Mamie Robinson Smith was born in Cincinnati on May 26, 1891.
By the time she was only 10 years old, she toured with the Four Dancing Mitchells, a white act.
As a teenager, she danced in J. Homer Tutt and Salem Tutt Whitney‘s Smart Set. In 1913, she left the Tutt Brothers to sing in clubs in Harlem and married William “Smitty” Smith, a singing waiter. William Smith died in 1928.
In 1918, Smith starred in Perry Bradford’s musical review, Made In Harlem, in which she sang the song “Harlem Blues.”
In 1920, Perry Bradford encouraged Fred Hager, Okeh Records A & R director, to record Smith. Despite racist and boycott threats, Okeh, a white recording company, took a risk and did.
Mamie Smith Crazy Blues
That Thing Called Love
In February she recorded two of Bradford’s songs: “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down.” A white band accompanied her.
Mamie Smith Crazy Blues
Crazy Love
On August 10, 1920 she and Bradford recorded another of his songs: “Crazy Love,” a somewhat reworked Harlem Blues.
According to David Hajdu in a New York Times article, the song “changed the course of music history. [The song was] a boisterous cry of outrage by a woman driven mad by mistreatment [and] …spoke with urgency and fire to Black listeners across the country who had been ravaged by the abuses of race-hate groups, the police and military forces in the preceding year — the notorious “Red Summer” of 1919.”
The song was a hit, selling 75,000 copies in the first month, eventually selling more than two million.
Again according to Hajdu, “It established the blues as a popular art and prepared the way for a century of Black expression in the fiery core of American music.”
Mamie Smith Crazy Blues
Crazy Blues Code
Subjugated groups create hidden ways of expressing themselves. “Crazy Love” did that. The song may simply seem to be a sad one about a woman who has lost her love, but it turns out to be a song in which the woman is driven to literally kill that love, that abusive love.
Now the doctor’s gonna do all that he can,
But what you’re gonna need is an undertaker man.
I ain’t had nothin’ but bad news,
Now I’ve got the crazy blues.
Mamie Smith Crazy Blues
Race Records
Not unlike The Kingston Trio’s success leading to Columbia Records signing Bob Dylan, the success of “Crazy Blues,” led Okeh and other recording companies [Emerson Records, Vocalion Records, Victor Talking Machine Company, Paramount Records, and several other companies] to record other Black female singers such as Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith as well as Black male musicians.
They and many more women made hundreds of records that sold millions of copies over more than a decade — all before the great Robert Johnson recorded for the first time, on November 23, 1936.
While the records did sometimes cross racial lines, a genre called Race Records came into being. Race records led to radio stations whose popularity was with the local Black population.
Mamie Smith Crazy Blues
Smith Successes/Issues
Mamie Smith’s financial success from her recording royalties and performance fees allowed her to purchase a large home in Harlem. According to Barry Kernfeld in his brief bio, “Dan Burley of the Amsterdam News reported “There were servants, cars, and all the luxuries that would go with being the highest paid Negro star of that day.”
Smith and Bradford parted ways because of financial disputes and Bradford sold her contract to Maurice Fulchner, a white manager.
In 1922 she recorded “I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None O’ This Jelly Roll.”
Smith continued to tour and performed through the 1920s and into the 1930s.
She toured Europe and also worked in films: Jailhouse Blues (1929), Fireworks of 1930, Paradise in Harlem (1940), Mystery in Swing (1940), Murder on Lenox Avenue (1941), and Sunday Sinners (1941).
Jailhouse Blues
Sunday Sinners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFeBTDqcEtI
Her last concert was at New York’s Lido Ballroom in August 1944. She died on September 16, 1946 . She is buried in Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, Staten Island, NY.
Larry Luddecke from Far Cry here – that was a great day!!That’s me with the platinum hair and the kid on my shoulders in the far left of picture. That’s Jed Whiting, our singer Jere’s son on the bike with Cris Pearne. The living members of Far Cry are still in touch, and I have worked with our guitar player, Paul Lenart, making and producing music for the pat 54 years! The after-party at our commune was great, though the memory is a bit hazy!!!
Mason, New Hampshire
Saturday 2 August 1969
1969 Festival #32
In my seemingly ever-expanding list of 1969 festivals, my general rule is to include only multi-day events, but the exception proves the rule. Two weeks before Woodstock, a one-day festival occured in Mason, New Hampshire. Mason sits on the border of New Hampshire and Massachusetts and is about 60 miles from Boston.
The event truly reflected the cultural revolution’s 1960’s zeitgeist: it was a benefit for the Mason Volunteer Fire Department to buy a new fire engine. Admission to the event was $3, all the artists performed for free.
And who were these generous artists? Locals, some better known than others, and some bigger names.
Where the festival actually was is confusing. The poster seems to give directions from Boston as it says to take Rt 2 to Concord (MA) and then Rt 119 to Townsend (also MA). The address to mail for tickets is in Greenville, NH, which is about 6 miles north of Mason. The notes from a Velvet Underground site says, “The event is often placed in Rindge NH, but it really took place on Barrett Hill Road in Mason NH.”
Who knows?
2023 Post Script
As you can see below, post readers occasionally leave comments. In August 2023, I exchanged a few emails with a John Bowditch who had attended the festival. I asked him regarding the actual location. Here’s his response: “I did a lot of sleuthing and can positively identify where this festival took place. I spoke with a friend, Gene Roe, who was there and one of the organizers. It took place in Mason, New Hampshire in a field just south of the junction of New Hampshire Rte 31 (Fitchburg Road) and New Hampshire Rte 124. This is very close to the Massachusetts border.
My personal memories were that it was a lovely festival and fun to attend. My then wife and I were good friends with a number to the organizers. Of course this all happened a long time ago.”
Thank you John!
Mason, NH
Mason, NH is a small town that was the boyhood home of one Samuel Wilson. While not for sure, Wilson is purportedly the basis for the legendary “Uncle Sam” character. May be an example of some enthusiastic History Haze.
Hilltop Pop Festival
Performers
Bartholomew & Oglethorpe
Sorry. Cannot find anything about this duo?
Bill Lyons
The only musician Bill Lyons I can find is a William Lyons and much to young to have participated in the Hilltop Pop Festival.
Blew Jug Band
Ditto.
Bob Garfield
There is a Bob Garfield who is a commentator and journalist.
Chris Pearne
I found an obituary for a Chris Pearne that seems to be for someone who could have been the Chris Pearne of the Hilltop Pop Festival. The obituary read, in part, “Chris was born John Christopher Pearne in Oakland, Calf., on May 25, 1945, and grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where he started performing music in the 1960s. After a short stay at Kent State University and serving in the National Guard, he moved to the Boston area in 1966, where he quickly became part of the folk scene. Then, migrating to New Hampshire in the seventies, he settled in the Peterborough area, becoming an integral player at the legendary Folkway club: as performer, sound man, and emcee, in addition to maintaining his guitar building and repair shop there. At around that time, he also became involved in working in human services, which he pursued for several years.” Follow the link above for more.
If it’s the same one (how many can there be, he asks innocently), then Chris played on Jamie Brockett’s 1993 Road Dancer album.
A response to my question under this YouTube video said this:
maxarsolutions: I don’t know much about Chris’s earlier years … He was a luthier working out of the Button Factory in Portsmouth NH … prior to that at Gary’s Guitars in Portsmouth. I do remember him mentioning his days playing at the Folkway ( I believe in the Petorborough NH area) He also used to play the Press Room in Portsmouth from time to time.
maxarsolutions added: It is most likely him … I did recognize another name from that festival Jaime Brockett who was a friend of Chris’s
Hilltop Pop Festival
Country Funk
Though personnel changed, it seems for the Hilltop show the band consisted of: Adam Taylor (lead guitar), Hal Paris (rhythm guitar, piano), Jim Lanham (bass, pedal steel), and Verne Johnson (drums)
From Country Funk dot net: I heard about a band called Country Funk that was playing in the Boston/New England area, and I was managing musical groups at the time in Boston, so I went to see them play and wanted to sign them immediately. They were the answer to California’s Buffalo Springfield. Eventually I became their manager. Listen to the music and you’ll see what I mean and hear what I heard. Manager Ray Paret.
From All Music: In 1969, the group landed a record deal with Polydor, and with Johnson back behind the drums, Country Funk headed to the Record Plant in Hollywood, where they cut their self-titled debut album. (True to the group’s shifting lineup, Pfeifer played drums on four of the album’s 12 songs.) Despite a strong reception, the album’s sales were poor, and it proved to be the group’s only record for many, many years — until 2011, in fact, when they returned with an album titled Zuma.
Here’s some of their sound. Nice stuff.
Hilltop Pop Festival
Far Cry
From All Music: Sometimes hypes and supposed scenes turn up random work that gets lost in the flow of its time but which a later generation rediscovers and celebrates deservedly for qualities obscured at the time. Sometimes. Far Cry, though, won’t get that nod, though it’s not for lack of trying on the part of the Fallout label, who make a specialty of digging up random oddities. This one’s just a bit too random, though: a late-’60s Boston band caught up in the monumental PR flop of the “Bosstown Sound,” Far Cry made a debut and, in the end, what would be their sole album, which is exactly what one would expect from a group at that time and place operating on a limited budget. To the septet’s credit, their songs are all originals as compared to so many of the covers that would pad out many albums at the time, while snagging a piece of classic Persian art for the cover made for a vivid visual impact. But the seven-song album sounds flat and distant even after a CD remaster, not bootleg-murky but not striking, either, while the band is simultaneously reasonably talented in a workmanlike way without bringing anything new to the table. Lead vocalist Jere Whiting‘s white blues wails are serviceable without being remarkable, while the group’s jams and breakdowns totter between noodling and making something out of it all, not always successfully. Bassist Sean Hutchinson more often than not is trying to lay in at least a bit of funk, in a steady-as-she-goes way, but otherwise long songs like “Dream?” and “Sweet Little Angel” in particular just fill up the space or build to OK but not remarkable finishes. A little psych, a little blues, a little funk — a little album, in the end.
Hilltop Pop Festival
Fort Mudge Memorial Dump
From mmone.org: Fort Mudge Memorial Dump — Caroline Stratton, Dean Keady, James Deptula, Dave Amaral, Richard Clerici — formed in Walpole, Massachusetts, in 1969, and boasted a loyal local following during their brief existence. By dint of geography, they were lumped into the “Bosstown Sound” with Ultimate Spinach, The Beacon Street Union and Orpheus, but their lone album, 1969’s Fort Mudge Memorial Dump, (Mercury) revealed the band to be rooted in San Francisco psychedelia — Stratton, with her strong vocals, and Keady, with his jazzy, acid-soaked guitar leads, were easily the East Coast’s answer to Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick and Jorma Kaukonen. Fort Mudge Memorial Dump disbanded in 1973. (by Stephen Haag)
Hilltop Pop Festival
Jack Parmlee
Need some help here.
Jaime Brockett
From mmone: I first met Jaime Brockett at the Y-Not coffeehouse on Main Street in Worcester during the mid-sixties. He walked on stage with a hotel-toilet-seat “Sanitized for your protection” strip wrapped snugly around the body of his guitar. He had recently returned from Denver, where he’d met Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who’d become his mentor and a major influence. Throughout ’67 and ’68 he would stop by Congress Alley whenever he was passing through Worcester, often staying for an all-night session of pickin’ and grinnin’.
That same year, Oracle Records released his first album, Remember the Wind and the Rain, which included “Black Beauty,” an original composition written by this reporter. More importantly, it contained his folk-rap version of Leadbelly’s “Ballad of the USS Titanic,” the cut that would catapult him back-and-forth across the country like a pinball. It would also get him in trouble. One of the song’s lines, concerning “Jewish people trading wives and Cadillacs,” resulted in a stern letter from then-ADL President Justin J. Finger, accusing him of “foisting hoary canards.” He stopped playing the song around ’73.
Hilltop Pop Festival
Jim Santos
Not confident in what I find for a “Jim Santos.” Again, any help here much appreciated.
Len Chandler
From All Music: When Len Chandler arrived in New York City in the 1950s, he had no intention of getting involved with the folk music scene. Born in Akron, Ohio in 1935, he showed an interest in music at an early age. “My father was in the army,” Chandler recalled, “and my mother bought me a little plastic flute with eight holes in it, and I played songs on it until I ran out of range.” At eight, he began playing piano and at 12, he started studying classical music. He learned to play the oboe so he could join the high school band, and during his senior year joined the Akron Symphony.
By the early 1960s Chandler felt himself drawn to the Civil Rights Movement. In 1962 he wrote his first topical song, and deepened his commitment to the movement after attending a freedom singers conference in Atlanta in 1964. “I started submitting a lot of songs to Broadside,” Chandler said, “because what sometimes got me off the most were topical songs. I really liked the impact that would be made on people when they would hear something that you had just written right out of the news about something that happened today.” He sang at demonstrations and rallies, and won a reputation as a protest songwriter.
Hilltop Pop Festival
Paint
Any help?
Peter Johnson
From AllMusic: Peter C. Johnson was one of the driving forces in the Boston music scene in the late ’60s. His singer/songwriter style was a big influence on the young musicians coming through the area, including a relatively unknown Bruce Springsteen. He teamed with Astral Weeks session player John Payne to form the Manic Depressives, a band best known for backing Bonnie Raitt, although they performed with Howlin’ Wolf numerous times during this period. The band broke up following a fistfight at a gig, and Johnson disappeared for a few years. When he reemerged, he had completely rethought his approach, this time performing with six mannequins and a fortune in electronic equipment that provided a chorus of voices and music behind what he was playing on-stage. He released a self-titled album on A&M, which was a critical success but never quite caught on with the record-buying public. On top of this, a poor contract left him penniless after his touring expenses caught up with him. He recorded an album with John Cale soon after, but eventually disappeared after trying to rehab his drug problem. In 1998, he joined Bonnie Raitt on-stage at a concert that would inspire him to make music again. Teaming with David Champagne (Treat Her Right) and Asa Brebner (Modern Lovers), he put together the rootsy Bloodshot for a 2001 release. Soul Sherpa appeared three years later.
In 1969 they were on the road in both the United States and Canada where they concentrated on their live performances. Some of these live recording shave been released, including their Hilltop Pop Festival’s.
Waiting For The Man (6:35)
Run Run Run (10:00)
Pale Blue Eyes (8:45)
What Goes On (11:45)
Heroin (8:28)
Hilltop Pop Festival
The Wild Thing
Not sure…maybe…but a Richard Julio commented: “The Wild Thing that played this festival were on Epic Records.”
As is always a wonderful thing, I heard from a Steve Minichiello, cousin of member Dennis.
• The Wild Thing ended up producing 2 LP’s for Elektra and one 45
• The band had Dennis (my cousin), Jesse, Pat and Pancho — only Jesse survives. The other three died fairly young with drug issues until the end.
• I’m always looking for new pictures of the band, so if you have any I’ll be happy to add them to my family archive.
Hilltop Pop Festival
Van Morrison
Van Morrison had made his first recording playing saxophone on “Boozoo Hully Gully” with the International Monarchs in 1962. With the band Them (a band in constant personnel change both while Morrison was in the group (1964 – 1966) and after). Until Them, Van Morrison hadn’t sung lead.
Them had a two-month tour of America in May and June 1966 that included a residency from 30 May to 18 June at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. The Doors were the supporting act on the last week and Morrison’s influence on the John Densmore, in his book Riders on the Storm, remarks on how Van Morrison affected Jim Morrison. “Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near namesake’s stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks.”
On the final night, the two Morrisons and the two bands jammed together on “Gloria“.
In 1967 he released “Blowin’ Your Mind,” his first solo album. Though critically well-received, the album was not a commercial success. 1968’s “Astral Weeks” was both. Having said that, the release of his “Moondance” in 1970 put him on the map.
The concerts.fandon.com site shows Morrison’s 1969 American bouncing him back and forth mainly from the east and west coasts. Along the way, he was at the Hilltop.
Hilltop Pop Festival
Dorothy Perry
As always, a first-hand account is always better than any summary. In January 2023, Dorothy Perry commented: I remember this well! I was in the midst of this event. 2nd child of Jon and Helen Bateman (Earth Mother). We lived in the Big House on the hill on the Greenville- Mason line, not far from Barrett Hill where the festival took place. Dad was a member of the fire department and both my parents were active in the music scene all over New England, so they were instrumental (unintentional pun) in lining up the talent. In the poster I’m the young girl with crossed arms looking like she’s going to bite the photographer. I can shed some light on the people behind the festival, some of the performers; who they are/were and what happened after. The Far Cry were living in the old wing of our house, Chris Pearne and Jim Santos had just moved out, Jamie Brockett was a frequent visitor, etc.
In a capitalistic culture, the idea of giving away what you provide is the opposite of what you are all about. When Woodstock Ventures announced that the festival would be free, it was not as incomprehensible as some observers may have thought. Providing free services was a view that many had had and continued to have.
Shown above is the “1% Free” poster that first appeared as wall sized posters in the winter of 1968 and became a Digger trademark for the last cycle of street events. Various interpretations of the poster’s cryptic symbology evolved. One interpretation which gained a certain infamy/popularity was that merchants and rock bands were expected to contribute 1% of their receipts to the Free City Bank to fund various activities such as the Free Food Distribution system.
“In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, … but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another” Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1660)
Wherever a powerful elite exist, we will often find coexisting the idea of “leveling the field” so that all members of a society have an equal chance. The American Constitution contains that idea in its phrase, “to form a more perfect union.”
Capitalism is based on private ownership. Those who have, have. Those who have not can work for those who have. The relationship can be an equitable one as long as the haves provide safe working conditions and a fare wage.
San Francisco Diggers
British Civil Wars
In Britain, during the 1640s, forces composed of those who supported Parliament (the “people”) fought forces composed of those who supported King Charles (the monarchy). Charles was beheaded in January 1649 and England became a republic. His son, Charles II, became the king of a much weakened monarchy.
San Francisco Diggers
True Levellers
During the war, the Levellerswere a faction supporting the a republican and democratic side, but more radical in their demands such as popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance.
The name “leveller” was used by their opponents in an attempt to associate the members with an earlier movement that actually leveled hedges that separated lands to open up the land to more people.
San Francisco Diggers
British Diggers
An even more radical branch of the Levellers emerged in April 1649 known as the True Levellers or Diggers. Gerrard Winstanley and William Everardled this faction. Their view was that the civil wars had been fought against the king and the great landowners and that with Charles’s execution, land should be made available for the very poor to cultivate.
San Francisco Diggers
San Francisco Diggers
The San Francisco Diggers began in August 1966 as a spinoff of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Billy Murcott had moved to San Francisco from New York and joined longtime friend Emmett Groganand playwright Peter Berg to collaborate on various undertakings including the founding of the Diggers. [see Chronology for a much expanded Digger timeline]
The Diggers site describe themselves as “…one of the legendary groups in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, one of the world-wide epicenters of the Sixties Counterculture which fundamentally changed American and world culture. “
They evolved out of the counter-cultural fabric already woven into San Francisco’s culture. The group used street theater, art happenings, and in October 1966, began to distribute free food. Members went to the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market and asked for whatever the sellers weren’t going to sell. Their first kitchens were their own apartments.
In 1967, new Digger Walt Reynolds started the first Free Bakery using equipment in the kitchen of the All Saints Church that its pastor, Fr. Leon Harris, had donated. Reynolds insisted on using whole grain wheat flour, which slowly helped spur the general spread of whole grain foods far beyond San Francisco.
Necessity being the mother of inventing, the lack of baking equipment led him to use tin coffee cans. And so, Digger Bread was born.
The Diggers created a free medical clinic.
San Francisco Diggers
Actors
R.G. Davis had created the San Francisco Mime Troupe. It’s mission was “…to create and produce theater that presents a working-class analysis of the events that shape our society, that exposes social and economic injustice, that demands revolutionary change on behalf of working people, and to present this analysis before the broadest possible audience with artistry and humor.”
The Diggers followed suit with street performances, eg, Trip Without A Ticket., the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free.
San Francisco Diggers
Members
Ariel, Sam, Peter. This was taken at Olema. Ariel was not yet two. I was about 29. (Peter Coyote)
Actor Peter Coyote was a member of the Diggers. He said, “The Diggers didn’t stand for anything, but they were about personal authenticity and taking responsibility for your own visions.
Co-founder Peter Berg: The Diggers have several goals. One was the immediate one: to simply act out free. Put free in front of any word you could think of–a free phone box, free lunch, free district attorney, free judge, free policeman, free boy, free girl, whatever–especially free love. Love being the word that had been foisted on Haight-Ashbery. And the long term goal was to create a bomb, a situation in which the people who were refugees from American culture at the time…would be able to re-see exchanges between each other.”
Like much of the idealism of the 60s, the Diggers activities gradually lessened and their operations ceased. Their operations ceased, but the philosophy ofleveling the field continues.
San Francisco Diggers
The World Turned Upside Down
In 1649 To St. George’s Hill A ragged band they called the Diggers Came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords They defied the laws They were the dispossessed Reclaiming what was theirs
“We come in peace,” they said “To dig and sow We come to work the lands in common And to make the waste grounds grow
This earth divided We will make whole So it will be A common treasury for all
The sin of property We do disdain No man has any right to buy and sell The earth for private gain
By theft and murder They took the land Now everywhere the walls Spring up at their command
They make the laws To chain us well The clergy dazzle us with heaven Or they damn us into hell
