Listening to Now: Richie Havens - "Freedom"

By Richard K. Barry

Sixties folksinger Richie Havens died last week at the age of 72 from a sudden heart attack. He is perhaps best known as the opening act at Woodstock in 1969. 

According to the Globe and Mail:

As the event’s opening act, he was instructed to stretch his set, partly because other performers were having difficulty reaching the congested festival location in upstate New York. When Havens ran out of songs, he improvised a version of the spiritual Motherless Child, which would eventually become his signature song, Freedom. All told, his set ran nearly three hours.