Newport 1965 and Other Memories of the Folk Scene
3-31 March 2014
Irene’s Pub & Restaurant
885 Bank Street
This exhibition contains photos of several folk festivals and concerts I attended in the 1960s, in Ottawa, Orillia, Toronto, and Newport, Rhode Island.
The annual Newport Folk Festival was the principal gathering place for folk musicians and fans in the 1960s. The town of Newport in 1965 was a somewhat jaded vacation haven of the rich and famous, with many of the decaying ocean front mansions from the 1920s standing vacant or occupied by hippies. The Newport Jazz Festival had long been well known and well attended, but by 1965 the Folk Festival had become a bigger summer attraction.
I drove to Newport from Ottawa with several friends to visit the Folk Festival the weekend of July 23-25, 1965. It was a long drive but well worth it. All the big names in folk music performed, including Canadians Joni Mitchell, Gord Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia and Bonnie Dobson. I took photos of some of them but missed a lot more.
Newport 1965 turned out to be a significant milestone in the folk music revival – but I didn’t know it at the time. The Sunday night concert was the first time Bob Dylan sang and played with an electronic band at a concert, and he was booed loudly by the traditionalists who thought he had sold out to rock music. We missed that concert! It rained Sunday afternoon, and in any case we had already decided to leave early and drive home to Ottawa for work on Monday morning.
Unlike today, not everyone carried a camera in 1965, and film was more expensive than digital cards are now. I took only 24 black and white photos that weekend, some of them printed here for the first time. If I had known then what I know now…!
Bill Woodley
Ottawa
24 February 2014
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What a great shot of Tyson, Lightfoot and Sylvia Bill! Where did the time fly to or to where did it fly?
Dav W
You might have taken only 24 B&Ws, Bill, but the ones we see on the Blog are gems! Today I may fill a 16G SD card with jpegs, but no guarantee that any of them is a gem.