Richie Havens - Glastonbury - 1987

Here's the late great Richie Havens at Glastonbury in 1982

Richard Pierce Havens[1] (January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013), known as Richie Havens, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.[2] His music encompassed elements of folk, soul, and rhythm and blues. He is best known for his intense and rhythmic guitar style (often in open tunings), soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children.[2] He was of American Indian (Blackfoot) descent on his father's side, and of the British West Indies on his mother's.[3] His grandfather was Blackfoot of the Montana/South Dakota area. Havens' grandfather and great-uncle joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, got off in New York City and ended up on the Shinnecock Reservation in Long Island. There he got married then moved to Brooklyn.[4]

As a youth, Havens began organizing his neighborhood friends into street corner doo-wop groups and was performing with the McCrea Gospel Singers at age 16.

At age 20, Havens left Brooklyn, seeking artistic stimulation in Greenwich Village. "I saw the Village as a place to escape to, in order to express yourself," he recalled. "I had first gone there during the Beatnik days of the 1950s to perform poetry, then I drew portraits for two years and stayed up all night listening to folk music in the clubs. It took a while before I thought of picking up a guitar."[citation needed]


Publicity photo released in 1974 by his management at the William Morris Agency
Havens' solo performances quickly spread beyond the Village folk circles.[2] After cutting two records for Douglas Records, he signed on with Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, and landed a record deal with the Verve Forecast label. Verve released Mixed Bag in 1967, which featured tracks such as "Handsome Johnny" (co-written by Havens and future Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr.), "Follow," and a cover of Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman."

By 1969, Havens had released five more albums. Something Else Again (1968) became his first album to hit the Billboard charts and also pulled Mixed Bag back onto the charts. Two of those albums were unauthorized "exploitation albums" released by Douglas Records (or Douglas International[5]): Electric Havens (released June 1, 1968]) and Richie Havens Record (1969)