Dead hired Lowell George to produce Shakedown Street, turned out to be good chemistry. Lowell contributed a lot, did most of it but was too sick to finish so John Kahn took over.

Bill Kreutzmann: "Lowell was really like a member of the band more. If we were working on a song and he didn't feel it was going right, he'd just grab a guitar and come into the studio and show us how he felt it. That was one of the ways he'd communicate, and it worked great. I had a tremendous amount of respect for him. "

Mickey Hart: "Lowell George was mad. We wrote a great song one night but never recorded it. It was called “My Drum Was a Woman.” We snorted miles and miles of coke and wrote this song about all my instruments and what I thought about them.”

Lowell and Dead doing "I Need a Miracle" way better than the track on Shakedown https://songmango.com/lowell-george-and-the-grateful-dead-rip-i-need-a-miracle-in-78/

from songmango link "As the story goes, Jerry Garcia loved Lowell’s unassuming musical style and his completely unscripted approach to performing. Apparently, George reminded Garcia of Pigpen...."