Morning Dew

[massacre]

I don't think I have heard a bad version of it

 

[JRC4558Dude]

This version is just incredible.

I was actually familiar with it (and the Jeff Beck version) long before I became Deadhead...

Diggin' the Lulu version, too. I'd never heard that before.

Cool thread.

 

[Staticbuster]

This was a fun one:

 

[pak1001]

This is a good one, too (but I like Lulu's best):

 

[RupertB]

GD is my favorite version but I like this one as well..

 

[townsend]

Beck's version. Tailor-made for Stewart.

Amen. I think Rod does some of his finest work with Jeff Beck on the album "Truth." Love Beck's guitar on this song, starts out clean and understated, ends up with distorted tone and tasteful wah. Beautiful build up throughout the song.

 

[Jon Silberman]

Morning Dew is a haunting post-apocalyptic folk rock song written by Canadian folk singer Bonnie Dobson in the early 60's. ...

For me, the Grateful Dead owned this song.

With good reason. The way the Dead played it and Garcia sang it was hauntingly mournful in a way that most of the alternative versions here miss the mark on (e.g., the ABB version - I love the ABB but the vibe they put on this one is just not consistent to me with the song's message).

Bonnie Dobson's lyrics:

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey
Walk me out in the morning dew today
I can't walk you out in the morning dew my honey
I can't walk you out in the morning dew, at all

Thought I heard a young girl cry 'Mama'
Thought I heard a young girl cry today
I didn't hear no young girl crying 'Mama, mama, mama'
I didn't hear no young girl cry at all

Thought I heard a young boy cry
I thought I heard a young man cry today
I didn't hear no young boy cry
You didn't hear no young man cry

Now, there is no more morning dew
Now, there is no more morning dew
What they've been saying all these years was not true
Now, there's no more morning dew

No, no, no, no more
No, no, no, no more
No more morning dew
No more morning dew
​

Interesting to compare Wooden Ships which was co-written by David Crosby, Paul Kantner, and Stephen Stills:

[Stills]
If you smile at me I will understand
'Cause that is something
Everybody everywhere does in the same language

[Crosby]
I can see by your coat, my friend you're from the other side
There's just one thing I got to know
Can you tell me please who won?

[Stills]
Say can I have some of your purple berries?
[Crosby]
Yes, I've been eating them
For six or seven weeks now haven't got sick once
[Stills]
Probably keep us both alive

Wooden ships on the water very free and easy
Easy, you know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline let us be
Talkin' 'bout very free and easy

Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries
Stare as all human feelings die
We are leaving, you don't need us

Go take your sister then by the hand
Lead her away from this foreign land
Far away where we might laugh again
We are leaving, you don't need us

And it's a fair wind
Blowin' warm out of the south over my shoulder
Guess I'll set a course and go

​

 

[Grobos Phunt]

 

[Pick'n'strum]

Love me some Tim Rose:

 

[66fs]

Beck, Stewart, Wood, and Waller. Saw them do it live back in the day and I still remember it.......well, some of it....I think...

 

[karmadave]

I agree. The Grateful Dead absolutely owned this song and made it their own. Jerry's singing and playing, on the Europe 72 version, is absolutely haunting...

 

[ssmug]

There are so many good ones, it's hard to choose. The one that popped into my head was with Branford Marsalis. I'll see if I can find it.

Edit: I can't find it. I might have imagined it.

I imagined it sounding awesome.

 

[Banditt]

Beck, Stewart...The bagpipes at the end get me every time, even all these years later.

 

[Duffy Pratt]

I had not heard any of the other versions before. The Dead have transformed just about everything. The chord pattern is different. The tempo. The lyrics. The overall feel. What's left is a core idea, and a little bit of the lyrics. Otherwise, a totally different song, and to my ears a better one - one which I think is truer to the core idea of the song.

 

[Murray Rothbard]

I imagined it sounding awesome.

I'm hearing parts from the Bird Song they did, I think, but they sound magical in my mental Morning Dew.

 

[blustrat]

 

[jfranks]

I enjoy the weirdness of the Einsturzende Neubauten version very much.

EDIT: Ooops, @Grobos Phunt beat me to it

 

[karmadave]

GD is my favorite version but I like this one as well..

This is on 'Great Sky River'. Great album!

 

[T92780]

Beck/Stewart version was intro into song, will always be my fav, but later enjoyed the way GD played it, as it seemed so natural sounding, as if it was an original.

 

[winterblu]

For me, the Grateful Dead owned this song.

Me too. I like many other versions but the Dead did own it. Ever since I heard it on their first album their version has been definitive for me.