Laughing Crow by Rick Griffin - 1973

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The original merch poster by Rick Griffin was produced and distributed by Griffin's California Graphic Exchange poster company. The laughing crow originally appeared on the Grateful Dead’s October 1973 album "Wake of The Flood" artwork. A rumored story behind the appearance of the crow iconography at the time the album came out was that the band said that if newly formed Grateful Dead Records was a flop, they would need to eat a lot of crow.

BUT, the image is actually not a crow at all, but a close relative called Rook. Crows, rooks and ravens are all part of the crow family, known as corvids. Corvids are very intelligent, creative, adaptable and able to exploit a wide range of food sources. (thanks to Bill Allen for pointing out that the “crow” was a rook)

Interestingly, Rook is a trick-taking game, usually played with a specialized deck of cards. Sometimes referred to as Christian cards or missionary cards, Rook playing cards were introduced by Parker Brothers in 1906 to provide an alternative to standard playing cards for those in the Puritan tradition, and those in Mennonite culture who considered the face cards in a regular deck inappropriate because of their association with gambling and fortune-telling. Is it a coincidence that artist Rick Griffin had become a born-again Christian a few years earlier?

Rick Griffin was one of San Francisco’s Big Five poster artists in the late 1960s and he later was a major figure in the underground comix movement and would design a number of album covers for the Grateful Dead. His Flying Eyeball poster is one of the most iconic of the entire psychedelic poster genre as was Aoxomoxoa, originally a concert poster and later used by the Dead for the cover of their third album. This poster was available for order from Rick's CGE catalog during the 1970s.