Cornell 5/8/77


Cornell 5/8/77 is a live album by the American rock band the Grateful Dead, recorded on May 8, 1977, at Barton Hall, Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. In 2011, the recording was selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Background

The May 8, 1977, show is a fan favorite, and is widely considered to be one of the band's best performances. Tickets to attend the general admission concert cost $7.50, and the soundboard recording was made by longtime Grateful Dead audio engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson. During this tour, the Grateful Dead visited Ithaca's Moosewood Restaurant, "only to go unrecognized by the members of the collective."
The album of the show was released as a three-disc CD and as a five-disc LP on May 5, 2017, three days shy of the 40th anniversary of the original performance. The same recording was also released on May 5, 2017 as part of the four-concert, eleven-CD box set May 1977: Get Shown the Light.

Critical reception

Stephen Thomas Erlewine on AllMusic wrote, "Sourced from the original soundboard recordings by Betty Cantor-Jackson, the sound is colorful and vivid, an excellent complement to a prime Dead performance. What makes this such an exceptional performance isn't that it's the Grateful Dead at their most experimental... but at their warmest.... If this isn't the best Grateful Dead show ever – a hard thing to quantify – it's nevertheless at the sweet spot of providing hardcore Deadheads with plenty to savor while offering a good introduction for neophytes, which is more than enough to make it essential."

Track listing

Disc 1
  1. "New Minglewood Blues" – 5:34
  2. "Loser" – 7:58
  3. "El Paso" – 4:51
  4. "They Love Each Other" – 7:29
  5. "Jack Straw" – 6:29
  6. "Deal" – 6:10
  7. "Lazy Lightning" > – 3:26
  8. "Supplication" – 4:48
  9. "Brown-Eyed Women" – 5:49
  10. "Mama Tried" – 3:12
  11. "Row Jimmy" – 11:14
Disc 2
  1. "Dancing in the Street" – 16:32
  3. "Scarlet Begonias" > – 11:15
  4. "Fire on the Mountain" – 15:40
  5. "Estimated Prophet" – 8:49
Disc 3
  1. "St. Stephen" > – 5:03
  2. "Not Fade Away" > – 16:20
  3. "St. Stephen" > – 1:54
  4. "Morning Dew" – 14:17
  6. "One More Saturday Night" – 5:10

Personnel

Grateful Dead
Production