Andrei Petrescu

Andrei Petrescu runs a record shop on Strada Lipscani in the old center of Bucharest. He heard his first Grateful Dead tape in 1978 — a third-generation dub of a 1971 Fillmore East show recorded by Betty Cantor-Jackson. The warmth of the recording, the way you could hear fingers on strings and breath on microphones, became an obsession. Over the next three decades, he traded across Eastern Europe — with collectors in Prague, Warsaw, Belgrade, and East Berlin — to assemble what he believes is the most complete set of early Betty Board recordings outside the United States. His tapes cover Betty's earliest work, from 1969 through 1973, when the Dead were at their most exploratory and the recordings were made on quarter-inch tape that captured every overtone.

Betty Cantor started working at the Fillmore West in 1967 and became the Dead's soundboard engineer by 1969. She recorded hundreds of shows on quarter-inch and half-inch tape — warm, immediate sound where the room and the audience are as present as the band. Her tapes disappeared into a storage locker in the early 1980s, resurfaced at auction in 1986, and became the gold standard for live Dead recordings. This collection spans the years when the band was inventing its language — the first Dark Stars, the early Truckin' jams, the birth of Playing in the Band as a vehicle for extended improvisation, the addition of Keith and Donna Godchaux. Pigpen is still on stage for the early shows. The music is raw and searching in a way it would never be again.

Every J-card in the collection has been photographed. They are available in the app.

Listen to Young Bettys in the XLIIs app.