Category Archives: Festivals

Festivals, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

1969 Laurel Pop Festival

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1969 Laurel Pop Festival

Laurel Race Course, Laurel, Maryland

July 11 & 12, 1969

1969 festival #24

1969 Laurel Pop Festival

Audio from a series of videos the Laurel History Boys did.
1969 Laurel Pop Festival

The 24th festival of 1969. I realize that there were other 1969 music events such as jazz, country, and folk festivals, but I am limiting my ongoing coverage to what I generally refer to as rock festivals. I included the Newport Jazz Festival earlier in the month because it included several rock bands as well.

1969 Laurel Pop Festival

Nice line-up

The Laurel Pop Festival does not make the list of answers when we ask anyone, “Name a festival that happened in 1969.” If we said “Laurel Pop Festival” to anyone, we likely  get a blank look.

The line up for that weekend suggests otherwise on both counts. We should know it. Look at the line up:

July 11

  • Al Kooper
  • Jethro Tull
  • Johnny Winter
  • Edwin Hawkins Singers
  • Led Zeppelin
  • Buddy Guy

July 12

  • Jeff Beck
  • Ten Years After
  • Sly and the Family Stone
  • Mothers of Invention
  • Savoy Brown
  • Guess Who

This post’s background audio mentions that five of the Laural Pop acts played at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August.

Actually not.

Three did and I’ve underlined them. I again note that Johnny Winter played. The guy was indefatigable that summer!

Nick and Bobbi Ercoline

Perhaps the most iconic photo of Woodstock attendees (as opposed to Woodstock performers) is the picture of Nick and Bobbi Ercoline.

1969 Laurel Pop Festival

For Laurel Pop we have John and Debbie. I suppose had Laurel Pop become as famous as Woodstock, we’d recognize them today, too.

1969 Laurel Pop Festival

The picture of John and Debbie is from a site that attendees have commented about their experiences there.

Wet ending

From the Baltimore Sun: Lost in the smoky haze of 1960s history is The Laurel Pop Festival held in July 1969, which was attended by 15,000 fans and offered an incredible lineup of some of the biggest pop performers of the year. Held just one month before Woodstock, The Laurel Pop Festival ended in controversy as rain-soaked fans built bonfires with wooden folding chairs and refused to leave as the concert dragged on into the early morning.

Laurel History Boys

A site called the Laurel History Boys posted a piece in 2019 on their golden anniversary presentation of the event. Lot’s of pictures and information about Led Zeppelin.

Link to that piece followed by a video with an interview with Kevin Leonard,  one of the Laurel History Boys.

https://laurelhistory.com/2019/07/12/great-fun-at-the-laurel-pop-festival-celebration/

1969 Laurel Pop Festival

Next 1969 festival: 1969 Forest Hills Music Festival

Festivals, Music of the 60s

1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival

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1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival

July 4 – 5

Pottawattamie Beach, Saugatuck, MI
1969 festival #20
1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival
ARTWORK: GARY GRIMSHAW
1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival

Line up

  • MC5
  • SRC
  • Procol Harum
  • Muddy Waters
  • John Lee Hooker
  • Amboy Dukes
  • Rotary Connection
  • Crazy World of Arthur Brown
  • Bob Seger
  • Frost
  • The Stooges
  • Big Mama Thornton
1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival

Festivals Continue

I reckon this as the 20th festival of the 1969 festival season. The main reason I’ve done these reviews is because for decades I ignorantly thought Woodstock was the only festival of 1969.

Sure, there was Altamont at the end of the year with its tragedy and the shibboleth that the “60s ended at Altamont.”

The 60s in its full meaning had hardly begun until 1965 and certainly continued into the early 70s at least.

The legacy of the so-called 60s is a topic for another time, another discussion.

1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival

Faded festivals

The reasons why some festivals, despite stellar performers likely doing stellar performances, faded with the newspapers that had a few columns about them are not complicated.

1. The location was away from the mainstream media’s purview.
2. The promoters had not the foresight or finances to record or film their event.

1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

As much as Michael Shrieve and his “Soul Sacrifice” drum solo helped carve Santana’s performance onto the monument of rock history, the fact that Woodstock Ventures did have the foresight to record and film the festival with high quality equipment made Woodstock the historic event it is today.

Stop stalling…

When am I going to start telling you about the Saugatuck Pop Festival? Unfortunately there’s not much to tell.

Here we go…

Alice Cooper

First: not listed but at the festival was Alice Cooper. In fact, one of the few things found about the festival is that the positive reception the band got at Saugatuck gave them the boost they had been looking for to continue as a band. [From The Original Glen Buxton site]

Gary Grimshaw
1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival
photo from the Grimshaw site

Second: Gary Grimshaw designed the poster. According to the bio at his site, “…Grimshaw (1946 – 2016) had a fifty-year carreer in the arts. He touched on many traditional disciplines and innovated new techniques. woven into his early and mid-career works are great examples of early underground comics.

Plea

So (not supposed to start sentences with “So…”) today’s blog is a request: do any of you have any information about the event? If so please comment and let me know and I’ll add what you contribute and give you credit for that contribution.

Follow up to Plea

Thank you to all (especially Paul) for all your memories. First hand accounts are terrific!

1969 Saugatuck Pop Festival

Next 1969 festival: Atlanta International Pop Festival 

Anniversary, Festivals, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival

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1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival

July 4 and 5
Atlanta International Raceway, Hampton GA
1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival
View of the stage from the side. Like most festivals of 1969, there was only one stage.
1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival

1969 Festival #21

We are more than a month away from THE Woodstock festival and are already up to the year’s 21s festival.

The 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival was mainly a success. No riots. No rain, but 100o temperatures. Local fire departments sprayed water on the crowd to alleviate heat issues. Long lines for food and beverages.

There is no movie (a home 8mm does not count). There is no album. Both those negatives were positives that helped propel Woodstock into its place in history.

The line up was a good as any that summer. Woodstock Ventures had booked seven of the bands for its Bethel soiree in August. I’ve underlined them.

1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival

Line up (underlined performed at Woodstock)

  • Chuck Berry
  • Al Kooper
  • Blood, Sweat & Tears
  • Booker T & the MGs
  • Canned Heat
  • Chicago Transit Authority
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • Dave Brubeck
  • Delaney, Bonnie & Friends
  • Ian & Sylvia
  • Grand Funk Railroad
  • Janis Joplin
  • Johnny Winter
  • Led Zeppelin
  • Pacific Gas & Electric
  • Paul Butterfield Blues Band
  • Johnny Rivers
  • Spirit
  • Sweetwater
  • Ten Wheel Drive

Yesterday, I posted a piece about the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival which included the fact that due to early disruptions, organizers had cancelled Led Zeppelin’s scheduled appearance in hopes of reducing the number of kids hoping to get into the sold-out venue. It worked a bit (not enough) and Zeppelin appeared as scheduled. You will notice their name here, too. They played on the 6th in Newport which enabled them to rush up there from Atlanta.

Johnny Winter, again, seems to be everywhere this summer and he along with Blood Sweat and Tears will also head north immediately for Newport. The life of  musicians!

Noteworthy is that it was 1969 and there was a strong sense among some young venture capitalists that making money wasn’t what it was all about! The festival was a financial success and that Monday, July 7, the festival promoters gave  a free concert in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. Some of the bands who had played at the festival Chicago Transit Authority, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Spirit, and the Grateful Dead performed.

And of course there’s a recording of the Dead on that July 7, 1969.

1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival

Freaks Unite

One of the most common takeaways that I often hear from other Woodstock alum is that they never realized how many of “us” there were.

According to a  2009 article from Georgia Music, “The flower children were awestruck as well, never having seen so many of their own in one setting. In fact, the turnout caused many of them to reflect for decades to come.

“We may have felt like freaks, but now we knew we weren’t the only freaks,” writes Mark Kemp in Dixie Lullaby: a Story of Music, Race and the Beginnings in a New South. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but the feeling of community . . . was the beginning of a healing process—in me and in many southerners of my generation—that continues to this day.”

And in 2023, Steve Young had this to say: I was there….5 of us…..8 hour drive….no tickets…..snuck UNDER the speedway fence…saw a few bands and missed a few…no shade…..yo yo’s that had lights at night and made amazing trails….saw Janis but missed Grand Funk Railroad and Joe Cocker

Next 1969 festival: Bullfrog Lake Music Festival