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Music et al

Eric Andersen Blue River

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Eric Andersen Blue River

Eric Andersen Blue River

Though Columbia released Eric Andersen’s Blue River in February 1972, it is a January album for my wife and me. In our home, 1972 was both a vinyl and 8-track house. The vinyl remains, the 8-tracks disintegrated long ago.

Late January 1973 was the due date for our first child. On our pre-dawn drive to the hospital we slipped “Blue River” into our car’s portable 8-track player.  As we turned onto the highway the album’s third track came on: Wind and Sand.

All alone a father sits
thinking of his son
Far away a mother sleeps

Her baby yet unborn

Rain and wood and fire and stone
magic all across the land
Seasons come and time will go
right through your hand,
like wind and sand

In awhile a child will grow
a bird will learn to fly
Pretty soon a child will know
what it is to make a life

Long before the river goes
far from where it was
Long before it meets the sea
a child will know of love
Eric Andersen Blue River

A Child Will Know of Love

While not literally describing our life at that moment, it was close enough to always remember. Later that day our son was born.

Blue River , Andersen’s  8th album, remains his best known and most successful. Unfortunately, Columbia lost the master tapes of his next album, so it was three years before his “next” album and by then Blue River’s momentum was gone.

And it was not until 1990 that the tapes to that 1972 follow-up were found.  Columbia released Stages: The Lost Tapes album was released in April 1991.

Eric Andersen Blue River

Greenwich Village

Andersen was part of the original Greenwich Village folk scene in the early sixties and eventually moved to Woodstock, NY in the mid-70s. I’ve often wondered,  but never found an answer, why Woodstock Ventures did not include him on their invitation list.

Bob Dylan (as often the case) had led the way to recording in Nashville by previously recording his John Wesley Harding (1967) and Nashville Skyline  (1969) there.

Among the many musicians who were on Andersen’s  album were Joni Mitchell (sang on the title track), David Bromberg, David Briggs, Norman Putman, Eddie Hinton, Kenneth Buttrey, and the Jordanaires.

Eric Andersen Blue River

Tracks

The track listing for the original album (2 additional tracks were later added for a CD release) is as follows. Anderson wrote all songs except where indicated:

  1. “Is It Really Love at All”
  2. “Pearl’s Goodtime Blues”
  3. “Wind and Sand”
  4. “Faithful”
  5. “Blue River”
  1. “Florentine”
  2. “Sheila”
  3. “More Often Than Not” (D Wiffen)
  4. “Round the Bend”

While Andersen was not part of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, he was part of the famous movable festival known as the Festival Express in 1970.

Surprise Phone Call

In 2004 our daughter was  waitressing at the Stone House Music Club, a now defunct venue in Englewood, NJ. Eric Andersen was playing. My wife and I were unable to attend, but we (likely again) told her the Wind and Sand story.

That particular night, our daughter was assigned to the green room and so met Eric. She told Eric the story.

My wife and I were already asleep and the phone rang. My wife answered and someone at the other end asked “Joyce?” It was Eric to say hello.  A red letter day…or night.

Nowadays

Eric Andersen continues to regularly tour in the US and Europe and release albums. ( Eric Andersen site)

Here is a his January 22, 2020 performance at the Paste Studio in New York City. Steve Addabbo (guitar), Eric Lee (mandolin, fiddle), and Jagoda (percussion)

Woodstock Under the Stars

In June 2020, Andersen release a 3-CD collection. Woodstock Under The Stars features songs from concerts, studio sessions and webcasts recorded 1991 – 2011.  The 36 tracks include 35 songs plus an introduction track.

Special Guests include: John Sebastian, Eric Bazilian, Garth Hudson, Happy Traum, Artie Traum, Inge Andersen, Joe Flood, Rick Danko, Jonas Fjeld, Gary Burke and Robert Aaron.

There are two live versions of six of the same titles recorded at different venues with different musicians accompanying Eric. The songs on this album feature Eric’s early works as well as more recent ones.

Like all things, the collection is available through Amazon.

Eric Andersen Blue River
Anniversary, Music et al

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Happy Anniversary!
January 23, 1986
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
1986 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees

By 1986, rock and roll was in its fourth decade and when you’re 40 some things that you would have laugh at in your teens, suddenly seem appropriate. A Hall of Fame seemed appropriate.

Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records’ chairman, founded The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . He had announced the Hall’s creation in August 1985 ( NYT article).

To be eligible, the performers nominated could alive or dead, but they had to have been actively involved in music for at least 25 years.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And so it was on this date that the first induction was held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

First Class

smaller r and r h of f

  • John Hammond
  • Alan Freed
  • Sam Phillips
  • Elvis Presley
  • Buddy Holly
  • Chuck Berry
  • Fats Domino
  • James Brown
  • Jerry Lee Lewis
  • Jimmie Rogers
  • Jimmy Yancy
  • Ray Charles
  • Sam Cooke
  • The Everly Brothers
  • Robert Johnson
  • Little Richard

The New York Times article described the event this way: By the end of the evening, the audience of 1,000 music-industry figures was rocking and rolling – shouting, cheering, standing on tables and chairs – while several inductees, and a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of rock stars who had helped present the awards – took over the stage for a roaring but surprisingly cohesive jam session. (NYT article)

It was quite a party with lots of musical collaborations such as the following Reelin’ and Rockin’

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Not all Musicians

It is important to note that three of the inductees were not musicians as such: John Hammond was an American record producer, civil rights activist and music critic from the 1930s to the early 1980s. In his service as a talent scout, Hammond became one of the most influential figures in 20th century popular music], DJ Alan Freed, and Sam Phillips (blog piece about Memphis Recording Service)

Happy anniversary to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Post Script

The foibles of men in power, particularly white men in power, can catch up with them and that’s what happened in September 2023 when in a New York Times interview Jann Wenner explained why there were so few women and Blacks were included in his book about important rock and roll musicians.

His response was unacceptable.

Regarding women; “Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,” and remarked that Joni Mitchell “was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.”

Regarding Blacks: “Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?” he said. “I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.” [NYT article]

Not good.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

Birthdays, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Richard Pierce Richie Havens

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Richard Pierce Richie Havens

Remembering and appreciating
Richie Havens
January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013

Richard Pierce Richie Havens

The above recording is Richie Havens on the Voice of America. He performed the song, Freedom, while explaining the cultural significance of Woodstock and his own performance there.
Richard Pierce Richie Havens

Doo-wop

Richie Havens. Doo-wop. Gospel. Drop out. Greenwich Village. Open D tuning. Mixed Bag. Just Like a Woman. And though he didn’t write the words, no one ever say them better (Jerry Merrick’s “Follow”)

The rising smell of fresh-cut grass,

Smothered cities choke and yell with fuming gas;

I hold some grapes up to the sun

And their flavor breaks upon my tongue.

With eager tongues we taste our strife

And fill our lungs with seas of life.

Come taste and smell the waters of our time.

And close your lips, child, so softly I might kiss you,

Let your flower perfume out and let the winds caress you.

As I walk on through the garden,

I am hoping I don’t miss you

If all the things you taste ain’t what they seem,

Then don’t mind me ‘cos I ain’t nothin’ but a dream.

Richard Pierce Richie Havens

Lighthouse

Richie Havens was a lighthouse for the sixties’ rough seas. After a February meeting in 1969, Woodstock Ventures, the quartet of John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Michael Lang, frolicked, staggered, and romanticized its way to August 15, 1969. 500,000 cultural refugees arrived in Bethel, NY with bated breath and found a place to harmoniously exhale.

Richard Pierce Richie Havens

Woodstock

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was a tumultuously peaceful gathering, an acoustic jewel set athwart the 1960’s cultural maelstrom. The decade embroiled, alienated, and divided American families, friends, and neighbors. It was the decade of the Cold War and nuclear proliferation, murderous violence against an expanding civil rights movement, scores of race riots, thousands of casualties in an escalating Viet Nam War, draft card burnings, anti-war demonstrations, patriotic exhibitions, protest music, student radicalization, assassinations, war atrocities, the Stonewall riots, a burgeoning drug culture, a growing ecological sensibility, a generally anti-establishment attitude by many young people, and the founding of the Black Panther Party, the National Organization for Women, the American Indian Movement, and the National Farm Workers Association.

Only months away were Altamont, the Mayday Tribe’s attempt to shut down Washington DC, the invasion of Cambodia, six students shot and killed at Kent State and Jackson  State, the takeover of Alcatraz, the Weatherman bombings, 200,000 Post Office workers striking,  and the Beatle break-up were. The Grateful Dead would play 143 more shows within the year; 1,891 before Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995.

Richard Pierce Richie Havens

Keystone

Richie Havens was the accidental opening act, but became the exposition’s keystone in its arch of apprehensions, anticipations, and hallucinations. He continued to be more than one generation’s underpinning for 44 years.

After a half century of loving performances and a life dedicated to seeking peaceful solutions, Richie Havens died on April 22, 2013 at age 72.

Thank you Mr. Havens for being so much to so many. As you wrote in “Three Day Eternity”

If you could only see the thousands

Of the days I’m standing in between

All because you hold my hand so tightly

As we both walk and we laugh.

 

Richard Pierce Richie Havens

Bullet-points

A quick incomplete bullet-point summary of his life:

Richie Havens

  • born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn on January 21, 1941.
  • joined street-corner doo-wop groups when he was about 12
  • at 14 he joined the McCrea Gospel Singers.
  • dropped out of high school.
  • in his late teens migrated to Greenwich Village, where he wandered the clubs working as a portrait artist.
  • in his early 20s he discovered folk music and he was soon playing several engagements a night at clubs like Why Not? and the Fat Black Pussycat.
  • developed an unorthodox guitar tuning so he could play chord patterns not possible with conventional tunings.
  • signed with the influential manager Albert Grossman and got a record deal with the Verve Forecast label. Verve released “Mixed Bag” in 1967, which featured “Handsome Johnny,” which he wrote with the actor Louis Gossett Jr.; “Follow,” which became one of his signature songs; and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman.”
  • In 1971, he released the only single that would put him in the Top 20, a rendition of George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun.”
  • In the mid-1970s he founded the Northwind Undersea Institute, an oceanographic children’s museum on City Island in the Bronx. He later created the Natural Guard, an environmental organization for children, to use hands-on methods to teach about the environment.
  • His music had a new burst of popularity in the 1980s, and he found success as a jingle writer and performer for Amtrak, Maxwell House Coffee and the cotton industry (“The fabric of our lives”).

  • He acted in a few movies, including “Hearts of Fire” (1987), which starred Bob Dylan.

 

Memorial

One of Richie Haven’s final requests was that his ashes be spread on the Woodstock field. On  August 18, 2013 there was a special celebration at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts that preceded the fulfillment of that request.

DJ Dennis Elsas was MC and many of Richie’s old and young friends spoke or performed. Among them were, Dayna Kurtz, Michael Lang, Joel Rosenman, Walter Parks, Sajoy Bandapadhyay, Guy Davis, Jose Feliciano, Danny Glover, John Sebastian, John Hammond, and Lou Gosset, Jr.

The featured image of this post is of that event and you can follow this link to see other pictures of the celebration.

New York Times obit for Richie Havens

Richard Pierce Richie Havens