Category Archives: Today in 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

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

Music et al, Today in history

Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

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Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

Patented August 10, 1937
Tom Morillo demonstrating some electric guitar techniques
Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument
Rickenbacker Frying Pan
Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

Acoustic guitar fine, but…

An acoustic guitar has many advantages. It is lightweight. It is portable. Manufacturers can make them inexpensively.

For centuries string-instruments held a high place among musicians.

Big bands…

In the early 20th century, big brass band became more popular and its powerful sound simply overpowered the acoustic guitar.

Enter electricity

As electricity increasingly became more accessible and a part of everyday life, inventors increasingly designed devices to use that power.

Electro String Instrument

On August 10, 1937, the United States Patent Office awarded Patent #2,089.171 to G.D. Beauchamp for an instrument known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan.

Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

Inventor G.D. Beauchamp, partnered with Adolph Rickenbacher in the Electro String Instrument Corporation of Los Angeles, California. They had spent more than five years pursuing his patent on the Frying Pan.

A telephone or a guitar?

The idea was a simple one. Simple to understand. Complicated to design. An electro-magnet placed near a vibrating string will pick up and amplify that vibration.

A problem that Beauchamp and Rickenbacker faced was the telephone worked in a very similar manner. They had to revise the guitar’s design several times before the Patent Office accepted their guitar as a guitar and not a telephone.

Their design resembled a circular magnet that surrounded the strings. That design is no longer used.

The same, but different

All the things that a guitarist could do with an acoustic guitar to vary its sound could, of course, be done with an electric guitar, such as bending the strings.

What an acoustic guitar could not do (at least not at first and not without magnetic pickups) was color the sound.

The simple current set up by the vibrating string within the magnetic field is not enough to make a loud sound. An amplifier is necessary. Put some other electronics between the guitar and the amp and a rainbow of sounds is produced.

Here is additional information about the earliest days of the electric guitar.

Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument