Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Grateful Useless stay in Vancouver in June 1973, a month earlier than they performed Summer season Jam. Picture: Ross Marino/Getty Pictures
Rock folklore remembers landmark festivals equivalent to Woodstock, Monterey, and the Isle of Wight as legendary events. For some cause, it has tended to miss the occasion that was larger than any of them.
The Summer season Jam at Watkins Glen, the Grand Prix racetrack in New York state, happened on July 28, 1973. It was attended by a mind-boggling (and record-breaking) whole of 600,000 individuals, who loved hours and hours of music offered by simply three acts, the Allman Brothers Band, the Grateful Useless, and The Band.
‘Largest audience for a pop festival’
That attendance was adequate for the Summer season Jam to be given the title of “largest audience for a pop festival” by the Guinness E-book of World Information. Whereas estimates of competition crowds usually fluctuate wildly, the determine dwarfed the 400,000 that have been stated to be at Woodstock. Additionally, looking back, that summer season’s day at Watkins Glen outlined the very concept of the prolonged jam session that grew to become one of many traits of Seventies rock.
The seeds of Summer season Jam have been sown the yr earlier than, when promoters Shelly Finkel and Jim Koplik had staged a Grateful Useless present in Hartford, Connecticut. Three members of the Allman Brothers Band — Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, and Jaimoe — all confirmed up on stage for an impromptu jam.
Unintentionally free
Watkins Glen was actually not supposed to be a free live performance, but it surely turned out that approach for tons of of hundreds of individuals. The promoters bought 150,000 tickets upfront at $10 every, however the remainder of the throng that created a special type of jam on the approaches to the racetrack wound up with a long-distance view for nothing.
Even the soundchecks at Summer season Jam have been epics, with a part of the Grateful Useless’s supposed run-through ultimately seeing launch on the 1999 field set So Many Roads (1965-1995). After they formally opened the occasion, the Useless performed two lengthy units, after which The Band adopted with a two-hour efficiency.
Allmans’ stay classics
When the Allmans hit the stage, the timing was excellent to provide songs from their imminent Brothers and Sisters album an airing. They took their place amongst what have been, by now, staples of their present equivalent to “Statesboro Blues” and “Whipping Post.”
Their Watkins Glen efficiency of one of many new songs, Gregg Allman’s “Come and Go Blues,” was later launched on their 1976 stay compilation Wipe The Home windows, Verify The Oil, Greenback Fuel. The Allmans performed, as usually, for 3 hours, after which, true to the spirit of the day, members of all three bands obtained as much as jam on requirements like “Johnny B. Goode” and “Not Fade Away.”
“Who can explain it,” Koplick stated within the Washington Put up’s report of the competition. “We spent less than $30,000 on advertising and we wound up selling 150,000 tickets at $10 each. But we never dreamed we’d have this many people. I guess they just found the concept appealing — a day of music in the country.”
Purchase The Allman Brothers Band’s music on vinyl now.
