Ron “Pigpen” McKernan was born 70 years ago today (he passed too soon on March 8, 1973). 

Here’s what Ken Babbs had to say about the original Grateful Dead frontman Pigpen in our July_August issue: “Pigpen was a tremendous guy. I was lucky to have all these guys as friends first, and the ones that are still alive are still friends today, too. We could get together and not have all that stuff hanging on them [due to their popularity]. But Pigpen was free of that stuff early. He was really a remarkable guy as a musician—his voice and this knowledge of these R&B tunes with his dad being an R&B disc jockey, and also his ability with the harp and with the organ. The communication between him and Jerry was fantastic. This is what it was all about: These musicians weren’t just playing songs and each one just playing their part of the song. They were paying attention to each other and listening to each other, so where one was going, the other one would go with them. When Pigpen would be doing his thing, Jerry would be playing along with him—it was really those guying meshing and playing back and forth together, complementing each other musically.

“We were still filming when we were making the Acid Tests. We still had the camera and everything. This one Acid Test that we had in LA, we had the camera going and we almost did get all of Pigpen on that! We did the sound system ourselves and the mics and everything. We had a screw- up there when he was doing “King Bee” and a few other songs. You can hear him OK on the PA, but his voice wasn’t coming through into the board and into the tape recorder. All the others were, and that was really bad because if that didn’t happen we would have some dynamite tapes. Still the tapes we did get were really good and their playing was unique—you couldn’t describe it as a form, type or style. It had a little bit of country, a little bit of R&B and it had the trip-out.”

To mark the occasion we have collected 7 videos below that give a taste of Pigpen’s talent and charisma…

“Turn On Your Love Light”

“Hard To Handle”

“It Hurts Me Too”

“Easy Wind”

“Mr. Charlie”

“Alligator”

“Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”