Most Boomers have heard of Sha Na Na and remember their successful late 70’s TV show, but young visitors to the Museum at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts not only don’t recognize the name, they don’t associate the band with Woodstock. Hendrix, of course. Sha Na Na? Never heard of them.
Not many had heard of the band made up of Columbia University undergrads before that famous August 1969 weekend in Bethel, NY either. And most weren’t there to hear the band on Monday morning.
Sha Na Na was there, though. They “opened” for Jimi Hendrix, an acquaintance and apparently the person who punched their ticket to Woodstock.
ShaNaNa Jocko Marcellino
Youngest @ Woodstock?
You can win some bar bets by asking who the youngest person to play at Woodstock was? Those who have an answer will often reply, “Santana’s drummer, Michael Shrieve.”
Country Joe McDonald boosts that belief dozens of times each day during the repeating movie in the entrance to the Main Gallery at Bethel Wood’s Museum.
McDonald is wrong. It’s Henry Gross, Sha Na Na’s guitarist (April 1, 1959), but Jocko almost made it as he was born on May 12, 1950. Shrieve is third youngest.
ShaNaNa Jocko Marcellino
Post Woodstock
For five years after Woodstock, the band toured and then landed the aforementioned TV show. It had an eight-year run.
In 1978 they appeared in Grease, the wildly popular film adaptation of the rock’n’roll revival musical.
In addition to that movie, Marcellino has appeared in many others, including Rain Man. Check out his IMDB page.
ShaNaNa Jocko Marcellino
Lately
Jocko continues to be in music and perform with his own band that departs from doo wop and believes in the blues. He released an album called Make It Simple.
Jocko discusses Woodstock’s golden anniversary on Yahoo!Finance
In 2017 when I first created this post, I wrote that “Once again a person one would think that information about someone who played in a well-known band–Paul Butterfield Blues Band–and played at what many think is the most famous festival of all time–the Woodstock Music and Art Fair—-would be easy to find.”
That has both fortunately and unfortunately changed. In 2022, I gave the internet another chance and sadly found Johnson’s obituaryfrom a May 27, 2021 article in The Register-Guard out of Eugene, OR.
Much of the other information came from the wonderful AllMusic site which so often rescues inquisitive music fans as well as Annie Painter, whom you, too, will discover in a moment.
Trumpeter Keith Johnson
Musician Keith Johnson
The opening lines of the Guard’s obituary by Matthew Denis was: Oregon native and trumpeter Keith Johnson, who died of cancer, leaves behind a musical legacy as a jazz mentor and longtime sideman playing with musicians such as Paul Butterfield, Martha Velez, Etta James and Van Morrison.
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia Johnson found love in jazz, art and life with his companion, Annie Painter. He died April 6 in Portland. He was 80.
His dad was a lumberman and was sent to Oregon, thus his living there from age four until he left as a 20-something to hit the musician’s road. He attended the University of Oregon for a bit, but left to become a teamster.
Annie Painter and Keith Johnson, were married and then divorced in their youth. In 2016 they rekindled their relationship. Photo by Annie Painter
Keith Johnson was mainly a trumpeter, but as so often happens on the musician’s path, other instruments come into play. Jazz was his niche.
And at 6’5″ he might have been the tallest performer at Woodstock!
He became part of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in time to perform with them a the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. Released in December 1968, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw was the first Butterfield album Keith appeared on.
He stayed with the band for their next two albums: In My Own Dream (1967) (an album cover I stared at for many hours) and Keep on Moving (1969).
A team player, at times Johnson played organ, but the trumpet was always his first and best instrument.
Despite the success of “horn” bands such as Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, the Butterfield band did not enjoy the same success.
Johnson left the group in 1970 to make a living as a roving sideman. Over the years, he played with Elephant’s Memory, on Mark “Moogy” Klingman’s first solo album “Moogy,” Van Morrison’s “His Band and the Street Choir” [Johnson call Van, Leprechaun]. The song “Domino” is Johnson’s horn chart.
He also played on Martha Velez’s “Hypnotized. A bit of trivia: Johnson married Velez and Martha’s brother was Jerry Velez, the same Jerry Velez who played with Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock!
He also became the musical director for Etta James in her L.A. studio and on the road. He played with her from 1975 to about 1983.
Here’s a YouTube link for Etta James performing Lovesick Blues. And as an example of Keith’s musical versatility, he plays piano on this cut.
Trumpeter Keith Johnson
Annie Painter
Before joining Paul Butterfield, Johnson was the DJ for a jazz show on KFMY, Eugene’s first FM radio station and in 1961 he married Annie Painter while attending the University of Oregon. They lived a settled life for 10 years before he landed the Butterfield gig. Keith hit the tour road, but the separation led to their divorce. Painter became a school principal.
She remarried and after the death of her second husband in 2016, she reconnected with Keith.
They would have, as Painter described, “the best years of our lives—the last five we were together again until his death.”
George D. Green
Johnson met neighbor and abstract illusionist painter George D. Green and the two hit it off.
Johnson would go on to write music soundtracks for several Green paintings. Matthew Denis describes the suites as…”a strange, hypnotic blend, emblematic of a man satisfied with his journey, looking to give just a little more beauty back to the world.”
Marooned Music by Keith Johnson for George D Green
Again from the Denis article: At the end, Johnson accepted life and death with an equanimity indicative of a melodious life. Speaking to a friend just days before he died, Johnson knew he would be leaving the world soon.
“But he said, ‘Hey, man, what are you going to do? This is what happens,’ “ Painter said. “I thought, bless his heart. I hope we can all be that way.”
Keep the Dream Flowing
Keep the Dream Flowing is a great podcast that has interviewed dozens of people who were part of Woodstock, both organizers and performers.
Here is a link to the first of the three podcasts they did with Keith Johnson.
Not Professor Keith Johnson
At one point it seemed that the Butterfield Keith Johnson as also a Professor Keith Johnson and taught at the college level, including the University of North Texas. Not so.
Remembering Alan Malarowitz, the drummer for Sweetwater at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
SweetwaterAlan Malarowitz
Jay Walker and the Pedestrians
As with nearly every band, Sweetwater grew out of another group: Jay Walker and the Pedestrians. That is a bit of information that I had never seen or read about until serendipitously I surfed onto Bruno Ceriotti’s site. At that site Ceriotti has links to many of his projects, one of which is his ( and Mike Stax’s) research into Sweetwater.
Since today’s piece is aimed at Alan Malarowitz, I will only use the tip of the wonderful iceberg of information Ceriotti and Stax have accumulated and I encourage you to use the link above to check out the complete article as well as his research into many other bands and themes.
SweetwaterAlan Malarowitz
Nancy Nevins appears
Robert ‘Bob’ Barboza had formed Jay Walker and the Pedestrians while in high school in Rhode Island. He moved to Los Angeles where he re-created the band with a core group of players as well as many others who came and went. Sometimes there were four or five playing a gig, sometimes a couple dozen. But never a vocalist!
The story goes that one April 1967 night on her way home, a too-high-to-drive Nancy Nevins ambled into the Scarab coffeehouse in Hollywood. Some of the various Pedestrians were hanging out there and jamming. She stared at them awhile. They invited her up. She sang along to a loose version of “Motherless Child.” They loved it. She left. Unlike Cinderella, the nameless Nevins left no glass slipper.
Between that hazy evening and re-discovering Nevins, the band played at the Freedom of Expression Concert on Sunday, April 30, 1967
SweetwaterAlan Malarowitz
Sweetwater’s source
Alex Del Zoppo finally located Nevins, she joined the band, and sang with it in sometime in late spring 1967.
Alex Del Zoppo suggested to a few of the band members that with Nevins and a few other more rock-oriented players, they could go in a different direction. That was fine with founder Barboza, he suggested a couple of players, and the as yet unnamed band was on its way with:
1) Alex Del Zoppo: keyboards, vocals
2) Albert B. Moore: flute, vocals
3) Pete Cobian: congas, other percussions
4) Nansi Nevins: lead vocals 5) Fred Herrera: bass, vocals
6) Andy Friend guitar, vocals
7) Alan Malarowitz, drums
8) Wesley Lloyd Radlein, cello
What’s in a name? Apparently the group went to attend the Monterey Pop Festival and while there Albert Moore drank water from a nearby stream. Nancy said he shouldn’t. He disagreed and said it was sweetwater. And so their name arrived
SweetwaterAlan Malarowitz
Alan Malarowitz
At its inception, Alan Malarowitz was only 17, but, he had good feel and instinct for his instrument. He had a sympathetic easygoing temperament, but was often the first to let his hair down when it came time to party. He became a touring and studio drummer in his later career (band site)
Malarowtiz died when he fell asleep at the wheel in San Bernardino, CA (source) and crashed. He was 31.
SweetwaterAlan Malarowitz
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