forward chord progression, no third bridge of harmony and the lyrical theme is almost always about a love lost, or unrequited or a love betrayed. "Going Down The Road Feeling bad'' is another song in this genre and there is almost never an actual persons name as the composer or writer of the piece just the words. "Trad.Arrgn. or "Traditional Arrangement''. I always loved the version the dead did of this number. They took it from a rather dreary sounding dirge and made a roiling, bouncy little tune from it. As a drummer I always loved doing it but as a singer this little number was kind of tough to get right. | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.