Category Archives: Music of the 60s

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

Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

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Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

Happy birthday June 17, 1947
Woodstock alum
2x Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Organist Gregg Alan Rolie
photo from greggrolie.com by Barry Z Levine

Gregg Rolie’s organ slides in just before Carlos Santana’s guitar glides in. Percussion keeps us on track. We immediately recognize Santana’s “Black Magic Woman.”

So smooth.

The opening continues a little more and then Gregg Rolie tells us that he has a black magic woman who’s trying to make a devil out of him.

Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

Palo Alto

Gregg Rolie grew up in Palo Alto, California. Prior to Santana, Rolie played with a group called William Penn and his Pals while attending Cubberley High School in Palo Alto.

After graduating, he met Carlos Santana through a friend who’d heard Santana play at Bill Graham’s Fillmore in San Francisco on a “locals” night.  Rolie tells a story that the first time he and Santana played together they heard police arriving and ran out and hid in a tomato patch.

Such are some beginnings.

Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

Santana Blues Band

They formed the Santana Blues Band, later simply called Santana. The band’s appearance at Woodstock [at manager Bill Graham’s insistence], on the soundtrack, and in the movie lit the fuse that sent them into international orbit with all its enticements and dangers.

Rolie’s journey lasted only two more years. In 1971 he left the band. In his words, “It just got to everybody. But at the same time, the one thing that we had in common was the music and that drive for the music. We did not know each other all that well so when the music faltered, we didn’t know how to express to each other what was going on, going wrong, or why.” [from > Herald Paris interview]

Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

Life after Santana

In 1973 with Santana guitarist Neal Shon, Rolie joined the newly formed Journey. Rolie was the band’s keyboardist and regularly did vocals.

Rolie left Journey in 1980 and did solo work until 1991 when he formed The Storm. In 1998, Rolie and other former members of Santana, including Neal Schon, briefly reunited as Abraxas Pool.

Today Rolie has his Gregg Rolie Band.

Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

Double Hall of Famer

With Santana, Gregg Rolie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. And he was inducted again in 2017 as a member of Journey.

Here is a video Santana’s induction. Rolie’s brief comments occur at 5:50 if you’d prefer.

Here is a link to a Keyboard Magazine interview with Rolie from April 5, 2017 about his second induction.

Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

According to his site, Gregg is a proponent of music education for children. In 2005, he signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and instruction to children in underserved public schools throughout the U.S.A. He sits on the organization’s Honorary Board of Directors.

Organist Gregg Alan Rolie

Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

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WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

June 16, 1966 announcement

NYC WOR-FM Goes Rock

Scott Muni…Saturday 8 October 1966, the first day of DJs on WOR-FM

In the New York metropolitan area, we Boomers had grown up listening to AM music in our parents’ car (when they’d let us) or on our own transistor radios (when we finally got one).

We could watch teenagers dance to the top singles on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. His shows included a lip-synched performance by a current top 10 artist or band: like this one by Roy Orbison on June 5, 1966.

WOR-FM switched to its rock format on July 31. I remember seeing advertisements beforehand and using my parents’ radio–it had FM unlike my AM-only transistor radio.

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

WOR-FM Goes Rock

WOR-FM Goes Rock

I didn’t realize that union difficulties meant no DJs at first. All I knew was that the lack of DJ chatter meant more room for music. And that’s what I wanted. The down side was that if I heard a song I liked but didn’t recognize (e.g., Buffalo Springfield‘s “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”) I was stuck.

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

Those songs of those first days were far from the future of album-oriented playlists. Here’s are some examples from that first day:

  1. Supremes, “Can’t Hurry Love”
  2. Supremes, “Baby Love”
  3. Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames, “Get Away”
  4. Simon & Garfunkel, “Dangling Conversation”
  5. Rolling Stones, “Mother’s Little Helper”
  6. Beatles, “Paperback Writer”
  7. Petula Clark, “You’re the One”
  8. Bobby Moore & the Rhythm Aces, “Searching For My Love”
  9. Frank Sinatra, “Strangers in the Night”
  10. Sandy Posey, “Born a Woman”
  11. The Capitals, “Cool Jerk”
  12. Herb Albert, “A Taste of Honey”
  13. [I don’t know and neither does Shazam] 
  14. Tommy Roe, “Sweet Pea”
  15. Billy Stewart, “Summertime”
  16. Ruby and the Romantics, “We Can Make It”
  17. The Supremes, “Back In My Arms Again”
  18. David Garrick, “Dear Mrs Applebee”
  19. Them, “Gloria’s Dream”
  20. Percy Sledge, “Warm and Tender Love”

Quite a variety, but obviously not the album cuts that many of us would come to love.

As WOR-FM’s DJ gained experience and confidence with the evolving format, management began to balk. Murry the K left in August 1967.  His replacement, Jim O’Brien, played more of a Top 40 format that management preferred to the free-form that had started to happen. By the fall of 1967, the Top 40 format, much like the traditional AM format, had happened. [Music Radio 77 article]

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

WOR-FM Goes South

On October 2, 1967, DJ Rosko announced his departure and the reasoning for that departure right on the air. His discussion reflect the thinking and the approach that some young people were realizing was a preferred format and one that they had become attached to (click to listen):

WNEW-FM took up the reins of that more relaxed, increased choice, and variety-filled approach the fall of 1967. Rosko arrived. Scott Muni arrived. Alison Steele (already there) became the “Nightbird.” Jonathan Schwartz and Dick Summer also became part of that line-up.

WOR FM Announces NYC Rock

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

Incredible String Band

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Incredible String Band

The first album by…
The Incredible String Band
Recorded May 22, 1966
Released in September 1966 (UK); April 1967 (US)
Mike Heron’s “How Happy I Am”

Incredible String Band

By June 1966, British influence on American pop musical tastes was firmly established and record labels had opened their recording studio doors to much more creativity.

The Incredible String Band was not the typical British Invasion band. In 1966 American radio stations were playing #1 songs by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Petula Clark, and the Troggs. Even the New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral” tickled our organs of Corti.

ISB, consisting originally of Mike Heron, Robin Williamson, and Clive Palmer, had recorded the album only the month before. Their style was acoustic and British folk.

Folk-rock > Psychedelic-folk

In the US, though folk music no longer enjoyed its heyday, the Byrds had become popular and their style had created the new rock genre:  “folk-rock.”

ISB planted their sound’s seeds in that soil.

Compared to their later albums (minus Palmer who left after the first album), Incredible String Band is simple. In fact, most of the songs are played solo by the person who wrote them. Palmer had only written one of the songs and thus minimized his presence: five by Williamson, three by Heron and the one by Palmer.

ISB would later compose more elaborate  songs resulting in yet another media label:  psychedelic folk. #ahwell

Heron & Williamson

It would be those more intricate pieces that attracted the band (now only Heron and Williamson with occasional others) to American FM alternate stations.

And it was that attraction that likely brought the band to the attention of Woodstock Ventures who booked them for the Festival on May 28, 1969 for $4,500.

Album

Here are the tracks for the album:

Side 1

  1. Maybe Someday
  2. October Song
  3. When the Music Starts to Play
  4. Schaeffer’s Jig
  5. Womankind
  6. the Tree
  7. Whistle Tune
  8. Dandelion Blues

Side 2

  1. How Happy I Am
  2. Empty Pocket Blues
  3. Smoke Shovelling Song
  4. Can’t Keep Me Here
  5. Good as Gone
  6. Footsteps on the Heron
  7. Niggertown
  8. Everything’s Fine Right Now