Category Archives: Birthdays

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

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Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

Remembering Cynthia Robinson

January 12, 1944 – November 23, 2015

Cynthia Robinson was born in Sacramento, California. She played brass instruments in her high school marching band and was an original member of Sly Stone’s short-lived band The Stoners.

After that group broke up, she stayed with  him as part of the Family Stone.

According to the Family Stone home page,  he career included “Playing with P-Funk maestro George Clinton, Larry Graham, Prince, and Sinbad’s Aruba Summer Soul Festival with fellow S & TFS members, Rose Stone, Jerry Martini, Larry Graham & Graham Central Station.  In 2006, she along with the Original Family Stone members performed at the Grammy Awards in an All Star assembled band paying tribute to Sly & The Family Stone.

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

Cynthia

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

She is the only female, African-American trumpet player ever to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

In 2006, she began playing with the Family Stone which included her daughter , Sylvette Phunne Robinson, also known as Phunne Stone.  She and her daughter sang lead vocals on “Do Yo Dance,” a single released by the group the summer of 2015.

When asked in 2011 what she thought the future held for the band and her, she responded, “As long as we all stay healthy, it’s going to be a motha’! I love these guys…and girl. And we all care about each other off the stage. When we’re in our separate cities and our separate homes. We still care about each other.” Robinson died of cancer in Carmichael, California at the age of 71.

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

Woodstock

It does not get much better than the classic “I Want to Take You Higher” from the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Cynthia is prominently featured:

From the Rolling Stone magazine obit : When news of Robinson’s death broke, Questlove penned a loving tribute to her, calling her music’s original “hypeman” in an Instagram post. “She wasn’t just a screaming cheerleading foil to Sly and Freddie [Stone]’s gospel vocals; she was a kick ass trumpet player,” he wrote. “A crucial intricate part of Sly Stone’s utopian vision of MLK’s America: Sly and the Family Stone were brothers and cousins, friends and enemies, black and white, male and female. saint and sinner. … Cynthia’s role in music history isn’t celebrated enough.”

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson
Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

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Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

Remembering Dennis Greene

January 11, 1949 – September 5, 2015

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene
Dennis Greene, top row, fourth from left.

Frederick “Dennis” Greene, born in Manhattan, was a founding member of Sha Na Na and later became a movie studio executive and then a law professor.  While at Columbia University, he and the other  classmates formed an a cappella group called the Columbia Kingsmen.

Because there already was a well-known band called the Kingsmen (they sang the infamous “Louie, Louie“) they changed their name to Sha Na Na after the nonsense lyrics in the Coasters hit song, “Get a Job.”

None of them realized the distance that idea would travel.

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

Dennis Greene

He sang with Sha Na Na at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. After receiving widespread exposure from Woodstock the movie and the album in 1970, the rock group became an overnight success. For the next three years, Mr. Greene attended classes on weekdays and toured on weekends. He graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in English in 1972.

He was in the movie Grease as well as in the group’s television series, “Sha Na Na.” The variety show aired from 1978 to 1981.

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

Columbia Pictures

After 15 years with the group Greene left Sha Na Na to pursue a master’s degree at Harvard and a law degree at Yale. According to his NY Times obituary, Greene said, “Being a rock star was never something that was particularly interesting to me… It was a great job. I loved the singing part. The byproducts, unfortunately, were exhausting travel and the ongoing-forever politics of being in a business controlled by young adults.”

He went on to become vice president of production and features at Columbia Pictures, where he worked on Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” and later became president of Lenox/Greene Films.

Greene eventually settled in law. He worked as a professor at multiple universities, including University of Dayton, Florida A & M University, and Ohio State University.

Dennis Greene died on September 5, 2015. His obituary appeared in the New York Times.

Columbia College

Here is the link to a Sept/Oct 2008  Columbia College article entitled ” Sha Na Na and the Invention of the Fifties” By George J. Leonard ’67, ’68 GSAS, ’72 GSAS and Robert A. Leonard ’70, ’73 GSAS, ’82 GSAS.

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene
Birthdays, Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Singer Activist Joan Baez

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Singer Activist Joan Baez

Many Happy Returns!

Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Báez was born in Staten Island, NY  on January 9, 1941. Although often associated with Bob Dylan, it should be that he is associated with her as Bob was Joan’s guest at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. It was she featured on the November 23, 1962 cover of Time magazine.

Singer Activist Joan Baez

…but associated they are.

Singer Activist Joan Baez

Many areas

To quickly explain Joan’s career would do a disservice to her.  Some associate Joan with the early 1960s civil rights movement. True. Some associate her with the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech movement. True. Some may even know of her participation in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. True again

In other words, Joan has had a lifetime of peace, love, art, and activism.

Singer Activist Joan Chandos Baez
Joan at Woodstock with Jeffrey Shurtleff
Singer Activist Joan Baez

David Harris

During the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, she was pregnant and married to David Harris. Authorities had jailed Harris for refusing to be drafted. That night, Baez played her hour set with Richard Festinger and Jeffrey Shurtleff.

Their set was:

  • Oh Happy Day
  • The Last Thing On My Mind
  • I Shall Be Released
  • Story about how the Federal Marshalls came to take David Harris into custody  
  • No Expectations
  • Joe Hill
  • Sweet Sir Galahad
  • Hickory Wind
  • Drug Store Truck Driving Man
  • I Live One Day at a Time
  • Take Me Back to the Sweet Sunny South
  • Let Me Wrap You in My Warm and Tender Love
  • Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
  • We Shall Overcome

Here is her rendition of International Workers of the World hero Joe Hill from that misty night. The lyrics are based on a 1925 poem by Alfred Hayes that Earl Robinson had put to music in 1936.

The compensation that each of the Woodstock performers received has long been of interest, but documents clearly showing the amount are hard to come by.

Joan Baez received $10,000 (approximately $71,000 in 2019 dollars) and here is the actual documentation:

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Letter to Joan

Dear Joan Baez,

We don’t love you because of all the albums you have released. And you have! We don’t love you because of that voice. And it is amazing! We don’t love you because are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And you are.

We love you for all you have contributed. We love for all you continue to contribute. We love you because you have been a role model to anyone willing to listen and watch.

From all of us to you.

We Shall Overcome.

Singer Activist Joan Baez

For more about Joan and her music, visit >>> Hubpages