All posts by Woodstock Whisperer

Attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, became an educator for 35 years after graduation from college, and am retired now and often volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts which is on the site of that 1969 festival.
Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton

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Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton

Happy birthday

Woodstock alum via Joe Cocker’s Grease Band

Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton

Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton

Chris Stainton was born in England on March 22, 1944. He began playing bass in the late ’50s (using a guitar he made himself out of a plank of wood) and along the path of his his early musical history, he happened to meet his childhood friend, John Robert Cocker, who had become Joe Cocker.

Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton

Woodstock

Stainton became an important part of Cocker’s Grease Band, but that also included an eventual move to keyboards. It was on keyboards that Stainton performed with Cocker at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Regarding Woodstock, Stainton said in a March 2021 Rolling Stone magazine interview:

What was it like to fly in on the helicopter and see the crowds below?
It was ridiculous. I had some acid just before I went into the helicopter and I threw up in the helicopter. I just remember it being so noisy and everything. It was colossal. It was a colossal experience to see the crowd, but it was a good feeling. There wasn’t any bad vibes or anything. It was all good. Everybody was being really great.

Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton

Post Woodstock

Stainton remained with Cocker after he left the Grease Band and became a part of the famous Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour that translated into both a triple-LP and a movie.

Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton
Chris Stainton’s feet, photo taken by Denny Cordell on the Mad Dogs tour

Chris  “Sessions” Stainton

As a sessions musician, he rivaled the output of Nicky Hopkins. 

Here’s a partial list of those he worked with:

  • Spooky Tooth
  • Ian Hunter
  • Leon Russel
  • Don Nix
  • The Who 
  • Esther Phillips
  • Jim Capaldi
  • Eric Clapton
  • Gary Brooker
  • Pete Townshend 
  • Beyonce
  • Alvin Lee
  • The Alarm
  • Ringo Starr
  • Bryan Ferry
  • BB King
  • Bill Wyman
  • David Gilmour
  • Peter Frampton
  • Van Morrison

On September 11, 2015 Stainton performed in a tribute/reunion concert for Joe Cocker. The concert honored Joe and the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour. Alumni included from the 1970 Tour included Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge,  and Claudia Lennear.

Basically, Chris Stainton has contributed to great music his whole musician’s life.

Thank you Chris! And many many happy returns.

Here are some highlights of Chris playing with Eric Clapton at NYC’s Madison Square Garden in September 2017.

or…

How about his playing for the Ginger Baker tribute on February 17, 2020 with quite a line up? He’s on the far right.

In March 2021, Rolling Stone magazine published an interview. It began:

How has your pandemic year gone?
It’s the same for everyone, I think. You’re stuck home. You just go to the shops and come back. That’s it.

You were still playing when this thing hit.
Yeah. We had everything canceled. The last show that I did was February 2020, which was a tribute to Ginger Baker that we did in London. After that, the whole pandemic hit. They canceled last year’s tour of Europe and America. They tried to put the Europe tour for Eric back on sale for this year, but it got canceled again. They are looking to get an American tour for the fall. So, we’re waiting.

There’s a lot more.

Keyboardist Christopher Chris Stainton
Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone

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Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone

Happy birthday
March 21, 1945
Woodstock alum
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee
Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone
Rosie Stone (bottom left) with Sly and the Family Stone
Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone

Slim pickings…

When most Boomers here the word stone there is one of two things they think of and one of them is Sly and the Family Stone, the band that got 500,000 people up and stomping in the middle of the night at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Rose “Rosie” Stone was part of that band.

I gleaned the information here from her Wikipedia entry and a few other varied sources. None are too extensive and 2007 seems to be the closest we can get to the present.

Rose “Rosie” Stone  is best known as one of the singers and keyboardists with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band, Sly and the Family Stone. Sly and band member Freddie are her brothers.

Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone

Reluctant Member

From a 2007 NPR interview, Rose said, “I was the last one to get in the group. I had been basically in the family band all my life. We started when we were five and six years old. So when I got in the group it was like, you know, it was like pulling teeth, in a way of speaking, because I was just so happy with being out of the musical group. 

Farai Chiideya was the host of that interview and asked whether the band felt that “something magical” was happening at the Woodstock festival?

Rose answered, “Well, we knew something magical was happening. I think after we realized that it was a sea of people in front of us. It was about 5:00 AM when we went on and it was dark, and we were playing, we were playing our best.”

It is always interesting to hear a Woodstock performer’s account of their experience. On tours at the Museum that sits near that famous field, we sometimes refer to inaccurate memories as part of the Woodstock Haze.

In this case, Sly and the Family Stone came on stage around 3:30 AM, not at 5. A minor detail, but one we try to softly point out in the interest of clarity.

Rose also recalls the sun coming up while they were playing. Since the Who came on after Sly and in the Woodstock movie one can clearly see the sky beginning to lighten as they played, the sunrise belongs to them (and Jefferson Airplane).

We all need answers to oft-asked questions and sometimes we do our best to create one that is close enough rather than have no answer at all.

Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone

Post Woodstock

After the band broke up in 1975, Rosie married Sly Stone’s former manager/co-producer, Bubba Banks. She later recorded a solo album on Motown Records, billed as Rose Banks.

Rose worked as a backup singer appearing on recordings by Michael Jackson, Phish, and Ringo.

She was apparently part of the Family Stone in 2003 according to a Billboard article that read in part: Undaunted by the absence not only of Sly but also of his cousin Graham on bass guitar, five of the original members of the group have been in the studio recording some 16 new songs. The new tracks are being written and sung mostly by Sly’s brother Freddie Stone and sister Rosie Stone. Freddie Stone and Errico are producing the album, which does not yet have a label home.

Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone

More

She does have a site, but it is difficult to be sure of how old the information is. In lead sentence of the site she says, “I’m doing my part to make the world a better place.”

Site also talks about her “latest project,” her “Already Motivated” album. She released that album in 2007, so…

Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone

Rose Stone

 

From Rose's Facebook page

Today, Rosie Stone is today part of the musical department at her brother Freddie’s church. She returned to her gospel roots in 1983 when she sang on Sandra Crouch’s album We Sing Praises, soloing on the old hymn “Power in the Blood.”

Rose appears at 1:16 in the video below:

In 2011 and 2012, Stone and her daughter Lisa toured with Elton John as members of his vocal backing group. The list of artists she has worked with is a long one (All Music credits)

Her Facebook page.

Rose Rosemary Stewart Stone
Black history, Today in history

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

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1964 Freedom Summer Riders

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

SNCC

On March 20, 1964 the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC–“snick”] announced the “Freedom Summer” program that would train young people to go to Mississippi and help disenfranchised Blacks register to vote.

In 1962, less than 7% of eligible Black voters in Mississippi were registered to vote due to the many blatantly racist laws and customs that States had put into place and the Federal government had allowed.

It had only been on January 23, 1964, thirteen years after its proposal and nearly 2 years after its passage by the US Senate, that the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, was ratified. The huge gap was that the amendment applied to national, not local, elections.

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

Civil Rights bill

A Civil Rights bill languished in Congress due to an 83-day filibuster by southern Senators until June 10, 1964 when  the Senate voted to limit further debate. On June 19 the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved. Voting for the bill were 46 Democrats and 27 Republicans. Voting against it were 21 Democrats and six Republicans. Except for Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, all the Democratic votes against the bill came from Southerners. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona voted against the bill, as he said he would. The five other Republicans opposing it all supported  Goldwater’s candidacy for the 1964 Republican Presidential nomination.

Andrew Goodman

The next day, June 20, 1964, the  first “Freedom Summer” volunteers arrived in Mississippi. Andrew “Andy” Goodman, 20, from New York City, was one of them. The next morning he sent a postcard home:

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

Freedom Summer

That same day, Andrew along with James E. Chaney, 21, and Michael Schwerner, 24, went to investigate the burning of a black church.

Police arrested the three on speeding charges, incarcerated them for several hours, and then released them after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.

Two days later, the station wagon Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were driving was found. Burned.

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

Other threats

Meanwhile, on June 24  thirty Freedom Summer workers from Greenville, Miss. made the first effort to register black voters in Drew, Miss., and local whites resisted with open hostility. Whites circled the workers in cars and trucks, some equipped with gun racks, making violent threats. One white man stopped his car and said, “I’ve got something here for you,” flaunting his gun.

Despite an intensive search, the bodies of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were not found until August 4.

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

Freedom Schools

The Freedom Summer workers established 41 Freedom Schools attended by more than 3,000 young black students throughout the state. In addition to math, reading, and other traditional courses, students were also taught black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement, and leadership skills that provided them with the intellectual and practical tools to carry on the struggle after the summer volunteers departed.

But, voter registration was the cornerstone of the summer project. Although approximately 17,000 black residents of Mississippi attempted to register to vote in the summer of 1964, only 1,600 of the completed applications were accepted by local registrars.

1964 Freedom Summer Riders

Convictions

Three years later, on October 20, 1967 an all-white jury convicted seven conspirators related to the murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, including a deputy sheriff. The jury acquitted eight others. It was the first time a white jury had convicted a white official of civil rights killings. For three men, including Edgar Rice Killen, the trial ended in a hung jury, with the jurors deadlocked 11–1 in favor of conviction. The lone holdout said that she could not convict a preacher. The prosecution decided not to retry Killen and he was released.

None of the men found guilty would serve more than six years in prison.

See KKK Murders for expanded story of the Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner killings.

1964 Freedom Summer Riders