July 1970

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday
  1
The "American Top Forty" syndicated AM radio show, hosted by Casey Casem, debuts in Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Bernadino, San Diego, Albany, Minneapolis and Honolulu.
 2
 3
The three-day Atlanta Pop Festival opens at Middle Georgia Raceway in Byron, Georgia. The crowd of 200,000 sees and hears Jimi Hendrix (playing his version of the "Star-Spangled Banner" on July 4), B.B King, John Sebastian, Mountain, Procol Harum, Jethro Tull, Poco, Johnny Winter, the Allman Brothers Band and many others. As the festival ends, local doctors beg federal and state authorities to declare the festival a health disaster area because of an "out-of-control drug situation." Earlier, the festival promoters threw open the gates after thousands of youths outside pressed for free entry. Two days after the festival, Georgia Governor Lester Maddox announces he will seek legislation banning rock festivals in the state.
 4
The FBI, in cooperation with special investigators from the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Association of Merchandisers, opens an investigation into counterfeit record rings in twelve states, as sales of bootlegs proliferate, cutting legitimate album sales.
5
 6
 7
 8
The Everly Brothers are hosts of their own ABC-TV variety show, which runs through September 16, 1970.
 9
 10
After a "tense flirtation" with rock acts in 1969, the Newport Jazz Festival reverts to its traditional all-jazz format.
 11
12
South Dakota judge S.K. Hicks, who claims to be the inspiration for Johnny Cash's hit single "A Boy Named Sue," receives autographed records and photos from Cash.

Janis Joplin plays her first gig with the new Full Tilt Boogie Band in Louisville, Kentucky.
 13
 14
Brave New World Productions announces that some proceeds of its three-day Randall's Island Rock Festival, scheduled to open July 17 on Randall's Island, New York, will go to "community groups" like the Young Lords and the White Panther Party.
 15
 16
 17
The mayor of Love Valley, North Carolina, hails the Love Valley Rock Festival scheduled to start there the next day, saying, "I'm the first mayor to sanction one of these things... I don't think the kids will let me down." However, Mayor Barker fails to get the audience to pray and sing the national anthem with him, one youth is wounded by a shotgun blast in a scuffle with a sheriff, and one youth dies of heat stroke. The Allman Brothers, among others, perform.
 18
The Randall's Island Rock Festival's gates are crashed and all comers are admitted free; more than 30,000 people end up seeing performances by Jimi Hendrix, Grand Funk Railroad, Little Richard, Elephant's Memory, Steppenwolf, Jethro Tull and others. Afterward, the festival's producers call it a financial disaster, allegedly because of those "community groups" who had threatened to call it a free festival if they weren't guaranteed some proceeds.
19
 20
 21
 22
 23
Bowing to pressure from local government and citizens, a New Haven, Connecticut, district court rules that the Powder Ridge Rock Festival, scheduled for July 30 through August 1 at the Powder Ridge Ski Resort in Middlefield, Connecticut, would create a public nuisance and can't be held. However, over 18,000 tickets have already been sold at twenty dollars apiece. Over the next few days, performers like Janis Joplin, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin and Sly and the Family Stone are informed of a ban on their appearance at the festival site. Though state police post signs along the routes to the site that there will be no festival, crowds keep coming anyway.

A published Justice Department memorandum reveals that the National Guard had no cause to fire on protesters at Kent State, while the Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest finds that the Nixon administration lacks understanding of the current wave of student dissent.
 24
 25
26
 27
 28
 29
The Rolling Stones, whose contract with Britain's Decca Records has just expired, and who've been discussing forming their own record company for some time, inform their business manager, Allen Klein, that "neither he nor ABKCO Industries have any authority to negotiate recording contracts on their behalf in the future." Klein took over the Stones' managment and publishing on August 28, 1965.

Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, which examines the rapid rate of technological advances and its effects on society in the latter part of the Twentieth Century, is published.

Pioneering hallucinogen researcher Dr. Howard Fabing dies.
 30
Over 30,000 people have showed up at the Powder Ridge Rock Festival site, even though police barricaded all roads leading to the festival site for up to 2 miles. All utilities on the site are cut off, but the kids party anyway. The festival's promoters are nowhere to be found. On July 31, Melanie and two local rock bands play, tomporarily checking a slow exodus from the area. Doctors report over 800 bad drug reactions among the audience. The Powder Ridge promoters later tried to stage followup concerts at Yankee Stadium in New York and Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington, D.C., to no avail.
 31
  


  Previous Month  |  Next Month  






 Main Page | Music Chronicle Intro | 1970 Almanac | Top 100 Seventies Singles | Search The RockSite/The Web