It’s become a bit of a cliché́ among music fans who don’t consider themselves Deadheads to dismiss the band’s studio albums with the exception of 1970’s doubleheader, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.

That’s because the band’s songwriting was at its sharpest in this period, and “Truckin,” the final song on American Beauty, is a prime example of this. As with most Dead songs, Robert Hunter handled the lyrics while, in this case, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh combined to write the music.

The communal, shared-group-experience feel of the song is brought home by the participation of all four of the group's chief songwriters, since, in Phil Lesh's words, "we took our experiences on the road and made it poetry," lyrically and musically.

The verses about being “busted down on Bourbon Street” refer to the Dead’s New Orleans drug bust on January 31, 1970, when the city narcotics squad raided the Dead’s hotel after a show and arrested most of the band. The Dead didn’t come back to New Orleans for ten years.

In a 1986 Relix interview, Hunter recalled, “I wrote that song in several different cities, starting off in San Francisco. I finished it up in Florida. I was on the road with the band and writing different verses in different cities, and when we were in Florida I went outside, and everybody was sitting around the swimming pool. I had finally finished the lyrics, so I brought them down and the boys picked up their guitars, sat down, and wrote some rock ‘n’ roll changes behind it.”

The single reached number 64 on December 25, 1971 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart and stayed on the chart for eight weeks. "Truckin'" was the highest-charting pop single the group would have until the surprise top-ten performance of "Touch of Grey" sixteen years later.

Various Sources