The Grateful Dead’s crucial fourth studio release, Workingman’s Dead, was a Top 30 breakthrough for the band in 1970, including the single “Uncle John’s Band,” which reached No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100. A fan favorite featuring now-iconic tracks such as “Casey Jones” and “Cumberland Blues,” the album has just been reissued in Rhino Music’s excellent High Fidelity series.
This edition holds considerable appeal for fans seeking a really good, clean-sounding copy of the album that remains true to the intent of the original production without breaking the bank.
From the official press materials, we learn the core specs that make this edition special: Workingman’s Dead (Rhino High Fidelity) was cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. It features glossy gatefold packaging with newly written liner notes by author and Grateful Dead historian David Gans.
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This new Rhino High Fidelity edition is a single LP spinning at 33⅓ RPM. For contrast, Mobile Fidelity’s 2023 edition is a 2LP, 45 RPM set. The Rhino HiFi pressing sounds true to, and fairly consistent with, my clean 1970-era green-label Warner Bros. original. It is a touch brighter, but overall it sounds like Workingman’s Dead is supposed to sound.
The new edition comes housed in an expanded gatefold sleeve with a great photo of the band inside. The disc arrives in its own protective, audiophile-grade, plastic-lined inner sleeve. My copy was perfectly quiet and well centered, so I have no issues on that front.
The cover is presented in a high-gloss laminated form akin to a Blue Note Tone Poet reissue. It looks really nice, and I totally get that this glossy presentation is part of the Rhino HiFi aesthetic, but the reality is that the original cover design of Workingman’s Dead was a far more rustic affair back in 1970.
Employing a classy-but-crude, brushed-brown, shopping-bag-like paper stock to evoke old-time America, that raw, sepia-toned look was part of a back-to-the-roots movement for artists trying to put the dayglow psychedelic era behind them. Think CSN&Y’s Déjà Vu, Neil Young’s Harvest, The Band’s eponymous second LP, and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy.
A minor detail for some fans, perhaps, but for others this change in the cover design is a significant factor, as it is part of the overall vinyl album experience.
All that said, for the price, the Rhino High Fidelity edition of Workingman’s Dead remains a solid offering. Tracking down a genuinely clean original 1970 vinyl pressing these days is not an especially easy task. It took me ages to find one that sounds good from start to finish. Even when they look perfect, many vintage copies of popular albums like this are often distorted on the inner tracks due to repeated play on poorly aligned automatic changers of the era.
And those rare audiophile Dead Heads who did take care of their albums likely still have them in hand. As a result, near-mint copies on the used market can often command prices north of $100. So, for less than $50, being able to pick up a sure-thing remaster that sounds like Workingman’s Dead is supposed to sound is a solid deal.
Limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies, the Rhino High Fidelity edition of Workingman’s Dead is available exclusively at Rhino.com for $39.98 (also from select Warner Music Group stores internationally).
Get your copy before it sells out, which these Rhino High Fidelity titles tend to do.
Our Ratings
★★★★★★★★★★ Album
★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality
★★★★★★★★★★ Pressing Quality
Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc. You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.
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