For a town inhabited by just 2,000 people and covering just 4 square miles, Watkins Glen, NY is a pretty famous place.

Winos (and their hygienically advanced brethren, wine connoisseurs) know the wineries that surround the Glen produce some of the best wine to ever say ‘hello’ to a cork. Fans of fast cars and loud noises know that the Watkins Glen International Raceway was where Mario Andretti became the first American to win the U.S. Grand Prix in 1977.

And rock and roll fans know that the biggest rock and roll concert in history — Summer Jam At Watkins Glen — started 35 years ago today at the very same spot.

I grew up just 15 miles south of the Glen, in the big city of Elmira, so even though I was just 10 years old at the time, I remember Summer Jam vividly.

I remember clearly the photos of the concert splashed across the front page of the Elmira Star-Gazette, the local newspaper where my father worked*.

I remember the thousands of cars parked along route 17, the “flower children” hitching up route 14, the micro-buses full of people, like hippie clown cars at a circus, the young cats in bell-bottoms flashing peace signs at us at the local convenience store.

The older sister of my best friend worked at the screen printing shop that made the concert posters and t-shirts. I don’t need to Google the concert to remember it was the Band, the Dead and the Allman Brothers who were playing. I remember her wearing that shirt for years afterward.

Musically, the Dead and such could’ve been Eastern European death metal for all I knew; I was into Top 40 and that’s about as far as I went. But, culturally, I remember a being fascinated by the whole scene. Though they didn’t go to the concert, my sister and brother were 19 and 22 at the time; I’d seen a lot of hippies pass through my life already.

To see 600,000 of them all in a row, though, now that was something.

Grateful Dead – Watkins Glen Soundcheck

Photo Source: Grant Gouldon’s Flickr page

*I don’t see anything today on the home page of what Dad used to call “the Starry Eyed Gazootsky,” but there is an important report on the annual pirogi festival at St. Nick’s Church. Joe Stanky And The Cadets were the headliners!.

Truth be told, the little blue-haired lady I mentioned a few days ago in my post about Strawbs had one up on me. She may not have known about Strawbs — who, according to White Ray at Echoes In The Wind, were said to be the British version of the Band – but she knew John Hartford and I really didn’t. Oh, the shame.

The short story on Hartford is that he came from a fairly wealthy, intellectual background, was obsessed with the banjo, the fiddle and the Mississippi River and spent most of his life pursuing his knowledge of all three. He wrote one of the most famous pop songs of the 1960’s, Gentle On My Mind, a song he said “bought his freedom”.

The little old lady might have known Hartford from his appearances on the Glen Campbell and Smothers Brothers TV shows. Or, she might’ve known him from actually listening to the 1969 John Hartford album she sold me for 25 cents. Given the content of the record — bizarre and certainly left of center — the mind reels at the kind of conversation blue-hair and I could’ve had had I known what I was getting into.

John Hartford – The Poor Old Prurient Interest Blues