RIP Richie Havens

[legalskier]

Another standout at the Woodstock Music Festival departs this world. Richie Havens is one of the few people who can point to one particular moment that completely changed his life.



He opened the concert- because the other acts were stuck in traffic trying to get there. He played for hours,
"performing encore after encore while festival organizers waited for the next act to arrive. By about the sixth or seventh encore...Havens had run through every song he knew. And then he did something extraordinary....
'I start strumming my guitar and the word freedom comes out of my mouth as FREE-dom, FREE-dom, with a rhythm of its own. My foot takes over and drives my guitar into a faster, more powerful rhythm. I don’t know where this is going, but it feels right and somehow I find myself blending it into an old song -- ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’ -- a great spiritual my grandmother used to sing to me as a hymn when I was growing up in Brooklyn.”The performance at Woodstock was...the turning point in Havens's career.
'Everything in my life, and so many others, is attached to that train,' "
http://www.watershedpost.com/2013/richie-havens-opening-act-woodstock-dies


RIP

 

[dmc]

The Woodstock gig was one of the BEST improved rock/folk performances in history....

I used to love going to see him play... Had a unique way of player guitar... cool...

Will miss him and his music and his wisdom....

 

[twinplanx]

RIP Richie Thanx for the memories

 

[legalskier]

Will miss him and his music and his wisdom....

This song always reminds me of my honeymoon in SF-


I still have this album on vinyl.

 

[bigbog]

Brought everyone good sounds....rip.

 

[dmc]

Great day at the Richie Havens Memorial!!!!
Classy event at Bethel Woods - haven't been back since the Phish run....
I had tickets to attend the memorial inside on of the market shed buildings between the Shed and the Woodstock field.. Those without tickets were allow to be on the Woodstock fields with a PA pumping the sound out.. Great to see Michael Lang - who's a regular in the TOWN of Woodstock(1.5 hours north).
Joel Rosenman was there as well which was cool.. Lou Gosset Jr gave a great speech on the old days in Greenwich Village of the early 60's... Danny Glover gleaned into Richies life...
Music performances were nice... John Hammond and John Sebastian are always entertaining together.. And Jose' Feliciano was just incredible...




We hung out on the concert field for a while... This picture is of me facing the fields standind where the stage was... Was trying to approximate where Richie played.. there was a killer drum circle at the top of the hill being led by Hendrix's percussionist... Who was a badass...

My friend Patsy at the monument..

 

[ScottySkis]

Great day at the Richie Havens Memorial!!!!
Classy event at Bethel Woods - haven't been back since the Phish run....
I had tickets to attend the memorial inside on of the market shed buildings between the Shed and the Woodstock field.. Those without tickets were allow to be on the Woodstock fields with a PA pumping the sound out.. Great to see Michael Lang - who's a regular in the TOWN of Woodstock(1.5 hours north).
Joel Rosenman was there as well which was cool.. Lou Gosset Jr gave a great speech on the old days in Greenwich Village of the early 60's... Danny Glover gleaned into Richies life...
Music performances were nice... John Hammond and John Sebastian are always entertaining together.. And Jose' Feliciano was just incredible...




We hung out on the concert field for a while... This picture is of me facing the fields standind where the stage was... Was trying to approximate where Richie played.. there was a killer drum circle at the top of the hill being led by Hendrix's percussionist... Who was a badass...

My friend Patsy at the monument..

Glad you got their, if I wasn't in PA for the Peach Fes. I would have went. Peach festival cool and lots of like minded people there, you should check it out next year.