Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer and songwriter. One of the most iconic and successful rock performers of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals, as well as her "electric" stage presence.
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Woodstock Rock Festival, it attracted an audience of more than 460,000. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite overcast and sporadic rain. It was one of the largest music festivals in history and became synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s.
Jefferson Starship is an American rock band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1974 by a group of musicians including former members of Jefferson Airplane. Between 1974 and 1984, they released eight gold or platinum-selling studio albums, and one gold-selling compilation. The album Red Octopus went double-platinum, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart in 1975. The band went through several major changes in personnel and genres through the years while retaining the Jefferson Starship name. The band name was retired in 1984, but it was picked up again in 1992 by a revival of the group led by Paul Kantner, which has continued since his death in 2016.
Canned Heat is an American blues and rock band that was formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The group has been noted for its efforts to promote interest in blues music and its original artists. It was launched by two blues enthusiasts Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Canned Heat Blues", a song about an alcoholic who had desperately turned to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat". After appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals at the end of the 1960s, the band acquired worldwide fame with a lineup of Hite (vocals), Wilson, Henry Vestine and later Harvey Mandel, Larry Taylor (bass), and Adolfo de la Parra (drums).
Big Brother and the Holding Company are an American rock band that was formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After some initial personnel changes, the band became well known with the lineup of vocalist Janis Joplin, guitarists Sam Andrew and James Gurley, bassist Peter Albin, and drummer Dave Getz. Their second album Cheap Thrills, released in 1968, is considered one of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco; it reached number one on the Billboard charts, and was ranked number 338 in Rolling Stone's the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album is also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary film of the watershed counterculture Woodstock Festival which took place in August 1969 near Bethel, New York.
Chester Leo "Chet" Helms, often called the father of San Francisco's 1967 "Summer of Love," was a music promoter and a counterculture figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the mid- to-late 1960s.
Tom Constanten is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Monterey Pop is a 1968 American concert film by D. A. Pennebaker that documents the Monterey International Pop Festival of 1967. Among Pennebaker's several camera operators were fellow documentarians Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles. The painter Brice Marden has an "assistant camera" credit. Titles for the film were by the illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Featured performers include Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, the Mamas & the Papas, the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose namesake set his guitar on fire, broke it on the stage, then threw the neck of his guitar in the crowd at the end of "Wild Thing".
Sam Houston Andrew III was an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, composer, artist and founding member and guitarist of Big Brother and the Holding Company. During his career as musician and composer, Andrew had three platinum albums and two hit singles. His songs have been used in numerous major motion picture soundtracks and documentaries.
Samuel Lawrence "Larry" Taylor was an American bass guitarist, best known for his work as a member of Canned Heat. Before joining Canned Heat he had been a session bassist for The Monkees and Jerry Lee Lewis. He was the younger brother of Mel Taylor, long-time drummer of The Ventures.
Jefferson's Tree of Liberty is the tenth album by Jefferson Starship, released on September 2, 2008. It is the band's first studio album since 1999's Windows of Heaven. The new album includes cover songs from Irish, American, English, and Latin-American traditions. The title is a reference to Thomas Jefferson's quotation, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The idea began in 2003 as "The Cuba Project", which was to include classic protest and folk songs recorded in Cuba. In 2008 the album was finally recorded but in California. About half of the songs planned for The Cuba Project were used on the final cut, with other songs coming from Jefferson Starship's previous repertoire and another project band member Paul Kantner had planned called "On the Threshold of Fire." The promotional tour for the album began in late June with shows at Larkspur, California followed by tours in the US and Europe before the album's release, and continued through December 2008 with a further tour in the US and a tour in Japan. On February 1, 2009, more tour dates and venues were announced by the band's manager Michael Gaiman, with additional plans to continue the tour through 2010 and bring it to Australia and South America. David Grisman joined the band for the April 2009 tour dates. The band's promotion for the album ended in June 2009 as the band changed their set-list to Jefferson Airplane's Woodstock Festival material and started touring with the "Heroes of Woodstock" through the end of October.
Kacee Clanton is an American, Nashville–based singer/songwriter, recording artist, stage actress, producer, and vocal and performance coach, who has worked as a background vocalist for recording artists Joe Cocker and Luis Miguel, and toured as lead vocalist with Big Brother and the Holding Company. She has played Janis Joplin in the musical Love, Janis and was the alternate lead on Broadway in the rock musical, A Night With Janis Joplin. She was also a vocal and performance instructor at Los Angeles College of Music. Both her music and vocals have been used in a variety of films, TV shows, and video games. She currently lives in the Nashville area and works as a singer, actor, producer and vocal coach.
Woodstock 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm is a six-CD live box-set album of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York. Its release marked the 40th Anniversary of the festival.
Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music is a 4-CD live box-set album of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York. Its release marked the 25th anniversary of the festival. The box set contains tracks from Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, Woodstock 2, and numerous additional, previously unreleased performances from the festival as well as the stage announcements and crowd noises. Just prior to the box set's release, Atlantic Records released a much shorter 1-CD version entitled The Best of Woodstock. In 2019, Rhino Records issued a 38-CD box set called Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive which includes every musical performance as well as stage announcements and other ancillary material.
The New Orleans Pop Festival was a rock festival held on Labor Day weekend, two weeks after the Woodstock Festival. It was held at the Pelican International Speedway in Prairieville, Louisiana, about 65 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and 15 miles south of Baton Rouge. Over 26 bands performed during the three days of the festival, including seven veterans of Woodstock. It had a peak attendance of 25,000–30,000 people.
Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive is a live album by various artists, packaged as a box set of 38 CDs. It contains nearly all of the performances from the Woodstock music festival, which took place on August 15–18, 1969, in Bethel, New York. The CDs also include many stage announcements and miscellaneous audio material. The box set also contains bonus material such as a Blu-ray copy of the director's cut of the Woodstock documentary film, a hardcover book written by concert promoter Michael Lang, and a replica of the original concert program. It was released by Rhino Records on August 2, 2019, in a limited edition of 1,969 copies.
Ronald Thomas Polte was an American manager in the California Bay Area rock and roll scene. He was well known as the manager of the psychedelic music groups, The Ace of Cups quintet, one of the earliest all-female groups, the renowned Quicksilver Messenger Service, which featured a host of major talents, and briefly, the Sons of Champlin.
Woodstock – Back to the Garden: 50th Anniversary Experience is a live album by various artists, packaged as a box set of ten compact discs. Released by Rhino Records during the summer leading up to the fiftieth anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, it contains selections from every performance at the music festival, which took place on August 15–18, 1969, in Bethel, New York. The discs also include stage announcements and miscellaneous audio material. The package contains essays by producer Andy Zax and Jesse Jarnow, details about the performers and notable festival figures, and photographs. This box set is a compilation derived from its limited edition parent box set. A smaller three-CD or five-LP sampler was also released.
Woodstock – Back to the Garden: 50th Anniversary Collection is a live album by various artists. It was recorded at the Woodstock music festival, which took place on August 15–18, 1969, in Bethel, New York. It includes 30 songs by 21 different musical artists, in order of performance, along with a number of stage announcements. It was released as a three-disc CD and as a five-disc LP on June 28, 2019.
