Tag Archives: Woodstock Music and Art Fair

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

Grease Band Henry McCullough

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Grease Band Henry McCullough

21 July 1943 – 14 June 2016
Guitarist extraordinaire

Grease Band Henry McCullough

Grease Band Henry McCullough

Early on

Henry Campbell Liken McCullough was born in Portstewart, Northern Ireland. He played guitar with various bands as a teenager. In 1967 while playing with The People, he got a break when ex-Animal bassist Chas Chandler signed the band and changed its name to Eire Apparent.

Grease Band Henry McCullough

Grease Band

Eire Apparent toured with many of the emerging bands of that time including the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and the Soft Machine.

He went back to Ireland for awhile, but in 1969 joined Joe Cocker’s back up band, the Grease Band. It was while with them that McCullough played at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Grease Band Henry McCullough

Wings

After leaving the Cocker-less Grease Band and playing on the Spooky Tooth album, The Last Puff, Paul McCartney asked McCullough to join Wings in 1971. He stayed with them for two years. His one-take improvised solo on Paul McCartney’s “My Love” is considered a classic.

Grease Band Henry McCullough

Solos and Sessions

Between 1975 and 2012 McCullough released five solo albums. During that same time he worked on numerous other projects as as sessions musician. among whom were Marianne Faithfull and Donovan. He also appeared on the original cast recording of Jesus Christ Superstar.(see AllMusic’s credit listing)

Grease Band Henry McCullough

Dark Side of the Moon

An interesting piece of trivia is that McCullough’s voice appears on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon amongst the several heard. His “contribution” is at the end of “Money” when he speaks of being drunk. In the compilation below, it can be heard around the 55 second mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJvSzJphgT8

Grease Band Henry McCullough

Henry McCullough

In November 2012, McCullough suffered a heart attack which left him incapacitated. He died on June 14, 2016. Paul McCartney said in a Rolling Stone magazine article following McCullough’s death, “He was a pleasure to work with, a super-talented musician with a lovely sense of humor. The solo he played on ‘My Love’ was a classic that he made up on the spot in front of the orchestra.”

Grease Band Henry McCullough

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

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

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Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Happy birthday

July 20, 1947

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Before Soul Sacrifice

Before Carlos Santana and his band performed at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on that sunny Saturday 16 August 1969, a few other things happened:

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

8 miles…

Santana Carlos Santana
Tony T, blue shirt, sleeping bag walking toward the festival on a jammed Rt 17B

Friend Tony T and I had walked 8 miles from where we’d left his car on the side of the road. We didn’t know we’d walked 8 miles–only decades later when I clocked it with a car that could drive down Rt 17B without stopping, up Hurd Road without another car on the road, and to the Field.

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Quill

Santana Carlos Santana
Quill through binoculars

We put our sleeping bags down to claim our spot, sat down, and waited. Quill opened that day. A Boston band hired by Woodstock Ventures to play free locally to residents of Bethel. Hopefully helping soothe the locals’ anger  who weren’t too enthused about the upcoming festival.

Few of us had heard of Quill. Few know them today despite their Woodstock appearance. No album appearance nor movie appearance.

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Country Joe

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana
Joe and rope

In an attempt to keep things moving, Michael Lang drafted Country Joe McDonald to play and fill in while the crew set up next band’s equipment.

Joe said he had no guitar. Someone found one for him. Joe said the guitar had no strap. Someone found a piece of rope.

Gimme’ an F!

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Big Grassy Bowl

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

When Max Yasgur showed Michael Lang his field, Michael realized he’d found exactly what was needed both literally and figuratively: a big grassy bowl.

After Country Joe finished his surprise and historic set, the guy sitting in front of us offered a toke to Tony and me. We straight suburban white Catholic-educated rising college sophomores (literally and figuratively redux) politely demurred.  He then asked us if we’d heard of the next band just announced? We said we hadn’t. He said we’d really like them.

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

We did

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana
Standing ovation for Santana at Woodstock

The next band was Santana and we sophomoric white kids were blown away. Never had we heard such percussion-filled music and an electric lead guitar that felt like Carlos Santana was playing personally to each of our 400,000 friends.

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana entered the ethos of myth that afternoon. And while his band mates went in different directions after he had, too, he has remained a beacon of musical nourishment for nearly 50 years.

And of course Carlos continues to inspire us with his music today.

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Many happy returns Carlos!

We Boomers owe more than that big grassy bowl to Carlos. Thank you from all of us. I hope that thunderous standing ovation in 1969 meant as much to you as its continued memory means to us today.

Meeting Santana Carlos Santana

Music et al, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

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Canned Heat release Canned Heat

July 1967

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Canned Heat released

I have done other blogs on the members of Canned Heat who were at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on their birthdates. If you’d like to read about  Alan Wilson, Bob Bear Hite, Harvey Mandel, Larry Mole Taylor, or Adolfo de la Parra, please click on their name/link.

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

The album Canned Heat

The band released Canned Heat the album in July 1967, shortly after their appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The personnel on the album differs slightly from the band that appeared at Woodstock.

In 1966, the band had recorded another album, but their label did not release it. In 1970, Janus Records released that album as Vintage Heat.

On the 1969 album, Henry Vestine is the lead guitarist. He will be that until August 1969 when Mandel replaced him. The band’s drummer at the time was Frank Cook and his time with the band was even shorter than Vestine’s. de la Parra replace Cook shortly after the album’s release.

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Tracks

The members of the band loved the blues as their name, a nickname for the poisonous but alcohol-based Sterno, implies.  Old bluesman Tommy Johnson had a song in 1928 called “Canned Heat Blues.” It told he sad story of an alcoholic desperately drinking Sterno, nicknamed “canned heat.” Here’s the opening track of their first album…a song that Johnny Winter also loved to cover.

Side one

  1. “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” (Muddy Waters, Hambone Willie Newbern) 
  2. “Bullfrog Blues” (Canned Heat) 
  3. “Evil Is Going On” (Willie Dixon)
  4. “Goin’ Down Slow” (James Oden) 
  5. “Catfish Blues” (Robert Petway) 

Side two

  1. “Dust My Broom” (Robert Johnson, Elmore James)
  2. “Help Me” (Sonny Boy Williamson II) 
  3. “Big Road Blues” (Tommy Johnson) 
  4. “The Story of My Life” (Guitar Slim)
  5. “The Road Song” (Floyd Jones)
  6. “Rich Woman” (Dorothy LaBostrie, McKinley Millet) 

As you can see, all but one of the tracks was a cover and from a variety of writers.

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

The Blues

For the typical suburban white teenage baby boomer, of whom there were thousands, discovering Canned Heat might have been cause for an epiphany. Such music was not heard on AM Top Ten formats. This music luckily found a place on the playlists of the emerging so-called “underground” FM rock stations that allowed their DJs the freedom to play more styles than typically heard. (All Music review)

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Future Heat…

Where the band went following this first worthwhile effort is a story that sounds like many other band stories. Personnel changes. Substance abuse. Premature deaths. Reunions with surviving members.

Nowadays only de la Parra is the only original member in the group who are:

  • Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra — drums, vocals (1967–present)
  • John Paulus — guitar (2000–2006, 2013, 2014–present)
  • Dale Wesley Spalding — guitar, harmonica, bass, vocals (2008–present)
  • Rick Reed — bass (2019–present)
  • Jimmy Vivino – Lead Guitar (2019 to Present)

See them soon!

Canned Heat release Canned Heat