(2 of 2)
Taking Off. But what emerged beyond question as the mainstream of pop music today was the "soul" sound. Earthy, vibrant and swinging, it derives from blues, gospel singing and jazz. Once it was concentrated in a separate pocket of the business called rhythm and blues—Negro music for the Negro market. Now its leading Negro purveyors, such as Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick, are high on the bestseller charts, and white performers are eagerly falling in with the spirit of it. When soul took over last week, the festival took off. Among the high points: Janis Joplin, backed by a San Francisco group called Big Brother and the Holding Company, belting out a biting alto and stamping her feet like a flamenco dancer; Down-home Shouter Buddy Miles sparking Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and his group, the Electric Flag, to a blues-rock frenzy; Singer Otis Redding soaring lustily over the hard-driving beat of Booker T and the MG's.
In all, with the high incidence of musical quality and the low incidence of violence and lawbreaking, it was a festival to make everybody happy. Well, almost everybody. There were complaints about the volume from as far away as Pacific Grove, six miles from the fairgrounds.