Category Archives: Music of the 60s

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

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

1 Comment

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Happy birthday
April 10, 1948
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
l-r Ira Stone, Bert Sommer, and Charlie Bilello at Woodstock

Ira Stone

Starting out, we may think our path will be a singular one. Simple. Straightforward.

Looking back we can see that there were many places where we made a choice or Fortune turned us in a direction that led to places we could never have anticipated.

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Queens, NY

In the early 1950s, when Ira Stone was a toddler growing up in Queens, NY and playing piano, how could he or anyone have predicted that in 1969 he’d play guitar on a damp stage in upstate New York in front of 400,000 people at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair?

In high school, Ira Stone met Jonny and Jeff Geist. They played guitar and Ira took lessons from Jonny. They had a band called the Fortunes and played behind acts that WMCA-AM’s DJs, the “Good Guys” produced.

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
The Fortunes (l. to r. Ira Stone, Jon Geist, Jeff Portney, Jeff Geist)
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

The Last Word

Other bands followed, including The Last Word, which released a single called “Hot Summer Days.” 

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Leslie West and Bert Sommer

In the mid-60s, Stone lived in Westbury, Long Island and had a band called the Stonehenge Circus.  As happens with most bands, while playing gigs he befriended other musicians. One of those musicians was Leslie West from the Vagrants. It was through that friendship that Stone met Bert Sommer who wrote some songs for the Vagrants.

Taking work from whence it came, Stone became part of The Music Explosion road band. Little did I realize that a band’s members not only have not played on their hit, but even if they had, they might not always be the band you saw at a concert.

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Road band

The Music Explosion had a “A Little Bit of Soul” hit and occasionally Stone was part of their road band. Later he became part of the Crazy Elephant road band.

In 1969, back in New York, he saw an ad in the Village Voice. Bert Sommer, a star in the play Hair, was looking for a guitar player. Capital Records (think Woodstock Ventures’ Artie Kornfeld) had just released Sommer’s first album and Kornfeld had invited Sommer to play at Woodstock.

Stone replied to the ad. Stone and Sommer hit it off. Stone got the gig.

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Stone with Sommer (on guitar)

Bert Sommer’s appearance at Woodstock (and thus Ira Stone’s appearance at Woodstock) did not have the impact that others’ appearances had. He was not in the movie, nor on the album. Had either happened future paths might have changed.

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Ira Stone’s Woodstock story

But he did have his story to share:

“In 1969 I answered an ad in the Village Voice newspaper. They were looking for a guitar player to work with a Capitol Records recording artist. I had seen Bert around because he wrote a few tunes for the ‘Vagrants’; Leslie West’s band before ‘Mountain’. Leslie and I were friends, played guitar together and hung out back then. Bert met with us (my wife Maxine & I) before he had to go play ‘Woof’ in “HAIR”. We both took our guitars out and started to tune down to open ‘D’ at the exact same time. That was a magic moment because not many guitar players were using an open D tuning at that time. We then played ‘Jennifer’ from his first album. Little did I know that our very first gig would be at the Woodstock Festival and we’d open with that song!”

“We arrived in upstate New York on Thursday and hung out until Friday when we had to get to the festival site. The caravan of cars that we were in got caught in the traffic gridlock so we had to wait in a big field for a helicopter to fly us over the hill to the stage area. Can you imagine waiting in a field with (among others) the Maharishi, Tim Hardin, & Bert ~ not too surreal. None of us realized the scope of this event until the chopper cleared the hillside. Then we were in awe! All we saw were hundreds of thousands of undulating colors. So many people. It was a sight that I will never forget!”

“We went on stage and played a full 10 song set. The eighth song into the set, we did that cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘America’ and got the only standing ovation of the Festival. Looking into Bert’s eyes and hearing the roar of that huge audience… WOW!  We finished our set and were totally blown away. All of us were unaware at that time what this concert would later become!” The spirit of a generation… The Woodstock Generation!”

And regarding wife Max’s role at Woodstock: Maxine was on stage with us but did not sing. She wrote some of the guitar and Hammond parts that I played and was always helping us at the many rehearsals at the the studio and Bert’s apartment! She and I were helicoptered in together after waiting in the field with Tim Hardin, Bert and the Swami!”

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Other paths

Ira Stone

Stone continued working with Sommer. One of Stone’s most vivid memories is opening for Poco at Carnegie Hall on February 12, 1971.  He traveled to India for a couple of years performing and writing songs while living in there as well as Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In 1982, Stone, his wife Maxine, and other formed Max. It stayed together until 1985 after which Ira and Maxine performed together. “We were still playing in many different incarnations. We did some solo gigs, just me and Maxine between 1985 and 1989.“

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Stoneband

Since 1995 he, Maxine and others formed and continue to play as Stoneband.

Here’s the link to his Facebook page.

Ira Stone

And his daughter Lyndsey is a wonderful musican, too. Here’s the link to her page.

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

Anniversary, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Peace Love Art and Activism

NYC Bans Folk Music

Leave a comment

NYC Bans Folk Music

Anniversary of the “Beatnik Riot”
April 9,  1961
NYC Bans Folk Music
New York Mirror headline
NYC Bans Folk Music

World Power Anomie

After World War II, many young adults, disenchanted with the horrors and atrocities of two global wars less than 25 years apart, broke away from prevailing cultural mores. They sought out an anti-conformist  life style that isolated them from what they saw as a morally corrupt society.

Some found that isolation with those whom American society had already segregated. Some found it in the arts.

Jack Kerouac referred to himself and those like him as part of a Beat Generation. (NY Times magazine article). His use carried with it the notion of being tired, but Kerouac mixed in the ideas of “upbeat”, and “beatific.”

NYC Bans Folk Music

Cold War

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik. The Cold War had increasingly heated in the late 1950s. Growing up as a Boomer meant learning to hate, to distrust, and be anti-anything associated with the USSR.  Catholics prayed for its conversion after every Sunday Mass.

The arms race continued. Sputnik launched the space race, in many ways an offshoot of that arms race.

What better way to label a disenchanted group, the Beats, a group that mainstream citizens and media saw as un-American? Associate them with Communism.

NYC Bans Folk Music

Beatniks

On April 2, 1958, Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only Beat, y’know, when it comes to work . . . “

Thus the Beats became Beatniks. It was not a compliment.

Some Beats loved jazz. Some Beats loved folk music. Both sometimes played outside with friends in NYC’s Greenwich Village, particularly Washington Square Park, busking or simply entertaining themselves.

NYC Bans Folk Music

Newbold Morris

Despite the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, on March 28, 1961, NYC Park Commissioner Newbold Morris notified his staff to limit permits issued for musical performances in Washington Square to “legitimate” artistic groups. He also asked the police to issue summonses to guitarists, bongo drummers, and folk singers who did not have permits.

On April 9, 1961 Greenwich Village folk song fans battled the police for two hours in Washington Square. Police arrested ten demonstrators. Several persons, including three policemen, were hurt.

From the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation site: The protest was arranged by Izzy Young, head of the Folklore Center on MacDougal Street.  A group of protestors who sat in the fountain singing “We Shall Not be Moved” was attacked by police with billy clubs.  Another group sang the Star Spangled Banner, thinking police would not attack such a display of patriotism- they were wrong.

NYC Bans Folk Music
Dan Drasin’s 1961 film, Sunday, captured the April 9, 1961, conflict between New York City folk musicians and police that came to be known as the Beatnik Riot.
NYC Bans Folk Music

Here is that film

NYC Bans Folk Music

Continued support for ban

Two days later NYC Mayor Robert F Wagner, announced his support of the ban.

On April 20, 1961 the  Community Planning Board voted to uphold Park Commissioner Newbold Morris’ ban against folk-singing in Washington Square Park.

On April 30, 1961 police arrested William French, a student, at another demonstration by folk-music fans in Washington Square Park. That arrest nearly set off a riot. It also raised charges of police brutality.

NYC Bans Folk Music

State Supreme Court

On May 4, 1961 NYC’s ban against folk singing in Washington Square Park was upheld by the State Supreme Court.

On May 7, 1961, singers marched back into Washington Square Park and sang for the first time in four weeks without hindrance from the police. They sang a capella. They had discovered that Park Department ordinances require a permit only for “minstrelsy” – singing with instruments, but not for unaccompanied song.

On May 12, 1961 NYC Mayor Wagner announced that folk singing, with instrumental accompaniment, would be permitted in Washington Square “on a controlled basis.”

On June 5, 1961 a grand jury cleared William French of charges associated with the April 30 Washington  Square demonstration.

NYC Bans Folk Music

Appellate Division decision

And on July 6, 1961, the Appellate Division of the NY State Supreme Court unanimously reversed a lower court decision that had supported the city’s former ban on folk singing in Washington Square.

Community displeasure with those seen as outsiders and disruptive was not new and continued. Eight years later in Wallkill, NY, a group of community leaders succeeded in keeping out a group that sought to play their music. That event, of course, was called the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Reference >>> NPR report on Washington Square folk music ban

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

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner

Leave a comment

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner

April 7, 1948 — January 18, 2015

Dallas Woodrow Taylor, Jr

Dallas Woodrow Taylor Jr. was born in Denver and raised in San Antonio.

When he was about 10  his mom brought him to see the “The Gene Krupa Story” movie. It inspired his musical choice and his course in life was set.

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner

Clear Light

For better and worse from there, Taylor’s path to fame and infamy was similar to the one that many have shared. He dropped out of high school at 16 and headed for Hollywood. In 1966 he helped form the psychedelic band Clear Light. A good example of their style is their song “Mr Blue” a cover of folk singer Tom Paxton’s song.

The band released one album, still considered an underground classic of the psychedelic genre.

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner

Crosby, Stills and Nash

In 1969 Dallas Taylor became the drummer for the recently formed group that David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills had formed. As part of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Taylor liked to say that he made his first million — and his last million — by the time he was 21.

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner

Road too often taken

The band played the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and went on, as you already know, to phenomenal success. That success included the availability of various pharmaceuticals that Taylor tried and became addicted to. Those addictions led to behavior that even the Who’s drummer Keith Moon warned Taylor about.

C, S, N, & Y fired him, but he did later become the drummer for Still’s band Manassas. 

He described his downfall this way: “I was one of the lucky ones. I managed to destroy my music, but none of my suicide attempts worked.”

In 1990, he told People magazine, ““I was more famous as a junkie than a drummer.”

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner

Counselor and Author

Eventually  achieving sobriety, Taylor became a drug counselor and in 1994 wrote a memoir entitled Prisoner of Woodstock.  Former band mate and famous addict himself David Crosby wrote in the book’s introduction, “There are a whole list of mistakes, peripheral traps that pull you away from the central and only important concern — music, Money, glory, fame, sex, adulation, peer group approval, competition and one’s own emotional baggage all distract you from your original purpose. As far as I know, Dallas didn’t miss any of these mistakes. They crept up on him, and jerked the rug out from under him, and derailed him and almost killed him.” [see Kirkus review as well]

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner

Declining Health

Taylor himself wrote: “I understand what it is like to be an angry, depressed addict who needs so badly to be liked that he gets on stage and sweats and bleeds and hopes that people will somehow connect.

“But as addicts whose only real happiness is being high–whether it’s on dope or music, writing, acting or painting–success becomes our worst enemy. When self-hatred runs so deep, it is never alleviated by fame or wealth.”

He finally got sober in 1985, but in 1989 doctors diagnosed terminal liver disease. In 1990 he had a liver transplant.

In 2005, his wife Patti McGovern-Taylor donated a kidney for Taylor.

Dallas Taylor Woodstock Prisoner