Open Mic Friday November 15!
This third Friday of the month, November 15th, 6:30 PM, hosted by MC Top Hat and the Amazing Suzanna Tamborina.
Another fun evening of brilliant music and astonishingly poor joke delivery by MC Top Hat. What’s his favorite new joke? Can he get it right? (Applause here!) The new posters of Richie Havens and a nice tribute to him are are going up in the neighborhood this week, so don’t miss out on a fun time, Bring a few friends to join you, we never run out of beer, only good jokes.
Thank you Open Mic regular musician and long time music sketch artist Parker Gambino, who painted him live the last time he saw him in New York, and wrote the nice tribute to him for our website. If you have a minute explore his great music with the links on Parker Gambino’s tribute below.
Tribute to Richie Havens (1941-2013)
by Parker Gambino
I was born too late to get hip to the beatniks until that scene had given way to the hippies, Allen Ginsberg and David Amram notwithstanding. And the early chapters of the Greenwich Village folk revival scene had passed before I was to get tuned in; it was only much later that I got around to experiencing some of these folks, who by then had attained elder status. But I did get to catch Richie Havens in the flesh a couple of times in his early (pre-1970) heyday. I remember the circumstances of only one of these performances.
A fellow (female) student and I had hitchhiked to Boston from Albany NY, where we were underclassmen. Upon learning that Havens was to give a concert at the Boston University gymnasium, we decided to get there early to be at the front of the line, for first shot at the general admission seats. We were so early that a street-side door to the gym was open, as it was being set up for the sound check. We waltzed right in as if we belonged, sat down in the front row, and hoped that our freeloading luck would hold out. And it did; we had the best seats in the house, for free!
Havens performed with his regular accompanists, Daniel Ben Zebulon on congas, and Paul “Deano” Williams on acoustic guitar, he of the jaunty-angled cap, as seen in my previous (uncurated) sighting, and also in the footage from the 1969 Woodstock festival. Deano and Richie had already been playing together for years, and to my ears his presence and nimble runs added greatly to the vibe and overall production value. So in tribute, images of these two players (at Woodstock) buttress Havens on the poster, along with the crowd.
For people like me, the Mixed Bag album, from 1966, was all I needed to know about Havens at the time. It was part of the mind-expanding music explosion that accompanied the rise of modern FM radio, and is widely revered as a timeless classic. It containing mostly covers that Havens appropriates as his own; Follow (written by Jerry Merrick) still wrings a tear or two from me.
There seem to be various accounts about certain details of Richie Havens’ life. Wikipedia traces his heritage to a mixture of Native American and British West Indian; believeable, but I’d like to see the primary source. For sure is that he grew up in Brooklyn before making his way to Greenwich Village, where he saw a scene that grabbed him, and he grabbed back. Before he took up music, Havens seemed to have made good bucks as a street artist, creating portraits for tourists. So, kindred spirit for me, and honored to close a circle of sorts! He was also a poet, but once he got going with the guitar and his singing, his course to the big time was set.
Both aspects of his musical development were distinctive. He has an earthy, smoky, soulful voice with which he inhabits every song. There is a vague lispiness to it, which perhaps adds more than it detracts, chalk it up to missing teeth. He is self-taught on guitar, working with mostly open tunings, and on certain songs he busts out a percussive strumming style. In the pass-the-hat system of coffeehouse funding of performers, you didn’t want to be following Havens, as pockets would go empty for him.
His rocket to wider fame was launched at the Woodstock festival in 1969. With things running way behind schedule and transportation difficulties keeping performers from arriving in a timely fashion (including his bass player), Havens was pressed into service as the opening act. And apparently nobody was in the wings waiting to follow. So after performing his intended set, he was asked to play some more, and then some more. And then there were no more songs that the band knew, so they just jammed to something that ended up being a mix of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child evolving spontaneously into the improvised Freedom. Exactly how long Havens was on the stage is another fact-versus-legend situation; he certainly was sweat-soaked when he finished!
By all accounts Havens was a peaceful, gentle, caring, and knowing soul. He branched out to other creative and performance areas, acting in movies, and as a sought-after voice for commercials (All aboard for Amtrak). He rounded it out with non-performance activities consistent with his enlightened positive community-building attitude in a multitude of directions, and threw his star power in support with innumerable benefit performances. One gig was at President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993.
The occasion of the poster sketch was a free concert in Norwalk, Connecticut, where he was accompanied by Walter Parks on guitar and Stephanie Winters on cello. He was in fine regal form with his stunning purple longcoat. The line for autographs was long; Richie was attentive to each and every person – some had brought their Mixed Bag album for him to sign. Indeed, I do feel like he is a friend forever.
Selected Links:
NY Times obituary Richie Havens
Be sure to read through the comments at the end for more flavor!