Ritchie Havens

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Before August 15, 1969, if you asked anyone about Richie Havens, they'd say, "Oh, yes, the guy who uses his thumb."

But after August 15, 1969, everyone would say, "Oh, yes, the opening act at Woodstock."

And just what, you ask, was Woodstock?

Well, you might say it was where Winston Churchill was born. That was on 1874. Of course, we all know Winston as the English prime minister who liked wearing pink silk underwear. But Winston's Woodstock is not our Woodstock.

Instead OUR Woodstock was the most famous rock festival in history. Or maybe even the most famous festival period - including the Festival of the Field of the Cloth of Gold organized by Hank and Frank.

Woodstock: Three Days of Love and Mud

Of course, Woodstock was not at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, UK or Woodstock, Ontario or Woodstock, New South Wales. It wasn't even at Woodstock, for crying out loud! Instead Woodstock "happened" on the farm of Max Yasgur near the town of Bethel. That's in New York, not Israel.

Enough has been written about the Rock Festival That Didn't End All Rock Festivals so that only a simple summary is needed here. The outdoor concert had been planned by a group of promoters, and it was going to be an extravaganza (as they used to call them). There would be multiple acts, and the show would last three days with an expected turnout of 200,000.

Unfortunately the sheer size of the enterprise scared a lot of the commercial people off and that included the food vendors. Worse, instead of 200,000, it was more like 400,000 people who came a-knocking at the gates. The traffic shut down the New York turnpike and there were so many people that they literally broke down the fences and just walked in.

Today the festival is remembered as Three Days of Love and Music but some that were actually there remembered it was more like Three Days of Mud not to mention no food and no way to leave. Three people were reported to have died and the area was declared a disaster area. Although there have been "Woodstock Anniversary" concerts from time to time, they haven't always run smoothly and the last one planned had to be canceled.

That said, Woodstock is still looked on as one of the pivotal points of American history and was when the counter culture became mainstream. For the next decade the "hippie" motif dominated everything. Kids quit wanting to be like adults and adults started dressing like kids. Business executives began sporting "Beatle" haircuts, and everyday dialect included now outdated but then "cool" phrases like "getting it all together", feeling "spaced out", and voicing approbation by quoting Shakespeare's "right on!"

But most of all rock music became high art. The stars began receiving prestigious awards and entertained at the White House. The Premiere of the Soviet Union was seen dancing to a rock band. Even quiz programs - the quintessential hallmark of American culture - began having "flower power" set designs. Eventually a rock and roller even won the Nobel Prize for Literature. And Richie was the opening act at Woodstock.

Yes, Richie's technique did involve fretting the lower strings on the guitar with his thumb. And no, Ritchie wasn't the only famous musician to play the guitar the "wrong" way. It may not be actually common, but some top notch guitarists have adopted this technique including Glenn Campbell and Merle Travis. In fact, you can sometimes catch a surprising number of players slipping in el pulgar izquierdo, particularly if they use an open tuning - that is, the strings are tuned to play a chord without pressing any strings. To get the sound of some of the great bluesmen that's what you have to do. For instance, if you want to fret the first and sixth string leaving the others open, that's the easiest way to do it.

The tuning Richie used from sixth string (lowest) to first (highest) was D2 A2 D3 F3# A4 D4 in scientific notation. This is not the "standard tuning" that Andres Segovia used which is E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4 where E2 is 329.63 cycles per second or hertz and E4 is 82.41 cps. A caveat is that when using standard music notation on the treble clef, guitar music is written an octave higher than the notes come out. What sounds as concert pitch middle C - that is C4, the C one ledger line below the staff - is written as C5 on guitar, the C in the middle of the staff.

Actually Richie pointed out that you got his tuning by first setting the strings to an open E chord. That's simple enough. Just raise the fifth and four strings (A2 and D3) up one step and the third string, G3, up a half step. Now you have E2 B2 E3 G#3 B3 E4. Then and drop the pitch of each string by a full step. Hey, presto!, you have D2 A2 D3 F3# A4 D4.

As anyone who has fiddled around with guitar tunings knows, dropping the lowest E string to a D gives a fuller and more resonant sound. But best of all Richie said that with open tunings, you could start playing songs right away. Which is how he got started.

Richie was born in New York City and as many young New Yorkers coming of age in the 1950's (he was 18 in 1959), he gravitated to Greenwich Village. That was where the "beatniks" were hanging out. Although the Beats tended to adopt jazz as their preferred music, folk singers began budging in and soon they could be found swarming in and around Washington Square Park. If you were lucky you might even catch a presciently bearded Woodrow Wilson Guthrie playing guitar and singing with Ramblin' Jack Elliott. But the way Richie got started is NOT the way it's usually done.

Hanging Out

Richie didn't intend to be a musician but concentrated on being a portrait artist. He had a natural ability and was asked by a gallery owner to do some charcoal drawings, a medium Richie found a bit difficult to control but soon got the hang of it. Not that Richie had no musical experience and when he was a teenager he had sung with a gospel group in the doo-wop style.

Doo-Wop, for those who haven't heard of it, is a manner of singing with close harmony (usually four part) and is - and we quote a dictionary here - "a style of rhythm and blues popularized in the 1950s and characterized by words and nonsense syllables sung in harmony by small groups supporting the melody of the song". Probably the most famous doo-wop hit was the Marcels singing the Rogers and Hart standard "Blue Moon". Everyone remembers how Fred Johnson kicked the song off:

Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom

Bom ba ba bom ba dang a dang dang

Ding a dong ding

Blue moon, blue moon, blue moon ...

Now as Richie was walking along in the Village he came across a group of kids - between ten and fourteen years old - singing doo-wop a-capella. He thought they were great but needed some musical backing. Since he didn't know how to play the guitar, he borrowed one from a friend and tuned it to an open D. That way he could play different chords simply by pressing all the strings down with his thumb.

Richie and the kids practiced together for a bit and then hit the streets. Richie set the open guitar case on the sidewalk and in their first performance they picked up $150. The next set landed them $250. We're talking 1960's dollars here. He told the kids that was what they were capable of.

By the way, it wasn't just to the kids that Richie gave career advice. He once went to a club and saw a guitarist doing all sorts of musical acrobatics including playing the instrument with his teeth. After the show he walked up and told the young man he should quit playing back-up and start his own group. Evidently Richie's advice carried the day and Jimi Hendrix later did quite well.

But working with the kids also got Richie into music as a serious avocation. Soon he swapped his paper and charcoal for his guitar and his unique playing style quickly attracted attention. Moving from the street corners to the clubs he was tapped on the shoulder by the famed music promoter Albert Grossman. Albert was known for being able to pull the right strings and moving his clients to commercial success. And yes, Richie's first album Mixed Bag was released in 1966 and sold well. He then began hitting the major television shows hosted by Merv Griffin, Steve Allen, Dick Cavett, and yes, Johnny Carson. He even made the really big shew with Ed Sullivan.