The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened on this day 54 years ago at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in upstate New York
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened on this day 54 years ago at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in upstate New York
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, "An Aquarian Exposition," opened on this day in 1969 at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in upstate New York — 54 years ago.
Promoters expected the music festival, modeled after the famous Monterey Pop Festival, to attract up to 200,000 for the weekend. Instead, nearly a half a million people converged on the concert site. The promoters soon realized that they could not control access to the site and opened it up to all comers free of charge.
Because of the unexpected size of the audience, volunteers were needed to help alleviate many of the logistics problems, while helicopters were used to fly in food, doctors and medical supplies, as well as many of the musical acts that performed during the three-day festival.
Despite rain and mud, the audience enjoyed non-stop performances by singers like Richie Havens, Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker and Joan Baez, as well as the bands Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Although different types of people attended the festival, many were members of the counterculture who rejected materialism and authority, experimented with drugs and actively protested against the Vietnam War. Much of the music had a decided anti-war flavor.
Representative of this genre was the "Fixin' to Die Rag" by Country Joe and the Fish. This song and its chorus ("And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for... Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam...And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates... There ain't no time to wonder why... Whoopie, we're all gonna die!") became an anti-war classic.
Jimi Hendrix closed the concert with a freeform solo guitar performance of "The Star Spangled Banner." Woodstock became a symbol of the 1960s American counterculture and a milestone in the history of rock music.
Thanks History.com
Here’s Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock, 1969.
On the Road to Woodstock, 1969
Photo by Baron Wolman
Oscar Peterson was born 98 years ago today.
A Canadian jazz pianist and composer, Peterson was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington. He was known as "O.P." by his friends.
Peterson released over 200 recordings. He was one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, having played thousands of live concerts to audiences worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years.
Born to immigrants from the West Indies, Peterson’s father worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway. He grew up in the neighborhood of Little Burgundy in Montreal, Quebec. It was in this predominantly black neighborhood that Peterson found himself surrounded by the jazz culture that flourished in the early 20th century.
At the age of five, Peterson began honing his skills with the trumpet and piano. However, a bout of tuberculosis when he was seven stopped him playing trumpet again, and so he directed all his attention to the piano.
His father, Daniel Peterson, an amateur trumpeter and pianist, was one of his first music teachers, and his sister, Daisy, taught Oscar classical piano. Young Oscar was persistent at practicing scales and classical etudes daily, and thanks to such arduous practice he developed his astonishing virtuosity.
As a child, Peterson also studied with Hungarian-born pianist, Paul de Marky, a student of István Thomán, who was himself a pupil of Franz Liszt. So young Peterson’s training was predominantly based on classical piano.
Meanwhile, he was captivated by traditional jazz and learned several ragtime pieces and especially the boogie-woogie. At that time, Peterson was called "the Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie." At the age of nine, he played piano with control that impressed professional musicians. For many years his piano studies included four to six hours of practice daily. Only in his later years did he decrease his daily practice to just one or two hours.
In 1940, at fourteen years of age, Peterson won the national music competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After that victory, he dropped out of school and became a professional pianist working for a weekly radio show, and playing at hotels and music halls.
Some of the artists who influenced Peterson's music during the earlier type of years were Teddy Wilson, Nat "King" Cole, James P. Johnson and Art Tatum, to whom many have tried to compare Peterson in later years.
Peterson wrote pieces for piano, trio, quartet and big band. He also wrote several songs and made recordings as a singer. Probably his best-known compositions are "Canadiana Suite" and "Hymn to Freedom," the latter composed in the 1960s and inspired by the U.S. civil rights movement.
On December 23, 2007, Peterson died of kidney failure at his home in Mississauga, Ontario.
Here, Peterson, featuring Joe Pass, performs “Cakewalk” in Tokyo, 1987.
Jimmy Webb is 77 years old today.
A songwriter, composer and singer, Webb wrote numerous platinum-selling classics, including "Up, Up and Away,” "By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” "Wichita Lineman,” "Galveston,” The Worst That Could Happen,” "All I Know” and "MacArthur Park.”
Born in Elk City, Oklahoma, Webb’s father, Robert Lee Webb, was a Baptist minister and former member of the United States Marine Corps who presided over rural churches in southwestern Oklahoma and West Texas.
With his mother's encouragement, Webb learned piano and organ, and by the age of 12 was playing in the choir of his father's churches, accompanied by his father on guitar and his mother on accordion. Webb grew up in a conservative religious home where his father restricted radio listening to country music and white gospel music.
During the late 1950s, Webb began applying his creativity to the music he was playing at his father's church, frequently improvising and rearranging the hymns. He began to write religious songs at this time, but his musical direction was soon influenced by the new music being played on the radio, including the music of Elvis Presley.
In 1961, at the age of 14, he bought his first record, "Turn Around, Look at Me" by Glen Campbell. Webb was drawn to the singer's distinctive voice.
In 1964, Webb and his family moved to Southern California, where he attended San Bernardino Valley College studying music. Following the death of his mother in 1965, his father made plans to return to Oklahoma.
Webb decided to stay in California to continue his music studies and to pursue a career as a songwriter in Los Angeles. Webb would later recall his father warning him about his musical aspirations, saying, "This songwriting thing is going to break your heart."
Seeing that his son was determined, however, he gave him $40, saying, "It's not much, but it's all I have."
After transcribing other people's music for a small music publisher in Hollywood, Webb was signed to a songwriting contract with Jobete Music, the publishing arm of Motown Records. The first commercial recording of a Jimmy Webb song was "My Christmas Tree" by The Supremes, which appeared on their 1965 Merry Christmas album.
Since, his songs have been performed by many popular contemporary singers, including Glen Campbell, The 5th Dimension, Thelma Houston, The Supremes, Richard Harris, Johnny Maestro, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Isaac Hayes, Art Garfunkel, Amy Grant, America, Linda Ronstadt, R.E.M., Michael Feinstein, Donna Summer and Carly Simon.
According to BMI, his song "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" was the third most performed song in the fifty years between 1940 to 1990.
Webb is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration.
Here, Webb performs “MacArthur Park.”
Edna Ferber, then 70, spins lassos on set of “Giant” in Marfa, Texas in 1955 with James Dean, with whom she became friends (he was reportedly working on a sculpture of Ferber at the time of his death).
In a rare show of authorial force, she became a one-third production partner and received a cut of the movie’s profits. She was later said to have been underwhelmed by director George Stevens’ big-screen adaptation.
Edna Ferber, novelist, short story writer and playwright, was born 138 years ago today.
Ferber’s novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).
Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper and his wife, Ferber graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel.
She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons. Through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Several theatrical and film productions have been based on her works, including Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, Cimarron (which won an Oscar) and the 1960 remake. Three of these works – Show Boat, Saratoga Trunk and Giant – have been developed into musicals.
When composer Jerome Kern proposed turning the very serious, Show Boat, into a musical, Ferber was shocked, thinking it would be transformed into a typical light entertainment of the 1920s. It was not until Kern explained that he and Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to create a different type of musical that Ferber granted him the rights.
Saratoga, based on Saratoga Trunk, was written at a much later date, after serious plots had become acceptable in stage musicals.
In 1925, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her book, So Big, which was made into a silent film starring Colleen Moore that same year. An early talkie movie remake followed, in 1932, starring Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent, with Bette Davis in a supporting role. A 1953 remake of So Big starred Jane Wyman in the Stanwyck role, and is the version most often seen today.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. She, and another member of the Round Table, Alexander Woollcott, were long-time enemies, their antipathy lasting until Woollcott's death in 1943.
Howard Teichmann wrote in his biography of Woollcott that their feud was due to a misunderstanding. According to Teichmann, Ferber once described Woollcott as "a New Jersey Nero who has mistaken his pinafore for a toga."
Ferber collaborated with Round Table member, George S. Kaufman, on several plays presented on Broadway, most notably The Royal Family (1927), Dinner At Eight (1932) and Stage Door (1936).
Ferber never married, had no children and is not known to have engaged in a romance or sexual relationship. In her early novel, Dawn O'Hara, the title character's aunt is said to have remarked, "Being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning – a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling."
Ferber died at her home in New York City, of stomach cancer, at the age of 82.
She was portrayed by the actress, Lili Taylor, in the 1994 film, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.
Bill Pinkney, at home in 1994
Photo by Frank Beacham
Bill Pinkney, founding member of the Drifters, was born 98 years ago today.
Pinkney was chiefly responsible for The Drifter’s early sounds, having a strong influence on soul, rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
Born in Dalzell, South Carolina, Pinkney grew up singing his favorite music, gospel, in his church choir. Before his career with the Drifters, Pinkney was a pitcher for the Negro Baseball League's New York Blue Sox sandlot team.
He also served in the Army in World War II. He earned a Presidential Citation with five Bronze Stars (for battles including Normandy and Bastogne under General Patton). Returning from the war, Pinkney began to sing again in various gospel choirs. It was there that he would meet and join with the men who became the original members of the Drifters.
Bill Pinkney, brothers Andrew and Gerhart Thrasher, and bass singer, Willie Ferbie, were approached by Clyde McPhatter, who had just quit as the lead tenor of the popular R&B group, Billy Ward & the Dominoes. McPhatter proposed they create a new group to record for Atlantic Records.
On their first record, "Money Honey," Pinkney, a natural bass-baritone with a multi-octave range, actually sang first tenor. After Ferbie left, Pinkney switched to the bass part, in which he was heard on "Honey Love," "White Christmas," "Adorable," "Ruby Baby" and many other early Drifters recordings.
In 1954, the Drifters recorded their version of "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin. That version was featured in the 1990 movie, Home Alone. Pinkney can also be heard singing lead on the 1956 recording, "I Should Have Done Right," and in 1955’s, "Steamboat.”
Pinkney worked with the group from 1956 through 1958, when the manager fired all of the individual Drifters, including Pinkney, and hired an entire new group of singers. The were from the Crowns (formally known as the Five Crowns), who were signed under the Drifters' name.
After Pinkney's permanent departure, The Drifters recorded hit classics such as "Under the Boardwalk," "Save the Last Dance for Me," "There Goes My Baby," "Up on the Roof" and "On Broadway," with the new line-up.
Pinkney quickly created a group called the Original Drifters, made up of key members of the first (1953–58) group. Pinkney's Original Drifters was consistently popular throughout the southeastern United States. For decades their music was a staple of the "beach music" scene.
Leaders such as President Bill Clinton and President Nelson Mandela of South Africa recognized Pinkney's contributions. He received many musical awards, including the Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Award, and was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, United Group Harmony Association and the Beach Music Hall of Fame.
Pinkney died the evening of July 4, 2007 in Florida from a heart attack while staying at the Daytona Beach Hilton. He was to perform with The Drifters at the annual Daytona Beach 4th of July celebration, Red, White & Boom.
Here, Pinkney was interviewed by the Rock Hall of Fame on Buddy Holly and segregation.
Nichols Roeg directs David Bowie in “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” 1976
Nicolas Roeg was born 95 years ago today.
An English film director and cinematographer, Roeg started his film career by contributing to the visual look of Lawrence of Arabia and Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death. He co-directed and photographed Performance in 1970.
He would later direct such landmark films as Walkabout, Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Roeg's films were known for having scenes and images from the plot presented in a disarranged fashion, out of chronological and causal order, requiring the viewer to do the work of mentally rearranging them to comprehend the storyline. His films seem to shatter reality into a thousand pieces and are unpredictable, fascinating, cryptic and liable to leave viewers wondering what just happened.
Roeg displayed a freedom from conventional film narration and his work often consists of a kaleidoscopic multiplication of images. A characteristic of Roeg's films was they are edited in disjunctive and semi-coherent ways that make full sense only in the film's final moments, when a crucial piece of information surfaces.
These techniques, and Roeg's foreboding sense of atmosphere, influenced later filmmakers such as Steven Soderbergh, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, François Ozon and Danny Boyle.
Roeg's influence on cinema is not limited to deconstructing narrative. The "Memo From Turner" sequence in Performance predates many techniques later used in music videos. And the "quadrant" sequence in Bad Timing, in which the thoughts of Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel are heard before words are spoken, set to Keith Jarrett's piano music from the Köln Concert, again stretched the boundaries of what could be done with film.
Roeg died in London on Nov. 23, 2018 of natural causes at the age of 90.
Fire Island Sunset, August 13, 2017
Photo by James Gavin