51 1969 Festivals +1
While the Woodstock Music and Art Fair is the most famous of music festivals, few realize that it was just one of dozens in 1969 and that many of the same Woodstock artists performed at those others.
Here are the ones I’ve found. I’ve done a separate blog entries for each one and each festival title is a link to where you can find out more them.
♥ #1 ♥
1969 Festival #1
5 Days of Music
Wednesday 26 March 1969
to
Sunday 30 March 1969
♥ #2 ♥
Palm Springs Pop Festival
April 1 & 3, 1969
Palm Springs Drive-In Theatre
- MC, KMET’s B Mitchell Reed
- Jeff Beck (billed but didn’t appear)
- Moby Grape (billed but didn’t appear)
- Procol Harum (replacement for above)
- Flying Burrito Brothers (replacement for above)
- Gram Pasons
- Timothy Leary
- John Mayall
- Paul Butterfield Blues Band
- Lee Michaels
- Hard Luck Boy
and
Palm Springs Angel Baseball Stadium
- Ike and Tina Turner Revue
- Savoy Brown
- Buddy Miles Express
- Canned Heat
♥ #3 ♥
LA Free Press Festival
April 20, 1969
Venice, California
The line-up was likely Spirit, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Taj Mahal, interspersed with anti-war speeches.
♥ #4 ♥
Nottingham’s Pop & Blues Festival
May 10, 1969
Notts County Football Ground, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire.
This one-day event squeezed plenty of music and a variety of music into its 11 hours.
♥ #5 ♥
Aldergrove Beach Rock Festival
Canada’s First Outdoor Rock Festival
“More than 25,000 young people from all over Canada and the Pacific Northwest rocked their way through the holiday weekend here — peacefully.
“There was pot; there was liquor; there was some nudity; and there was some sleeping bag love-ins. But nothing was as bad as the foretellers of doom had predicted.” [Vancouver Sun ]
47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #6 ♥
Aquarian Family Festival, San Jose, CA
May 23 – 24, 1969
San Jose State University football practice field
Performers (likely): The Ace of Cups, All Men Joy, Birth, Beggars Opera, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Boz Scaggs, Chocolate Watchband, Crabs, Crow, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, Devine Madness, Denver, The Doobie Brothers, Elgin Marble, Flamin’ Groovies, Frumious Bandersnatch, Gentle Dance, Greater Carmichael Traveling Street Band, Glass, Mountain, High Country, Jefferson Airplane, Joy of Cooking, Last Mile, Libras, Lamb, Living Color, Linn County, Mother Ball, Morning Glory, Mad River, Mt. Rushmore, Nymbus, Old Davis, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Red Grass, Green Smoke, Rubber Maze,Rising Tide, Rejoice, Sunrise, Sable, Sons of Champlin, Sounds Unlimited Blues Band, Sandy Bull, The Steve Miller Blues Band, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Stoned Fox, South Bay Experimental Flash, Throckmorton, Tree of Life, Weird Herald, Womb, Warren Purcell, and Zephyr Grove.
♥ #7 ♥
Northern California Folk-Rock Festival
May 23 – 25, 1969
Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA
The poster for was created by rock artist Linda Segul.
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♥ #8 ♥
Big Rock Pow Wow
May 23 – 25, 1969
Seminole Indian Village, Hollywood, FL
Performers: Grateful Dead, Joe South, NRBQ, The Nervous System, Jane and the Electric Jive Wire, Rhinoceros, Muddy Waters, Sun Country, Sweetwater, Johnny Winter, Youngbloods, The Echo, and Aum.
♥ #9 ♥
First Annual Detroit Rock & Roll Revival
May 30 – 31, 1969
Michigan State Fairgrounds
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♥ #10 ♥
May 31 – June 2, 1969
Stanley Carlson farm in Duvall, WA
(after the Tulalip Indian Reservation in Marysville, WA cancelled)
I can find very little about the festival other than it did actually happen. And all I can find is an AP article in The Daily Chronicle from Monday 2 June 1969 whose headline reads: Hippies Take To the Hills.
The articles first sentence states that …hippies and some of the not-so-hip took to the hills during the Memorial Day weekend to follow the Sunrise to Sunset Rock Festival as it moved from Marysville to this tiny King County community, scene of a piano drop last April.
♥ #11 ♥
Mississippi River Festival
June — July 1969
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL
| Date | Performer | Notes | Paid attendance |
| 6/23 | Buffy Sainte-Marie | 2268 | |
| 6/24 | Modern Jazz Quartet | The Galactic Vision projected a light show on a screen behind MJQ | 1542 |
| 6/26 | Paul Butterfield Blues Band | High winds forced lawn guests to seek shelter | 3449 |
| 7/1 | Janis Joplin | na | |
| Aorta | |||
| 7/7 | Arlo Guthrie | The National Educational Television Network recorded the concert. | 3753 |
| Joni Mitchell | |||
| 7/10 | Iron Butterfly | 12,735 | |
| Blues Image | |||
| 7/14 | The Band | Bob Dylan came out for the Band’s encore and played four songs with them. This was his first public performance since his July 29,1966 motorcycle accident | 4082 |
| 7/17 | Ian and Sylvia | They called their band the Great Speckled Bird | 2487 |
| 7/21 | New Christy Minstrels | 5711 | |
| 7/22 | Richie Havens | 2753 | |
| Eddie Fisher Trio | The EFT was an East St Louis jazz band | ||
| 7/23 | Joan Baez | 11,052 |
♥ #12 ♥
The Fourth Annual Memphis Country Blues Festival
and the
W.C. Handy Memorial Concert
June 6 – 8, 1969
The poster reads: The Memphis Sesquicentennial Inc. in conjunction with The Memphis Country Blues Society proudly presents The Fourth Annual Memphis Country Blues Festival and First Annual W.C. Handy Memorial Concert
The Festival will officially begin Friday June 6 and Saturday June 7, 1969 with three daytime concerts and two evening concerts all in the Overton Park Shell, culminating with the W.C. Handy Memorial Concert in the Mid-South Coliseum on Sunday June 8th.
Tickets for the Shell concerts will be available at time of performance only . Tickets for the W.C. Handy concert will be on advance sale at many Memphis locations ($2.50 to $5.00)
Claude Mabel (artist?)
Johnny Winter, Canned Heat, Backwards Sam Firk,Bukka White,Carla and Rufus Thomas, Insect Trust, Fred McDowell & Johnny Woods, Nathan Beauregard Sun Smith and the Beale Street Five, Elder Lonnie McIntorsch, Sleepy John Estes Blues Band, Lum Guffin, The World Greatest Jazz Band, Albert King, The Bar-Kays with Toni Mason, Jo-Ann Kelley, Furry Lewis, Slim Harpo, Rev. Robert Wilkins, John Fahey, Southern Fife and Drum Corps, Booker T. and the MGs, Moloch, Casietta George, Sid Selvidge, Soldiers of the Cross, Robert Pete Williams, Rev. Ishmon Bracey, and Wild Child Butler.
♥ #13 ♥
Cambridge Midsummer Pop Festival
8, 9, 10, & 11 June 1969
On Midsummer Common
Like many historic events, claims are often exaggerated. For many years, the Phun City rock festival held at Ecclesden Common near Worthing, England from 24 July to 26 July 1970 was considered the first large-scale free festival in the UK. Though it was “free,” it, like the famous Woodstock festival, organizers did not intend it to be so. Circumstances dictated the change.
Also, there was this one: the Cambridge Midsummer Pop Festival a year earlier and it was organized as a free festival from the beginning.
Acts included Family, David Bowie, Brian Auger Trinity, King Crimson, The Strawbs, and Roy Harper.
♥ #14 ♥
Newport ‘69 Festival
June 20 – 22, 1969
Devonshire Downs, Northridge, CA
This was the 2nd year for the festival, with the first, the Newport Pop Festival, had been held in Costa Mesa, CA. Attended by an estimated 200,000 fans, the festival was the largest pop concert up to that time and is considered the more famous of the two Newport Pop Festivals, possibly because of the appearance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who got top billing. Hendrix was the headline act for the Friday night opening, but he played so poorly – supposedly from an LSD-laced drink – that he returned to the stage on Sunday. His Sunday performance with Buddy Miles, Eric Burdon, and several others lasted more than two hours.
Despite a poor sound system, a lack of food, water, and restrooms, and brutal security by the Hells’ Angels, it was deemed a resounding success by the attendees and musicians.
A week later, Robert Wilkinson, a Los Angeles City Councilman representing Northridge, led the call for immediate inquiries to determine “what can the city do to prevent another disgraceful melee such as occurred outside Devonshire Downs last week.” The event’s promoter, Mark Robinson, along with his attorney–who happened to be his father, Mark Robinson, Sr.–were hauled into an emergency session of the police commission, as was Robert Deem, the Downs manager, and Captain Al Lembke. The community was outraged, and determined that this sort of debacle wouldn’t happen again. Talk of law suits against Valley State College seeking liability for property damage was bandied about, and, eventually, an ordinance was presented to the City Council that sought greater authority to “control such events as the Devonshire Downs Newport ’69 Pop Music Festival.”
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Fri 20 June
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Sat 21 June |
Sun 22 June
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47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #15 ♥
June 21 – 22, 1969
Varsity Stadium
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Saturday 21 June
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Sunday 22 June
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♥ #16 ♥
June 27 – 29, 1969
Mile High Stadium
From Wikipedia: Throughout much of the festival, a crowd gathered outside the venue and demonstrated against having to pay to hear the acts. They also tried to breach the gates and security fences. The Denver Police were forced to employ riot tactics to protect the gates. On the second day the battle between gatecrashers outside the stadium and the police suddenly affected those inside. With a combination of shifting wind and re-thrown canisters, tear gas suddenly swept over the crowd. The seats emptied into the concourses and onto the field. It was fortunate that the fence that had been erected to keep the crowd from the field was torn down by the crowd on Friday night. On Friday night Iron Butterfly “encouraged” the crowd to bring down the fence – which they did. If the fence had been up on Saturday there may have been injuries with the crush of people that would have likely occurred with people trying to get out of the stands onto the field to get away from the tear gas. Announcer Chip Monck should be credited with calming the crowd that day as the tear gas came into the stadium. With his amazing voice he instructed the crowd to stay calm – to cover their faces with whatever they had (like a jacket or t-shirt) – etc. Chip Monck was also the announcer at Woodstock – you can hear him in the movie Woodstock. Ticket prices were $6 per day, or $15 for all three days (Fri, Sat, Sun). On Sunday, after all possible tickets had been sold, the promoter announced from the stage that he was declaring it a “free festival”. The people from outside the stadium were let in and took seats in the South Stands of the old Mile High Stadium.
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June 27
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June 28
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June 29
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♥ #17 ♥
Bath Festival of Blues
June 28, 1969
Bath Pavilion Recreational Ground in Bath, Somerset, England
DJ John Peel. Tickets cost 18/6. The festival proved very popular, selling out all 30,000 tickets in the first week, surprising both the townsfolk and the promoters. The only major problem occurred when the Nice’s use of bagpipers caused the stage to collapse. This is often considered the first modern ‘rock’ festival in Britain.
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♥ #18 ♥
Harlem Cultural Festival
aka…Black Woodstock
Mount Morris Park, NYC
June 29 – August 24, 1969: consisted of six free Sunday afternoon concerts held between June 29 and August 24. The total attendance was some 300,000 people.
Held in Harlem at Mount Morris (now Marcus Garvey) Park, it was a self-consciously urban affair, a concert series rather than a one-off, and already in its third year. The New York City Parks Department and Maxwell House co-sponsored the series.
Some of the performers were Nina Simone, B.B. King, Chuck Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Mongo Santamaria, and David Ruffin.
The festival was hosted and promoted by Tony Lawrence, a New York night club singer. [NYT article]
♥ #19 ♥
Newport Jazz Festival
July 3 – 6, 1969
Newport, RI
The festival’s 1969 program was an experiment in fusing jazz, soul and rock music and audiences. Its lineup included, besides jazz, Friday evening appearances by rock groups Jeff Beck, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Ten Years After, and Jethro Tull. Saturday’s schedule mixed jazz acts such as Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck with others including John Mayall and Sly & the Family Stone. James Brown was among those who appeared Sunday afternoon, followed in the evening by Johnny Winter, Herbie Hancock, B. B. King, and Led Zeppelin. According to the NYT, on July 6 “The Newport Jazz Festival was invaded…by several hundred young people who broke down a section of the 10-foot wooden fence surrounding Festival Field and engaged in a rock throwing battle with security guards.” NYT Newport Jazz report.
♥ #20 ♥
Saugatuck Pop Festival
July 4 – 5
Pottawattamie Beach, Saugatuck, MI
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not listed, but there: Alice Cooper |
♥ #21 ♥
Atlanta International Pop Festival
July 4 – 5, 1969
Atlanta International Raceway, Hampton, GA
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♥ #22 ♥
Bullfrog Lake Music Festival
July 4, 5, and 6, 1969
Estacada, Oregon
46 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #23 ♥
Spectrum Summer Music Festival
July 5 and July 11 -12
Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA
♥ #24 ♥
Laurel Pop Festival
July 11 – 12, 1969
Laurel Race Course, Laurel, MD
From the Baltimore Sun: Lost in the smoky haze of 1960s history is The Laurel Pop Festival held in July 1969, which was attended by 15,000 fans and offered an incredible lineup of some of the biggest pop performers of the year. Held just one month before Woodstock, The Laurel Pop Festival ended in controversy as rain-soaked fans built bonfires with wooden folding chairs and refused to leave as the concert dragged on into the early morning.
July 12
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July 11
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♥ #25 ♥
1969 Forest Hills Music Festival
July – August 1969
Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, Queens, NY
July 12, 1969, beginning on July 12 and running on Saturdays during July and August, the 1969 Forest Hills Music Festival (Queens, NYC) featured a variety of performers including Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, Blood Sweat and Tears, and Johnny Winter. [1969-07-28 NYT Johnny Winter]
Meanwhile…
..news from the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
♥ #26 ♥
Newport Folk Festival
July 16 – 20
Newport, RI
♥ #27 ♥
Held at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field on July 26, 1969
Unfortunately, the event does not go as planned and several scheduled acts, including The Byrds and The Youngbloods, do not perform.
Bands that did perform: The Doors, Them, Alice Cooper, Rockin’ Foo, J Geils Band, Peter, River, Truth, The Bumps, and Zu
The Doors arrived only minutes before taking the stage and played an extended set (70 minutes instead of 45 minutes) to make up for the missing bands.
♥ #28 ♥
Seattle Pop Festival
July 25 – 27, 1969
Woodinville, WA
The Doors were billed as the headliner for the third day. After The Doors played, Led Zeppelin came on. When the festival was first being put together,Led Zeppelin was still gaining momentum. According to the sources, Led Zeppelin stole the show. It was the only time The Doors and Led Zeppelin were on the same bill.
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47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #29 ♥
Midwest Rock Festival
July 25 – 29, 1969
State Fair Park, Milwaukee, WI
Total attendance of about 45,000. The scheduled list of bands was even longer than the number that actually played – Jethro Tull, Jeff Beck and the Bob Seger System were scheduled on Sunday, but rain canceled many of that day’s performances.
Fri 25 July
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Sat 26 July
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Sun 27 July
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47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #30 ♥
Atlantic City (NJ) Pop Festival
August 1 – 3, 1969
Atlantic City Race Track.
Approximately 100,000 people attended. Biff Rose MC’d. Rose filled in for Joni Mitchell when she started to cry and ran off stage in the middle of her 3rd song because the crowd was not paying attention to her performance. It seems she was placed in the rotation directly after Mother Earth featuring Tracy Nelson and the crowd wasn’t ready to hear her mild act. Crosby, Stills & Nash were originally on the lineup but ended up as a no-show, Nash supposedly had polyps on tonsils (but sang at Woodstock two weeks later). The Chambers Brothers were a last-minute substitute. The Moody Blues were scheduled but weren’t there. Johnny Winter was present but did not perform as his equipment did not show up in time.
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Friday 1 August
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Saturday 2 August
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Sun 3 August
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♥ #31 ♥
Ann Arbor Blues Festival
August 1, 2, and 3, 1969
Fuller Flatlands, MI
Line up
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August 1, Friday Night
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August 3, Sunday afternoon
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August 2, Saturday night
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August 3, Sunday night
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♥ #32 ♥
Hilltop Pop Festival
Mason, New Hampshire
Saturday 2 August 1969
♥ #33 ♥
Wonderland Pop Festival
August 13 – 14
Wonderland Gardens, London, Canada
♥ THE PLUS ONE ♥
Woodstock Music & Art Fair
August 15, 16, 17, & 18
Bethel, NY
46 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #34 ♥
Bullfrog 3 Festival
August 21, 22, and 23
Pelletier Farm, St Helens, OR
47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #35 ♥
Vancouver Pop Festival
August 22, 23, and 24
Squamish, British Columbia
47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #36 ♥
Dusseldorf, West Germany
August 23-31, 1969
Billed as “An exhibition for young people” the Fair was used as an opportunity for companies to market their products to young people.
Attendance was approximately 300,000.
♥ #37 ♥
Isle of Wight Festival
August 30 – 31, 1969
Wootton, Isle of Wight
The festival attracted approximately 150,000. It became a legendary event largely owing to the participation of Bob Dylan who had spent the previous three years in semi-retirement following a motorcycle accident.
Saturday 30 August
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Sunday 31 August
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47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #38 ♥
Texas International Pop Festival
August 30 – September 1, 1969 [Labor Day weekend]
Lewisville, TX
Attendance at the festival remains unknown, but is estimated between 120,000 and 150,000.
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Sat 30 Aug
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Sun 31 Aug
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Mon 1 Sept
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47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #39 ♥
Sky River Rock Festival
August 30, 1969
Rainier Hereford Ranch, Tenino, Washington
46 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #40 ♥
New Orleans Pop Festival
August 31 – September 1, 1969
Prairieville, LA
Performers: White Fox, Snowrabbit, Deacon John and the Electric Soul Train, Whizbang, Axis, Sweetwater, Lee Michaels, Oliver, Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, Spiral Staircase, It’s A Beautiful Day, Country Joe and the Fish, Byrds, Youngbloods, Canned Heat, Pot Liquor, Chicago (Transit Authority), Tyrannosaurus Rex, Santana, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin.
♥ #41 ♥
First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival
September 6, 1969
Cleveland Zoo
- Grand Funk Railroad
- Paul Butterfield Blues Band
- Vanilla Fudge
- Lonnie Mack
- Dee Felice Trio
47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #42 ♥
The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival
September 13, 1969
Varsity Stadium, at the University of Toronto
Over 20,000 attended. The appearance of John Lennon, Yoko Ono and The Plastic Ono Band was not publicly known in advance. It was Lennon’s first-ever public rock performance without one or more of the Beatles since meeting Paul McCartney in 1957. He decided before returning to England to leave the Beatles permanently.
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♥ #43 ♥
Sixth Big Sur Folk Festival
September 13 – 14 1969
(made into a movie: Celebration at Big Sur)
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47 1969 Festivals +1
♥ #44 ♥
Toledo Pop Festival
September 14
Toledo Raceway Park
♥ #45 ♥
Gold Rush Festival
October 12, 1969
Lake Amador, CA
♥ #46 ♥
Internationales Essener Festival
In the Grugahalle in Essen, West Germany
Bands that performed
- October 9, 1969: Fashion, Keef Hartley Band, The Pretty Things, Yes, Warm Dust, Fleetwood Mac, Free, Spooky Tooth, Hard Meat.
- October 10, 1969: Amon Duul II, Hardin & York, Keef Hartley Blues Band, Champion Jack Dupree & Shades, The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Alexis Korner & New Church, Steamhammer, Muddy Waters, Taste, Shades.
- October 11, 1969: Tulliver’s Brain, Taste, Cuby’s Blues Band, Keef Hartley Blues Band, Livin Blues, Deep Purple, Amon Duul II, The Nice, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Ekseption, Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Xhol Caravan, Hardin & York.
Tangerine Dream performed at this festival, but is not listed on the poster.
♥ #47 ♥
Raccoon Creek Rock Festival
November 6 – 8, 1969
Livingston Gym, Denison University (Granville, OH)
- The Who
- The Spirit
- Johnny Winter
- Supporting acts: Owen B, The Dust
♥ #48 ♥
Palm Beach Music & Art Festival
November 28 – 30, 1969 (Thanksgiving weekend)
West Palm Beach, FL
From a 2009 Palm Beach Post article: Then-Palm Beach County Sheriff Bill Heidtman vowed to make life miserable for the free-loving, pot-smoking, anti-establishment youngsters who were coming to the Palm Beach Pop Festival. He threatened to herd alligators toward the crowd, gathered on a grassy field at the Palm Beach International Raceway. And he promised to dig out fire ant colonies and relocate them at the venue. The Festival was at a drag strip outside of West Palm Beach. Among others, Grand Funk played three nights also. The show featured Iron Butterfly, King Crimson (Robin Fripp and Greg Lake), Jefferson Airplane, Rotary Connection (Minnie Ripperton), PG&E, Rolling Stones, Vanilla Fudge, Janis Joplin and Her Full Tilt Boogie Band, Johnny Winters, and others. On the third night, Winters played, then Vanilla Fudge played followed by Janis Joplin. Afterwards, the announcer said, Johnny wants it, Janis wants it, and the Fudge wants one. All three bands came out on stage and jammed. Winters jammed with the guitar players and scatted with Janis. Wavy Gravy was there in his WW2 pilot helmet or whatever it was, guiding a car backwards trying to help them and backed them into the pond. We’d like to think he knew it was the police in an unmarked car and put them in the pond on purpose since we know he didn’t do drugs.
♥ #49 ♥
Altamont Free Concert
December 6, 1969
Altamont Speedway in northern CA between Tracy and Livermore
December 6, 1969: Altamont Free Concert: (at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, between Tracy and Livermore) headlined and organized by The Rolling Stones, it also featured, in order of appearance: Santana, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with the Rolling Stones taking the stage as the final act. The Grateful Dead were also scheduled to perform, but declined to play shortly before their scheduled appearance due to the increasing violence at the venue.
♥ #50 ♥
Miami Rock Festival
December 27 – 29, 1969
International Speedway, Hollywood, Florida
Among the bands playing were: BB King, The Band, Santana, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Johnny Winter, Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, Sweetwater, Vanilla Fudge, Hugh Masakela, Amboy Dukes, The Turtles, Biff Rose, Tony Joe White, and Celebration.
♥ #51 ♥
Mid Winter Pop Festival
“December 27, 28, & 29”
Blythe, CA
...and finally, the “last” festival of the 1960s. Well not really because it didn’t happen. But Johnny Winters would have played (AGAIN) that year!
Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Young Rascals, Vanilla Fudge, Brooklyn Bridge, Neil Diamond, and many others were to attend.
Thanks for the memories. I was 16 years old in 1969. It was one of the best years.
Forty nine years eleven months ago I was asked to be Security Chief at Palm Beach Pop Fest. It was a journey packed with memorable experiences. Long live the ’60s!
Thank you!!
Really fantastic.
I didn’t know about a lot of these that summer.
You missed the Sunrise Sunset Rock Festival 5/31-6/1/1969 originally slated for the Tulalip Indian Reservation, Marysville WA which was moved to the Stanley Carlson farm in Duvall WA. There is a poster for this event.