Photograph by Carter Rawson, August 18, 2019. Woodstock Music Festival Site, Bethel Vicinity, Sullivan County, NY. For sing-along enthusiasts, it doesn’t get much better than this. Below is a selection of songs popularized by Woodstock or covered by acts closely associated with the festival. The second was the festival changed the concert industry and the radio airwaves forever by elevating performers strictly associated with the nascent FM band out of the shadows to achieve recognition associated with AM pop radio. One was that this muddy weekend in rural New York yielded an Academy Award-winning film replete with outstanding performances, audience humor and cinéma vérité that immerse viewers in the festival experience. While the cultural legacy of Woodstock has been debated for decades, two things were made clear. For approximately three years, Melanie was a crossover force on AM radio with a talent that competed easily with male contemporaries such as Don McLean and John Denver.
Melanie’s artistic triumph led to a collaboration with the renowned Edwin Hawkins Singers, and from there she went on to become a platinum performer with regular television appearances. Instantly popular with the rain-soaked throng, CSN maintained a halo effect that later propelled another no-show, Joanie Mitchell, to the top of the charts as the songwriter of an eponymous single, “Woodstock.”īut perhaps the most unlikely career made that weekend was that of Melanie Safka, an obscure 22-year-old New York folkie who wrote “Candles in the Rain” and rode it to the top of the charts just a few months later. Others, like heavy rock pioneers Iron Butterfly, were grounded altogether by helicopter tie-ups and traffic snarls.Īlso emerging that weekend was folk-rock’s first super group, Crosby Stills and Nash (and Young). Legend has it that relative unknowns, such as Santana, soared while better-knowns such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Grateful Dead struggled. Poster (color lithograph) by Arnold Skolnick, 1969. An aquarian exposition in White Lake, N.Y.–3 days of peace & music / Skolnick.