Category Archives: Birthdays

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Guitarist Jeffrey Shurtleff

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Guitarist Jeffrey Shurtleff

January 20
Happy birthday, Jeff

Joan Baez is a name fans of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair all recognize. Jeffrey Shurtleff less so.

Guitarist Jeffrey Shurtleff
Shurleff and Baez from the Woodstock movie

According to the Rate Your Music site, “Jeffrey Shurtleff was born…in Vallejo, California at Mare Island Naval Hospital.

He entered Stanford University from the Choate School in Connecticut in September 1962. In 1964, he took a year off in Mexico and worked with a Quaker project. Returning to Stanford, he lived in a commune with his brother Bill and friend David Harris named Peace and Liberation, which advocated resistance to the war in Vietnam.

Here is his and Joan Baez’s wonderful performance at Woodstock on One Day at a Time.

Guitarist Jeffrey Shurtleff

State Farm

In the early 70s, he released an album, State Farm.

Guitarist Jeffrey Shurtleff
Jeffrey Shurtleff on cover of his State Farm ablum

[Also from Rate Your Music] In 1970-72, Jeffrey hitch-hiked throughout South America starting from California. He later started Printers Inc. bookstore in Palo Alto, California and later became the owner of a new Central Park Bookstore in San Mateo, California.

Guitarist Jeffrey Shurtleff

California

He was married to Maria De Jesus Flores and had two sons. He has been both the Director and Head Instructor at several Youth Schools in San Francisco. Jeff continues to live in California.

If his Facebook page is an indication of his current status, he remains an activist for many causes. Here are the titles of recent Facebook posts:

  • Demand San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon Charge SFPD Officers with Murder!
  • End Juvenile Solitary Confinement
  • We demand that the use of herbicides in any part of Lake Tahoe be prohibited.
  • Stop the Drills: Say No to Offshore Drilling in the Atlantic and Artic.

He is also active with Northern California Amnesty International.  Here he spoke about the conflict between China and Tibet and its importance.

Guitarist Jeffrey Shurtleff
Birthdays, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Remembering Janis Lyn Joplin

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Remembering Janis Lyn Joplin

January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970
(sound clip is from Janis on the Dick Cavett Show 18 July 1969)

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas. High school was an uncomfortable place for her as a teenager in the mid-1950s. Unlike her classmates, her tastes in music gravitated toward the blues and beatniks.

She sang in a local choir and expanded her listening to singers such as Odetta, Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton. In fact, years later Janis provided a headstone for Bessie Smith’s grave, who is buried in Philadelphia’s Mount Lawn cemetery.

Janis Lyn Joplin
Mount Lawn Cemetery, Sharon Hill, PA

After a couple of unsuccessful college ventures, visits to California, living in Texas again, going to NYC, and a failed marriage engagement, Janis arrived in San Francisco on June 4, 1966 to audition with Big Brother and the Holding Co. She became part of the band and her first performance with them was six days later at the Avelon Ballroom.

Remembering Janis Lyn Joplin

Big Brother & the Holding Co.

Janis and the band became local favorites and a year later on June 17, 1967 they hit the big time at the Monterey International Pop Festival. When the movie was released in December 1968, it was Janis on the poster.

Remembering Janis Lyn Joplin

Here she is at that festival performing Ball and Chain.

And 21 months later at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, she again starred.

Remembering Janis Lyn Joplin

Harvard Stadium

And only a year later, on August 12, 1970, was Janis’s last public performance. It was at Harvard Stadium, Boston with the Full Tilt Boogie Band. (story and photos from WBUR site)

Like too many of her time, the drug availability and sycophant fans were too easy to avoid. Perhaps Life seemed better with them. Life, perhaps, had become addicted to them.

On October 4, 1970 Janis Joplin was found dead of a drug overdose at the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles at the age of 27 by her road manager John Cooke. (NYT obituary)

References: Joplin dot com

Remembering Janis Lyn Joplin
Birthdays, Black history, Mohammad Ali, Peace Love Art and Activism

Greatest Muhammad Ali

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Greatest Muhammad Ali

Greatest Muhammad Ali
Nov. 9, 2005, President Bush presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to boxer Muhammad Ali in the East Room of the White House. He is now so much a part of the nation’s social fabric that it’s hard to comprehend a time when Ali was more reviled than revered.
January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016
Remembering the “Greatest” on his birthday
Greatest Muhammad Ali

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr

When Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr was born in Louisville, Kentucky no one would have predicted that one day he would be the most recognized person in the world.

Boxing was the skill that brought such fame.

The legend begins with a stolen bike. A young boy wanted to get even and a cop told him he’d better learn to fight first.

As Clay, he won six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles, two national Golden Gloves titles, an Amateur Athletic Union National Title, and the Light Heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.

After the Olympics, Ali went professional. Though not each of his consecutive victories was without criticism, but the end of 1963 he was next in line to fight Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship.

Because of his personality, some could still use the term uppity without recrimination, many looked forward to Clay being pummeled by Liston and getting a comeuppance.

On February 25, 1964 Ali defeated Liston.

In their May 25, 1965 re-match, Ali defeated Liston again and successfully retained his crown for 7 more bouts until 1967 when he refused to be drafted. His championship was taken away.

At this point Ali became more than a great boxer. He became a person who some admired and others decried. Listen below to David Suskind’s withering criticism of Ali.  (also see a PBS article on Ali from a broadcast called The Trials of Muhammad Ali)

I find nothing amusing or interesting or tolerable abut this man. He’s a disgrace to his country, his race, and what he laughingly describes as his profession. he is a convicted felon in the United States. He has been found guilty. He is out on bail. He will inevitably go to prison, as well he should. He is a simplistic fool and a pawn.
Greatest Muhammad Ali

June 28, 1971

On June 28, 1971 the US Supreme Court reversed Ali’s conviction for refusing induction by unanimous decision in Clay v. United States. The decision was not based on, nor did it address, the merits of Clay’s/Ali’s claims per se, rather, the Government prosecution’s procedural failure to specify which claims were rejected and which were sustained, constituted the grounds upon which the Court reversed the conviction.

Ali would go on to win back the heavyweight championship, lose it, and regain it again. The only boxer to hold the championship three different times.

Thank you Muhammad Ali

Greatest Muhammad Ali