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..”
Remembering, appreciating, and recognizing his genius
February 28, 1939 — February 22, 2001
Guitarist Extraordinaire John Fahey
First light
I’m not sure when I first heard John Fahey. Probably on New York’s WNEW-FM and during Christmas time 1968 when his The New Possibility album came out.
Guitarist Extraordinaire John Fahey
Unique
I was often on the musical lookout for something new, good, and an outlier. For me, John Fahey fit all three. It seemed like he was doing more without words (most of the time), than many musicians were doing with them (most of the time).
Even a song as simple as Amazing Grace had this seesaw rhythm to it that somehow enhanced the whole experience. Songs seemed to stretch out slowly to new paths. The New Possibility.
Backstory
His story is similar to others who found the music was their avocation. Both parents liked music and played the piano. Before television’s takeover, pianos were often a home’s entertainment system. John’s parents brought him to local bluegrass concerts near their home in Tacoma, Maryland. And like so many other young people, hearing Jimmie Rogers lighted an acoustic flame.
Unlike many young people, hearing Blind Willie Johnson ignited a love of the acoustic blues. His own playing progressed to the point that he began to record his music, but thinking no company would be interested in pressing the music, he decided to start his own label and name it after his hometown.
To honor his musical progenitor, he decided to name himself Blind Joe Death. He pressed only 100 albums. Of course they are very rare today, but thanks to that world-wide-internet, we can hear that album:
Guitarist Extraordinaire John Fahey
California
Fahey graduated from American University and moved west where he met fellow blues enthusiast, Alan”Blind Owl” Wilson. Wilson, of course, later went on to co-found Canned Heat, a band named after, what else, an old Tommy Johnson‘s blues song.
Fahey’s Tacoma label struggled on, but he insisted on finding other musicians whose abilities far outweighed their commercial prospects. He discovered fellow guitarists Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, Bola Sete, and Peter Lang, as well as pianist George Winston.
Health and lifestyle issues plagued Fahey. Tacoma was sold and Fahey eventually moved to Salem, Oregon where to survive he sometimes sold one of his guitars or rare records.
In the late 90s, a new generation discovered his genius and Fortuna smiled. Or at least she grinned a bit. He released new albums, created a new label (Revenant Records) Not surprisingly it sought out obscure recordings of early blues, old-time music, and things that caught Fahey’s fancy.
In 2000, he published a book of loosely autobiographical stories, ”How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life” (Drag City Press). In it he said: ”I never considered for a minute that I had talent, What I did have was divine inspiration and an open subconscious.”
On February 22, 2001 Fahey died at Salem Hospital (Oregon) after undergoing a coronary bypass operation.
