Fact #131708
When:
Short story:
The 1965 Newport Folk Festival, at which Bob Dylan famously goes electric, continues in Fort Adams Park, Newport, Rhode Island, USA. Acts on this day include Odetta, Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Lightnin' Hopkins, Ian And Sylvia, The Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Bill Monroe and Horton Barker.Full article:
Joe Boyd (production manager, Newport Festival) : It was a very, very exciting time, and Dylan was the focus.
Jac Holzman (founder, Elektra Records) : The event of the folk year was the Newport Folk Festival. It was launched in 1959 by George Wein who was also founder of The Newport Jazz Festival and an accomplished jazz pianist himself. At the folk festival, Elektra was always well represented with performers on stage. I went every year from the first. You'd see all the people you normally would run across in New York or LA, but out of the city there was time for relaxation that transcended business or party loyalties. For me it was a mini-vacation. I loved just wandering around, catching the workshops and the impromptu get-togethers of musicians showing off their licks and trading songs . . .
Joe Boyd : The 1965 Folk Festival came at a time when, on the radio, you were hearing I Got You Babe by Sonny And Cher, which was obviously a Dylan rip-off, Like A Rolling Stone, The Byrds singing Mr Tambourine Man. There was something happening. Things were changing … There was a tremendous anticipation at Newport about Dylan.
And, instead of this blue-jeaned, work-shirted guy who'd arrived in '64 to be the Pied Piper, he arrived rather secretively. He was staying in a luxurious hotel just on the outside of town, and he arrived with Bob Neuwirth and Al Kooper. That was the entourage, Neuwirth, Kooper and Dylan, and they were all wearing puff-sleeved duelling shirts - one of them was polka dot - and they were wearing not blue jeans but some kinda trousers. And they wore sunglasses. The whole image was very, very different. They were very clannish, very secretive.
They (festival organisers) were tense … because things were happening in the air that summer that they didn't understand and that they weren't prepared for. They were very, very paranoid about people smoking marijuana, for example. They were nervous about the whole thing.
Donovan : It was my first big festival, and to be doing the Newport Folk Festival was much more comfortable, obviously. It was just great. Joan Baez and Pete Seeger had told America that here is an important figure in our folk world arriving, which was marvelous.
I can understand now what the shock must have been, for any change, because the audience were in Bermuda shorts and bobbysocks and short hair. I mean, it hadn't happened yet. This was a middle class folk crowd, what I would call `folk purists', who came to hear what they wanted to hear and that's all they wanted to hear.
Jonathan Taplin (roadie, Bob Dylan] : Grossman, upon hearing that Bob wanted to play electric, hastily put a band together. And the only guys who had electric instruments were Butterfield's band.
Al Kooper : I didn't go to the '65 Newport Folk Festival with Dylan. I went as a regular person who always just bought tickets and went. But Albert Grossman, his manager, saw me walking around and said, "Hey, Bob is looking for you." And so he gave me passes and I sold my tickets. Evidently they'd been calling my house, but I'd already left. I was on vacation.
Joe Boyd : All of the performers did what they called workshops during the day, just small performances on the small stages around the grounds. Dylan, of course, was scheduled to sing in the Songwriters' Workshop.
Unlike the previous years, when there was always a good spread of attendance between workshops, this year the crowd around the Songwriter's Workshop was so immense that it was swamping the other workshops. People were complaining, 'Turn up the Dylan one because we're getting bleed from the banjo-picking one on the other side!' This was very much against the spirit of what the festival was supposed to be about, and the officials were starting to get tense … Dylan's appearance, his manner, the songs he sang at the workshop, everything added to their disquiet.
Joe Boyd : The flashpoint came at the Blues Workshop at the end of the day.
Jac Holzman : On the Saturday afternoon there was a blues workshop. Alan Lomax was hosting the black traditionalists. Alan was the son of John Lomax, two great white collectors, for whom traditional music seemed to freeze-frame about the time of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Alan was the last protector and refuge of the lone voice from Mutton Hollow.
Joe Boyd : There had been a lot of pressure from Peter Yarrow on adding the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to the line-up of the festival. He really put a lot of pressure on the other members of the Board to get the invitation, and Lomax was really against it. Against Butterfield, against white boys doing the blues, really.
Jac Holzman : The second segment of the workshop was slated to be white urban blues, featuring the Butterfield Band. Due to the amazing sales of Born In Chicago on the Elektra sampler, and the buzz that went with it, I had arranged for them to perform at Newport. Albert Grossman, the manager of Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul And Mary, was in full hover over Them (Butterfield Blues Band) as future clients.
Joe Boyd : Grossman became a focus of hostility for a lot of them. He'd never been popular among these people. He'd always been seen as one of the money changers at the gates of the temple and not a priest, y'know? And Grossman was arrogant, particularly with Dylan now being so big. Grossman was being very cool, but Grossman's way of being cool got up a lot of people's noses.
Jac Holzman : The crowd at the blues workshop was enormous. Instead of a few hundred this one had nearly a thousand.
Michael Bloomfield (guitarist, Butterfield Blues Band) : What we played was music that was entirely indigenous to the neighbourhood, to the city we grew up in. There was no doubt in my mind that this was folk music; this was what I heard on the streets of my city, out the windows, on radio stations and jukeboxes in Chicago and all throughout the South, and it was what people listened to. And that's what folk art meant to me me - what people listened to.
Joe Boyd : Lomax was forced to introduce the Butterfield Blues Band at the Blues Workshop, and he gave tham an introduction which was very condescending.
Paul Rothchild (producer, Elektra Records) : He got up and said something like, "Today you've been hearing music by the great blues players, guys who go out and find themselves an old cigar box, put a stick on it, attach some strings, sit under a tree and play great blues for themselves. Now you're going to hear a group of young boys from Chicago with electric instruments. Let's see if they can play this hardware at all."
Joe Boyd : As the group started to take to the stage, Lomax came off stage to be confronted by Grossman who, basically, said unkind words about the introduction Lomax had just given. Lomax just pushed him aside and said, 'Out of my way, Grossman.' And the next thing you know is these two men, both rather over-sized, were rolling around in the dirt throwing punches. They had to be pulled apart.
Jac Holzman : …duelling behemoths. Two big growlers, overweight, unfit, far from agile…
Paul Rothchild : …groveling in the dusty dirt of Newport over the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. It was wonderful. Holzman was laughing his ass off.
Jac Holzman : Al 'If I Had A Hammer' Grossman versus Alan 'Mighty Defender of the Status Quo' Lomax. One very short round, split decision. And this was only the preliminary bout. The main event was the following night when Dylan went electric-
Theodore Bikel (folk performer) : To the delight of some, to the dismay of most.
Joe Boyd : Lomax then called an emergency meeting of the board of the Festival that night … the board actually voted in favour of banning Grossman from the grounds of the Festival. George Wein, who was a non-voting advisor to the board, had to step in and say, 'Look, I don't have a vote, it's up to you, but I can tell your right now that if you do bar Grossman, you have to prepare yourselves for the walk-out of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul And Mary, and Buffy St Marie.'
So the board reconsidered and dropped the action against Grossman, but there was obviously a tremendous simmering of feeling.
Al Kooper : Me and Bob and the Butterfield Blues Band rehearsed through the night in the living room of some millionaire's mansion in Newport. By the time we went to bed at sunrise, we had three songs down.
Michael Bloomfield (guitarist) : We were all at Newport, Kooper, me, Barry (Goldberg), and this schwartze Jerome from the Butterfield Band playing bass … and he's fucking up on everything, and we're practising there in a room and Odetta's staring at us and Mary Travers is there and we're playing and it's sounding horrible and finally, it's time for the gig and Barry and me are throwing up in these outhouses.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL - DAY 1 - VERSION 2
FIRST DAY : 24 JULY 1965
Joe Boyd (production manager, Newport Festival) : The 1965 Folk Festival came at a time when, on the radio, you were hearing I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher, which was obviously a Dylan rip-off, The Byrds singing Mr Tambourine Man. There was something happening. Things were changing ...
Donovan : It was my first big festival... the audience were in Bermuda shorts and bobbysocks and short hair. I mean, it hadn't happened yet. This was a middle class folk audience, what I would call `folk purists', who came to hear what they wanted to hear and that's all they wanted to hear.
Joe Boyd : There had been a lot of pressure from Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) on adding the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to the line-up of the festival. He really put a lot of pressure on the other members of the Board to get the invitation, and (board member Alan) Lomax was really against it. Against Butterfield, against white boys doing the blues, really.
Al Kooper (organist) : I didn't go to the '65 Newport Folk Festival with Dylan. I went as a regular person who always just bought tickets and went. But Albert Grossman, his manager, saw me walking around and said, "Hey, Bob is looking for you." And so he gave me passes and I sold my tickets. Evidently they'd been calling my house, but I'd already left.
Jonathan Taplin (roadie, Bob Dylan) : Grossman, upon hearing that Bob wanted to play electric, hastily put a band together. And the only guys who had electric instruments were Butterfield's band.
Joe Boyd : The performers did what they called workshops during the day, just small performances on the small stages around the grounds. Dylan, of course, was scheduled to sing in the Songwriters' Workshop.
This year, the crowd around the Songwriter's Workshop was so immense that it was swamping the other workshops... and the officials were starting to get tense ... Dylan's appearance, his manner, the songs he sang at the workshop, everything added to their disquiet.
Jac Holzman (founder, Elektra Records): The second segment of the workshop was slated to be white urban blues, featuring the Butterfield Band. Due to the amazing sales of Born In Chicago on the Elektra sampler, and the buzz that went with it, I had arranged for them to perform at Newport. Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, was in full hover over them as future clients.
Michael Bloomfield (guitarist, Butterfield Blues Band) : What we played was music that was entirely indigenous to the neighbourhood, to the city we grew up in. There was no doubt in my mind that this was folk music; this was what I heard on the streets of my city, out the windows, on radio stations and jukeboxes in Chicago and all throughout the South, and it was what people listened to. And that's what folk art meant to me - what people listened to.
Joe Boyd : Lomax was forced to introduce the Butterfield Blues Band at the Blues Workshop, and he gave them an introduction which was very condescending.
As the group started to take to the stage, Lomax came off to be confronted by Grossman who, basically, said unkind words about the introduction Lomax had just given. Lomax pushed him aside and said, 'Out of my way, Grossman.' And the next thing you know is these two men, both rather over-sized, were rolling around in the dirt throwing punches. They had to be pulled apart.
Lomax then called an emergency meeting of the board of the Festival that night ... the board actually voted in favour of banning Grossman from the grounds of the Festival. George Wein, who was a non-voting advisor to the board, had to step in and say, 'Look, I don't have a vote, it's up to you, but I can tell you right now that if you do bar Grossman, you have to prepare yourselves for the walk-out of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Buffy St Marie.'
So the board dropped the action against Grossman, but there was obviously a tremendous simmering of feeling.
Al Kooper : Me and Bob and the Butterfield Blues Band rehearsed through the night in the living room of some millionaire's mansion in Newport.
Michael Bloomfield : Kooper, me, Barry (Goldberg, organist), and this schwartze Jerome from the Butterfield Band playing bass ... and he's fucking up on everything... and it's sounding horrible and finally, it's time for the gig and Barry and me are throwing up in these outhouses.
Al Kooper : By the time we went to bed at sunrise, we had three songs down.
Tweet this Fact
Jac Holzman (founder, Elektra Records) : The event of the folk year was the Newport Folk Festival. It was launched in 1959 by George Wein who was also founder of The Newport Jazz Festival and an accomplished jazz pianist himself. At the folk festival, Elektra was always well represented with performers on stage. I went every year from the first. You'd see all the people you normally would run across in New York or LA, but out of the city there was time for relaxation that transcended business or party loyalties. For me it was a mini-vacation. I loved just wandering around, catching the workshops and the impromptu get-togethers of musicians showing off their licks and trading songs . . .
Joe Boyd : The 1965 Folk Festival came at a time when, on the radio, you were hearing I Got You Babe by Sonny And Cher, which was obviously a Dylan rip-off, Like A Rolling Stone, The Byrds singing Mr Tambourine Man. There was something happening. Things were changing … There was a tremendous anticipation at Newport about Dylan.
And, instead of this blue-jeaned, work-shirted guy who'd arrived in '64 to be the Pied Piper, he arrived rather secretively. He was staying in a luxurious hotel just on the outside of town, and he arrived with Bob Neuwirth and Al Kooper. That was the entourage, Neuwirth, Kooper and Dylan, and they were all wearing puff-sleeved duelling shirts - one of them was polka dot - and they were wearing not blue jeans but some kinda trousers. And they wore sunglasses. The whole image was very, very different. They were very clannish, very secretive.
They (festival organisers) were tense … because things were happening in the air that summer that they didn't understand and that they weren't prepared for. They were very, very paranoid about people smoking marijuana, for example. They were nervous about the whole thing.
Donovan : It was my first big festival, and to be doing the Newport Folk Festival was much more comfortable, obviously. It was just great. Joan Baez and Pete Seeger had told America that here is an important figure in our folk world arriving, which was marvelous.
I can understand now what the shock must have been, for any change, because the audience were in Bermuda shorts and bobbysocks and short hair. I mean, it hadn't happened yet. This was a middle class folk crowd, what I would call `folk purists', who came to hear what they wanted to hear and that's all they wanted to hear.
Jonathan Taplin (roadie, Bob Dylan] : Grossman, upon hearing that Bob wanted to play electric, hastily put a band together. And the only guys who had electric instruments were Butterfield's band.
Al Kooper : I didn't go to the '65 Newport Folk Festival with Dylan. I went as a regular person who always just bought tickets and went. But Albert Grossman, his manager, saw me walking around and said, "Hey, Bob is looking for you." And so he gave me passes and I sold my tickets. Evidently they'd been calling my house, but I'd already left. I was on vacation.
Joe Boyd : All of the performers did what they called workshops during the day, just small performances on the small stages around the grounds. Dylan, of course, was scheduled to sing in the Songwriters' Workshop.
Unlike the previous years, when there was always a good spread of attendance between workshops, this year the crowd around the Songwriter's Workshop was so immense that it was swamping the other workshops. People were complaining, 'Turn up the Dylan one because we're getting bleed from the banjo-picking one on the other side!' This was very much against the spirit of what the festival was supposed to be about, and the officials were starting to get tense … Dylan's appearance, his manner, the songs he sang at the workshop, everything added to their disquiet.
Joe Boyd : The flashpoint came at the Blues Workshop at the end of the day.
Jac Holzman : On the Saturday afternoon there was a blues workshop. Alan Lomax was hosting the black traditionalists. Alan was the son of John Lomax, two great white collectors, for whom traditional music seemed to freeze-frame about the time of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Alan was the last protector and refuge of the lone voice from Mutton Hollow.
Joe Boyd : There had been a lot of pressure from Peter Yarrow on adding the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to the line-up of the festival. He really put a lot of pressure on the other members of the Board to get the invitation, and Lomax was really against it. Against Butterfield, against white boys doing the blues, really.
Jac Holzman : The second segment of the workshop was slated to be white urban blues, featuring the Butterfield Band. Due to the amazing sales of Born In Chicago on the Elektra sampler, and the buzz that went with it, I had arranged for them to perform at Newport. Albert Grossman, the manager of Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul And Mary, was in full hover over Them (Butterfield Blues Band) as future clients.
Joe Boyd : Grossman became a focus of hostility for a lot of them. He'd never been popular among these people. He'd always been seen as one of the money changers at the gates of the temple and not a priest, y'know? And Grossman was arrogant, particularly with Dylan now being so big. Grossman was being very cool, but Grossman's way of being cool got up a lot of people's noses.
Jac Holzman : The crowd at the blues workshop was enormous. Instead of a few hundred this one had nearly a thousand.
Michael Bloomfield (guitarist, Butterfield Blues Band) : What we played was music that was entirely indigenous to the neighbourhood, to the city we grew up in. There was no doubt in my mind that this was folk music; this was what I heard on the streets of my city, out the windows, on radio stations and jukeboxes in Chicago and all throughout the South, and it was what people listened to. And that's what folk art meant to me me - what people listened to.
Joe Boyd : Lomax was forced to introduce the Butterfield Blues Band at the Blues Workshop, and he gave tham an introduction which was very condescending.
Paul Rothchild (producer, Elektra Records) : He got up and said something like, "Today you've been hearing music by the great blues players, guys who go out and find themselves an old cigar box, put a stick on it, attach some strings, sit under a tree and play great blues for themselves. Now you're going to hear a group of young boys from Chicago with electric instruments. Let's see if they can play this hardware at all."
Joe Boyd : As the group started to take to the stage, Lomax came off stage to be confronted by Grossman who, basically, said unkind words about the introduction Lomax had just given. Lomax just pushed him aside and said, 'Out of my way, Grossman.' And the next thing you know is these two men, both rather over-sized, were rolling around in the dirt throwing punches. They had to be pulled apart.
Jac Holzman : …duelling behemoths. Two big growlers, overweight, unfit, far from agile…
Paul Rothchild : …groveling in the dusty dirt of Newport over the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. It was wonderful. Holzman was laughing his ass off.
Jac Holzman : Al 'If I Had A Hammer' Grossman versus Alan 'Mighty Defender of the Status Quo' Lomax. One very short round, split decision. And this was only the preliminary bout. The main event was the following night when Dylan went electric-
Theodore Bikel (folk performer) : To the delight of some, to the dismay of most.
Joe Boyd : Lomax then called an emergency meeting of the board of the Festival that night … the board actually voted in favour of banning Grossman from the grounds of the Festival. George Wein, who was a non-voting advisor to the board, had to step in and say, 'Look, I don't have a vote, it's up to you, but I can tell your right now that if you do bar Grossman, you have to prepare yourselves for the walk-out of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul And Mary, and Buffy St Marie.'
So the board reconsidered and dropped the action against Grossman, but there was obviously a tremendous simmering of feeling.
Al Kooper : Me and Bob and the Butterfield Blues Band rehearsed through the night in the living room of some millionaire's mansion in Newport. By the time we went to bed at sunrise, we had three songs down.
Michael Bloomfield (guitarist) : We were all at Newport, Kooper, me, Barry (Goldberg), and this schwartze Jerome from the Butterfield Band playing bass … and he's fucking up on everything, and we're practising there in a room and Odetta's staring at us and Mary Travers is there and we're playing and it's sounding horrible and finally, it's time for the gig and Barry and me are throwing up in these outhouses.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL - DAY 1 - VERSION 2
FIRST DAY : 24 JULY 1965
Joe Boyd (production manager, Newport Festival) : The 1965 Folk Festival came at a time when, on the radio, you were hearing I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher, which was obviously a Dylan rip-off, The Byrds singing Mr Tambourine Man. There was something happening. Things were changing ...
Donovan : It was my first big festival... the audience were in Bermuda shorts and bobbysocks and short hair. I mean, it hadn't happened yet. This was a middle class folk audience, what I would call `folk purists', who came to hear what they wanted to hear and that's all they wanted to hear.
Joe Boyd : There had been a lot of pressure from Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) on adding the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to the line-up of the festival. He really put a lot of pressure on the other members of the Board to get the invitation, and (board member Alan) Lomax was really against it. Against Butterfield, against white boys doing the blues, really.
Al Kooper (organist) : I didn't go to the '65 Newport Folk Festival with Dylan. I went as a regular person who always just bought tickets and went. But Albert Grossman, his manager, saw me walking around and said, "Hey, Bob is looking for you." And so he gave me passes and I sold my tickets. Evidently they'd been calling my house, but I'd already left.
Jonathan Taplin (roadie, Bob Dylan) : Grossman, upon hearing that Bob wanted to play electric, hastily put a band together. And the only guys who had electric instruments were Butterfield's band.
Joe Boyd : The performers did what they called workshops during the day, just small performances on the small stages around the grounds. Dylan, of course, was scheduled to sing in the Songwriters' Workshop.
This year, the crowd around the Songwriter's Workshop was so immense that it was swamping the other workshops... and the officials were starting to get tense ... Dylan's appearance, his manner, the songs he sang at the workshop, everything added to their disquiet.
Jac Holzman (founder, Elektra Records): The second segment of the workshop was slated to be white urban blues, featuring the Butterfield Band. Due to the amazing sales of Born In Chicago on the Elektra sampler, and the buzz that went with it, I had arranged for them to perform at Newport. Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, was in full hover over them as future clients.
Michael Bloomfield (guitarist, Butterfield Blues Band) : What we played was music that was entirely indigenous to the neighbourhood, to the city we grew up in. There was no doubt in my mind that this was folk music; this was what I heard on the streets of my city, out the windows, on radio stations and jukeboxes in Chicago and all throughout the South, and it was what people listened to. And that's what folk art meant to me - what people listened to.
Joe Boyd : Lomax was forced to introduce the Butterfield Blues Band at the Blues Workshop, and he gave them an introduction which was very condescending.
As the group started to take to the stage, Lomax came off to be confronted by Grossman who, basically, said unkind words about the introduction Lomax had just given. Lomax pushed him aside and said, 'Out of my way, Grossman.' And the next thing you know is these two men, both rather over-sized, were rolling around in the dirt throwing punches. They had to be pulled apart.
Lomax then called an emergency meeting of the board of the Festival that night ... the board actually voted in favour of banning Grossman from the grounds of the Festival. George Wein, who was a non-voting advisor to the board, had to step in and say, 'Look, I don't have a vote, it's up to you, but I can tell you right now that if you do bar Grossman, you have to prepare yourselves for the walk-out of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Buffy St Marie.'
So the board dropped the action against Grossman, but there was obviously a tremendous simmering of feeling.
Al Kooper : Me and Bob and the Butterfield Blues Band rehearsed through the night in the living room of some millionaire's mansion in Newport.
Michael Bloomfield : Kooper, me, Barry (Goldberg, organist), and this schwartze Jerome from the Butterfield Band playing bass ... and he's fucking up on everything... and it's sounding horrible and finally, it's time for the gig and Barry and me are throwing up in these outhouses.
Al Kooper : By the time we went to bed at sunrise, we had three songs down.