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.
In a sense, Roger Daltrey founded the Who. It was he who recruited John Entwistle in 1961 to form a band. It was Entwistles suggestion to ask Pete Townshend to join the new band, the Detours.
Who Roger Daltrey CBE
Early on…
Daltrey’s daytime job was in a sheet metal factory, even making the band’s guitars. Interesting, since Pete’s later smashing of his guitars obviously required wooden ones.
The young band went through the usual young band growing pains adding members, firing others, changing its name to The Who, then changing it to The High Numbers, before changing it back to the Who in November 1964.
By that time, Pete Townshend was the leader of the band because of his ability to compose songs, but Roger Daltrey became the front man to sing Townshend’s songs. The famous swirling mic became Daltry’s signature.
Who Roger Daltrey CBE
1965 Who released
On December 3, 1965, the Who released their first album, “My Generation.”
My Generation album cover
Who Roger Daltrey CBE
1967 breakout
1967 was a break-out year in the US where they appeared for the first time. One of their performance was well-timed. On June 18 they appeared at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival and were included on both its movie and soundtrack album.
Having said that, during a July – August tour that year, they opened for Herman’s Hermits.
In 1968 they began to headline and in 1969 Pete Townshends “Tommy” with Roger Daltrey embodying the character on stage, put them among the elite of rock groups.
Who Roger Daltrey CBE
Who Woodstock
Invited to perform at Woodstock, the band wasn’t certain whether to, but finally did. Like Monterey, it became a huge piece of that famous festival.
The Who’s Woodstock encore: My Generation
Who Roger Daltrey CBE
Roger Daltrey
Like many groups, members began to release solo albums, and Daltry released his first, Daltrey, in 1973. He has released eight solo albums, but others in collaboration as well as a children album, The Wheels on the Bus.
The Who continued, sometimes sporadically, despite the death of Keith Moon in 1978 and John Entwistle in 2002.
The Who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
Who Roger Daltrey CBE
Teenage Cancer Trust
Since 2000 he has been a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity that builds specialized wards for teenagers with cancer in the UK and in November 2010, Roger and Pete Townshend launched Teen Cancer America.
Guitarist Ralph Towner? There were over 160 performers who played on the stage in 1969 at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Many were , became, and have remained everyday names. Instantly recognizable. Icons.
Those are the names that visitors to the Museum at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts ask about on a docent tour with a Woodstock alum. “Where you there for…?”
Tim Hardin is not one of the names asked after and those who played with him during his set even less so.
Guitarist Ralph Towner
Tim Hardin
Ralph Towner played at Woodstock. Ralph Towner played with Tim Hardin at Woodstock. Ralph Towner never stopped playing.
An interesting thing (to me at least) about his site‘s bio page is that the word Woodstock doesn’t even appear. Well, he really doesn’t need another credit to his very long list.
Guitarist Ralph Towner
Chehalis, Washington
Towner was born in Chehalis, Washington. His mother was a piano teacher, his father a trumpet player, so it was no surprise that he enrolled as an art major at the University of Oregon in 1958. He changed to composition.
He became interested in jazz and in 1968 Towner moved to New York City to deepen his love within its jazz scene. Paul Winter invited Towner to be part of the Paul Winter Consort.
It was with the Paul Winter Consort that he met Glen Moore, Paul McCandless, and Collin Walcott. They would all form the band Oregon in 1971. Though Towner has played with dozens of other people, Oregon was and continues to be his home port.
Guitarist Ralph Towner
Acoustic jazz
There aren’t many acoustic jazz guitarists, but Towner is one of if not the best. I am far from an expert about jazz and those who fill that field with wonderful music, but I do recognize a few of the names he’s played with and have found their music great and wish it were more widely promoted.
“I was a Leap Year baby, and it seems to me that I have been leaping ever since.”
Remembering and appreciating
February 29, 1892 — March 27, 1962
Sculptress Augusta Savage
Woodstock Music and Art Fair
500,000 attendees and its long list of now-famous performers have overshadowed the original goal of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. As its name implied, it was going to be a weekend of art and music.
“…inspire(s), educate(s) and empower(s) individuals through the arts and humanities.”
Sculptress Augusta Savage
Her Life
Savage’s 1942 terracotta Portrait of a Baby recalls the small, red clay sculptures she made as a child (New-York Historical Society)
The life of Augusta Savage reflected the Center’s mission.
She was born Augusta Christine Fell in Green Cove Springs, Florida on February 29, 1892. She loved sculpting animals and other small figures as a child with the red clay others used to make bricks, but her father, a poor Methodist minister, frowned upon such an activity.
Sculptress Augusta Savage
Persistence
Augusta persisted.
Augusta Savage (her second husband was James Savage, the name she kept even after their divorce) moved to Harlem in 1921, where she cleaned houses to pay her rent and studied art at the tuition-free Cooper Union. She finished her degree in three years.
A bust she made of W.E.B. DuBois led to another commission for a busts of other African American leaders such as Marcus Garvey.
Wendy N.E. Ikemoto of the New York Historical Society explains that the selection committee rescinded the scholarship. The reasoning was the white women “would feel uncomfortable sharing accommodations on the ship, sharing a studio, sharing living spaces. ...the way that these committee members expressed that decision and the justification for it — they were concerned about Savage. It would be uncomfortable for her.”
Despite the withdrawal, Savage stayed in Paris for three years studying, working, and winning awards.
Gamin
Sculptress Augusta Savage
Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts
According to the Smithsonian site, in 1932, she “returned to New York and established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts and became an influential teacher in Harlem. In 1934 she became the first African-American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. In 1937 Savage’s career took a pivotal turn. She was appointed the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center and was commissioned by the New York World’s Fair of 1939 to create a sculpture symbolizing the musical contributions of African Americans. Negro spirituals and hymns were the forms Savage decided to symbolize in The Harp. Inspired by the lyrics of James Weldon Johnson’s poem Lift Every Voice and Sing, The Harp was Savage’s largest work and her last major commission. She took a leave of absence from her position at the Harlem Community Art Center and spent almost two years completing the sixteen-foot sculpture. Cast in plaster and finished to resemble black basalt, The Harp was exhibited in the court of the Contemporary Arts building where it received much acclaim. The sculpture depicted a group of twelve stylized black singers in graduated heights that symbolized the strings of the harp. The sounding board was formed by the hand and arm of God, and a kneeling man holding music represented the foot pedal. No funds were available to cast The Harp, nor were there any facilities to store it. After the fair closed it was demolished as was all the art.” (NYT announcement)
The Harp by Augusta Savage, displayed at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City
Sculptress Augusta Savage
Lost job
When Savage returned to Harlem, her job at the Harlem Center was taken. She attempted to establish two other centers, but a lack of funds during the late Depression, caused their failure.
In 1945, Savage moved to Saugerties, New York, in the Catskill Mountains to be with her daughter and her daughter’s family.
Although she visited NYC occasionally, the peace of rural Saugerties (as had been the case for earlier artists and would be the case for some other artists in the not-too-distant future) continued to attract her. She taught children in local summer camps, and produced a few portrait sculptures of tourists.
In 1962 Savage moved back to New York where she died in relative obscurity on March 26, 1962. (NYT obit)
“Augusta Savage was an African-American artist who failed to receive the recognition she deserved in her lifetime,” said Khanh Tran, the sculpture instructor at DA. “This sculpture garden is our way of commemorating her contributions to the local and national artistic landscape.”
Restore art to replace Confederate statues
Aviva Kempner wrote in The NY Times that as important as the removal of Confederate statues was, it was just as important to replace them with appropriate art such as Augusta Savage’s. Kempner wrote, “First on the list should be “The Harp,” a magnificent work by the noted African-American sculptor Augusta Savage that was demolished at the closing of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York..”
