Milwaukee native Wales played with Grateful Dead
Howard Wales isn’t a widely known name among Deadheads, but his contributions to the Grateful Dead live on.
The Milwaukee native’s saloon piano waltzes through the Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” from 1970’s “American Beauty” album. His organ can be heard on the album’s “Candyman” and grooving boogie rock finale “Truckin.’”
When Rolling Stone revamped its 500 greatest albums of all time list in September, “American Beauty” once again made the cut, landing at No. 215.
“The Dead never sounded better in the studio,” Rolling Stone wrote about “American Beauty” in September, specifically citing “Palace” and “Truckin’” as some of the band’s most beloved songs.
Wales would never record with the Dead again, but he shared top billing with the Dead’s Garcia on two instrumental jazz-rock fusion albums they made together in the ‘70s: 1971’s “Hooteroll?,” and “Side Trips Volume One,” eventually released in 1998.
“For some reason, Howard enjoyed playing with me, but I was just keeping up,” Garcia once said, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “Howard did more for my ears than anybody I ever played with.”
Wales died Dec. 7 in Redding, Calif., after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in late November at his home in Weaverville, according to the Chronicle. He was 77.
Wales was born in Milwaukee on Feb. 8, 1943, where he started taking classical music lessons when he was 6. Following a brief stint in the Navy, he relocated to Chicago to try to become a full-time keyboard player, then by 1968, was living in San Francisco where he fatefully met Garcia at the club the Matrix.
Following his work with Garcia, Wales largely focused on making and self-releasing his own albums, eight in all from 1976 to 2018, which he’d give away. His other credits include playing in the Milwaukee-born blues band A.B. Skhy, which featured Wales on its selftitled debut album in 1969. The group was short-lived, but its accomplishments included gigs at the famed Fillmore in San Francisco and sharing the stage with Jimi Hendrix at the Whiskey A Go Go in Los Angeles.
Wales was also a backing musician for the Four Tops, Lonnie Mack, Ronnie Hawkins, the Coasters, and Little Anthony and the Imperials, the Chronicle reported. His Fox Point-based nephew Scott Wales wrote in a tribute on Facebook that his uncle also shared the stage with James Brown, Richie Havens, Taj Mahal and Pete Escovedo.
“Howard was truly a pioneer and his first love is and always will be the music he was able to create and share with the world,” Scott Wales wrote.
Wales is also survived by another nephew, two nieces and his sister-inlaw. According to the Chronicle, a memorial will be planned for after the pandemic.