National Jazz and Blues Festival
The National Jazz and Blues Festival was a jazz , blues and rock music festival in Great Britain in the 1960s . In the 1970s it transformed into a pure rock festival .
In 1961 the music festival was launched as the National Jazz Festival by the founder of the London Marquee Club , Harold Pendleton , in collaboration with the National Federation of Jazz Organizations of Great Britain (later the National Jazz Federation , NJF), whose secretary was Pendleton since 1948 by Chris Barber . From 1963 it was called the National Jazz and Blues Festival and from 1972 the National Jazz Blues and Rock Festival . This reflected the increasing proportion of blues rock as well as beat music and folk , which was already overweight in the second half of the 1960s.
history
The first festival in 1961 had a stage similar to that of the original Marquee Club. There were Johnny Dankworth , Chris Barber, Dick Charlesworth and His City Gents and Tubby Hayes on. The festival took place every summer (August).
The Rolling Stones appeared for the first time in 1963 and were the main attraction on the first evening in 1964 (this was also the last time they performed at a festival for a long time, as they were too "big" for that). In addition, Humphrey Lyttelton , Dick Morrissey , Ottilie Patterson , Ronnie Scott and Chris Barber appeared on the jazz side in 1964 . The Yardbirds , Georgie Fame , Manfred Mann and Long John Baldry also presented themselves that year . In the following years, alongside Keith Tippett , Jon Hendricks , Mike Westbrook , Louis Nelson , Ernestine Anderson and Soft Machine , soul acts and rock bands such as The Who , Cream , The Spencer Davis Group , Traffic , Small Faces , Jethro Tull , John Mayall , Jeff Beck , The Nice , Fleetwood Mac , Fairport Convention , Joe Cocker . In the late 1960s the festival got competition from the big Isle of Wight Festivals (from 1968) and the Rock Festival in Bath (from 1969).
The location of the festival changed, among other things because of noise nuisance complaints from local residents, but remained close to London. Initially it was in Richmond upon Thames , 1966/67 in Windsor , 1968 in Sunbury-on-Thames (where there was an accident with many injuries when a roof collapsed on which many spectators had gone to get a better view ), 1969/70 in Plumpton in East Sussex and from 1971 in Reading .
From 1971 rock and hard rock dominated ; but in 1973 Chris Barber , Embryo and Jon Hiseman still played . From 1977 to 1988 the festival became the Reading Rock Festival .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Biography of Pendleton, Marquee Club website ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ Events in 1964 at the National Jazz Festival
