Content area
Full Text
VOA English Service
DATELINE: New York
There were a great many great musical performers at the historic three day Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, whose 40th anniversary is being celebrated this August 14-16. But few are as etched into the public mind as singer-songwriter Richie Havens, whose rendition of "Freedom/Motherless Child" and others songs were featured in the Oscar-winning documentary about the legendary festival.
Richie Havens played his now-iconic medley end of the opening act before a crowd of between 300,000 and 500,000 music fans, hippies, counterculture activists and drug-soaked pleasure seekers. Havens was later followed onstage by superstars like Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Ravi Shankar, Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Janis Joplin. That might also help explain why Havens' long African-style tunic was soaked with sweat during his performance.
Havens recently told this reporter that he had already been onstage for nearly three hours when he played that song, which suddenly sprang to mind from his doo wop and gospel days back in Brooklyn.
"To tell you the truth, I had sung... all the...