RIP Beard of the Day





Jerry Garcia

(August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995)

Band leader, guitarist, and songwriter. Born on August 1, 1942, in San Francisco, California. Garcia was the son of a Spanish immigrant who grew up to become a bandleader popular in the San Francisco area. He studied piano as a boy but turned to the guitar in his teens. He dropped out of school at age 17 and served nine months in the U.S. Army before being discharged for poor conduct.

He began to play folk and blues guitar, alone or with pickup groups, in clubs in the San Francisco area while working as a salesman and music teacher in a music store.



In 1965 he formed a band, the Warlocks, but on discovering another group with that name, it was changed to the Grateful Dead (1966). Closely involved with the San Francisco hippie movement and the use of drugs such as LSD, the band first played "psychedelic" rock but moved on to a more diverse repertory of rock styles in the 1970s. From around 1974 the band's members began to go their own ways, and Garcia made solo appearances and albums.

In the 1980s he became heavily addicted to drugs, and after being arrested in 1985 was sent to a treatment center. After emerging from a diabetic coma, he decided to turn his life around, and the band made a comeback (1987) with a hit single, "Touch of Gray" and an album, In the Dark.



Garcia and the rest of the band enjoyed this new wave of success and continued to tour, drawing legions of fans - new and old - to their shows. The Grateful Dead had built quite a following over the years and their loyal fans, sometimes called "Deadheads," were known to travel around the country to catch their concerts.



Unfortunately, the show could not go on forever. Despite Garcia's efforts to improve his lifestyle, all of the years of hard living caught up with him. He died of heart failure on August 9, 1995, in Forest Knolls, California.

Source: Biography.com

Flight of the Beard

American Idol Beard of the Day

GAB#39 - Tim Jones

GAB #38 - Andy Perri

GAB #37 - Justin Benoliel

Happy Birthday Beard of the Day

Dr. Seuss

U.S. writer and illustrator.He studied at Dartmouth College and did doctoral work at the University of Oxford. He began working in 1927 as a freelance cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. Under his pseudonym, Geisel began creating immensely popular children's books peopled with outlandish invented creatures and brimming with nonsense words. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937), his first Dr. Seuss book, was followed by such huge successes as Horton Hatches the Egg (1940), The Cat in the Hat (1957), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), Yertle the Turtle (1958), and Green Eggs and Ham (1960). Such perennial best-sellers, and his posthumous Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1993), made him the best-selling children's author in the world.



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RIP Beard of the Day

Toy Caldwell - Marshall Tucker Band

Toy Caldwell was best known as the lead guitarist and main songwriter in the Marshall Tucker Band. A unique personality as well as a formidable musician, he was a peer of both Dickey Betts and Charlie Daniels, and his best work crossed effortlessly between country, blues, and rock & roll. A few years after the breakup of the Marshall Tucker Band in the late '80s, he re-emerged as leader of the Toy Caldwell Band, which played small-scale shows of the kind that the Marshall Tucker Band couldn't do. He also recorded one solo album before his death in early 1993. Although most of his fame inevitably rests with the Marshall Tucker Band, Caldwell left behind a small but glorious body of solo material. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi



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Snow beard of the day

Nick Davis

Happy Birthday Beard of the Day

Peter Fonda

Actor, director, writer, producer. Born Peter Seymour Fonda on February 23, 1939 in New York City. Son of actor Henry Fonda and Frances Seymour Brokaw, who committed suicide when Peter was 11. His only sister, Jane, is also an actress. A brilliant student, Fonda left New York for Nebraska at age seventeen, where he entered the University of Omaha as a sophomore without even finishing high school.

Though he spent much of his childhood trying to live up to his famous father's expectations, it wasn't until college that Fonda broke into acting. After appearing in the Omaha Playhouse's production of Harvey, he moved back to New York, debuting on Broadway at the age of 21 in a production of Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole. In 1963, he made his first Hollywood film, Tammy and the Doctor starring Sandra Dee.

With all-American good looks and a reputation that preceded him through his father, Fonda continued to play romantic leads during much of the early to mid-1960s. But in 1966, Fonda turned on his golden boy persona as he began to take on roles that were increasingly anti-establishment, earning him notoriety as both a delinquent and rebel. Such films included Roger Corman's The Wild Angels in 1966 where he played a motorcycle gang leader and 1967's The Trip.

In 1969, Fonda pushed the envelope even further when he produced and starred in Easy Rider as Wyatt "Captain America" Earp. Co-starring Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson as freewheeling, pot-smoking adventurers, the film became one of the era's cultural landmarks. But it also proved to be an unexpected commercial success, grossing over $19 million at the box office and earning Fonda an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.



Casting Fonda as a cult hero, the success of Easy Rider proved hard to live up to. In 1971, he teamed up again with Hopper for The Last Movie to lukewarm critical reviews. Increasingly, Fonda became better known for his activities off-screen than on. John Lennon's She Said She Said was reportedly inspired by a bad acid trip the musician had taken, during which Fonda repeatedly told him, "I know what it's like to be dead, man." In 1969, Fonda left Los Angeles to live in Montana.
His screen career continued its downward spiral during the 1980s, and was eventually eclipsed by that of his daughter, Bridget. But in the mid-1990s, he staged a comeback, starting with a cameo appearance in Bodies, Rest & Motion. In 1994, he had a starring role in Michael Almereyda's Nadja and created a self-parody in John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. in 1996.

Fonda's true comeback came in 1997 with Ulee's Gold, Victor Nunez's 1997 exploration of loss and family ties. He won raves for his portrayal of the title character, as well as a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Always one to play by his own rules, Fonda rejected mainstream Hollywood fare to next star in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey in 1999. He also appeared in The Passion of Ayn Rand as the author's long-suffering husband for which he received a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor.

Fonda was married to Susan Brewer from 1961-1972. They have two children, Bridget and Justin. He married Portia Rebecca Crockett (aka Becky McGuane) in 1975.

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