Friday, July 24, 2009 – John Dawson of the New Riders of the Purple Sage died on Tuesday in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he lived, at 64.
Dawson, known as Marmaduke, founded NRPS in 1969 with David Nelson and Jerry Garcia. Dawson knew Garcia from Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Band Champions, a Grateful Dead predecessor formed in 1964. Dawson wanted to form a band to play his country-based music, while Garcia sought to play pedal steel.
NRPS took its name from a 1912 Western novel by Zane Grey, "Riders of the Purple Sage." Members of the New Riders included Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, although they departed the band before its debut came out in 1971. Garcia left soon after the debut was out.
The band put out a dozen albums into the early 1980s. "The Adventures of Panama Red," from 1973, went gold, and the song Panama Red, a novelty song about marijuana, became perhaps their beast know song. With Garcia and Robert Hunter, Dawson also wrote the song Friend of the Devil, which was on the Grateful Dead's 1970 album "American Beauty."
The New Riders broke up in 1982, although Dawson continued touring with the band using different musicians for 15 years. He moved to Mexico in the late 1990s.
