Keef Hartley Band – "Sinnin' for You" (1969)

Saw you on the corner with another man

A woman like you, I just can’t understand

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I introduced you to the most obscure of the 31 bands or individual musicians who performed at Woodstock 50 years ago this month – the Keef Hartley Band.

The Keef Hartley Band’s founder was English drummer Keith Hartley.  (Like Keith Richards, Hartley is known as “Keef” because some Brits pronounce “Keith” that way.

Keith (or "Keef") Hartley

Hartley got his first big break when Ringo Starr left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join the Beatles.  (Too bad Ringo didn’t stay where he was and give Hartley a chance to hook up with John, Paul, and George.)

He later played drums for British blues legend John Mayall before putting together the Keef Hartley Band, which released its first album – Halfbreed – just a few months before Woodstock.

Hartley sometimes dressed in a Native American outfit – complete with a full head-dress and war paint.

Here’s he is on the Halfbreed album cover:

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Halfbreed was a big hit in the U.S., but it sold reasonably well for a debut album by an unknown band.

Most of the group’s members had never performed live in the states before following Santana at Woodstock.  It appears that their set was well received, but the band is MIA when it comes to the various versions of the Woodstock documentary that have been released over the years.

According to frontman Miller Anderson, that was because the group’s manager put the kibosh on their performance being filmed:

I remember being back stage [at Woodstock], waiting to go on, when a fella approaches me with a clipboard.  Turns out he’s with the people filming the show, and he starts asking me what numbers we’re doing, where the solos will be, etc.  

Up walks Johnny [Jones, our manager, who] asks what’s going on, then says something like, “Sorry you're not filming my boys without a written contract.” The guy says he doesn’t even know if the film will ever be made, but suggests it could turn out to be a memorable show, so getting it on film could be a wise move.  

Johnny wasn’t having any of it though, so the guy just tears up the notes he’d taken from me, and walks off.

(The opening sentence of The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford’s 1915 novel, is “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.”  I think Ford would have revised that sentence if he had lived long enough to hear Miller Anderson’s Woodstock tale.)

The comprehensive 38-CD audio box set released by Rhino Records earlier this summer (see above) does include much of the band’s Woodstock performance.  That made them the very last Woodstock performers to have their music included on a Woodstock album.

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All of the songs that the Keef Hartley Band played at Woodstock were taken from Halfbreed, which was a straight-ahead electric blues album.  

Today we’re featuring the fifth track from the album, “Sinnin’ For You.”  Click here to listen to the studio album version of that song.

“Sinnin’ for You” was part of a 17-minute, 57-second medley that band played at Woodstock.

You can click here to listen to a 30-second sample from the Woodstock performance of that medley.  But if you want to hear the whole thing, it looks like you’re going to have to click here and buy an MP3 album of the entire second day of Woodstock from Amazon for $47.49.  

If that’s a little rich for your blood, the MP3 version of the Halfbreed album is available from Amazon for $9.49 – or you can buy any of the eight individual tracks on that album for only $1.29 each:

Keef Hartley Band – "Leaving Trunk" (1969)

Woke up singing the blues three different ways

One said, “Go!”

But the other two said, “Stay!”

This week marked the 50th anniversary of the legendary Woodstock music festival.

I didn’t go to Woodstock.  I was barely 17 years old when Woodstock took place, and living in Joplin, Missouri.  I’m not sure I was even aware of Woodstock until it was over, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had – no way my parents would have let me go.

They were at Woodstock. Why weren't you?

What’s your excuse for not going to Woodstock?  

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How many of the bands or individual musicians who performed at Woodstock can you name?  

The award-winning Woodstock documentary that was released in March 1970 was 185 minutes long, but included only 16 of the 31 performers who took the stage at the Woodstock festival.  

The three-LP soundtrack album that was issued a couple of months later also included songs by 16 different performers – but not the same 16 performers that appeared in the movie.  For some reason, Janis Joplin is in the movie but not on the soundtrack album, while the Paul Butterfield Blues Band isn’t in the movie but has a cut on the soundtrack album.

The original Woodstock soundtrack album

Here are the 15 acts whose performances were included in both the original 1970 version of the movie and the original 1970 soundtrack album:

Joan Baez

Canned Heat

Joe Cocker and the Grease Band

Crosby Stills Nash & Young

Country Joe and the Fish

Arlo Guthrie

Richie Havens

Jimi Hendrix

Jefferson Airplane

Santana

John Sebastian

Sha Na Na

Sly and the Family Stone

Ten Years After

The Who

I haven’t watched the movie or listened to the soundtrack in years, but I think I could have named all or almost all of those Woodstock performers – plus Janis Joplin and the Butterfield Blues Band.

That leaves 14 acts – some of them quite famous – who performed at Woodstock but whose performances weren’t included in the movie and/or the original soundtrack.  Until recently, I was unaware that most of them had appeared on the Woodstock stage.

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Woodstock Two was a two-LP album released in 1971 that contained 16 additional songs that were performed at Woodstock.  Most of those tracks were by performers who were represented on the original soundtrack album, but Woodstock Two also included songs by two that weren’t: Melanie and Mountain.

(That leaves 12.)

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A 224-minute-long “director’s cut” of the movie and a four-CD album titled Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music was released in 1994 to mark the 25th anniversary of Woodstock.  

The original Woodstock poster

The new album contained all the songs from the 1970 and 1971 Woodstock albums as well as tracks by The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Tim Hardin, whose songs had not been included on either of the first two soundtrack albums.  

(That leaves nine.)

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In 2009, the longer “director’s cut” of the movie was re-released in high definition along with a second DVD containing performances of 18 additional songs.  Shortly after the release of that version of the documentary, Rhino Records released a six-CD album titled Woodstock 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm.  

Those 2009 releases included songs by Blood Sweat & Tears, the Grateful Dead, the Incredible String Band, Quill, Ravi Shankar, Bert Sommer, Sweetwater, and Johnny Winter, whose Woodstock performances were missing from the earlier versions of the movie and the previously released soundtrack albums.

(Which leaves only one.)

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Earlier this month, Rhino released 1,969 copies of a 38-CD, 432-song audio box set titled Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive, which contains virtually every note played by the 31 performers who appeared at Woodstock – including the Keef Hartley Band, an obscure British band whose Woodstock performances were AWOL from every previous Woodstock album.  (We’re talk about why that was in the next 2 or 3 lines.)

The Keef Hartley Band

That 38-CD album – which retailed for $799.98 – quickly sold out.  But Rhino also issued a 10-CD album that includes one cut by the Keef Hartley Band.

That cut is a 17-minute, 57-second hot mess titled “Halfbreed Medley/Sinning For You/Leaving Trunk/Just To Cry/Sinning For You.”  

Halfbreed was the title of the Keef Hartley Band’s first album, and “Sinnin’ for You,” “Leaving Trunk,” and “Just to Cry” were tracks 5, 6, and 7 of that album.  Presumably the band went right from the first song into the second song, and then went right from the second song into the third song, and then finished up by circling back to the first. 

The Halfbreed album

Unfortunately, the recording of the band performing that medley at Woodstock isn’t available on Youtube.  

You can click here to listen to a 30-second sample from that performance.

But if you want to hear the whole thing, it looks like you’re going to have to click here and buy an MP3 album of the entire second day of Woodstock from Amazon for $47.49.  

You can click here to listen to the Halfbreed version of “Leaving Trunk,” which is one of the songs that the band played at Woodstock.  (The lyrics quoted at the beginning of this post are from that track.)  

Click on the link below to buy “Leaving Trunk” from Amazon: