Much is made about the guitar work of superstar Jimmy Hendrix, whose rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner” forever altered the anthem in the minds of countless baby boomers.
The performance was cemented at Woodstock, the 1969 music festival in upstate New York.
Remembering The Atlanta International Pop Festival
More than a month before more than 400,000 hippies, college students and lost souls traveled to a remote gathering space up north, Atlanta hosted an event that featured many of the same artists.
When Was The Atlanta International Pop Festival?
The official name of Woodstock was “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music,” in ATL, The rock festival was held at the Atlanta International Raceway in Hampton, home of the Atlanta Motor Speedway, on July 4th, 1969.
According to Birmingham Weekly, “The bill was wildly eclectic, from mainstream jazz with Dave Brubeck to first generation rock with Chuck Berry; from sweet soul by the Staple Singers and Booker T to the blues of Canned Heat and Paul Butterfield; from the folk of Ian and Sylvia to the cataclysm of Led Zeppelin. As an intrepid band of explorers from Alabama arrived at the outskirts of Hampton prior to the show amid a stupendous traffic jam, it was clear that word-of-mouth had drawn the crowd Cooley sought.”
Cooley would go on to apologetically host a concert the following Monday in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, embarrassed that he’d made a $12,000 profit at the pop fest. “You have to understand the context,” Cooley told Atlanta Magazine. “It was the height of the Vietnam War, and Lester Maddox was governor. I wanted to do something that would make people where I lived understand that we could change.”
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