Ann Arbor Blues Festival
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The Ann Arbor Blues Festival was a blues festival that took place in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1969 and 1970.
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[edit] Overview
There is no record of any blues festival of any similar scope and extent that predates the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival, which was organized in 1968 and held in 1969, much less one that endures to the present day.
It featured artists like Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, B.B. King, Otis Rush, J. B. Hutto and the Hawks, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Magic Sam, Freddy King, and many other modern-electric blues players. The festival also featured traditional blues artists like Son House and those in between, like Clifton Chenier, Roosevelt Sykes, and many others.
In Ann Arbor, the accent was off folk and country blues and on modern, big-city, electric blues artists. While the Newport Folk Festival featured more than folk music and to a degree helped blues to segue from folk and country blues to more modern blues, it was in Ann Arbor that the first all-out extravaganza of modern city blues was born.
It helped to mark the discovery of modern blues music and the musicians that made that music. It helped introduce black culture to white musicians. Major blues artists came from all over to play, but also to listen and socialize, which helped open their minds to new styles of music.
[edit] Background
The first two festivals were sponsored by the University Activity Center (UAC) of the University of Michigan and the Canterbury House, and were organized by a small group of University of Michigan students, led by John Fishel.
Late in 1968, Fishel and a small group of students formed an exploratory committee to create a blues festival, tentatively scheduled for the fall of 1969. They traveled to Chicago to hear well-known blues men in the South Chicago bars and clubs. They came back with their eyes opened, more convinced then ever to organize a festival.
Concerned that their audience would not understand or have sufficient interest in the concept, they first held a warm-up concert in the spring of 1969, so that students could preview the music and build an appetite for the coming festival. The preliminary concert was held in the University of Michigan Union Ballroom, featuring the Luther Allison Trio, a young blues group from Chicago. It was very much a success and the larger festival was scheduled for the fall. The University of Michigan approved a budget and Fishel and his group set about making the festival a reality.
[edit] 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival
The festival turned out to be very sucessful. That first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969 included such great blues artists as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Freddy King, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and many others. The 1969 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival even made a small profit. It was an enormous artistic success and it was decided to make this an annual event. A proposed budget for the 1970 concert was formulated and accepted by the university.
It has been said by way of criticism of the first two Ann Arbor Blues Festivals (mostly by the producers of the subsequent Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival) that their choice of talent was too esoteric and that these artists were not known by the general public. In defense of the early festivals, it is only fair to point out that at the time of those first two blues festivals, these performers were indeed almost completely unknown to White America. That is a major reason why the original Ann Arbor Blues Festival was undertaken: to bring these artists to general attention, which it did.
It is true that there was no attempt to include jazz, R&B, or popular headliners in these first festivals, and it is true that that might have resulted in larger attendance. It just was not envisioned by the festival coordinators, who were struggling to bring blues to national recognition. More than anything else, everyone involved in the early festivals wanted to hear this music live and meet the performers.
Discovering these great blues artists, alive and living all around us, but never previously accessed or known, was a revelation to all present at that time. Here was not a dying or antiquated music, as was the case with certain styles of folk music. Modern-electric blues was very much alive and well in cities across the United States, only separated from White America by a racial curtain.
Removing that curtain exposed a vast wealth of music to be experienced and absorbed. What happened in that first blues festival in 1969 was a revelation to those in attendance, at least to the White members of the audience. It helped to launch a new era of blues discovery and acceptance.
[edit] 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival
For this festival, the same concept was followed as with the first: gather together as many of the great blues players, of all styles, as money would allow. The program for the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival was just as robust as the first festival and included artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, Bobby Blue Bland, Otis Rush, Son House, and dozens of other performers.
However, the 1970 festival ran into stiff competition from a large rock concert being held at the same time, in nearby Goose Lake. The Goose Lake Bonanza drew a lot of attendees away from the blues festival, with the result that, when all was said and done, the festival came out in the red, a loss of some $30,000, which was a lot in those days. It should be noted that festival organizer John Fishel went on to create four additional blues festivals in Miami, Florida from 1972 through 1974.
