Category Archives: Music et al

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

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone

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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.

Most of this information was gotten from Ira’s site. The site has lots of pictures, especially of his gear.

Also, if you’re looking to listen to Ira’s Stone Band, check out…

Ira Stone

Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Anniversary, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Peace Love Art and Activism

NYC Bans Folk Music

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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, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Drummer Keef Hartley

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Drummer Keef Hartley

April 8, 1944, — November 27, 2011
Drummer Keef Hartley
cover to first Keef Hartley Band album (1969)
Guitarist Miller Anderson speaks about Keef Hartley Band’s Woodstock experience

The Beatles were not at Woodstock, but a few of their songs were sung, most notably Joe Cocker‘s “With a Little Help From My Friends.”  The Beatles were not at Woodstock, but the drummer who replaced Ringo Starr when he joined the Beatles was.

The threads of rock’s tapestry are trivial taken singly, but  together tell the story. We all know that when Pete Best was let go, Ringo replaced him. Ringo had been in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes at the time. Keef Hartley replaced Ringo.

Keith Hartley was born in Preston, England and said that because he had small hands, found the drums an easier instrument to learn than guitars.

He said to Spencer Leigh in an Independent interview: “I have very short hands and I couldn’t manage the guitar neck so the drums were for me. My biggest influences were Tony Meehan, Sandy Nelson and the guy who did that wonderful drumming on the Ventures’ ‘Walk – Don’t Run’.”

The first band he was in was the Heartbeats (who opened for the Beatles once) and in 1963 joined the aforementioned Rory Storm, but he soon replaced that band by joining Freddie Starr and the Midnighters.

Drummer Keef Hartley

More bands

He joined the Artwoods with Art Wood (brother of Ronnie) before leaving them and joining John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers.  Among the Bluebreakers during Hartley’s stint with them was Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Peter Green, and Harvey Mandel who later played at Woodstock with Canned heat.

Before Hartley left Mayall, the friendly two recorded “Hartley Quits” with the Bluesbreakers. 

Drummer Keef Hartley

Keef Hartley Band

Keef formed his own band in 1968. True to their humorous relationship the first track on the band’s premiere album, Halfbreed, is called “Hearts and Flowers” in which there is a tongue-in-cheek phone call in which Mayall fires Hartley. 

Hartley “returned the favor” in another song.

The All Music review describes the album as “some of the best ever late-60s jazz-influenced blues, and the album remains an undiscovered classic.” 

Drummer Keef Hartley

Hard and brassy set

Invited to Woodstock, Rolling Stone magazine described the band’s performance there as “a hard and brassy set.” They came on after John Sebastian unscheduled appearance on Saturday.

Drummer Keef Hartley

The band members were

Their setlist…

  1. Spanish Fly
  2. She’s Gone
  3. Too Much Thinkin’
  4. Believe In You
  5. Halfbreed Medley: Sinnin’ For You (Intro) > Leaving Trunk > Just to Cry > Sinnin’ for You

In a 1994 interview Hartley said of Woodstock, “They were hiring some incredible names but they had a fixed budget to stick to so they needed some lesser known names as well. I can’t remember what we were paid now but it was two or three thousand dollars and I got the lion’s share!”

Drummer Keef Hartley

 Five band albums

The band released five albums between 1969 and 1972. Hartley released one solo album and two other albums as part of Little Big Band and Dog Soldier. (Wikipedia discography)

Drummer Keef Hartley

Out of music

Eventually the band dissolved, particularly after Miller Anderson, who had been the band’s mainstay composer as well, left.

In the early 90s Hartley left music and took up work as a joiner, working as one part of Hunter Hartley of Preston, England.

Keef Hartley is one of those “unknown” Woodstock performers. Not on the triple album. Not in the movie. No Woodstock push, but the quality of the music that Hartley, his own bands, and the bands he was simply a member of remains undiminished.

He died on November 11, 2011.

On his death, John Mayall said: “When I think back to all the adventures we had over the years, both on and off the road, it seems hardly possible that my friend of so many years will not be showing up to sit in with any of my bands in the future. His sense of fun and love of life will always remain in my thoughts as special memories.”  (>>> British Blues archive site)

Drummer Keef Hartley