Laurel Pop Festival

The Laurel Pop Festival took place on July 11th and 12th, 1969 at the Laurel Race Course in Laurel, Maryland .

The festival was hosted by George Wein in collaboration with local organizers Elzie Street and James Scott just over a month before the Woodstock Festival . Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz Festival , saw the Laurel Pop Festival as an addition to his Laurel Jazz Festival, which had been running since 1967.

Advertised in advance in the press as the “Who's Who” of pop music, the event drew up to 15,000 spectators. With entry prices between $ 4.75 and $ 10, the Laurel Pop Festival made a sizeable profit.

The second evening was rainy, there were delays of several hours. The spectators began to carry the provided wooden folding chairs together and then set them on fire. The festival was broken up by the police well after midnight.

The following occurred:

• on Friday, July 11th, 1969:
  • Buddy guy
  • Al Cooper
  • Jethro Tull
  • Johnny Winter
  • Edwin Hawkins
  • Led Zeppelin
• on Saturday, July 12, 1969:
  • Jeff Beck
  • Ten Years After
  • Sly and the Family Stone
  • The Mothers of Invention
  • Savoy Brown
  • The Guess Who

Web links

• Report on the Laurel Pop Festival on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laurel Pop Festival on ledzeppelin.com (English)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} David Constine: The Laurel Pop Festival: Maryland's Woodstock-Before-Woodstock on blogs.weta.org, July 21, 2017 (English)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} John Kelly: Before there was Woodstock, there was Laurel Pop, Maryland's fiery rock festival . The Washington Post , July 9, 2019 (English)