Rev. Gary Davis

In a 1981 interview by Jon Sievert, Bobby dispels the myth that he took lessons from Garcia:

Jon: I read somewhere that you once a guitar student of Garcia's back in the early days.  Is that true?

Bob: No. I hung around him and picked up a thing or two, but I never really took any formal lessons from anybody except Reverend Gary Davis back in 1971. I was a longtime fan of Davis' and always really liked his approach to guitar because he played the whole instrument and only used two fingers to pick. Being blind, he didn't know what you can't do. Notes and lines just seem to come at you from all different directions, and he seemed to have a way of tying them all together. He was just about to the end of his days when I met him and took a couple of lessons from him.

...

Who were some of your major musical influences?
 Bob: Well, I mentioned Gary Davis, but I haven't really emulated anybody's guitar style in particular...

[but he did emulate McCoy Tyner]

Bobby also learned Samson & Delilah from Rev. Gary Davis. A version from 12/16/78 with some funky Jerry (whole show here).

Rev. Gary Davis' Samson and Delilah. Rev. Gary Davis' Death Don't Have No Mercy.

Bob Dylan

According to an interview with Reverb Music, Bobby first heard Bob Dylan at age 21:

'The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ was the first one of his I’d heard –- the one with ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ on it. That really turned my head, and it made me aware of something I had not been aware of previously – that one guy with a guitar can frame together music and poetry and present art that amounts to that.

McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane's pianist in the John Coltrane Quartet, was a huge influence on Bob Weir. In a 2001 Guitar World interview, Bobby confesses:

my dirty little secret is that I learned by trying to imitate a piano, specifically the work of McCoy Tyner in the John Coltrane Quartet. That caught my ear and lit my flame when I was 17. I just loved what he did underneath Coltrane, so I sat with it for a long time and really tried to absorb it. Of course, Jerry was very influenced by horn players, including Coltrane, but I never really explicitly thought about that relationship, because I didn’t really ever decide to pattern myself after McCoy Tyner’s piano. It just grabbed me.

But it's not such a dirty secret. In numerous interviews, Bobby cites McCoy Tyner as his primary influence, in one 1981 interview, citing Tyner's "chording, voicing and tonalities" as particularly influential.

The Beatles

In a Reverb Music interview, Bobby says, “I loved the early Beatles records. The ‘Rubber Soul’ record was informative to me in terms of what a quartet can do musically.”

The Grateful Dead covered many Beatles tunes, especially in the final years. My top 5 (although two aren't technically Beatles tunes): "Blackbird," "Dear Prudence Jam," "Hey Jude" coming out of "Mr. Fantasy," "That Would Be Something," and "Imagine."

"Blackbird," sung by Bob and Brent, was done twice in 1988, once on 6/23/88 at Alpine and once on 7/17/88 (whole show) at the Greek in Berkeley. Both times occurred as a double encore preceding "Brokedown Palace." Alpine features Brent laughing as the vocals slip away, but still feels a little more emotional and truer than the Greek version.
The Jerry Garcia Band performed "Blackbird" on three occasions, 11/18/75 at the Keystone, 11/23/75 at the Macky Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado, and 4/26/88 (Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, with special guests Brent and Bob) at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael (if anyone has a copy of this show, please let me know!)

The GD played Day Tripper 5 times, first as an encore on 12/28/84 at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium and last on 8/24/85 at the Boreal Ride Ski Resort near Truckee, CA (although the first and last performances appeared in the encore, the other three versions were not encores).

According to DeadBase, the only "Dear Prudence Jam" occurred 3/13/82 between "The Other One" (starts at 6:34 on the linked version) and "Black Peter." Setlists and reviews on archive.org cite three other Dear Prudence Jams however:  9/19/90 (whole show) on the track Jam (Dear Prudence teased at 8:55 on this version) out of "Let It Grow," preceding "Drumz." Hornsby is playing quite beautifully here in his first week as the Dead's keyboard player after Brent passed. 12/30/91 (whole show) between "Saint of Circumstance" and "Drumz," and 6/8/92 (link to jam only) between "Corinna" and "Drumz" (whole show here). Jerry played "Dear Prudence" three times in 1979 with Reconstruction, and at least 13 times with the Jerry Garcia Band, mainly in 1981 and then again in the early nineties (searching "Dear Prudence" on www.thejerrysite.com only yields 13 results, but looking through the setlists it is clear it was played more times). Here is a YouTube version on 9/6/89 (although this version . Notably, RatDog has played "Dear Prudence" 99 times. A nice version from 9/6/03 (whole show here. I love the RD version from 11/12/05 at the Palladium in Worchester, MA, but that show is not up on the LMA. Furthur played "Dear Prudence" once 11/12/10 in Utica (whole show).

"Get Back" was played once 1/28/87 (whole show) at the SF Civic Auditorium. There is a nice Dan Healy melting voice effects on the line "but she was a man." Then come Alvin & the Chipmunks...

According to Rock Scully's book, Living with the Dead (a book hated and refuted by Deadheads and the band), the Dead played "Good Day Sunshine" at some Acid Test: "a bouncy version...with dodgy harmonies." Thanks to the Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder for this one.

"Hey Jude" appeared as a Pigpen encore twice, once at the Fillmore East on 2/11/69 (early show) and once at the Fillmore West on 3/1/69. Neither version is available on the LMA, but can be found respectively on the commercial recordings Live at the Fillmore East 2-11-69 and Fillmore West 1969: Complete Recordings. The "nah nah nah Hey Jude" part appeared alongside "Mr. Fantasy" sung by Brent (who was lyrically similar to Pig in many ways). It was played once in 1985 (9/7/85 whole show link), and then 27 other times between 1988 and 1990. Check out the 10/9/89 version, at Hampton Coliseum (when the band played covertly as "Formerly the Warlocks." While "Mr. Fantasy" didn't always end with the "Hey Jude Finale," the "Hey Jude Finale" never appeared sans "Mr. Fantasy." Jerry and John Kahn also played "Hey Jude" at Wavy Gravy's 50th Birthday celebration at the Berkeley Community Theater on 5/15/86. Wavy's son would later emerge snoreling from an onstage bathtub adorning plumbers candles, filled with melted fudge, everybody singing "Happy Birthday."

"I Want to Tell You" was played 7 times in 1994 and 1995. A YouTube 10/15/94 version from MSG. Not very exciting, but given the year...it's at least cool they were trying new things.


A band called Bobby Ace and His Cards From the Bottom of the Deck played "I've Just Seen a Face" once (originally appearing on Rubber Soul), with Bobby singing, 6/11/69 at the California Hall. The band featured Weir, Garcia, Lesh, Hart and Constanten, with John Dawson and David Nelson on guitar, autoharp and vocals and with Peter Grant on pedal steel (info from Deadbase).

Vince sang "It's All Too Much" 6 times in 1995, notably 3/26/95 (whole show) at the Omni, a good show given the year. According to the GD Song and Lyric Finder, the Dead soundchecked "Paperback Writer" that night too. "It's All Too Much was also played at the final run of shows, 7/8/95 (whole show) at Soldier Field. 

The band played "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" 19 times from 1993 to 1995. Here is a YouTube from the second time played, 3/24/95 at the Dean Smith Center at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The band played "Rain" a number of times in the final years. 3/18/95 Jerry doesn't look so good... Here at Alpine,  7/19/94 (whole show), another rain encore, fitting given the rain that day.

The band played "Revolution" 11 times between 1983 and 1990. Here is a YouTube of the second ever version, 7/2/85 from Pittsburgh Civic Arena.

The band played "Tomorrow Never Knows" 12 times, 11 times as a encore song, played out of "Baba O'Riley." Here (whole show) is a version from 6/6/92.

"Twist and Shout," written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns, later recorded by the Beatles in 1968 with additional lyrics. According to the GD Song and Lyric Finder, it "was sung by Joey Covington with the Dead and other members of the Jefferson Airplane on 7 September 1969. It segues out of a very raw version of Louie Louie...It has also been played as a jam (no lyrics) by Phil Lesh & Friends in 2002. And before that by Bob Weir with Nightfood and in a Furthur Festival jam." It's not clear which lyrical version Joey sang.

The Dead opened with "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" once, 4/7/85 at the Spectrum in Philly.

According to the GD Song and Lyric Finder, the Dead soundchecked Lennon's Watchin' the Wheels in 1995, but never played the song live.

The Dead played McCartney's That Would Be Something 17 times between 1991 and 1995. There's just something I love so much about this song. My favorite version comes up out of a nice He's Gone vocal jam just before Drumz and Space. You gotta hear the whole sequence... 4/1/94 at the Omni.

Playing with Merl Saunders in the early 70s, Jerry noodled out the Imagine melody a few times. I absolutely love the 1/19/72 version at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. Jerry pours gold nectar out of Expressway (To Your Heart), that Imagine melody woven in so sublimely...

Igor Stravinsky

An inter-continental influence, Igor Stravinsky was born in Russia in 1882, moved to France in 1920, then to the States in 1940, where he died in 1971. His most famous 1913 composition, Rite of Spring, incited a riot at its premier.

In a Reverb Music interview, Bob Weir recounts hearing Stravinsky at age 18:

...[T]here was a classical record on CBS with Pierre Boulez conducting ‘Le sacre du printemps’ –- or ‘The Rite of Spring.’ If you ask me who the father of rock ’n’ roll is, I’ll tell you Igor Stravinsky. He wrote that in 1913, I think, and people were leaving the theater when they first performed it –- the old guys were leaving saying, ‘Stop this noise!’ But it was a ballet, and it was spectacular. It was dance music. And that rearranged my thinking, and a lot of what I wrote when I was working on the tune ‘The Other One’ I gleaned from listening to that record.

 
The Sacrificial Dance from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Not surprisingly, Stravinsky's work has been called Satanic, and is a favorite of Marilyn Manson. Perhaps the Grateful Dead are Freemason Satanists after all!

During the 2009-2010 Furthur New Year's countdown you can hear Stravinsky's Firebird being played over the PA while a woman (Jerry's daughter?) descends from the sky on a Terminator meets the Dead skull a la Bill Graham.

Joan Baez

Joan Baez, legendary folk singer from the 60s, best known for her amazing voice and activism.
According to some 80s tour rumor, the song "Hell in a Bucket" was penned after Joan said, of playing with the Grateful Dead, "I'd rather go to hell in a bucket." The rumor seems unlikely though, since Joan sat in with the Dead on five occasions, according to DeadBase, and shared the bill with them two other times. However, maybe it's something Joan said after she and Mickey Hart stopped dating?

I can't vouch for this story at all, but it's a good one all the same, taken from the description of a Joan Baez "Jackaroe" YouTube:

Joan says: I went to see Micky [sic] Hart when we wanted to get the Greateful [sic] Dead to do a Cambodian benefit with me.. that`s how I met him. All of his aquaintances [sic] are so slightly on the colorful wacky side. He was sitting with a blond guru with a dot and a turban when we were talking about the Cambodian refugees. After that , [sic]I was at home sitting at my desk writing my book when I looked out the window and saw Mickey in my front yard, banging on one of his esoteric drums and dancing around like a wild gnome. He could sense my isolation, even if he didn`t know me, and he was saying, "Hey you got to get out more." I began spending time with him and eventually we had the concept to collaborate on some recordings."

On to the Joan/GD collaborations throughout the years:

• According to DeadBase, the first time sit in is said to be for "Midnight Hour" on 7/16/66 at the Fillmore, along with Mimi "Farinalist"--could they mean Joan's daughter, Mimi Farina? However, the DeadBase setlist "may be incomplete" and indeed, the LMA has a few recordings for this show with different setlists, none of them containing "Midnight Hour."
• 3/23/75 at the Kezar found the boys on the same bill as Joan, but no sit-in. The show is still worth a listen, as it features Merl Saunders and Ned Lagin, no Donna, and the first "Blues for Allah" / "Stronger Than Dirt." It's a SNACK benefit show.
• 1/13/80 at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum ends with Joan singing. According to DeadBase, after the GD encore "U.S. Blues," Joan, the GD and the Beach Boys sing "Amazing Grace." According to the setlists on the LMA they sing "Bridging the Gap" (also known as "Land of a Thousand Dances"). According to the actual audio track names on the LMA, they sing "Land of a Thousand Dances" and "Amazing Grace." In "Land of Thousand Dances," mainly Joan is singing (and a bunch of people going "OH yeah!" and "Nah nah nah", someone is drumming, Phil is playing bass, Jerry is noodling (he gets a shout out for a brief solo from Joan). It's a Cambodian refugee benefit show.
• Throughout 1981, Mickey played in a historically unknown band High Noon, also featuring Bobby Vega and Merl Saunders. Joan sat in a number of times. A discussion of these shows can be found at Lost Live Dead
• 12/12/81 at Fiesta Hall in San Mateo features a Joan set, some of the boys sitting in, and a short Dead set. Dance for Disarmament benefit and the first "Me and Bobby McGee" since 10/16/74 (in Joan's set).
• 12/30/81 at the Oakland Auditorium Arena, features a mini set with Joan sans Brent (Brent is also missing for the second set opener, "Feel Like a Stranger"). 
• 12/31/81 still in Oakland, features another acoustic set with Joan, and this recording has four more tracks than what DeadBase lists (DeadBase, and most recordings, start at Me and Bobby McGee). Joan also comes out for "Must of Been the Roses" and "Aiko Aiko." "I don't know but I been told/ that a room with Deadheads is filled with soul yeah." Some Deadheads say this is the longest GD show ever, with four sets of music.
• 11/3/91 a tender memorial in Golden Gate Park for Bill Graham. Joan does not sit in, but is on the bill. Still check out this show, an amazing testament to Bill Graham, whose vision was essential to the Grateful Dead. The only GD "Forever Young" with Neil Young is especially tender, even if not the most musically smoking ever.
•  Since Jerry's passing, Joan has sat in with the remaining boys on different occasions. She sat in with Ratdog on 5/20/06, celebrating Wavy Gravy's 70th birthday at the Berkeley Community Theatre (I think it was the last of 20 Wavy birthdays celebrated in Berkeley). Humorously, Joan mistook the opening chords of Uncle John's Band as some folk song, "Little Darling, By the Diamonds." The look on everybody's face when she started singing...
• 4/20/08 (YouTube) features Mickey, Bobby, Joan, Michael Kang, Robin Slyvester, Tommy Lee Jones and a few others, on an oddly acoustic "Not Fade Away" in Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park. A Green Apple benefit. Ludacris (YouTube) persuading Mickey to let Tommy play...

The Rolling Stones

Garcia talking about Altamont, and by proxy, the Rolling Stones, in an 1981 Musician interview:

[Altamont was] an incredibly selfish scene. Steve
Gaskin pinned it down best when he said that Altamont was "the
little bit of sadism in your sex life the Rolling Stones had been
singing about all those years, brought to its most ugly, razor-
toothed extreme." Kind of ironic, since they were the ones who
started that "Sympathy For The Devil" stuff.

Outlaw Life

Jerry, on the Hell's Angels, in an 1981 Musician interview:

MUSICIAN: Can you talk about your relationship with the  Hell's
Angels? I played in a band backed by them in Berkeley  and it was,
uh...an ambivalent experience.
GARCIA: Well, that's it. It is ambivalent. I've always liked them 
because they don't hide what they are, and I think all they require of
you is honesty - they just require that you don't  bullshit them - and 
if you're out front with them, I think you  don't have anything to worry
about.
 The Angels are very conscious of their roots and history, so  the
fact that we played at Chocolate George's funeral way back during
the Haight-Ashbury was really significant to them. They didn't have
many friends in those days, and so anybody who would come out for
one of their members was demon strating true friendship. And with
them, that really counts for  something.
MUSICIAN: What do you feel attracted Kesey to them in the first
place? The noble savage concept?
GARCIA: No, I think Ken saw them for what they are: a definite
force of their own which you can't hope to control. When they
come around, it's reality, and you go with it.
MUSICIAN: What about Altamont?
GARCIA: Horrible.
MUSICIAN: It sure was. But having been in the Bay area at the time, I
can understand how you might have thought it a good idea to
recommend them as security people.
GARCIA: We didn't recommend them!!
MUSICIAN: I thought the Stones people said you suggested it?
GARCIA: Absolutely not!  No, we would never do that. The Angels
were planning on being there, and I guess the Stones crew thought
this might be a good way to deal with that fact.

The Who

Garcia, in an 1981 Musician interview:

I think the Who are one of the few truly 
important architects of rock 'n' roll. Pete Townshend may be 
one of rock 'n' roll's rare authentic geniuses. And there's also
the fact that they're among our few surviving contemporaries. . . 
I'm just really glad they exist. 

Pete Townsend and the GD "Not Fade Away" 3/28/81 in Essen, Germany
Jerry and Bobby doing windmills a la Townsend during "Truckin,'"4/12/78 Cameron Indoor (Duke University).
5/31/92 in Vegas, Bobby and Steve Miller doing windmills during Baba O'Riley. The GD played Baba O'Riley 12 times (sung by Vince), mainly in the Spring and Summer of '92 (first: 5/19/93; last: 11/29/94). With the exception of 11/29/94, it was always an Encore song, played into Tomorrow Never Knows (a Beatles song).

Hamza el Din and the Nubian Desert Trip

From a 1981 Musician article, Addendum #1:

"It's so great to meet someone who could be so damn strong and yet not
exude even a trace of evil, meaness, or  fear." A few years ago, Hart
accompanied Hamza on a journey  up the Nile to visit his ancestral
village in the Nubian Desert.  "The first thing those Nubian drummers
taught me was that Bo Diddley didn't invent that beat," said Mickey.
Not speaking Arabic, Hart utilized the universal language of music to 
exchange ideas and converse with the Sudanese, who were 
impressed with his dexterity. "Hamza had taught me to play the tar,
a single-membraned African drum, and his people were really blown
out by the rhythmic exercises I'd worked  up." The Nubians would
often hold the same rhythmic groove for hours, with different
sections of the ensemble coming forward to improvise over the
basic pattern. But when Hart's turn to solo came up he met with an
unexpected reaction from his hosts. "My polyrhythms startled them
at first. I asked  Hamza why they were staring at me, and he
explained that when they heard the off beat and polyrhythms they
felt I was forcing the drum. They feel the drums should tell you what
to  do, and not vice versa, which they see as artificial. They say, 
'Excite the drum and it will tell you what to play'," reflects Hart: 
"It's a great concept, and I've found it works if you approach the
instrument with the right attitude."

Airto Moreira

In a 1981 Musician interview, Hart talks about Airto:

"Airto gave me this Brazilian stringed instrument called the berimbau. He gave me a
quick lesson in how to play it, and I took it home to practice on.
Well, I wound up just staring into the fire  and playing this thing for
weeks. It just took over; I wouldn't accept phone calls or anything,"
laughs Hart. "Three weeks later I called up Airto and asked him what
the hell was going on!" and he explained that in Brazil the berimbau
was used to induce an altered state of consciousness for practicing
the  martial arts." Hart pauses. "The weird thing is that I've been
into the martial arts for years, but had let it go for a while, and 
then got back into it when I started playing the berimbau . . . And 
there was Airto talking about how this jungle instrument could take
you without you even knowing it!"

Francis Ford Coppola and Apocalypse Now

From Musician article in 1981, Addendum #1:

along with with bassist Phil Lesh, Airto, Flora Purim and others, accepted a
commission from Francis Ford Coppola to compose the score for Apocalypse Now: The Rhythm Devils Play River Music. 

Hart's marching orders from Coppola were short and to the point: "All
Francis said was 'you know what I want¿you know how to make
magic.  Do it!"' recalled  Hart. "I watched the film constantly. I had it
on video cassette in my kitchen, in my bedroom, and in the studio. It
played  continuously for three months." Their task was complicated 
by the fact that the battle sound effects Coppola brought back from
the Phillipines sounded unconvincing. In the end they were asked to
find a way of simulating the cacophony of war in the studio. "Try
reproducing the sounds of a napalm attack using wooden instruments
and bells;" suggests Hart wryly.  "The artillery sounded like cheap
firecrackers, so we had to reinforce that, too, with steel drums I
had built, and other  percussive devices. We had over fifteen hours of
material!"

John Coltrane

In a 1981 Musican magazine interview with Jerry, Jerry says:

I never sat down and stole ideas from him; it was more his sense of flow that

I learned from. That and the way his personality was always right there, the

presence of the man just comes stomping out of those records. It's not

something I would've been able to learn through any analytical approach,

it was one of those things I just had to flash on.

In a 1981 interview for BAM! magazine with David Gans and Blair Jackson (as found in Gans' book Conversations with the Dead, p. 65-66), Jerry elaborates Coltrane's influence:

I've been influenced a lot by Coltrane, but I never copied his licks or sat down, listened to records and tried to play his stuff. I've been impressed with that thing of flow, and of making statements that to my ears sound like paragraph--he'll play along stylistically with a certain kind of tone, in a certain kind of syntax, for X amounts of time, then he'll like change the subject, then play along with this other personality coming out, which really impresses me. It's like attitude's changing. But it changes in a holistic way, where the tone of his axe and everything changes.

Perceptually, an idea that's been very important to me in playing has been the whole "odyssey" idea--journeys, voyages, you know? And adventures along the way. That whole idea has been really important to me...

 I can't remember where I read it, but Jerry once said his favorite Coltrane album was The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. Here is "Impressions (A)."

According to an interview with Reverb Music, Coltrane was a big influence of Bobby's, age 19:

The John Coltrane record that had ‘Tunji’ on it, ‘Coltrane,’ had me hugely enamored with his rhythm section –- Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison –- and the way they worked together. It was great the way they played off McCoy Tyner. Whereas a lot of guitarists cite other guitarists as primary influences, I listened to a lot of McCoy Tyner and what he had to say. It was Phil (Lesh) who turned me onto Coltrane.

McCoy Tyner was a huge influence on Bobby.

Django Reinhardt

In an 1981 interview with Musician:

[GARCIA]...You can actually hear him
shift mood...  
MUSICIAN: The humor in his solo on "Somewhere Beyond  the Sea" is
amazing...
GARCIA: Anger, too. You can hear him get mad and play some nasty,
mean little thing. It's incredible how clearly his personality comes
through. It's one of those things I've always been impressed with in
music. There's no way to steal that, but it's something you can model
your playing on. Not in the sense of copying someone else's
personality, but in the hopes that maybe I could learn how to let my
own personality come through.

Scotty Stoneman

Scotty Stoneman was part of the Stoneman Family (think, Jackson 5 of bluegrass, led by country music pioneer Pop Stoneman), a Virginia family of bluegrass and country musicians. Here is Scotty playing with Jimmy and Donna Stoneman, "a musical family of thirteen children" as it says in the video.

In a 1981 Musican magazine interview with Jerry (archived here), Jerry is prompted to talk about Stoneman after the interviewer says he was "imitating essence, not form" from Coltrane. So presumably, the same was true with Stoneman--Jerry was moved by his essence, his emotionality, rather than his specific licks or technical ability.

A very important model for me was a bluegrass fiddle player named Scotty Sternman [sic], who was just a house-a-fire crazed fiddle player. He was a monster technically, played liked the devil. Anyway, he was terribly burnt-out alcohol case by the time I saw him, but I remember hearing him take a simple fiddle tune and stretch it into this incredible 20-minute extravaganza in which you hear just everything come out of that fiddle, and I was so moved emotionally that he became one of my models...I mean, there I was standing in that audience with just tears rolling out of my eyes, it was just so amazing. And it was the essence that counted, none of the rest of it.

For a musician of such great caliber (who met quite an alcoholic demise), little of his work is commonly available--perhaps only three albums are still commercially available. But there are a number of recordings of his work with the Kentucky Colonels (a partial list is available on etree, but note, not all Kentucky Colonel recordings feature Stoneman). Some Kentucky Colonel recordings are available on the great Steam Powered Preservation Society's website. Here is a FLAC show. You'll have to poke around for other Colonel shows on SPPS, as well as MP3 recordings if that is your format of choice.

I haven't found anything akin to a 20-minute Scotty song, but his short take on Lee Highway Blues says something for sure.

Art Tatum

Art Tatum (October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was close-to-blind jazz pianist, known for his unique interpretations of the Great American Songbook.
Jerry

Taken from a Frets magazine interview in 1985, published in its entirety here.

[Jerry:]. . .Art Tatum is my all-time favorite. Yeah, he’s my all-time favorite. He’s the guy I put on when I want to feel really small [laughs]. When I want to feel really insignificant [laughs]. He’s a good guy to play for any musician, you know. He’ll make them want to go home and burn their instruments [Laughs.] Art Tatum is absolutely the most incredible musician – what can you say?

[Frets:] What era of Tatum’s piano playing appeals to you?
[Jerry]: Well, all of it is fascinating, and I also haven’t heard everything, but I’ve got the two big sets from Norman Granz, and everything on those is beyond the pale. It’s just so incredible, you know. What a mind!

I think the "two big sets" Jerry's referencing are the Complete Pablo Group Masterpieces (Vol.1-6) and the Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces (Vol.1-7), re-released by Pablo Records (Norman Granz's final label). "Hallejuah" from the Group Masterpieces Vol. 3. "Over the Rainbow" from the Solo Masterpieces Vol. 6.

Later in the same interview, Jerry mentions composing on the piano ("because it just puts me in a different head"):

Jerry: I don’t know the instrument. But I can sit and figure anything out, you know, if I have a little time.

Frets: Art Tatum.

Jerry: [Laughs.] Yeah, right. Give me 20 years and another head!

Merl Saunders

Jerry's musical cohort, Merl Saunders, also felt small in the face of Art (the writing is Blair Jackson's):

“I saw Art Tatum play when I was about 15 years old and I got so disgusted I stopped playing piano,” Saunders said with a laugh. “I thought, 'What's the point?' He was so amazing you could never hope to be that good in your wildest dreams. I was hurt; I was crushed. But he was a genius, and of course I came to appreciate him more, and I actually studied him a bit. I managed to learn a few of his runs and I'd be there warming up on this stuff and Garcia would be saying, ‘Hey man, what's that run?’ ‘That's Art Tatum.’ And we'd go over them together. Then we'd be out at the Keystone in the middle of a song and all of a sudden I'd hear him doing an Art Tatum run, and I'd look over and he'd have this big smile on his face! Man, when Jerry would get on something, he'd keep going with it until he got it. He'd stumble through it at first, but he understood music so well and he had such a good memory that he could eventually get almost anything he tried down. And getting down Art Tatum is not easy — on piano or guitar.”