Rhino High Fidelity Announces "Workingman's Dead" on Vinyl and R2R Tape
ever notice the fake smokestacks?
(April 24, 2026 - Los Angeles, CA) On June 14, 1970, the Grateful Dead released Workingman’s Dead, an album that was unlike anything they’d ever done, one that showed the world a new side of the Dead. It was clearly the same band as before, but now with a distinctly different sound and approach to the music, pivoting from psychedelic improvisation to folk-rock storytelling for the “everyman,” as the album’s title suggests. Today, Rhino High Fidelitypresents new audiophile editions of the album on reel-to-reel and vinyl, plus Mickey Hart’s 2023 Atmos mix, available on Blu-ray for the first time.
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. The album is limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and available exclusively at Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores internationally.
In the liner notes, Gans says the songs reflect a more direct, stripped-down approach, calling them “concise, countrified, and catchy as hell.” As bassist Phil Lesh recalled in his autobiography Searching for the Sound, the shift moved the Dead “from the mind-munching frenzy of a seven-headed fire-breathing dragon to the warmth and serenity of a choir of chanting cherubim.”
Workingman’s Dead (Rhino High Fidelity R2R) was duplicated in real time from a 1:1 copy of the original flat analog master tape. The result is a master-quality listening experience that captures the full dynamics of the recording. The 15 i.p.s. half-track 1/4” tape is produced to the IEC equalization standard on premium RTM LPR90 tape stock and housed on a 10.5” metal reel. The Reel-to-Reel edition is limited to 300 copies worldwide and available exclusively at Rhino.com.
In 2023, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart created a new Dolby Atmos mix of Workingman’s Dead, revealing remarkable instrument separation and nuance in the album’s harmonies and arrangements. Hart’s immersive mix expands the sonic depth of the original recording while preserving its essential character. Hart’s new Atmos mix will be available on Dead.net and Rhino.com. Order now.
While the Dead’s first three studio albums appealed to many, the group didn’t yet have the mass breakthrough that would make the entire world take notice of this band of misfits from the Bay Area. Workingman’s Dead changed all that. With eight perfect songs – like “Casey Jones” and “High Time” – the album solidified the Jerry Garcia-Robert Hunter songwriting tandem as one of the best and most important songwriting collaborations in music history. The album reached the Top Thirty and included the single “Uncle John’s Band,” which climbed to #69 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart recorded the album in about 10 days at Pacific High Recording Studio in San Francisco with Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor – the band’s live-sound engineers – as producers.
Rhino High Fidelity continues to tap into Warner Music’s vast catalog, introducing reissues of seminal albums across genres—from rock and pop to jazz, soul, and beyond. Each title pairs uncompromising audio with archival-grade packaging, honoring the album’s original intent in both sound and design.
