Birthdays : Richie Havens - Freedom (Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child) Woodstock 1969 | Route books

Richie Havens was born in New York City on this day in 1941. Sometimes he feels like a motherless child.

Once seen and heard never forgotten . . . . . .

Legend . . . . .

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Remembering Richie Havens 1/21/1941 - 4/22/2013

Richie Havens was a regular performer in the Greenwich Village folk scene at the same time as Dylan and often sang a "A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall," assuming their mutual acquaintance Gene Michaels wrote the tune. "I used to have arguments about that with different people. It was terrible [that I didn't know]," 

Havens recalled in a 1994 DISCoveries interview. 

“I remember singing it at Folk City and a guy walking up to me with tears in his eyes, and telling me it was his favourite version of that song – and then walking away. I headed down to the dressing room down in the basement, and Dave Van Ronk was coming up.  

He said to me, 'Do you know who that was? He wrote that song.'  

I said, 'No, he didn't! Gene Michaels wrote that song.'  

Van Ronk said, 'No, he didn't! Bob Dylan wrote that song, and that was just him!'  

And it blew my mind that he had complimented me for singing one of his songs. At the time, I didn't even realize it."

here

Richie Havens – Live At The Cellar Door And The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

Wonderful live helping of Richie Havens doing some of his most evocative songs ever. His patter is great too. Easily a four star album, dunno why AM gave it so few, probably just the automatic bias against live discs. If you dig Richie Havens, you absolutely should acquire this superb work.

The album features two concerts from Richie's early-'70s peak; in fact, this performance at the Cellar Door is the one from which his hit recording of Here Comes the Sun was taken! And the Santa Monica show was taped by remote recording whiz Wally Heider, so EXCELLENT sound. Also includes Fire and Rain; God Bless the Child; All Along the Watchtower; No More, No More; Dolphins, and more.

Highly recommended.


Tracklist:

1 Can't Make It Anymore
2 All Along the Watchtower
3 Helplessly Hoping
4 God Bless the Child
5 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
6 No More, No More
7 Preparation
8 Here Comes the Sun
9 Fire and Rain
10 Superman
11 Dolphins
12 Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen/My Sweet Lord

Richie Havens - My Own Way (1967 / 2012)

In 1967, producer Alan Douglas heard some tapes of solo performances by Richie Havens. In Douglas' own words, as taken from a note on the back cover of this reissue, "We decided that a solo recording was just too difficult to compete in the exploding record market...So we went back to the studio and overdubbed musical backgrounds onto Richie's solo sessions." The results yielded two albums on his own Douglas label, "Electric Havens", and "Richie Havens Record", issued at a time when the singer was reaching much bigger audiences with Verve albums conceived with full-band arrangements from the start. "My Own Way" is a 14-song CD compilation of material from those Douglas LPs, and is flawed in several crucial respects. True, Havens' performances -- largely of traditional or traditional-oriented folk and blues material, though there are more contemporary items like Ray Charles' "Drown in My Own Tears" and Fred Neil's "The Bag I'm In" -- are OK, and characteristic of the style with which Richie came to prominence. However, the overdubs are sometimes notably out of sync with the original contents, smacking of a hurried rush to exploit the folk-rock sound. Even the liner notes concede Douglas' additions were done "to the great displeasure of purists everywhere," and though they're not nearly as controversial or well-known as the posthumous overdubs he laid on some Jimi Hendrix tapes, they can likewise be criticized for insensitivity.

Even if one takes the attitude that the Douglas productions are nonetheless of historical interest, this CD blows an opportunity to gather all of the material in one place, by including only 14 of the 18 tracks from the original LPs. "I'm a Stranger Here" (from Electric Havens) and "I'm Gonna Make You Glad," "It Hurts Me," and "I'm on My Way" (from Richie Havens Record) are all missing, even though there was ample room for their inclusion on the CD, which runs 51 minutes. As another annoyance, there are no songwriting credits. If you do need to find these tracks for their historical interest, it's still preferable to hear them in their entirety than in this slightly abridged and unsatisfactorily packaged version. - www.allmusic.com

Tracklist:

1 C.C. Rider 3:20
2 Oxford Town 3:19
3 Norah's Dove 3:37
4 9000 Miles From Home 3:44
5 Shadow Town 3:55
6 3:10 To Yuma 3:18
7 The Bag I'm In 3:46
8 Drown In My Own Tears 4:20
9 Down In The Valley 4:03
10 Chain Gang 2:49
11 Babe, I'm Leaving 4:36
12 Daddy Roll 'Em 2:40
13 Boots & Spanish Leather 5:38
14 My Own Way 2:11

Richie here at Zero . . .

A Musical Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1-20-1968

 A Musical Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1-20-1968 

Paul says : In October 1967, one of the all-time musical greats, Woody Guthrie, died at the age of 55. His health started declining in the late 1940s, and in 1952 he was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease, which causes a gradual decline in motor skills and mental abilities. He was hospitalized continuously from 1956 until his death. From the early 1960s onward, Bob Dylan regularly visited him in the hospital and sang songs for him, but so did Pete Seeger and many other folk singers.

Back in the 1960s, musical tribute concerts weren't really a thing yet, but Guthie was such a towering figure that there actually were three such concerts. I plan on posting all three eventually. This is the natural way to start, since it came first chronologically.

This concert was officially released in full as the album "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Part 1," in 1972. In 1970, another tribute concert for him happened, and that was eventually released as "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Part 2." Then, decades later, highlights from the two were combined onto one CD simply called "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie." 

Normally, I wouldn't post something that has been officially released in full. But I think in this case I can made a more listenable album by subtraction. What I mean is, the 1968 concert was a combination of songs that were sung and spoken word/poetry that was read, going back and forth between the two. I think the songs have a lot of relistening value, but I don't want to hear the spoken word parts that often. So I deleted almost twenty tracks of that, keeping just the music. If you want the full version, the official album is for you. 

In removing those tracks, I was careful to manage the applause at the end of each song, since the spoken word part often started while the cheering was still going on. In some cases, I was able to fade the cheering down to bring it to a natural end. But when it was too short for that, I pasted in some cheering from the ends to other songs.

Now, let's get to the music, which consists entirely of songs written by Woody Guthrie, or cover songs he was closely associated with. This concert is most famous due to the appearance of Bob Dylan and the Band. It was important for several reasons. This was Dylan's first public performance since his motorcycle accident a year and a half earlier. It seems he wasn't actually that seriously injured in that accident, and it certainly didn't take him years to recover. But he'd been living a fast and crazy life of stardom and wanted to step away from all that for a while, and the accident gave him an excuse to go into seclusion. After this concert, Dylan basically went back into seclusion for another year or so. But he considered Woody Guthrie so important to his life that he made this rare public appearance during that time anyway.

Also important was the fact that Dylan was backed by the Band. Most members of the Band had backed him on a 1966 tour, and then during his "Basement Tapes" studio sessions in 1967. But at the time of this concert, they still hadn't made a name for themselves... both figuratively and literally! Since they literally didn't have a name to call themselves yet, for this concert, they were billed as "The Crackers," weirdly enough. Later in 1968, the Band would release their first studio album, "Music from Big Pink," to great critical acclaim. They would continue to back Dylan on other projects, including the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival concert and a 1974 tour. This concert was critical to their early career as well as their evolving musical connection with Dylan.

By the way, in addition to playing three songs with the Band, Dylan sang on two others: "This Train Is Bound for Glory" and the finale, "This Land Is Your Land." His voice is just one of many on the finale. As for "This Train Is Bound for Glory," he sang a verse on his own. Unfortunately, the album only included about a 30-second long snippet of that song, and his part wasn't included. I didn't include that snippet since I found it frustrating to only have a bit of the song. I'm guessing there was a flaw with the recording for much of the song.

The other stars of the concert were some of the biggest names in folk music at the time: Arlo Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's son, who had just hit it big with "Alice's Restaurant" in 1967), Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Richie Havens, and Tom Paxton. (I was asked the other day if I could post something by Pete Seeger. I couldn't think of anything worth posting. But then I remembered this concert.)

If you want to know more about this concert, here's an article in Rolling Stone Magazine about it that came out just a month after it took place:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-turns-up-for-woody-guthrie-memorial-197917/

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 Oklahoma Hills (Arlo Guthrie)
02 So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh [Dusty Old Dust] (Judy Collins)
03 Curly Headed Baby (Pete Seeger)
04 Ramblin' Round (Odetta)
05 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie & Judy Collins)
06 Pretty Boy Floyd (Tom Paxton)
07 I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water (Richie Havens)
08 Plane Wreck at Los Gatos [Deportee] (Judy Collins)
09 Vigilante Man (Richie Havens)
10 Pastures of Plenty (Tom Paxton)
11 Grand Coulee Dam (Bob Dylan & the Band)
12 Dear Mrs. Roosevelt (Bob Dylan & the Band)
13 I Ain't Got No Home (Bob Dylan & the Band)
14 Roll On Columbia [Edit] (Judy Collins)
15 Jackhammer John (Pete Seeger & Richie Havens)
16 Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done [The Great Historical Bum] (Tom Paxton)
17 Union Maid (Judy Collins & Pete Seeger)
18 This Land Is Your Land (Will Geer, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta & Everyone)