Toby Rogers traces the Grateful Dead’s jazz roots—and recalls asking Pharoah Sanders about Coltrane, LSD and Om. A reporter’s story, nearly 30 years in the making.
A Coltrane rumor helped Toby Rogers find his footing at High Times in 1998. He knew the jazz world through Bennington, Bill Dixon and Milford Graves, and he heard connections between that music and the Grateful Dead that went well beyond a shared taste for improvisation. For our first guest conversation, Toby joins Daniel to follow those connections from the records to the people who made them.
We talk about the Black musical traditions behind the Dead’s freedom, Phil Lesh’s listening habits, Jerry Garcia’s interest in horn players and Bob Weir’s debt to McCoy Tyner. Toby brings stories from the free-jazz world, including Cecil Taylor and Milford Graves, as we work through the links between jazz, psychedelic music and the community that grew around the Dead.
Then comes the elevator encounter. Toby recalls meeting Pharoah Sanders at the Iridium in December 2019 and asking about LSD at the Om session. The answer he remembers was qualified; it did not identify every participant. That distinction matters. This is a conversation about what Toby heard, what he inferred and how decades of listening and reporting changed his understanding of the music.
ABOUT TOBY ROGERS
Toby Rogers is an investigative journalist and nonfiction author whose work spans music, counterculture, politics and true crime. His bylines include The New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Enquirer, Village Voice, High Times, Clamor Magazine and Houston’s Public News, alongside reporting for Black Star News. His books include Ambushed (2004) and The Ganja Godfather (2015).
TOBY ROGERS — READ & FOLLOW
Substack: https://tobinrogers08.substack.com/
His Pharoah Sanders story: https://tobinrogers08.substack.com/p/pharaoh-sanders-50-years-of-karma
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-qJ6FVPUQss
Join the channel and get free access to the Shakedown Observatory: https://www.youtube.com/@TheShakedownArchives/join
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:43 Mickey Hart and the double drums
4:10 One chord forever: the Dead's jazz roots
5:20 Kerouac, Kesey and the improv tradition
7:42 Where was the jazz in the 1965 Haight?
8:29 Free jazz, "fire music" and Coltrane's Om
10:46 Phil Lesh brings Coltrane to 710 Ashbury
11:35 From Buddy Bolden to Coltrane
13:12 Psychedelics, jazz and the Fillmore
16:04 Who is Toby Rogers?
18:13 Getting into High Times
21:02 The pitch: Coltrane recorded Om on acid
21:52 Toby's first Dead show, Nassau '85
24:48 The jazz players who sat in with the Dead
27:08 How Bob Weir learned jazz
29:29 Coltrane, community and the endless tour
31:04 Space, Drums, Sun Ra and Ornette
34:19 In the elevator with Pharoah Sanders
38:08 Coltrane beat the Dead to acid
40:40 Live vs. studio: why you had to be there
42:57 The Dead carried themselves like jazz musicians
43:57 Ornette and Cecil Taylor go to a Dead show
45:59 Milford Graves and Mickey Hart
48:10 Play it forward, warts and all
49:10 Will the Dead last 200 years?
50:16 Coltrane's double drummers
52:04 The old records behind the Dead's songs
53:30 Dylan and the Dead
54:40 Jerry on Broadway, and a night with Dylan and Petty
