I'm very sad and hurt about this.. I Loved Richie Havens..

RIP!

getxxxx said:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1559103/richie-havens-folk-and-woodstock-legend-dead-at-72

Richie Havens, Folk and Woodstock Legend, Dead at 72

By Gary Graff
April 22, 2013 4:52 PM EDT

[img:$uid]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b59/jbodine/Music%20II/ritchie_havens_650_zps812f7d4a.jpg[/img:$uid]


When he turned 70 a couple of years ago, Richie Havens noted with pride that, "I don't feel one iota different from the day I walked into Greenwich Village" 50 years prior. "Everything I hoped for has happened," he told Billboard. "I never had a bad day on stage. I don't think I'm ever going to go away...least while I'm alive."

Havens, a protest music hero ("Handsome Johnny," "No Opportunity Necessary...," "Stop Pulling and Pushing Me") and the man who opened the 1969 Woodstock festival, died on Monday morning from a sudden heart attack at his home in New Jersey, according to his publicist. He was 72. In March of 2012, Havens had announced an end to his 45-year touring career, citing health issues.

Born in Brooklyn, Havens started out singing doo-wop and gospel -- which inspired him to write songs, but not necessarily in those genres. "I said to myself when I started singing doo-wop that I would never write another song like those guys were writing," he explains. "They were fantastic writers, which is what educated me. I lot of guys went off to do their own doo-wop stuff, But I wanted to figure another way around and do something that was different and new and my own."

The search led Havens to "the melting pot of poetry" that was New York's Greenwich Village during the 50s and 60s. Arriving when he was 20 years old, he was mentored by Fred Neil -- "He didn't know I was singing with a doo-wop group in Brooklyn, but he knew something in his music had changed me," Havens recalled -- and put out a pair of albums for Douglas Records before Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman signed him and got him a deal with Verve Forecast. "Mixed Bag" in 1967 featured "Handsome Johnny," which Havens co-wrote with actor Louis Gossett Jr., and a cover of Dylan's "Just Like a Woman."

Havens mixed a variety of styles into his music, drawing on folk, blues, rock, jazz, funk and even elements of country and bluegrass that filtered through the scene in New York. He was also an avid interpreter of other songwriters' including Dylan, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Leonard Cohen. It made it hard for him to find a niche but easy to find places to play; he laughingly remembered that his first who out of town, in Detroit, was at a jazz club, and the next, in Chicago, was at a blues spot.

"I looked at the poster for that first show and it said, 'Richie Havens -- folk/jazz singer.' I went, 'Really? Is that what I am? Is that what I do?' I just went into any situation the put me in, and people seemed to like it."

Havens' breakthrough situation was at Woodstock, of course. Pressed by organizers to open the show when another artists' equipment was stuck on the New York Thruway, Havens -- who was originally scheduled to go on fifth -- played a galvanizing set that included a vamp on "Motherless Child" that morphed into his song "Freedom."

"It was 5 o'clock and nothing was happening yet," Havens remembered. "I had the least instruments and the least people (in his band). But they had to catch me first. I felt like, 'They're gonna kill me if I go up on stage first. Give me break. I need those four people in front of me to warm up the crowd.' But the people were great. I was supposed to sing 40 minutes, which I did, and from the side of the stage they go, 'Richie, four more songs?' I went back and did that, then it was, 'Four more songs...' and that kept happening 'til two hours and 45 minutes later I had sung every song I know."

Woodstock gave Havens a boost to his highest-charting albums -- "Richard P. Havens, 1983" in 1969 (No. 80 on the Billboard 200) and "Alarm Clock" in 1971 (No. 29). The latter featured his lone Billboard Hot 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" that peaked at No. 16. Havens' final chart entry was the 1987 album "Simple Things," which reached No. 173, while his final set of original material was 2008's "Nobody Left to Crown."

Notable moments in Havens' career included television performances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Tonight Show," a role in the 1972 stage production of The Who's "Tommy," a roles in the films "Catch My Soul," "Greased Lightning," Bob Dylan's "Hearts of Fire" and Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan-inspired film "I'm Not There," singing "Tombstone Blues." During the mid-70s he co-founded the Northwind Undersea Institute, a children's-oriented museum in the Bronx, as well as the Natural Guard, an organization to teach children about ecological issues.

He sang at President Bill Clinton's inauguration in January of 1993, and a decade later he received the American Eagle Award form the National Music Council. He collaborated with the electronic duo Groove Armada on "Hands in Time" for the "Collateral" film soundtrack, and he's worked with Genesis members Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett, blues artist Bill Perry and with David Letterman CBS Orchestra drummer Anton Fig. Havens published an autobiography, "They Can't Hide Us Anymore," in 2000 and was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

Havens is survived by four daughters, five grandchildren and at least one grandchild. Through his publicist, Haven's family has asked "for privacy during this difficult time" but promised that "a public memorial will be planned for a later date."

http://www.billboard.com/...dead-at-72

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Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

[Edited 4/22/13 20:08pm]

R.I.P.

Richie says in the interview "everything I hoped for has happened". I think that's awesome!

RIP.

Sad passing.

I was never a "fan"...but always reaaly respected / dug what he pulled off at Woodstock....brilliant.

The New York Times

The King of the Barre Chords, Mr. Havens' RIP.

from...

Guild Guitar Website.

So sad. Don't know much about him but the first time I saw his Woodstock performance I was riveted. The moment he gets everyone in the audience on their feet clapping gives me chills evertime I see it.

Weirdly, I was only watching 'Woodstock' on Sunday night.

[Edited 4/23/13 11:10am]

rlittler81 said:

So sad. Don't know much about him but the first time I saw his Woodstock performance I was riveted. The moment he gets everyone in the audience on their feet clapping gives me chills evertime I see it.

Weirdly, I was only watching 'Woodstock' on Sunday night.

[Edited 4/23/13 11:10am]

the thing that impressed me so much were the circumstances. He spoke about it in the interview that Ta posted above, but it was improv ....under some tough conditions.

The time, the place, the audience, the song, the message, the performance ALL on point.

Really amazing.

[Edited 4/23/13 11:24am]

JamFanHot said:

rlittler81 said:

So sad. Don't know much about him but the first time I saw his Woodstock performance I was riveted. The moment he gets everyone in the audience on their feet clapping gives me chills evertime I see it.

Weirdly, I was only watching 'Woodstock' on Sunday night.

[Edited 4/23/13 11:10am]

the thing that impressed me so much were the circumstances. He spoke about it in the interview that Ta posted above, but it was improv ....under some tough conditions.

The time, the place, the audience, the song, the message, the performance ALL on point.

Really amazing.

[Edited 4/23/13 11:24am]

An amazing example of the power of live music/musicianship.

He was- I sat next to him at a Musicology show at MSG in new york back in 2004. he was Super down to earth!

funkyslsistah said:

I read some posts on various media sites of folks telling stories of meeting him or sitting next to him during a flight and the common concensus is that he was genuinely nice. RIP!

An article in today's L.A. Times touches on another side of Mr. Havens

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Richie Havens' creative, political spirit never wavered

An appreciation: The veteran folk rocker may not have reached the fame of other musicians of his generation, but the power of his voice and message stayed true.

By Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic
April 22, 2013, 8:00 p.m.

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People who experienced Woodstock through the lens of the 1970 documentary film "Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music" can describe every contour of Richie Havens' face. With focused eyes and a scraggly beard, the singer, songwriter, guitarist and activist, who died on Monday at age 72, is ingrained into a generation's memory. In the film and on record, you can hear the mantra that he offered echo across Max Yasgur's farm, and that message has resonated over the years to become one of Woodstock's archetypal performances.

"Freedom, freedom, freedom," he sang, the camera close on his face as his hands strummed out a percussive rhythm on his acoustic guitar, driven by a musician whose work in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s had laid the foundation for this worldwide stage. As his two collaborators accompany him on guitar and congas, Havens' final song of his set feels like an opening argument — and served as a reminder of the African rhythms that helped birth much of the music that would follow over the next 72 hours.

Havens' message not only helped set the tone for the concert but also became part of a conversation about an unpopular war and a country that felt like it was losing its way. The artist offered such power throughout his musical life, even if his fame never ascended to the levels of some of his peers at Woodstock.

That perhaps stands to reason. His was a level of intensity that made Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young sound like the Kingston Trio, which didn't endear him to an American mainstream then wrestling with the black power movement. Havens too was more commercially successful as an interpreter than as a songwriter. To critics in love with iconoclasts such as Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Sly & the Family Stone and James Brown pushing at the fringes of songwriting, Havens never felt on equal aesthetic footing.

At Woodstock, Havens performed killer versions of the Beatles' "Hey Jude," "With a Little Help From My Friends" and transformed the hallucinatory "Strawberry Fields" into a journey through a place of seeming peril. When Havens hit in the early 1970s with George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun," he did so with an excitement of someone who seemed to understand the essence of a sunrise.

As a songwriter, he presented lyrics that illustrated his unwavering moral compass: He addressed crime and racial inequality with the same spirit that guided his love of the natural world, and over the years his ecological activism became as central to his creative spirit as political inequality.

Still, from a fan's perspective, his best works are the records he made in the late '60s after signing a management deal with Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan's longtime manager. The first of these (his third studio album), called "Mixed Bag," is an essential and unsung gem. Not only does it feature fantastic versions of Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby," but a thrilling rendition of New York proto-punk band the Fugs' "Morning, Morning."

Havens released almost two dozen albums over his nearly 50-year musical life, moving from folk to electric blues (including a nice version of Tom Waits' "Ol' 55") and even collaborating in the early '00s with smooth electronica group Groove Armada.

That Havens never achieved the universal fame of some of his Woodstock peers shouldn't been seen as a failure. Rather, unlike many of the Woodstock generation who ditched politics and charity when they accepted their first salaried position, or signed to major labels and chased hits at the expense of righteousness and purity of message, Havens never left his politics behind, treating his musical gifts as more of a means than an end.

http://www.latimes.com/en...5743.story
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One of my favorite, more obscure tunes by Richard P. Havens...



...For Haven's Sake



Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

Mr, Havens was a life long player of Guild Acoustic guitars. One of the amazing things about Havens playing was his unique chord progression and open tunings. In part he was forced to do this because his hands were too big to play traditional chords so he compensated by playing Barre Chords/open chords through out his songs. His tuning was DADF#AD... Mr. Havens said his reason for being a long life Guilds acoustic player was... Guild guitars unlike any other allowed th listener hear his chord changes clearly and distinctly.

P.S. Just lucked up on this NPR interview a couple of years ago where Mr. Havens speak of his guitar playing style. (2004)

'Talk Of The Nation' Remembers Folk Singer Richie Havens National Public Radio

2004

I did not hear this...what a human being.

thanks

TD3 said:

Mr, Havens was a life long player of Guild Acoustic guitars. One of the amazing things about Havens playing was his unique chord progression and open tunings. In part he was forced to do this because his hands were too big to play traditional chords so he compensated by playing Barre Chords/open chords through out his songs. His tuning was DADF#AD... Mr. Havens said his reason for being a long life Guilds acoustic player was... Guild guitars unlike any other allowed th listener hear his chord changes clearly and distinctly.

P.S. Just lucked up on this NPR interview a couple of years ago where Mr. Havens speak of his guitar playing style. (2004)

'Talk Of The Nation' Remembers Folk Singer Richie Havens National Public Radio

2004