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Sweetwater was an American rock band originally from Los Angeles, California. They were the act scheduled to open the Woodstock festival in 1969 but were stuck in traffic, so that folksinger Richie Havens's trio instead performed first. Sweetwater was eventually flown in to Woodstock by helicopter and performed next, becoming the first band to perform at the festival. [1]
The original members of the band were Nancy "Nansi" Nevins (lead vocals/guitar), August Burns (cello), Albert Moore (flute/backing vocals), Alan Malarowitz (drums), Elpidio Cobian (conga), Alex Del Zoppo (keyboards) and Fred Herrera (bass).
The band originally formed to perform in local coffee houses in Los Angeles until being signed to a major label. Sweetwater were early developers of the psychedelic rock/folk rock fusion style that was popularized by Jefferson Airplane to be regarded as the archetypical "60s Sound". In 1968–69, the band often toured with The Doors. They were also one of the opening acts for The Animals in 1968. One of their best-known recordings is a version of the traditional folk song "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child". It appeared on their debut album, Sweetwater , the band's only album to chart nationally in the U.S. As the band progressed, they developed music more toward the psychedelic folk genre. [2]
Three days after Sweetwater performed on The Red Skelton Show, Dec. 30, 1969, singer Nansi Nevins was severely injured when the car she was traveling in was struck by a drunk driver. She suffered a brain injury which left her in a coma for 10 days, and she suffered damage to one of her vocal cords as a result of the tracheotomy performed to save her life. [3] Nansi would never again complete a full album with the band, although she still had some recordings prepared for the next two albums. For several years, there was a widespread but unfounded belief that Beverly Bivens, formerly of the West Coast group We Five, had died in a car accident. It is thought that confusion over names (Bivens/Nevins) may have contributed to this rumor. [4]
The group reunited for Woodstock '94 in 1994 with three original members - Nevins, Herrera and Del Zoppo. August Burns died after contracting pneumonia while being treated in a German hospital for injuries he suffered after falling out of a construction elevator in 1979, [5] Alan Malarowitz was killed in a car crash in 1981, [5] Albert Moore died of lung cancer in 1994. [5] Elpidio Cobian works as an underwater welder in the movie industry. [3]
In 1999, the band's story was depicted in a VH1 TV-movie Sweetwater: A True Rock Story. Amy Jo Johnson portrayed Nansi Nevins and Michelle Phillips portrayed the older Nancy.
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, that became one of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock. Formed in 1965, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to achieve international commercial success. They headlined the Monterey Pop Festival (1967), Woodstock (1969), Altamont Free Concert (1969), and the first Isle of Wight Festival (1968) in England. Their 1967 breakout album Surrealistic Pillow was one of the most significant recordings of the Summer of Love. Two songs from that album, "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", are among Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
John Benson Sebastian is an American singer, songwriter and musician who founded the rock band the Lovin' Spoonful. He made an impromptu appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 and scored a U.S. No. 1 hit in 1976 with "Welcome Back."
The Electric Prunes are an American psychedelic rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1965. Much of the band's music was, as music historian Richie Unterberger described it, possessed of "an eerie and sometimes anguished ambiance." Their most successful material was by songwriters Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, though the group also penned their own songs. Incorporating psychedelia and elements of embryonic electronic rock, the band's sound was marked by innovative recording techniques with fuzz-toned guitars and oscillating sound effects. In addition, guitarist Ken Williams' and singer James Lowe's concept of "free-form garage music" provided the band with a richer sonic palette and exploratory lyrical structure than many of their contemporaries.
Country Joe and the Fish was an American psychedelic rock band formed in Berkeley, California, in 1965. The band was among the influential groups in the San Francisco music scene during the mid- to late 1960s. Much of the band's music was written by founding members Country Joe McDonald and Barry "The Fish" Melton, with lyrics pointedly addressing issues of importance to the counterculture, such as anti-war protests, free love, and recreational drug use. Through a combination of psychedelia and electronic music, the band's sound was marked by innovative guitar melodies and distorted organ-driven instrumentals which were significant to the development of acid rock.
Richard Pierce Havens was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music encompassed elements of folk, soul, and rhythm and blues. He had a rhythmic guitar style. He was the opening act at Woodstock, sang many jingles for television commercials, and was also the voice of the GeoSafari toys.
The Charlatans were an American folk rock and psychedelic rock band that played a role in the development of the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury music scene during the 1960s. They are often cited by critics as being the first group to play in the style that became known as the San Francisco Sound.
The Incredible String Band were a British psychedelic folk band formed by Clive Palmer, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron in Edinburgh in 1966. The band built a considerable following, especially in the British counterculture, notably with their albums The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, and Wee Tam and the Big Huge. They became pioneers in psychedelic folk and, through integrating a wide variety of traditional music forms and instruments, in the development of world music.
Psychedelic folk is a loosely defined form of psychedelia that originated in the 1960s. It retains the largely acoustic instrumentation of folk, but adds musical elements common to psychedelic music.
The Pentangle is the 1968 debut album of the band Pentangle: Terry Cox, Bert Jansch, Jacqui McShee, John Renbourn and Danny Thompson. It brought together their separate influences of folk, jazz, blues, early music and contemporary songwriting. One of the band's most commercially successful albums, it reached number 21 in the British charts.
Fear Itself was a short-lived psychedelic blues-rock band formed by Ellen McIlwaine in the late 1960s in Atlanta, Georgia. The band featured McIlwaine on lead vocals and playing harmonica, rhythm guitar and organ. Chris Zaloom played lead guitar, and Bill McCord was on drums. Steve Cook played bass guitar and was the bassist on the band's one album, the self-titled Fear Itself. However, Cook left, and was replaced by Paul Album on bass.
Nancy Priddy is an American actress, singer and singer-songwriter. As an actress, she has appeared on many television series, including Bewitched, The Waltons, and Matlock. She is the mother of actress Christina Applegate.
Volume 3: A Child's Guide to Good and Evil is the fourth album by the American psychedelic rock band The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (WCPAEB), and was released on Reprise Records in May 1968. By the time the group commenced recording Volume 3, guitarist Danny Harris had excused himself from the WCPAEB, reducing their numbers to a trio. As with the WCPAEB's earlier work, the album saw the band continue to blend psychedelic influences and complex studio techniques, and was marked by a bizarre fusion of innocence and malice in the band's lyrics. Volume 3 featured the WCPAEB's most ambitious music to date, and the striking cover art of John Van Hamersveld, yet it failed to sell in sufficient copies to chart nationally. In more recent times, the album has been considered the band's most accomplished work and a masterpiece of the psychedelic genre.
Beverly (Bev) Ann Bivens, born in Santa Ana, California on April 28, 1946, was lead singer of the American West Coast folk rock group We Five from 1965 to 1967. Since 2021 she has been the original band's last surviving member. After her marriage to jazz musician Fred Marshall and the break-up of We Five, she sang for a while with the experimental Light Sound Dimension, but by the late 1960s Bivens had largely left the music scene. After many years of relative seclusion, she sang at the opening of an exhibition in San Francisco in 2009. Her son is the saxophonist Joshi Marshall.
Evergreen, Vol. 2 is the second album from the Stone Poneys, released five months after The Stone Poneys. It was the most commercially successful of the Stone Poneys' three studio albums.
H. P. Lovecraft II is the second album by the American psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft and was released in September 1968 on Philips Records. As with their debut LP, the album saw the band blending psychedelic and folk rock influences, albeit with a greater emphasis on psychedelia than on their first album. H. P. Lovecraft II failed to sell in sufficient quantities to reach the Billboard Top LPs chart or the UK Albums Chart, despite the band being a popular act on the U.S. psychedelic concert circuit. Legend has it that the album was the first major label release to have been recorded by musicians who were all under the influence of LSD.
Dando Shaft is the name of a short-lived psychedelic/progressive folk and folk jazz band that was primarily active in the early 1970s. The band has attracted a measure of attention from recent compilation releases and Dando Shaft is today known primarily as one of the major influences on the progressive stream of the 1960s folk revival.
Sweetwater is the debut studio album by the Los Angeles band, Sweetwater. The album is musically enriched by several influences from different genres that the band sought to experiment with. Much of the band's resemblance came from Jefferson Airplane, the group that successfully integrated jazz fusion into their compositions. Upon the album's release, it was largely unnoticed, but still became the band's only work to chart in the Billboard 200. Their most acclaimed track is the opening cover version of "Motherless Child".
"High Flying Bird" is a song written by American folk and country singer-songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler, and first recorded by Judy Henske in 1963. It was performed and recorded by many musicians and groups in the mid and late 1960s, and was influential on the folk rock genre.
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.
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