Tag Archives: Festivals

1969 Wonderland Pop Festival

1969 Wonderland Pop Festival

August 13 – 14, 1969
Wonderland Gardens, London, Ontario

1969 festival #33

1969 Wonderland Pop Festival

Well, here’s another 1969 festival that is a little one and likely why little is known about it.  Here’s what I’ve found:

1969 Wonderland Pop Festival

Dennis Dunaway’s story

From the Alternative Control siteDennis Dunaway is the bassist from the original Alice Cooper lineup. He has a Wonderland Pop Festival story that includes Woodstock.

On the afternoon of July 26th, 1969, the Alice Cooper group played the Eugene Pop Festival at the University of Oregon with the Doors, the Youngbloods, the Byrds, Them and others. Nearby Creswell was where I spent my childhood, and where my grandparents still had the farm where I had spent the summer of ’64 working to get the money to buy my first bass. So my Grandma came to the show, and afterwards the band followed her back to the farm for a delicious home cooked meal. Then my Grandpa loaded the outrageous looking Alice Cooper group into the back of his pickup and took us around to meet his neighbors. They all asked if we were from the “Hippy Farm,” which we soon found out was a nearby commune owned by Ken Kesey who wrote One Flew Over TheCukoo’s Nest. So after we bid my grandparents farewell, the band went to visit Kesey. But it looked like the few people stirring were recovering from a wild night. One guy sat by a smoldering camp fire with a mic plugged into an amp attached to an orange extension cord that snaked all the way back to the house. Loudly through the microphone, he explained that the bus that the two other hippies were painting psychedelic patterns on was about to be driven across the country to upstate New York for a big music festival. He loudly said it would be the biggest festival of them all. Two weeks later (August 13th), we were opening for The Mothers of Invention at the Wonderland Pop Festival in London, Ontario. Alice and I asked Frank Zappa why we weren’t playing at the big music festival in New York that weekend? Frank said, “Because we don’t want to.”

1969 Wonderland Pop Festival

From the Original Glen Buxton site

Glen Buxton was the Alice Cooper guitarist: Review in the London Free Press, August 15, 1969. The headline reads “Wonderland ‘rocked’ by pop festival”.

The festival ran 13th and 14th Aug. Alice Cooper gets the biggest mention in the review:

“Alice Cooper stomped on a metal satchel, speared the big bass drum, threw microphones and stands on the stage, drummed out all the violent motions of war, and died.

“It was a groovy scene. And it happened in London.

“Alice Cooper–it’s the name of a light-popping, five-man rock group from Arizona–was one of six groups on stage Thursday at Wonderland, wrapping up London’s first pop festival.”

1969 Wonderland Pop Festival

A little bit of help?

Sorry nothing else, but as always let me know if you know something. Thanks.

1969 Wonderland Pop Festival

Next 1969 festival (other than Woodstock): Bullfrog 3 (2 )Festival

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

August 1, 2, and 3, 1969
Fuller Flatlands, MI
1969 festival #31
1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Whites and the Blues

With civil rights and anti-establishment sentiments in the air, there were  numbers of white kids searching outside the popular top-10 musical box.  Of course they’d already heard Brits  Eric Burdon, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and John Mayall’s interpretations of American Blues, but eventually and not surprisingly, those same white kids “discovered” what had been in front of them all along: true Blues.

University of Michigan sophomore John Fishel was one of those white kids. Bert Stratton was another. He said, “…in those days to like the blues was to be part of an exclusive, rebellious club. It was like a secret language. If you were a young white kid who was into the black blues you thought you were pretty cool.”

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

University backed

A group of University of Michigan students  led by Fishel decided to hold a Blues festival.

Quoted in a 2009 Ann Arbor Chronicle article, Fishel said, ““Somebody put me in touch with one or two people. It ended up with maybe four or five of us getting together. Some of us knew each other, some didn’t. We really didn’t have a concept at the time. We didn’t know whether it would be a series or a one-shot deal. We didn’t know whether it was an inside show in an auditorium, or whether it was an outdoor show. But I agreed to do the entertainment part of it.”

The group asked their school for sponsorship and two university-connected nonprofit entities – the University Activities Center (UAC), and Canterbury House, the student Episcopalian organization – put up $70,000 for the event.

The kids did good!

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Chicago

That spring the group visited Chicago to test the waters: what true blues performers attracted the best crowds? Luther Allison was one they found.

They invited Allison to play at a free show in April and the reception was great. The group knew they could continue.

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Ann Arbor, the Not-Woodstock

According to a 2018 Forbes article, “When Ann Arbor Blues Festival opened in 1969, it wasn’t just the first blues festival in Michigan — it was the first blues festival ever.”

As a Woodstock alum, it is hard to criticize what so many think of as the greatest festival of all time.  History and commercialism have  ways of distorting reality when reality is mostly a subjective,  not a single unequivocal experience.

Woodstock, for all its outstanding and now-historic performers and performances, lacked true blues. Ten Years After, Paul Butterfield, Canned Heat, and Blood Sweat and Tears all provided their interpretation of original Blues.

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Ann Arbor Line up

August 1, Friday Night

  • Roosevelt Sykes
  • Fred McDowell
  • JB Hutto and the Hawks
  • Jimmy Dawkins
  • Junior Wells
  • BB King

August 3, Sunday afternoon

  • Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup
  • Jimmy “Fast Fingers” Dawkins
  • Roosevelt Sykes
  • Luther Allison & the Blue
  • Nebulae
  • Big Joe Williams
  • Magic Sam
  • Big Mama Thornton
  • Freddy King

August 2, Saturday night

  • Sleepy John Estes
  • Luther Allison
  • Clifton Chenier
  • Otis Rush
  • Howlin’ Wolf
  • Muddy Waters

August 3, Sunday night

  • Sam Lay
  • T-Bone Walker
  • Son House
  • Charlie Musselwhite w Freddy Roulette
  • Lightnin’ Hopkins
  • James Cotton

 

Unlike the half-million who camped in Bethel, NY, the Ann Arbor Blues Festival had about 20,000, but 20,000 very enthusiastic listeners. Dan Morgenstern wrote in Downbeat that “the performers – especially the veterans – were treated with respect that bordered on reverence. It added up to a kind of recognition that blues artists have seldom, if ever, received from their own people.

In October, after Woodstock, Morgenstern was clear.  The Ann Arbor Festival was “without doubt the festival of the year, if not the decade.”

Stanley Livingston, a professional photographer from Ann Arbor, captured the performers both on- and off-stage. He and Michael Erlewine later published many of his photos in  Blues in Black and White

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Ann Arbor 2

In 1970 a second blues festival was held, but success led to disruption and disruption led to financial loss.  Also, the Goose Lake festival held the same time had a big-name line up that pulled possible guests away from Ann Arbor.

The festival went away for two years, returned in 1972 to a three-year run, and then went away again.

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Renewal

In 2016, James Partridge realized that in three years it would be the original festival’s 50th anniversary.  In 2017 he organized a new Ann Arbor Blues Festival.

Today,  Partridge, the Festival’s executive producer, says, “I want everybody to know what Ann Arbor has contributed to music and recognize that the Ann Arbor Blues Festivals, they changed music. They changed history. Had it not been for those original festivals, a lot of the music we listen to today might not have been made.”

And the festival continues. Here’s the link.

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Next 1969 festival: Hilltop Pop Festival

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

July 5 and July 11 -12
Spectrum, Philadelphia
1969 festival #23

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

The Spectrum was an indoor arena that opened in the fall of 1967. Like any modern indoor arena, the venue hosted many things. For Philadelphia it was used for  basketball, ice hockey, arena football, indoor soccer, indoor lacrosse, and, of course, concert events.

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

Festival-filled summer

On July 5 and on July 11 and 12, during that festival-filled summer of 1969, there was a three day event there. It was divided into four shows: one evening show on Saturday 5 July; one evening show on Friday 11 July and two on Saturday 12 July–an afternoon and an evening show.

Saturday 5 July

As you can see from the above advertisement,  the first show featured black artists, with the James Brown Show headlining. Chicago’s Young Holt-Unlimited, with their hit Soulful-Strut.

Tyrone Davis, with his hit…

and the comedian Nipsy Russell.

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

Friday 11 July

Friday’s line-up was an impressive one with future Woodstock performers Sly and the Family Stone and Ten Years After along with Jeff Beck, the Mothers of Invention, and Savoy Brown. I would have like to have been there that night!

Saturday afternoon 12 July

The Saturday afternoon show only had two bands: Blood, Sweat and Tears and the Hawkins Singers.

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival
from a Led Zeppelin fan site
1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

Saturday evening 12 July

Saturday evening was the stronger line-up: Led Zeppelin, Johnny Winter, Al Kooper, Jethro Tull, and the Buddy Guy Blues Band.

As you may notice, there was a heavy emphasis on soul music and the electric blues whether played by blacks or whites.  Though there were some blues-influenced bands at Woodstock such as Johnny Winter and Ten Years After the following month, the absence of such artists as Buddy Guy and James Brown leave some scratching their heads. Young whites’ interest in the original blues artists had already returned and such artists were regularly featured in many other festivals that summer.

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

So Long Spectrum

A little more than a year after the arena’s final event (a Pearl Jam concert) took place on October 31, 2009.  the Spectrum was demolished (between November 2010 and May 2011) .

1969 Spectrum Summer Music Festival

Next 1969 festival: Laurel Pop Festival