Jerry Garcia was the lead guitarist and vocalist of the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead. Named after composer Jerome Kern, Garcia started on the banjo and piano, moved on to the guitar, and eventually became a master on many stringed instruments, despite the accidental amputation—by his brother Clifford Garcia ("Tiff")—of his right middle finger just below the first knuckle at age nine during a family camping trip, while Tiff was chopping wood. David Nelson (musician), and a poet named Robert Hunter teamed up to make music—later on, Hunter would become the main lyricist for the Grateful Dead. Around this time Garcia was playing and teaching acoustic guitar and banjo, and up to 1964 he sang and performed mainly bluegrass, old-time and folk music. Garcia joined a local bluegrass and folk band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, whose membership also included Bob Weir and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. In 1965, this group evolved into the Warlocks—which, with the addition of Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann, would in turn become the Grateful Dead later that year—and Garcia picked up the electric guitar. Garcia's style varied somewhat according to the song or instrumental he was contributing to. His playing had a number of so-called "signatures" and, in his work through the years with the Grateful Dead, one of these was lead lines making much use of rhythmic triplets (examples include the songs "Good Morning Little School Girl," "New Speedway Boogie," "Brokedown Palace," "Deal," "Loser," "Truckin'," "That's It For The Other One," "U.S. Blues," "Sugaree," and "Don't Ease Me In"). Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995, of a heart attack exacerbated by sleep apnea. Garcia, who struggled with tobacco and drug addictionand sleep apnea for much of his adult life, was staying at the Serenity Knolls drug rehabilitation center in Forest Knolls, California at the time. On his passing, he was honored by President Clinton as being "an American icon.