Bryan Greene wrote this article on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in 2017. He later served as Consulting Producer on the award-winning film, "Summer of Soul," directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, a 2021 music documentary about the festival.
Parks
and Recreation
by Bryan
Greene
When people first hear about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, they ask, "Why isn't there a movie?"
The New York Times
reported that the festival drew 300,000 to six Sunday concerts in Harlem's
Mount Morris Park the summer of 1969. It boasted some of the biggest names in
popular music—The 5th Dimension, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, The
Staple Singers, Nina Simone, B.B. King—but it is virtually unknown. Unlike
"Woodstock," the same summer, and "Gimme Shelter," the film
of the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour, there is no similar film of the Harlem
Cultural Festival, despite the pivotal moment it represents in Black music,
politics, and culture. While two television networks aired one-hour specials
with festival highlights, the broadcasts left little lasting impact on the
culture. Hal Tulchin, a TV producer whose crew filmed over 50 hours of the
festival, reported that he was unable to interest anyone in a bigger project.
As a consequence, the Festival remains, as documentary filmmaker Jessica
Edwards calls it, "The most popular music festival you've never heard
of."
Someday, someone will make a film about the Festival, which
marks its 50th anniversary in two years. That filmmaker will have to obtain the
rights to the concert footage that exists. Past efforts have proven
unsuccessful. Many of the organizers and performers have died in the
intervening years. To piece things together, I have consulted newspaper and
magazine accounts, watched the footage I could obtain, and interviewed Festival
attendees and performers. May this article serve as the starting point for the
filmmaker who takes on this project. This is my treatment for the film that
will come.
Just as "Woodstock" and "Gimme Shelter"
use aerial shots to show the multitudes at those concerts, my film of the
Harlem Festival opens with a helicopter over Mount Morris Park. This would be
two years before the 1969 Festival. Sitting in the helicopter are two Yale
men—one, the Mayor of New York City, John Lindsay, the other, August Heckscher,
his newly-appointed Parks Commissioner (note: They are now deceased. We will
have to re-enact this). The men share a vision: to attract more New Yorkers to
the parks, especially Blacks and Hispanics. It's March 1967, and Mayor Lindsay,
a Republican, is swearing in Heckscher.
Heckscher describes the helicopter descent into the Harlem
park in his 1974 memoir, Alive in the City:
The
mayor and I arrived at the ceremony by helicopter, landing upon the summit of
Mount Morris, a six-acre park situated at the center of Harlem. It seemed
appropriate at that time to give emphasis to a black community. ...As our
helicopter came low I could see crowds of children climbing up the slopes and
steep paths to greet the mayor. This was a period when John Lindsay's
popularity was at its height, and he was a hero to young blacks.
Heckscher was New York aristocracy. His predecessor as Park
Commissioner, the legendary Robert Moses, had named a Long Island state park
and Central Park's largest playground after Heckscher's grandfather and namesake,
a German-born capitalist and philanthropist. Heckscher's commitment to improve
park access for underprivileged New Yorkers stood in stark contrast with Moses,
whose biographer, Robert Caro, told the New York Times, "[Moses] was the
most racist person I ever met." Caro, in his Pulitzer-prize winning
biography of Moses, described Moses's idea of helping Harlem residents feel at
home in Riverside Park: he installed wrought-iron trellises with monkeys on the
comfort stations.
Heckscher, meanwhile, sponsored the Harlem Cultural Festival.
In a press release, Heckscher announced that the City had partnered with
Maxwell House, the General Foods subsidiary, to sponsor the 1969 Festival. He
stressed: "However, the City is not running the Festival; General Foods is
not running it. We are only supporting it. The Harlem Cultural Festival belongs
to Harlem. It is the expression of the many elements—‘soul,’ if you will— of
the diverse cultures that make up the Harlem community."
Tony Lawrence, a Caribbean-born singer and actor, was the
driving force behind the Festival. By 1969, the budget for the three-year old
Festival had grown such that Lawrence told the New York Times, "The
entertainers charged me top price, and we paid it." Moreover, he said, "We
put a lot of money around this community. I hired as many people as
possible." This included money for security, advertising, and a house
band. Lawrence also emphasized that the television crews included Black
supervisors and trainees. The Times said the Festival "provided a
lucrative market for enterprising small merchants...to indulge in what
Harlemites would call a 'legitimate hustle.'"
The headliner the first day (which the Times said drew 60,000)
was The 5th Dimension. The group's record, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine
In," from the Broadway musical, Hair, was still in the Billboard Top 40,
after six weeks at #1 in April and May. "Aquarius" would win
"Record of the Year" at the Grammy Awards (just as "Up, Up, and
Away" had in 1968). The band's schedule was so packed that it's no
surprise the group's founding member, Lamonte McLemore, told me he scarcely
remembers the Harlem gig. They played Ed Sullivan that year. The group had just
come off a tour with Frank Sinatra, the only group to go on the road with him,
McLemore said. They also guest-starred in Sinatra’s 1968 TV special and opened
for him during his engagement in Las Vegas. The group was ubiquitous. We know
the group played the Harlem Festival because CBS-TV aired highlights of their
performance in a primetime special on July 28th. Alas, the concert footage
remains in a vault.
Meanwhile, Sly and the Family Stone's 42-minute set is on the
Internet (with Hal Tulchin's watermark). The band is absent from posters, which
suggests their July 27th performance was a fortuitous last-minute booking; they
played the popular Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park the day before.
Sly and the Family Stone deliver an exhilarating performance.
Tulchin's footage is in brilliant color, shot by multiple cameras, and
masterfully edited. The band’s setlist is almost identical to their Woodstock
show two weeks later. But the Harlem performance packs more punch: it's an
historical moment to see the band, sporting Afros, bell-bottoms, and frilled
jackets, play to tens of thousands in Harlem. If such a performance hadn't
existed, you'd have to invent it. You can imagine an inspired Larry Graham
inventing his trademark slap-bass technique, on the spot, inspired by the
appreciative crowd. You see here how the band had soaked up that time's crosscurrent
of music genres—rock, psychedelia, funk, soul—and taken it to a new level. The
hippie zeitgeist is here, too. When Sly sings, "Higher" he tells the
crowd, "When we say 'higher,' if you'd say 'higher' and throw the peace
sign up, we'd appreciate it. Now it don't make you mellow if you don't, it
don't make you groovy if you do..." But the crowd does. The song's
breakdown is one of the most joyful music moments on film. See if it doesn't
make you jump up and dance. And when trumpet player Cynthia Robinson introduces
"Dance to the Music," and shouts, "Get up and dance to the
music! Get on up and dance to the music!" you wonder if the revolution
might very well be televised.
The Festival provided a national showcase for Black gospel
music. A staple on radio and local TV, gospel took a leap forward when ABC-TV
broadcast, in primetime, highlights from the Festival's "Folk and
Gospel" concert on September 16, 1969. Helping whet the worldwide appetite
for Black gospel music was a breakout hit that summer—an arrangement of an old
hymn by an Oakland, California choirmaster, Edwin Hawkins. "Oh Happy
Day" spent 10 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #4 on June 7,
1969. It reached #1 in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. When the Edwin
Hawkins Singers took the stage June 29th in Mount Morris Park, they were one of
the most popular acts in the world. CBS featured the Singers on the same July
28th special with The 5th Dimension.
Edwin Hawkins told me in an email:
That
was a whirlwind year for me. We'd recorded "Oh Happy Day" to raise
money for our youth choir tour. It was as simple as that. A San Francisco radio
station started playing it, and next thing you know, 500 copies weren't enough.
My calling is to spread the gospel, the good news. This song could have stayed
in the church—which is what the church elders preferred when the song showed up
on the radio. But the funny thing about gospel is it touches people and it
spreads. You can't contain it, and why would you? I count myself so blessed to
have been a vehicle for this message that went around the world that year.
"Oh Happy Day" shaped gospel music for years to come
but its influence went beyond that. George Harrison became the first former
Beatle to write a number-one song with "My Sweet Lord" in 1971.
Ronnie Mack sued him successfully for copyright infringement, citing
similarities with "He's So Fine," which Mack had written for the
Chiffons. George Harrison in his 1980 autobiography, "I, Me, Mine,"
demurred. He said, "I was inspired by the Edwin Hawkins Singers' version
of 'Oh Happy Day.'"
While Hawkins was a 26-year old newcomer in 1969, Mahalia
Jackson was the reigning "Queen of Gospel." She had inherited the
mantle from her mentor, composer Thomas A. Dorsey. Jackson would perform with
her protege Mavis Staples at the festival, a moment Jessica Edwards, maker of
the film "Mavis!" said "very much indicated a passing of the
baton." Together, Jackson and Staples sang Dorsey's standard, "Take
My Hand, Precious Lord," which Jackson sang at the funeral of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. The crowd, many in their Sunday best, responded
enthusiastically. Exiting the stage, Jackson and Staples passed the mike to
their mutual Chicago friend, civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson.
The footage I saw of the Festival's gospel concert is not
publicly available, but Mahalia Jackson's appearance at the concert is more
widely documented by a New York Times photograph of her with Mayor Lindsay, on
the steps of her trailer. Lindsay was in Harlem, campaigning for re-election.
Jackson, with her arm around Lindsay, told the assembled reporters, "We're
really going to go for him." Accounts of the Festival say the emcee
introduced Lindsay to the crowd that day as "our blue-eyed soul
brother."
Lindsay had credibility among Black New Yorkers because he not
only talked the talk; he literally walked the walk—through the streets of
Harlem and other neighborhoods, on a regular basis. Richard Grant, an
African-American aide to Lindsay, described the power of these walks during an
interview with me. Grant worked as an advance man on the 1969 campaign, so he
would go ahead and scout the route. On this particular walk, Grant observed a
colorfully-dressed woman who had set down at 135th and Lenox “with a folding
chair and food,” who knew a lot of people in the community, and announced, “I'm
going to give [the Mayor] a piece of my mind!” Grant sent word to the Lindsay
team, “This may be a place where you might not want to stop.” Yet, when Lindsay
reached this location, Grant said, “This woman called out, ‘Mr. Mayor, Mr.
Mayor!’ [Lindsay] walked right over to her and I thought, 'Oh my God.' And she
began a lecture. 'We have you white politicians who come up here and make all
these promises. Nothing ever changes’.” As she recited the City's failings,
Grant said, “The mayor stood there, batting his eyes, looking very, very
seriously down to the ground. When she finished, he said, ‘Well I have
understood what you say and I'm sure we haven't done all we should have done
and could have done, but all I can promise you is that I'm going to continue to
work on things and I'm going to do my best to make some changes. The people
with me have taken down what you said. And we're going to see what we can do to
help.’ She had a very stern look on her face...And after he finished, she
stepped back and broke into this wide smile and said, ‘I don't know about you.
I don't know, but I think I trust you.’ She shook his hand. That was what was
on the news at the end of the day."
Lindsay aide Sid Davidoff, in an archival film on CUNY’s
website, describes how the mayor's Harlem relationships helped quell tensions
the night of the King assassination. Davidoff recalls "it was a very tense
situation on the streets," but Lindsay insisted on walking Harlem that night,
protected by the Five Percenters, a group of former prisoners with whom
Lindsay’s office had built a relationship. Davidoff said, ”[Lindsay] got out of
the car and began to walk...He began walking and shaking hands, and hugging
people and saying, 'I'm sorry.' And meanwhile around him were some really bad
guys of Harlem." A shoving match ensued as local politicos jostled for
position next to the Mayor. Davidoff said, "This wasn't about local
politics... This was about John Lindsay who'd been in that neighborhood many
times...who was coming back to say, ‘I feel your pain.’ And he did feel the
pain." While New York was less than peaceful that night, many credit
Lindsay with sparing New York the fallout other cities experienced.
Lindsay was also a champion for Black urban communities
nationwide. He served as Vice Chairman of the Kerner Commission, where he
penned the Commission's famous conclusion about the cause of the mid-1960's
civil disturbances: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black,
one white, separate and unequal." He became the face of liberal concern
for the fate of Blacks trapped in inner cities. Reader's Digest captured
Lindsay's challenge to America with its title for an August 1968 interview:
"We can lick the problems of the ghetto, if we care." And so, the
official poster for the Harlem Cultural Festival boldly asked, "Do you
care?"
Anthony Flood, a 16-year old white kid from the Bronx, saw
such a poster on the B27 bus. Tony cared about music. "I got into The
Beatles but I never got into hard rock... By 1968, '69, I was listening to
R&B." On Sunday, July 20th, Flood took the subway to Lexington Ave and
125th St., the very station from which Lou Reed emerged in the Velvet
Underground's "Waiting for The Man." Contrary to Reed's song, no one
asked, "Hey, white boy, what you doin' uptown," or accused him of
"chasin' our women around." Instead, Flood's presence in the park was
unremarked upon. "I was in the sea of black people and there was no
tension." Flood recalled, "I stood for hours and hours.... I took the
train home and I told Mom, you should see what I saw, Gladys Knight and the
Pips, Chuck Jackson, Stevie Wonder..." Wonder's "My Cherie
Amour" was #9 on the charts and climbing. About the free concert, Flood
said, "I was struck by how much I was getting for nothing. What am I
missing here? Am I going to be charged on the way out? How is this
possible?"
That date, July 20, 1969, is special for other reasons. For
that same day, Heckscher's Park Commission had erected giant screens in Central
Park for thousands to watch one of the most historic events of mankind: the
landing on the moon. Why weren't the Harlem concertgoers there or glued to
their TV sets at home?
The New York Times on July 27, 1969 provides an answer. In a
story headlined, "Blacks and Apollo: Most Couldn't Have Cared Less,"
the Times reported, "An estimated 50,000 people flocked to last Sunday's
Harlem Cultural (soul music) Festival at Mt. Morris Park and the single mention
of the [Lunar Module] touching down brought boos from the audience." NAACP
Executive Director Roy Wilkins "called the moon shot 'a cause for shame,'
and added, 'there's something wrong with the Government's priority
system.'" The Times article concluded with a lament from an editorial that
ran in the Amsterdam News, the city's leading Black newspaper, the day after
the moon landing: "Yesterday, the moon. Tomorrow, maybe us."
Two weeks after Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix put on a free benefit
concert in Harlem. Hendrix had resided there during his formative years (taking
the top prize at the Apollo's amateur night in 1964). In 1969, Hendrix had been
playing with a loose collection of mostly Black musicians, the Band of Gypsys.
He told The New York Times why he was playing Harlem: "Sometimes when I
come up here, people say, 'He plays white rock for white people...' 'What's he
doing up here?' Well, I want to show them that music is universal—that there is
no white rock or black rock.'" Alas, the Harlem crowd disagreed. They
threw eggs at him.
The Hendrix experience typified the pressure on Black artists
to ally themselves with the Black Power Movement. In many instances, musicians
had to choose between commercial mainstream success and a more Black-conscious
identity. Sly and the Family Stone even faced pressure during the 1970s to let
go its white drummer and saxophone player. The Fifth Dimension navigated these
loyalties better than some, but McLemore told me, "Black people, when we
first started...they didn't understand what we were doing at all." One
time, he convinced the Temptations promoter to let them open for the R&B
group in Los Angeles. "We were singing our number-one song then, 'Go Where
You Wanna Go'...The audience was looking at us, like, 'Well, y'all better go on
and get off that stage and bring the Temptations on! People said, here's a
black group singing white songs, white stuff, with a white sound...And we said,
How can you color a sound? This is *our* sound. And it's different and we ain’t
gonna change it. When Aquarius came out, all of a sudden, all the black people
came up and said, 'We were with y'all all along!'"
The major reason we need a film of the Harlem Cultural
Festival is to document a community at a cross- roads—torn on which direction
to take but hopeful about where each road leads. The community was under
strain, but its unity had not dissipated. Surely, Tony Lawrence had
demonstrated what was possible from a partnership among city administration,
corporate sponsors, neighborhood organizers, and local entrepreneurs. Hundreds
of thousands had come out to see an unprecedented number of Black artists at
the top of their game, in pop, blues, R&B, rock, gospel, jazz, soul, and
funk. It was a time when leaders like Lindsay and white performers like Elvis
were shining a light on what was going on "in the ghetto," while
those who dwelt there debated whether it was better to go it alone.
In 1969, these questions and the possibilities they present
come into sharp focus, just before another turn of the lens takes us into the
blurry 1970s. The Festival did not return to Mount Morris Park in 1970. Joseph
Harris, a doctor who was a Black Panther in Harlem in 1969, told me, "The
first thing they did after '69...They said, 'We're not gonna have this anymore.
Oh, we're gonna build a pool for y'all.’" Years later, a large pool
complex filled in the area where the Festival crowd had gathered. The Parks
Commission renamed the park Marcus Garvey Park in 1973, a symbolic victory for
the Black Power Movement, but Harris observed, "Every central meeting
place in Harlem was eliminated [in the 70s]." That decade, Nina Simone,
whose stirring Festival performance is available in its entirety online, left
the United States altogether. In a 1997 interview, she said, "I left
because I didn't feel that Black people were going to get their due, and I
still don't."
If we had a film, we could freeze the frame in 1969. We could
watch, over and over, Sly and the Family Stone remind us, "We've got to
live together" and celebrate, "Different strokes for different folks.
And so on, and so on, and scooby dooby doo."
