Category Archives: History

Festivals, Today in history

Texas International Pop Festival

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Texas International Pop Festival

August 30 thru Sept 1, 1969
Dallas International Motor Speedway
Lewisville, TX
1969 Festival # 39

Texas International Pop Festival

Texas International Pop Festival

Festival #39

Texas International Pop Festival
Newspaper article

The Texas International Pop Festival is the 39th festival of 1969 that I’ve discovered. Most were single weekend events, but I’ve included others as well to show how the definition of a festival can be expanded to include summer-length events as well.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair changed the festival landscape. The organizers of the Texas festival did not expect nearly as many people (Texas had approximately 120,000 attended), but towns and police were even warier fearing the potential of another Woodstock-sized event in another small town. Lewisville had about 8,000 people.

Angus Wynne III

Texas International Pop Festival
Crowd shot

Angus Wynne III was the primary organizer of the event. His father was a successful businessman who had begun the Six Flags Over Texas park (if you care to know, the six flags refers to the six countries that have governed Texas: France, Spain, Mexico, The Republic of Texas, The Confederate States of America, and the United States of America).

Huge Romney

Hugh Romney’s Hog Farm was also at the Texas International Pop Festival serving in the same capacity as it had at Woodstock: food and please-ant crowd control.

Romney was still Romney until, as the story goes, he had a conversation with BB  King, one of the festival’s performers. After that conversation, King reportedly turned to someone and said, “That guy is wavy gravy.”

Texas International Pop Festival
Texas International Pop Festival
Crowd shot

Line up

Saturday, August 30
  • Canned Heat
  • Chicago Transit Authority
  • James Cotton Blues Band
  • Janis Joplin
  • B.B. King
  • Herbie Mann
  • Rotary Connection
  • Sam & Dave
Sunday, August 31
  • B.B. King
  • Led Zeppelin
  • Herbie Mann
  • Sam & Dave
  • Santana
Monday, September 1
Texas International Pop Festival

More than once

Though not on the schedule, the newly formed Grand Funk Railroad opened each day, a clever move that helped spread the news about themselves.

You will also notice that some bands played more than one day: Chicago (2x), James Cotton (2x), BB King (3x), Herbie Mann (2x), Sam & Dave (2x), and Delaney & Bonnie & Friends (2x). The ubiquitous Johnny Winter played one day.

Unlike most other 1969 festivals, there is a bit more to read about and find and hear regarding this festival. Several bootleg albums exist from some performances.

And it has something that Bethel, NY’s Woodstock only recently received: historic recognition. The Texas Historical Commission recognized the  Festival as a significant part of Denton County history by awarding it an Official Texas Historical Marker.

Texas International Pop Festival

A Scott Powers, who commented on my WW Facebook page entry, pointed out that he lives nearby and that , “The site is now a Chase office building.” Thanks Scott.

David Weekly took the video below with a super-8 movie camera and added the music afterwards.

Some information from the City of Lewisville site

Texas International Pop Festival

Next 1969 festival: Sky River Rock Festival

Black history, Fear of Rock, Music et al

1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

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1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

Houston, TX

Fear of Rock

The Fear of Rock and Roll · Propeller
1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

Rock & Integration?

Some have argued that rock and roll did as much to integrate the United States as legislation or demonstrations. It is difficult to quantify the contribution of any one civil rights strategy, but it is interesting to think that rock and roll music did not start out as a way to bring races together.

1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

International fear

The fear of rock music was not limited to the United States. On May 8, 1954 the UK’s BBC radio banned Johnnie Ray’s song “Such A Night” after some listeners complained about its ‘suggestiveness.’ Ray was famous for his emotional stage act, which included beating up his piano and writhing on the floor.

1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

Billboard’s Fear

Later that year, on September 24, 1954, a Billboard magazine editorial entitled “Control the Dimwits” called for removing rhythm and blues records with sexual double entendres from jukeboxes.

The Songwriters Protective Association (today the Songwriters Guild of America ) endorsed the editorial. Police in Memphis, Tennessee, and Long Beach, California, confiscated jukeboxes with the offending records. The largest jukebox operator in the New York City area offered to remove any records that Billboard listed.

1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

Variety’s Fear

The following year, on February 23, 1955, Variety magazine wrote “A Warning to the Music Business,. Music ‘leer-ics’ are touching new lows and …policing, if you will, [has] to come from more responsible sources. Meaning the . . . record manufacturers and their network daddies. . . . It won’t wash for them to . . . justify their ‘leer-ic’ garbage by declaring ‘that’s what kids want’ or ‘that’s the only thing that sells today.”

1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

Institutional Fear

Again that year, on May 17, 1955,  Princeton University students played the Bill Haley hit record Rock Around the Clock simultaneously from their dorm rooms. University administrators suspended four students.

1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

Municipal Fear

Some US cities began to ban concerts by certain rock and roll artists…mainly black like Fats Domino.

1955 Juvenile Delinquency Crime Commission

Juvenile Delinquency and Crime Commission

Finally on August 21, 1955, the Juvenile Delinquency and Crime Commission in Houston, Texas, claimed success  in its anti-rock and roll crusade. The effort involved pressuring radio stations not to play recordings with “lewd or suggestive” lyrics. All nine Houston radio stations had cooperated.

The Commission had prepared a list of objectionable records. “Wash-Out-The Air,” a subcommittee of the Commission, looked for records that were supposedly suggestive, obscene, or had lewd intonations. The list contained twenty-six records and almost all by black artists, including:

  • Ray Charles “I Got a Woman”
  • Clyde McPhatter “Whatcha’ Gonna Do Now”
  • Hank Ballard and the Midnighters “Annie Had a Baby”
  • Dominoes “Sixty Minute Man”
  • Drifters “Honey Love”
  • Roy Brown “Good Rockin’ Tonight”

The Commission told radio station owners that the Commission would complain to the Federal Communications Commission if the stations did not cooperate.

For more about Houston in particular and the fear of rock in general, see the book, Anti-rock: The Opposition to Rock ‘n’ Roll by Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave.

Cold War, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Red Scare, Today in history

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

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1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

August 18, 1955

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

McCarthyism

Despite its importance in the Allied victory in World War II, after the war most Americans viewed Communist Soviet Union as a dangerous enemy.

A number of American politicians, most notably Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, said that many Americans were sympathetic to Communism, worked for Communists, or were  spies for Communists.

In February 1950, McCarthy charged that there were over 200 “known communists” in the Department of State.

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

House on Un-American Activities

Established in 1938, the House on Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed citizens to testify before Congress about possible or imagined Communist sympathies.

Many felt that HUAC was simply a political tool used by the Republicans. In 1947, HUAC had decided not to investigate the Ku Klux Klan. HUAC’s chief counsel, Ernest Adamson, announced: “The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe,” HUAC member John Rankin added: “After all, the KKK is an old American institution.”

That same year, Ronald Reagan, along with his wife Jane Wyman, provided the FBI with a list of names of Screen Actors Guild members they believed were or had been Communists.

On October 20, 1947, HUAC opened hearings into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. A “friendly” witness included President of Screen Actors Guild Ronald Reagan.

On November 24, 1947 the House of Representatives issued citations for Contempt of Congress to the so-called Hollywood Ten—John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo. They had refused to cooperate at hearings dealing with communism in the movie industry. The men were sentenced to one year in jail. The Supreme Court later upheld the contempt charges.

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

Other artists targeted

On September 4, 1949  racists injured more than 140 attendees after a benefit for a civil rights group in Peekskill, N.Y.

The victims were among the 20,000 people leaving a concert featuring African-American Paul Robeson, well-known for his strong pro-unionism, civil rights activism and left-wing affiliations.

The departing concert-goers had to drive through a mile-long gauntlet of rock-throwing racists and others chanting “go on back to Russia, you niggers” and “white niggers.”

On February 6, 1952, a former Communist Party member and now an FBI informant,  named members of the popular folk singing group The Weavers as Communists. Pete Seeger was a member of the group.

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

Pete Seeger Does Not Testify

On this date, HUAC called Pete Seeger to testify.

Seeger refused to invoke the Fifth Amendment, protecting citizens from self-incrimination. Instead he insisted that the Committee had no right to question him regarding his political beliefs or associations.

HUAC cited Seeger for contempt of court and in March 1961 he stood trial. The court found him guilty of obstructing HUAC’s work. At his sentencing he asked if he could sing, “Wasn’t That a Time”? The judge refused Seeger’s request and sentenced him to a year and a day in prison.

A court overturned the verdict in May 1962. The same week Peter, Paul, and Mary’s cover of Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” hit the top 40 list.

That same year, Seeger used words from the Book of Ecclesiastes to write “Turn Turn Turn.”

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses

Blacklisted

Though the Court had overturned his conviction, TV and other media continued to blacklist Seeger. It would not be until September 10, 1967, on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Show that Pete Seeger appeared for the first time on television. It had been 17 years since blacklisting. He sang Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, but CBS dropped the performance when Seeger refused to edit the obviously the song’s anti-Vietnam sentiments.

On February 25, 1968, CBS allowed Seeger to return to the show and sing the song among others.

1955 Activist Pete Seeger Refuses