Henry Gross was born on April 1, 1951 in Brooklyn, NY. According to his site, “By age thirteen his first band, The Auroras, performed at The New Jersey pavilion of the Worlds’ Fair in New York City. At age fourteen he was playing regularly in local clubs all over the New York area and spending his summers playing at Catskill Mountain Resort hotels.”
When he was 18, Henry Gross helped form Sha Na Na.
Woodstock then solo
Sha Na Na’s successful appearance at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair launched their career. It also launched Henry Gross’s career as he went solo in 1970.
His first A&M album, “HENRY GROSS” (AKA “The Yellow Album”) sold very well and had several regional hits including “Simone,” “Come On Say It,” “Skin King” and a near gold cover of Lindisfarne’s European hit “Meet Me On The Corner.”
He also had success as a sessions guitarist on recordings by Dion and Jim Croce.
Carl Wilson connection
In 1976, he released the song “Shannon.” It was written about the passing of Beach Boy Carl Wilson’s Irish Setter of the same name.
Casey Kasem rant
Nine years later a request for the song led to a now infamous tirade by Casey Kasem. On September 14, 1985 while recording his show, Kasem read a “Long-Distance Dedication” from a listener who asked Kasem to play the song “Shannon” because his dog Snuggles had died.
Kasem was upset that the dedication had segued out of the uptempo “Dare Me” by the Pointer Sisters. Here is that piece. Warning: this is a side of Casey you’ve likely not heard before. NSFW. You have to click to listen.
Keep the Dream Flowing
Henry Gross continues to perform and in 2022 released a new album, “In My Own Sweet time.”
On September 20, 2022, Henry was part of an interview with Donny York on the Keep the Dream Flowing podcast. Here is the link to part one of that interview.
Many people visit the town of Woodstock, NY to find Max and Miriam Yasgur’s farm because of the oft told, but inaccurate, story: that is where the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was.
Another inaccuracy is that the town of Woodstock denied Woodstock Venture’s request to hold it in the town itself.
Keep in mind that Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld‘s original idea (one that Kornfeld has said was actually his wife’s idea) was to create a recording studio in Woodstock. Many musicians lived in, near, the often visited the town.
Though Bob Dylan was the most notable among those musicians, Bob’s band, The Band, was there of course and others included Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, Van Morrison, John Sebastian, and even Jimi Hendrix.
(As an aside, it continues to confuse me why Lang and Kornfeld thought of studio would be a good idea when Albert Grossman was already doing just that and his Bearsville Studios would open in 1970.)
Lang and Kornfeld had proposed the studio idea to John Roberts and Joel Rosenman (already involved in Media Sound) in early February.
Road From Woodstock To Bethel
Woodstock Ventures
Their company, Woodstock Ventures, formed on February 28, 1969 (legally minus Kornfeld who was under contract to Capitol Records). Their general goals were to:
a recording studio in Woodstock
a music festival in nearby Saugerties (~ 10 miles away)
Road From Woodstock To Bethel
Rapid plans
In a month, things happened quickly regarding the festival’s site.
March 29, 1969, Michael Lang had found a suitable site in Saugerties, NY right off the NY Thruway. On this date, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman met with a Mr Holmes, the lawyer for the site’s owner, Mr Shaler. The lawyer emphatically told Roberts and Rosenman that the site was not for rent for such a purpose.
March 30, 1969, after the Saugerties refusal, Roberts and Rosenman spoke to Howard Mills about a piece of land in Wallkill, NY that Mills was going to develop. Mills agreed to rent the site for the festival.
You will notice that the town of Woodstock was not part of the festival’s picture. It did not “refuse” or “kick out” Woodstock Ventures. And the owner of the proposed Saugerties site simply refused.
Jazz drumming is all about keeping time. And what Paul Motian did with time, starting with Bill Evans, and more notably as his career progressed, was to prove that it was elastic. Under his touch, the steady ding-ding-a-ling of swing could be implied, rather than explicitly played, and yet still keep the music grooving. ( 2011 NPR article )
Paul Motian
I became a volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in 2011 and since then I’ve collected information about the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and those associated with it, particularly the performing artists,
Of course we immediately recognize names like Hendrix. Slick, Santana, Joplin, Townshend, and many others. Those who visit the site ask first about them. About their performance. Aware of their part not just in the festival itself, but in establishing and contributing to the music that came out of the 1960s’ counterculture.
And then there are others. Performers who left the music scene because they were hardly a part of it to begin with. Performers who despite a claim to fame, few others found interested. Performers who hardly appear anywhere in the seemingly infinite world wide web.
Drummer Paul Motian
An Interesting Neither
Paul Motian is an interesting neither. Neither a name that anyone ever asks about, nor someone who left the scene. He was also a part of the scene long before 1969.
He played with Arlo Guthrie at Woodstock, but that is far down on his list of claims to fame.
Motian was born in Philadelphia on March 25,1931 and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. He played guitar for awhile, but by 12 was playing the drums.
I cannot find the connection between Arlo Guthrie and Motian, but Paul played with Arlo between 1968 and 1969. I was able to contact Arlo (or someone speaking for him via Instagram). I asked about their connection. The response was, “Paul worked with me back in the mid to late 60’s. Forget how we met, but he was a master, and a pleasure to work with.”
Personal Calendar
With permission of the Paul Motian Archive
I first made this post in 2016 and luckily I sometime come across new information. Paul Ditmer did not attend Woodstock, but there are few people who have done more to research the festival’s pictures than he has. 1000s!
In 2024, he sent some pictures of Paul Motian’s personal calendar for 1969. He found them at a the Paul Motian Archive site. For those interested in the life of a musician, it is a wonderful inside look at their day-to-day life.
Besides 1969’s mundane quotidian activities like dentist appointments, jury duty, paying bills, dentist visits, and travel arrangements, we can see Motion worked with lots of “names” over that year.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if he attended a concert or was doing a concert, but some of the names that stick out before Woodstock were: Charles Lloyd, Donald O’Connor, Keith Jarrett, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, and Mose Allison.
The first rehearsal with Arlo Guthrie was on Wednesday 4 June. A number more rehearsals and apparent shows followed.
They got back together on Sunday 13 July. A few other dates with Arlo (including Central Park in NYC on August 11), then Woodstock (“one set”).
There is one more Arlo entry on Sunday 17 August in Massachusetts, but after that the two appear to separate.
Drummer Paul Motian
Jazz Greats
2006 Garden of Eden album cover
That a musician temporarily plays with another musician is as common as broken drumsticks. That a drummer who had already played with such jazz luminaries as Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Paul Bley, and Keith Jarrettand then plays with folkie Guthrie seems unusual.
For example, Bill Evans’s Wikipedia entry has the following: In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio.
The trio recorded the album Explorations in 1961. Writing for Allmusic, critic Thom Jurek said of the album: “Evans, with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro, was onto something as a trio, exploring the undersides of melodic and rhythmic constructions that had never been considered by most… Explorations is an extraordinary example of the reach and breadth of this trio at its peak.”
WOW!
Drummer Paul Motian
Woodstock alum Harvey Mandel
Harvey Mandel, in a 1986 “Downbeat” interview, said of Motian, “Drummer Paul Motian, like many a jazz player, lives in the eternal present” and then quoted Motian as saying, “When there were bohemians, I was a bohemian; when there were beatniks, I was a beatnik; when you were a hippie, I was a hippie, when you were a yippie, I was a yippie! I’ve been through the whole thing and even before there were bohemians, there was something else – I don’t know what it was – and I was that.”
The list of projects that Paul Motian was a part of during his six decades of performing feels endless. Here’s the All Music link to that list. You’ll need a few minutes!
Paul Motian performing at the Village Vanguard in 2008. Credit Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times
Steve Futterman described Motian this way in a New Yorker articleafter Motian’s death on November 22, 2011.
Rhythm, for Motian, existed to be messed with. He could swing his ass off when called upon, but, given his druthers, Motian would break up time signatures with impunity, dangling himself and his bandmates in space until he miraculously brought them home safely. There was an edge of anxiety to watching Motian at work. He knew it and exploited it to everyone’s advantage.
