Ann Arbor Blues Festival

The Ann Arbor Blues Festival was a blues festival that took place in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1969 and 1970.

Overview

There is no record of any blues festival of any similar scope and extent that the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival, which was organized in 1968 and held in 1969. Fact|date=June 2007

It featured artists like Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, B.B. King, Otis Rush, J. B. Hutto and the Hawks, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Magic Sam, Freddy King, and many other modern-electric blues players. The festival also featured traditional blues artists like Son House and those in between, like Clifton Chenier, Roosevelt Sykes, and many others.

In Ann Arbor, the accent was off folk and country blues and on modern, big-city, electric blues artists. While the Newport Folk Festival featured more than folk music and to a degree helped blues to segue from folk and country blues to more modern blues, it was in Ann Arbor that the first all-out extravaganza of modern city blues was born.

It helped to mark the discovery of modern blues music and the musicians that made that music. It helped introduce black culture to white musicians. Major blues artists came from all over to play, but also to listen and socialize, which helped open their minds to new styles of music.

Background

The first two festivals were sponsored by the University Activity Center (UAC) of the University of Michigan and the Canterbury House, and were organized by a small group of University of Michigan students, led by John Fishel.

Late in 1968, Fishel and a small group of students formed an exploratory committee to create a blues festival, tentatively scheduled for the fall of 1969. They traveled to Chicago to hear well-known blues men in south side Chicago bars and clubs. They came back with their eyes opened, more convinced then ever to organize a festival.

Concerned that their audience would not understand or have sufficient interest in the concept, they first held a warm-up concert in the spring of 1969, so that students could preview the music and build an appetite for the coming festival. The preliminary concert was held in the University of Michigan Union Ballroom, featuring the Luther Allison Trio, a young blues group from Chicago. It was a success and the larger festival was scheduled for the fall. The University of Michigan approved a budget and Fishel and his group set about making the festival a reality.

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

The festival turned out successful. That first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969 included blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Freddy King, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and many others. The 1969 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival made a profit and it was decided to make this an annual event. A proposed budget for the 1970 concert was formulated and accepted by the university.

Critics of the first two Ann Arbor Blues Festivals has pointed out that the choice of talent was too esoteric and that the artists were not known by the general public. There was no attempt to include jazz, R&B, or popular headliners in these first festivals. In defense of the early festivals, it is only fair to point out that at the time of those first two blues festivals, these performers were indeed almost completely unknown to White America. That is a major reason why the original Ann Arbor Blues Festival was undertaken: to bring these artists to general attention, which it did.

1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

For this festival, the same concept was followed as with the first: gather together as many of the great blues players, of all styles, as the budget would allow. The program for the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival was as the first festival and included artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, Bobby Blue Bland, Otis Rush, Son House, and dozens of other performers.

However, the 1970 festival ran into stiff competition from a large rock concert being held at the same time, in nearby Goose Lake. The Goose Lake Bonanza drew attendees away from the blues festival, with the result that the festival came out in the red, a loss of some $30,000, a lot in those days. It should be noted that festival organizer John Fishel went on to create four additional blues festivals in Miami, Florida from 1972 through 1974.