Quick Facts
Biography
Personal life
Jerilyn Lee Brandelius was born June 25, 1948 in La Jolla, California to homemaker Dorothy Anne Reid and Marine Edwin Carl Brandelius II. Jerilyn was the first of five children.
Early on her parents moved to Detroit, Michigan to help with her great-grandmother toward the end of her life. Edwin began working as a mechanic and racing for Blake's Autobody where "Ma Blake" gave him the racing nickname "Brandy Blake." The nickname "Brandy" stuck and he participated in Sprint car racing until flipping his car and puncturing a lung in 1956. Edwin Brandelius and wife Dorothy Reid separated in 1962, and Reid moved back to La Jolla. Edwin Brandelius traveled extensively in Mexico driving a dune buggy where he met his last wife, Arizona folk singer and author Katie Lee.
Jerilyn Lee Brandelius gave birth to a daughter in 1964, followed by a son in 1967. Brandelius was in an intimate relationship for 10 years (1971–1981) with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.
Career
In 1968 Brandelius began working for Translove Airways Productions at the Hippodrome Ballroom in San Diego which led to her meeting members of the Grateful Dead, Steve Miller Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Velvet Underground, Electric Flag, and more.
In 1969 Brandelius moved to San Francisco, met music promotor and cultural icon Chet Helms (founder of the Avalon Ballroom and father of San Francisco's 1967 Summer of Love). Brandelius worked for him At the Family Dog Ballroom as a personal assistant until it closed at which point Brandelius went to work for Pete Marino (close friend of Liberace) at WEA as a production assistant.
Brandelius' photographic archive includes rare images from the Grateful Dead's 1978 tour to Egypt.
In 1989, Brandelius published the book The Grateful Dead Family Album. Cover art by Stanley Mouse. The book was originally signed to a small publisher but re-signed and pushed into full production with Warner Bros. following Jerry Garcia's hospitalization and near fatal diabetic coma in 1986.
Publication
The Grateful Dead Family Album, 1989
Television and Documentary
Brandelius appears in the 1995 documentary "Tie-Died" which offers a look at the band and the fans known as "Deadheads.
Brandelius appears in The American Experience, a television documentary series aired on PBS, in a 2007 episode titled "Summer of Love"