Pat Campbell’s 43-year-old tape recording was well-done.

So, he didn’t have to bake it.

“The tape was in really good condition,” Campbell said. “It needed no baking in the studio.”

The most notable ingredients of his newly released archival live bluegrass recording are the banjo-playing and vocals of Jerry Garcia (1942-1995), the Grateful Dead co-founder, philosopher and master guitar player.

Garcia accompanies the Good Old Boys, a Bay Area bluegrass band in which Campbell, a Stockton native and Stagg High School graduate, played stand-up bass.

“The Good Old Boys Live: Drink Up and Go Home,” a 24-track double-CD, documents a rarity — the Feb. 20-21, 1975, shows that Garcia played with Campbell and the Good Old Boys at Margarita’s Cantina in Santa Cruz.

Campbell had squirreled the tape away for posterity until 2015, when he finally decided to “really pursue” preparing it for release. The live album finally was issued Dec. 7 by RockBeat Records, which produces vintage rock, blues, jazz and folk albums (Count Basie, the Kingston Trio, Dick Dale, the Flamin’ Groovies, among many others).

It took Campbell three “I-can’t-do-it-this-year” delaying tactics from a Garcia representative before he obtained permission to release the album.

The recording possesses a Grateful Dead pedigree, having been taped on a Nogra two-track machine owned by Owsley “Bear” Stanley (1935-2011), a Dead cohort and well-known Bay Area hippie.

Campbell, given the situation’s rarity on those nights in 1975, decided to preserve the occasion by recording the shows on some ¼-inch Scotch tape he’d bought for that purpose.

Members of The Grateful Dead pioneered the method of “restoring” old recordings that were made on 2-inch tapes by “dehydrating” them in a 105-degree oven. Literally. Sometimes overnight. That became a common practice in the music industry.

Campbell was pleased to discover that his narrower tape had weathered the 43 years better than wider recording tapes typically do, retaining most of its original quality and avoiding the oven.

On the remastered recording, Frank Wakefield (mandolin), David Nelson (guitar) and Brantley Kearns (fiddle) — the Good Old Boys — join Campbell and Garcia. Everyone contributes vocals. (Robert Earl Davis, who had lived in Stockton, was one of the group’s banjo players.)

The live recording, produced by Campbell and Nelson, includes 21 traditional tunes — “Orange Blossom Special,” “T for Texas,” “Wildwood Flower” and “Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail” among them) — and three by Wakefield, an expert mandolin player (“New Camptown Races,” “Jesus Loves His Mandolin” and “Leave Well Enough Alone”).

It wasn’t the first time Campbell had played guitar with Garcia, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member and venerated guitar player.

Even during his years with the Grateful Dead, Garcia was a bluegrass music devotee, recording “Old & in the Way” — a 1973 album that’s now a rock-era standard — with David Grisman, Peter Rowan and others. It was released on the Dead’s Round Records.

Campbell, a founding member of Stockton’s Water Brothers, first met Garcia in 1974 at the Marin County Bluegrass Festival. Their musical paths crossed on other Bay Area occasions and Garcia played shows with the Good Old Boys between 1974 and 1978.

“He was just a band guy,” Campbell said of Garcia, a San Francisco native who has gained totemic status in rock history, “Just a guy. He was just Jerry Garcia, you know. A very nice man. He didn’t act like some big star or anything.

“He was a top-notch gentleman. He was very nice to me. He’d sit in with the band. ‘You need a banjo player?’ He was a very proficient musician in a whole lot of ways. He was just intuitive on all kinds of instruments. He wasn’t ego-ed out or anything.”

Campbell’s hoping Deadhead completists seek out the new recording just because of Garcia’s presence. The Grateful Dead was the first group to allow — even encourage — people to record its marathon jam-rock concerts.

The Good Old Boys released only one album (“Pistol Packin’ Mama” in 1975), with a membership that usually was in flux. The guys playing on the live CD were the group’s core.

On the recording, there’s “a very excited audience,” Campbell said of shows where Garcia’s presence — the Grateful Dead was on hiatus — came as a “surprise” to many. “The sound quality is exceptional. This captures the vibe of the band and the music.”

He credited the “intuitive skills” of engineer John Cutler for that quality.

The Dead had formed in 1965, when Campbell, now 70, Dean O’Connor and his brother, Tim, who all attended Stagg High, and Kent Campbell (no relation) from Lincoln High still were playing in teenage cover bands (Sass & the Unsane and Sweet Wine).

After Dean O’Connor, Kent Campbell (Army) and Pat Campbell (Navy) had returned from the Vietnam War, they wound up starting the Water Brothers in Moccasin Creek in 1971. After returning to Stockton, the Water Brothers became a steady part of the city’s live-music foundation, mixing original songs and cover tunes.

Though the band still re-gathers for occasional shows in different configurations, the Water Brothers last played in Stockton in 2009.

Campbell, who has lived in Novato since 1994, also plays electric bass, Dobro, lap slide and guitar and regularly joins in with a variety of bands in the Bay Area, such as New Riders of the Purple Sage.

“I’m always involved in different ways,” Campbell said of the Water Brothers. “It’s kept going, It’s never really stopped. It has an engine of its own.”

“Good Old Boys Live: Drink Up and Go Home” is available at amazon.com and rockbeatrecords.com.

Contact music and entertainment writer Tony Sauro at tonysauro48@gmail.com.