Famed
folk singer Richie Havens, the opening act at the 1969 Woodstockmusic festival, died Monday of a sudden heart attack, his publicist
said. He was 72.
Havens,
who retired three years ago, toured for more than 30 years and
recorded 30 albums.
Havens
told Billboard that his breakthrough at Woodstock came after another
artist's equipment got stuck in traffic. He was supposed to be the
fifth act.
"It
was 5 o'clock and nothing was happening yet," Havens toldBillboard. "I had the least instruments (to set up on stage) and
the least people (in his band)."
So
Havens went on and performed for 40 minutes, as planned. Organizers
asked him to do four more songs, he
told Billboard.
"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," he said.
Havens,
a Brooklyn, New York, native, told CNN in 1999 that music enabled him
to leave his rough neighborhood to head to Greenwich Village and the
music scene there.
Music
was always a part of his life.
"I
believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was
an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it,"
he recalls. "I came up in Brooklyn singing doo-wop music from
the time I was 13 to the time I was 20. That music served a purpose
of keeping a lot of people out of trouble, and also it was a passport
from one neighborhood to another."
His
inspiration for songs about social change and protest came when he
heard artists like Fred Neil, Dino Valenti and Tom Paxton. That's
when he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
"It
was the songs that actually changed my life," he says. "The
songs that I heard were so much different than the doo-wop kind of
thing. They were just so powerful. Finally I decided, 'I've got to do
this.'"
Before
Woodstock, his nights were filled with playing as often as possible
to make a few dollars.
"We
played three coffeehouses a night, 14 sets a night, 20-minute sets,
pass the basket, stay alive," he told CNN. "I was there
seven and a half years, every day. It was the most incredibly magic,
magic time."
After
Havens gained attention at Woodstock, he recorded a soulful-voiced
cover of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun," which rose on
the pop charts in 1970.
Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills and Nash said Havens was an inspiration for
the natural gravel in his singing voice. He called Havens a
passionate performer.
"He
lit fire when he started playing within the first song and burned
exactly the same way throughout his set. And it never stopped, it
never changed," Stills said.
He
added that he thought Havens' style was probably a little too arcane
to appeal to a mass audience.
"But
he sure knew what to do when they were begging for someone to go on
first, when all those people showed up at Woodstock," Stills
said.
Havens
returned to Woodstock for the 40th anniversary festival in 2009.
"While
his family greatly appreciates that Richie's many fans are also
mourning this loss, they do ask for privacy during this difficult
time," a statement from his publicist, Carrie Lombardi, said.
Billboard
reported Havens died in New Jersey, leaving behind four daughters and
five grandchildren.
Source:
cnn
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