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Today in history

Fantasy Fair Festival

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Fantasy Fair Festival

June 10 – 11, 1967
Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre in Marin County, California
For the benefit of the Hunter’s Point Child Care Center
The Sons of Champlin, “Freedom” Recorded Live: 8/16/1968, San Francisco, CA

Whether the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969 was the greatest festival ever held is open to debate. Perhaps.

Whether it was the most important festival ever held?

Likely.

Woodstock not the first

It certainly wasn’t the first rock festival. 

Indoor multi-day rock events began in the 50s, but it wasn’t until the late 60s that the multi-day outdoor rock festival, featuring more than just a series short sets by musicians playing their big hits, happened.

Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival

Usually the Monterey International Pop Music Festival gets the nod for being the first of the later type, but the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival occurred a week before. The line-up for the KFRC-sponsored event looks pretty good, too.

Day 1 (Saturday 10 June)

  • The Charlatans
  • Mount Rushmore
  • Rodger Collins
  • Dionne Warwick
  • The Doors
  • The Lamp of Childhood
  • Canned Heat
  • Jim Kweskin Jug Band
  • Spanky and Our Gang
  • Blackburn & Snow
  • The Sparrow
  • Every Mother’s Son
  • Kaleidoscope
  • The Chocolate Watchband
  • The Mojo Men
  • The Merry-Go-Round
  Day 2 (Sunday 11 June)

  • Sons of Champlin
  • Jefferson Airplane
  • The Byrds w/ Hugh Masekela
  • P. F. Sloan
  • Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
  • The Seeds
  • The Grass Roots
  • The Loading Zone
  • Tim Buckley
  • Every Mother’s Son
  • Steve Miller Blues Band
  • Country Joe and the Fish
  • The 5th Dimension
  • The Lamp of Childhood
  • The Mystery Trend
  • Penny Nichols
  • The Merry-Go-Round
  • New Salvation Army Band

While I will admit ignorance of many of the names themselves and of those bands whose names I do recognize that I am not familiar with any of their particular songs of their

A few are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’ve underlined those who would play at Woodstock.

Fantasy Fair Festival

Little documentation

Unfortunately for the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival (and like so many other festivals), no worthwhile recordings of the music or the event apparently exist. There is a silent blurry hand-held camera film of the Doors performing (whose name does not appear on the poster), but little else.

There is an interesting connection between the Fantasy Fair and Woodstock. Mel Lawrence was Fantasy’s co-producer and he became Woodstock’s operation manager.

Fantasy Fair Festival
Mel Lawrence

Charitable festival

You will also have noticed that the event was for the benefit of the Hunter’s Point Child Care Center, thus preceding George Harrison and Ravi Shankar’s Concert for Bangladesh by four years.

The Hells Angels “volunteered” to be security and with some reluctance the organizers approved their “request.” Fortunately, their presence worked out OK and without any incident. You can see some of their bikes parked in the following picture:

Fantasy Fair Magic Mountain Music Festival
Photo by Henry Diltz

Here is a link to a 2014 Rolling Stone magazine article on the event. RS interviewed many of the attendees, performers, and organizers

Drew Willis

Drew Willis via Facebook:  I still have the flyer, map, that was given out. Lists all of the performers with a layout of the surrounding attractions up there on Tam.

Fantasy Fair Festival

Today in history, Vietnam

Richard B Fitzgibbon Jr

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Richard B Fitzgibbon Jr

June 21, 1920 — June 8, 1956

Richard B Fitzgibbon Jr

This person’s date of death was easier to determine than the date a war began.

Richard B Fitzgibbon Jr  fought in World War II in the Navy. After the war he joined the Air Force and was eventually promoted to Technical Sargent. He served in Vietnam as part of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), the advisors to the South Vietnamese army.

Fitzgibbon died on June 8, 1956 after S/Sgt Edward Clarke had shot him. On June 20, 1956, an Associated Press article in the New York Times reported the deaths:

Richard B Fitzgibbon Jr

 When the Vietnam Memorial was in its planning stages, one of the obvious decisions was “Who was the first American killed in Vietnam?” It would seem obvious that Fitzgibbon would at least have been one of the first if not the first.

Chronologically, he was as no other American military person had been killed in Vietnam since the US Government had begun sending MAAG personnel on September 3, 1950.

The first date used for the “beginning” of the war was January 1, 1961 because President Johnson had stated that Spec/4 James T. Davis, who died in a Viet Cong ambush on 22 December 1961, was “The first American to fall in defense of our freedom in Vietnam.”

For years, the Fitzgibbon family argued that Richard should be included. Finally the Department of Defense decided to use the start date November 1, 1955, thus qualifying Fitzgibbon.

Richard B Fitzgibbon Jr

Fitzgibbon’s son, Lance Cpl. Richard B Fitzgibbon III, joined the Marines because he wanted to connect to the place where his father had died.

Fitzgibbon III was killed in combat on Sept. 7, 1965, in Quang Tin, Vietnam, at the age of 21. The Fitzgibbon father-son deaths in Vietnam were one of three pairs: Leo Hester Sr. and his son Leo Hester Jr and Fred C. Jenkins and his son Bert M. Jenkins were the other two.

Richard B Fitzgibbon Jr

Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

Hendrix Plays Sgt Pepper

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Hendrix Plays Sgt Pepper

or

A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

June 4, 1967

Hendrix @ Olympia, London December 1967

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Geniuses plus

We all acknowledge the genius of  both the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, but we typically don’t associate the two together. Hendrix famously covered Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” but not Beatle songs.

Ironically the British Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, helped put the Yankee Jimi Hendrix on the American map.

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Long time coming

The talented Hendrix had already been an excellent guitarist backing up the Isley Brothers, Rose Lee Brooks, Little Richard, and Curtis Knight.  In 1966 in  Greenwich Village, he fronted Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, but it’s lack of success made it an easy decision for him to accept Chas Chandler’s offer to come to the UK. Chandler had just left the Animals and in the UK was able to connect Hendrix with various members of the British rock royalty such as Eric Clapton (nearly speechless after his initial experience hearing Hendrix),  Pete Townshend, and Paul McCartney.

Great Britain

Noel Redding came into Hendrix’s orbit because Redding was auditioning as a guitarist for the renovating Animals. Mitch Mitchell, a jazz drummer, fit the type of power trio Chandler and Hendrix were building.

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Beatles

The Beatles had completed recording Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on April 21, 1967 and the world received it on June 1. How Hendrix first heard the album, whether he purchased his own copy or Paul McCartney had given an copy to him, isn’t important. What is interesting was the Experience’s opening number at their concert only three days later: “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.” Hendrix may not have even known that McCartney and Harrison were in the audience.

Monterey Pop invitation

Even more important was what Hendrix did two weeks later at the last when he played the Monterey International Jazz and Pop Festival and changed American music forever.

Why was he playing that event? The festival’s organizers had invited the Beatles to play, but they declined as they still did not want to be on a live stage. They did do an illustration for the event:

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Jimi Hendrix Plays Sgt Pepper

Recommendation

Paul McCartney and the Beatles did something else. McCartney strongly recommended the “unknown” Jimi Hendrix Experience. And who would say no to a Beatle recommendation?

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr had first seen The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing on 11 January 1967 at the Bag O’Nails club in London.

So it was on June 4, 1967 that McCartney, George Harrison, Jane Asher and Pattie Boyd watched them headline a bill at the city’s Saville Theatre.

Hendrix plays Sgt Pepper

Beatles > Jimi

Thank you Jimi. Thank you Paul and the Beatles. We may have heard Jimi on this side of the pond without your help, but we certainly did because of your help.