Soon after Woodstock came the Palm Beach Pop Festival, 40 years ago
Tags: Bill Heidtman, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Ken Davidoff, Palm Beach, Palm Beach International Raceway, Palm Beach Pop Festival, rock history, Spirit, The Rolling Stones
| Friday 20 November 2009 2:38 pm
Three months after Woodstock, the hippie scene shifted south.
To the boondocks west of West Palm Beach.
On Thanksgiving weekend, 40 years ago.
See anyone you know in the crowd? (Courtesy Ken Davidoff)
And the local ruling class didn’t like it one bit.
What did the sheriff do? Wanna see one of the greatest Mick Jagger pictures ever? Click
Then-Palm Beach County Sheriff Bill Heidtman vowed to make life miserable for the free-loving, pot-smoking, anti-establishment youngsters coming here for the Palm Beach Pop Festival. He threatened to herd alligators toward the crowd, gathered on the grounds of the old Palm Beach International Raceway. And he swore he’d have his good ole’ boys dig out fire ant colonies and relocate them at the venue.
Yet, 50,000 people showed up for the three-day event, the only one of its kind ever in this area. And they got to calling Heidtman “Sheriff Eichmann,” after Hitler’s henchman, Adolf Eichmann.
Mick Jagger at the 1969 Palm Beach Pop Festival (Courtesy Ken Davidoff)
The lineup of bands was nearly the same as the earlier New York state rendezvous. Except that Jimi Hendrix couldn’t make it. He was replaced by a little band known as The Rolling Stones. Janis Joplin belted out a few tunes, as did The Byrds, Sly and the Family Stone, Johnny Winter, Grand Funk Railroad, Spirit and Jefferson Airplane.
Florida rocker Tom Petty was there, too, after hitch-hiking south from his hometown of Gainesville.
Palm Beach society shutterbug Ken Davidoff remembers the festival well. At 19, he scored a gig as the event’s official photographer.
Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter at the 1969 festival (Courtesy Ken Davidoff)
“It was raining and freezing cold and people were ankle deep in mud,” Davidoff said. “There were 50,000 at the beginning, but by the time the Stones got on stage on Sunday, there were maybe 3,000 left. The weather and delays just drove people away.”
Among the delays, Davidoff cited the Stones’ arrival after authorities forced the band to wait on an airport tarmac for six hours, sorta, kinda, on purpose.
Davidoff recently built this Web site for the anniversary and stuffed it with some of the 600-plus pictures he took that weekend. He’s also interviewing festival-goers, roadies and promoters for a documentary.
“The festival was definitely a historical event that very few residents knew about,” Davidoff said.
For more photos, click here. And for some of the sounds, click here.
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There are a few great bootlegs of Janis at this festival floating around on the internet.
Listen, say what you will of this feature story, it should be yanked from the front page online where it currently sits under the tag “BREAKING NEWS”.
Set up another features tag to link to, but if you keep linking stuff like this there, you’re going to lose all credibility of what is actually “BREAKING NEWS”.
I was there with my friends, Nina Barker & Pat Murphy. We sat there through thick and thin seeing everything, waiting out the cold and wet to see the Stones close out the concert. I remember thinking “Wow, this little Pop Festival surely didn’t get the features of Woodstock, but was a whole lot better for lack of crowding.” I spent my birthday there and enjoyed some of the best music ever! Thanks again for the greatest concert event of my teenage years.
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Some music from the show… http://www.archive.org/details/RollingStones1969-11-30MiamiPopFestivalFL
very cool pictures
I was in college back then. Came hme from U of Fla over holiday to work for my old employer–Universal Ambulance of Lake Worth (long gone). We had the medical contract for there. I manned the first aid tent from beginning to end.
Still remember it and seeing the “old” bands.
The thing I most remember was when the participants tore down an outhouse burned the wood to stay warm.
IT WAS FREEZING COLD…..
Oh–two years later Sheriff Heidtman hired me when I got out of college and did a career there.
Happy times……
I was there. I remember some dude standing up with no shirt and dancing for the entire festival….. Was a great time!