Pete Johnson was a music critic for the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s [1] before being replaced by Robert Hilburn in 1970. [2] In 1969, he wrote The History of Rock and Roll [3] and appeared in another rockumentary, the Pop Chronicles. [4] [5]
In writing The History of Rock and Roll documentary, Johnson said: "I included nearly every record I ever rem[em]ber hearing". [6]
After his work at Los Angeles Times, Johnson was editorial director of Circular, a promotional magazine published by Warner Bros. [7]
Buffalo Springfield was a rock band formed in Los Angeles by Canadian musicians Neil Young, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin and American musicians Stephen Stills and Richie Furay. The group, widely known for the song "For What It's Worth", released three albums and several singles from 1966 to 1968. Their music combined elements of folk music and country music with influences from the British Invasion and psychedelic rock. Like contemporary band the Byrds, they were key to the early development of folk rock. The band took their name from a steamroller parked outside their house.
Traffic were an English rock band formed in Birmingham in April 1967 by Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason. They began as a psychedelic rock group and diversified their sound through the use of instruments such as keyboards, sitar, and various reed instruments, and by incorporating jazz and improvisational techniques in their music.
Stephen Lawrence Winwood is an English musician and songwriter whose genres include blue-eyed soul, rhythm and blues, blues rock and pop rock. Though primarily a guitarist, keyboard player and vocalist, prominent for his distinctive soulful high tenor voice, Winwood plays other instruments proficiently, including drums, mandolin, bass and saxophone.
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.
The Credibility Gap was an American satirical comedy team active from 1968 through 1979. They emerged in the late 1960s delivering comedic commentary on the news for the Los Angeles AM rock radio station KRLA 1110, and proceeded to develop more elaborate and ambitious satirical routines on the "underground" station KPPC-FM in Pasadena, California. Richard Beebe's wife Heidi came up with the name "The Credibility Gap" due to the news being published that seemed to have gaps.
"Dear Mr. Fantasy" is a rock song by Traffic from their 1967 album, Mr. Fantasy. Jim Capaldi contributed the lyrics, while Steve Winwood and Chris Wood composed the music.
The Spencer Davis Group were a British blues and R&B influenced rock band formed in Birmingham in 1963 by Spencer Davis (guitar), brothers Steve Winwood and Muff Winwood, and Pete York (drums). Their best known songs include the UK No. 1 hits "Keep on Running" and "Somebody Help Me" and the UK and US Top 10 hits "Gimme Some Lovin'" and "I'm a Man".
Benjamin Fong-Torres is an American rock journalist best known for his association with Rolling Stone magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Len Hunt Chandler Jr. was an American folk singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Chandler was known for his powerful voice and socially conscious songs.
Roll with It is the fifth solo studio album by English blue-eyed soul artist Steve Winwood, released on 20 June 1988. It became one of Winwood's most commercially successful albums, reaching number four on the UK Albums Chart and number one on the US Billboard 200, and has sold over three million copies.
Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue, was an American rock and roll radio disc jockey, record producer and concert promoter.
John Sanford Gilliland Jr. was an American radio broadcaster and documentarian best known for the Pop Chronicles music documentaries and as one of the original members of The Credibility Gap. He was born and died in his hometown of Quanah, Texas. He worked for a number of radio stations in Texas and California including KOGO in San Diego (1961–1965), KRLA 1110 in Los Angeles (1965–1970), and KSFO (AM) in San Francisco (1971–1978).
The Pop Chronicles are two radio documentary series which together "may constitute the most complete audio history of 1940s–60s popular music." They originally aired starting in 1969 and concluded about 1974. Both were produced by John Gilliland.
Elisha Gerald Hopkins was an American journalist and author best known for writing the first biographies of Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison of the Doors, as well as serving for 20 years as a correspondent and contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine. He also penned several other biographies, wrote history and humor, and was a writer-producer for Mike Wallace, Steve Allen and Mort Sahl.
The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by author Ken Kesey primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, centered on the use of and advocacy for the psychedelic drug LSD, commonly known as "acid". LSD was not made illegal in California until October 6, 1966.
The History of Rock & Roll is an American radio documentary on rock and roll music, first syndicated in 1969. Originally one of the lengthiest documentaries of any medium, The History of Rock & Roll is a definitive history of the Rock and Roll genre, stretching from the early 1950s to the present day. The "rockumentary," as producers Bill Drake and Gene Chenault called it, features hundreds of interviews and comments from numerous rock artists and people involved with rock and roll.
The KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival was an event held June 10 and 11, 1967, at the 4,000-seat Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre high on the south face of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Although 20,000 tickets were reported to have been sold for the event, as many as 40,000 people may have actually attended the two-day concert, which was the first of a series of San Francisco–area cultural events known as the Summer of Love. The Fantasy Fair was influenced by the popular Renaissance Pleasure Faire and became a prototype for large scale multi-act outdoor rock music events now known as rock festivals.
Significant events in radio broadcasting in the year 1969 included the debuts of two documentaries on rock and roll.
Lew Irwin has been a Los Angeles–based journalist for more than 50 years. He was the original anchor/reporter at KABC-TV from 1957 to 1962 and the news director of Los Angeles radio stations KPOL, KRLA, KDAY, and KNX-FM. While at KRLA in the late 1960s, he created The Credibility Gap, a 15-minute news program, broadcast every three hours, that integrated topical satire and music with the news. He also has interviewed Presidents Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan, as well as such show business personalities as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, Peter Sellers, Jack Nicholson, Dick Clark and Elvis Presley. He is the author of Sinatra, a Life Remembered, a coffee table book about Frank Sinatra and since 1992 has been the publisher/editor of the daily entertainment industry digest Studio Briefing.
Robert Hilburn is an American pop music critic, author, and radio host. As critic and music editor at the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles appeared in publications around the world. Hilburn has since written a memoir and best-selling biographies of Johnny Cash and Paul Simon. He was a member of the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for more than twenty years, and lives in Los Angeles.