The Sixties and John Denver - at the Grammy Museum Los Angeles

The life and music of John Denver was on exhibit the first half of 2017 - which this blogger finally visited a few days before the show ended near the end of July.  This visit also provided opportunity to tour another new exhibit, under the same roof, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Monterey International Pop Festival, a historic three-day concert that took place during the Summer of Love.  Other recent blog posts covered the counterculture movement in Los Angeles/Monterey and San Francisco.

The Denver exhibition was held in a significant year - the 20th anniversary of JD's accidental death, to commemorate soon - October 12th.

JD settled in L.A. in 1964, and he was immersed in the folk music scene where he crossed paths with other musicians, some of whom later became involved with the 1967 pop festival.

If JD were alive, he'd probably chuckle that this exhibit ran alongside the Pop Festival - some of his experiences ran parallel to other Festival musicians:  JD once sang (tried out) with Roger McGuinn, Guy Clark and David Crosby when the latter three were in the midst of forming a new band (The Byrds).  JD felt so square and out of their leagues.  JD also auditioned for a part in the TV show about the antics of a fictional musical group, the Monkees.  Folk rock was emerging, but JD continued to practice his craft as a traditional folk singer.  Yet he also spent a lot of time at the Troubadour where the McGuinn, Clark, Crosby and the likes of Elton John found their first followings with the new music genre.

[Update October 12, 2018:  Read a recent post about JD's 1975 Spring tour.]

The decade of the 1960s was punctuated by the arrival of the Beatles, and soon after, the rise of the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and many, many others.  Some artists were bred in L.A. while San Francisco was the hotbed for others.  Southern and northern California-based artists formed the core of the groundbreaking musical celebration, the Monterey International Pop Festival (Hendrix and Ravi Shankar were two of the exceptions.)  Angeleno and L.A. music producer Lou Adler along with John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas were primary organizers of the festival.

Fifty years later, Adler lends his voice, persona, and archival collections to form this exhibition.