Feast your ears on this little gem from our archives - a partial recording of the Big Sur Folk Festival of 1969, which was also captured in a documentary film called "Celebration at Big Sur," directed by Baird Bryant and Johanna Demetrakas, from which this recording was culled. The Big Sur Folk Festival occurred September 13th and 14th of '69, about a month after Woodstock, and it featured some of the same performers, including Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and John Sebastian, who had left the Lovin' Spoonful the year earlier. The lineup, while not quite at the Woodstock level was still quite impressive, including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Mimi Fariña , the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Dorothy Combs Morrison, a gospel singer whose song “All God’s Children Got Soul,” reached number 95 on the Billboard top 100 in October of 1969. Joan Baez, of course, has a long history with the Big Sur area and with Esalen - before Esalen was even Esalen, when it was still Big Sur Hot Springs or Slate’s Hot Springs, she lived in Carmel and often came to the Hot Springs, where she could be heard playing her guitar and singing; she also had a friendship with the former Esalen gate guard Hunter S. Thompson. Baez taught her first workshop at Esalen in 1964, entitled “The New Folk Music,” which became the basis for the first Big Sur Folk Festival. The festival would reoccur each year thereafter until 1971. a couple of albums came out of the various festivals, including Celebration, From the 1970 festival, One Hand Clapping, from the 1971 festival. and Live at the Big Sur Folk Festival, featuring Kris Kristofferson’s performance from 1971. This episode will comprise part one of the 1969 festival, and in our next episode we'll get part two. The setlist for this episode goes like this: Joan Baez singing “I Shall Be Released” , then “Mobile Line” by John Sebastian with Stephen Stills, followed by “Song for David” by Baez, and then “All God’s Children Got Soul” by Dorothy Combs Morrison and the Combs sisters. Then we have a nice "Sea of Madness" by Crosby Stills Nash and Young, followed by an interesting scene where a heckler interrupts the performance taking place down at the Esalen pool and ultimately gets into a fistfight with Stephen Stills. This scene is pretty wild and you might want to refer to the actual movie for this one; it’s available to watch on YouTube. Really a fun watch, especially if you’ve been to Esalen before and you want to see the property and how it looked in the late 60’s overrun by 10,000 friendly young people. Then we get Stills doing "4 and 20," followed by a very young Joni Mitchell accompanying Crosby Stills and Nash with John Sebastian on "Get Together." At this time Joni was dating Graham Nash. You’ll also hear her talking about spotting some whales off the coast. Then we’ll end with Dorothy Combs Morrison kinda stealing the show with her cover of Put a Little Love in your Heart. I really hope you enjoy this dip into Esalen history and a glimpse back to the days when a rock festival cost four dollars to attend. Yes indeed. It's true.