Atlanta Pop Festival: Fifty Years Ago
The Fourth of July weekend in 1969 was blazingly hot at the Atlanta Raceway. I was there, fresh out of college, sunburned and thirsty, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to see some acts that had never been to the South’s largest city before. I even took a few pictures. It was two years after the seminal Monterey Pop Festival, six months after the first Miami Pop Festival, and two months before Woodstock. An amazing lineup came to town… Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Blood Sweat and Tears, Al Kooper, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and many more. Almost nobody had seen Zeppelin; they had been together less than a year, and the crowd went wild over a new kind of guitar-based blues/rock that most consider the beginning of heavy metal. Somehow I missed Chicago (then known as Chicago Transit Authority), but everyone saw Janis Joplin. Everyone knew about her, but they were still stunned by the power of her voice. Creedence Clearwater Revival and Grand Funk Railroad met every expectation. And even though it took a while, I was pleasantly surprised that my picture of Paul Butterfield ended up being used somewhere. Fifty years later, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution takes a look back at that weekend.
