Here is my favortie moment and I hope this might inspire others to share:
My most memorable moment attending a folk festival was the final concert at Newport in 1969. Newport was less rock and more folk compared to the previous year when I had watched Ramblin’ Jack Elliott perform quite drunk on sloe gin that Janis Joplin had plied him with back stage. No amplified acts like Big Brother And The Holding Company returned to Newport in 1969.
There was a build up to the moment over five days and nights of music. I remember Bert Jansch with Pentangle, “Big Mama” Thorton, Billy Ed Wheeler, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Jesse Fuller, Son House, Happy & Artie Traum, Jerry Jeff Walker, Spider John Koerner & Willie Murphy, Sleepy John Estes, The Everly Brothers, Carl Perkins, Buffy Sainte Marie, Don McClean, Jean Ritchie, and Muddy Waters who played a rare acoustic set. On Saturday afternoon sitting right at the edge of a tiny stage I watched the “Contemporary Songs” workshop. The 200 or 300 of us assembled on the grass heard a then unknown James Taylor. He was immediately invited to perform again on the main stage in the “New Folks” concert Sunday afternoon - a rare honor. It was a year later before I heard “Fire And Rain” again, on the radio. Also at the workshop were Steve Young and Joni Mitchell. Joni also performed on the main stage that night followed by Arlo Guthrie as the headliner. Two years earlier Arlo had performed at this same Saturday afternoon workshop, singing a long song about Alice for the first time ever.
But it was Sunday night that was special. I was running back and forth from my seat to watch a few minutes at a time on one of four big black and white TV’s set up on racks behind the audience. There was a light mist falling so the TV’s were under tarps and the moon was obscured from us though we all kept hoping to see it. I remember Van Morrison, Doug Kershaw and Ramblin’ Jack that night. And that night another unknown and nervous songwriter, Kris Kristofferson, was brought out on the stage by Johnny Cash and he sang a song about hitchhiking with Bobby McGee and one about Sunday mornings. I remember Pete Seeger and a pregnant Joan Baez sharing the MC duties and speaking eloquently of the future possibilities for our world which they predicted to be changed that day…to be much smaller evermore. My most memorable moment, the exact moment, was when Joan came back out to make an announcement at around 10:30. A sudden hush and stillness was broken by our cheers at receiving the news and she repeated for us what had just been heard on TV’s around the world… something about one small step and a giant one.
That Sunday, July 20, 1969 became a famous date in human history and all of us there knew our memories of that event would be special because of where we were that night. We would hold that memory in the context of the times and troubles we were living through which had drawn us to be there together with our poets and minstrels. We all felt it. Newport had always been a pilgrimage. We stood there on sacred ground where people had come for many years before to sing “We Shall Overcome” and “Blowing In The Wind” and to reflect on the possibilities of what could be achieved.
When the traditional Newport finale was over, the stage lights were dimed and the thousands of us had walked about half way out to the main gate, we suddenly heard Joan Baez start to sing a spiritual a cappella over the public address system. The crowd slowed and quieted in the dark. It was haunting and it was an obscure song named “Throw Out The Life Line” which I found in an old hymnal in a book store in Seattle three months later.
A week after Woodstock, which was just three weeks after Newport, I hitchhiked across the country with a knapsack and my 12 string as my worldly possessions. I visited Seattle to join a peace march the week I turned 19. The world did feel smaller.