This little charm pendant measures 1/4″ across and almost 1/2″ long (exclusive of the bail) and features a symmetrical combination of letters of “CR&S” in sterling silver.

Cold Rain and Snow began as an old American Appalachian folk tune, sometimes called simply “Rain and Snow”.  It’s  first attribution is a 1916 single verse about a troublesome marriage from a Mrs. Tom Rice of Big Laurel, North Carolina, “Lord, I married me a wife / She gave me trouble all my life / Made me work in the cold rain and snow.”

The song traveled through Appalachian oral tradition for decades. In 1965, balladeer Dillard Chandler recorded a more violent version that ends with the husband shooting his wife tied  to an actual killing in Madison County, North Carolina.

Young Jerry Garcia was influenced by old-time Appalachian music. The Dead adapted Chandler’s version into “Cold Rain and Snow” and it became one of the first songs to enter their repertoire, played live from their earliest 1966 shows onward.

Cold Rain and Snow appeared on the band’s self-titled 1967 debut album and remained a fixture of their live shows for essentially their entire career. It was performed most years from 1966 through 1995 — often used as a show opener. Its first official live release came years later, on the 1976 album Steal Your Face.

Like much of the Dead’s early repertoire, “Cold Rain and Snow” shows how deeply rooted the band was in American folk and Appalachian tradition — taking a century-old ballad about heartbreak and hard weather and turning it into one of the most durable songs in their thirty-year songbook.