Who can orget Richie Haven’s incredible performance as the opening act at Woodstock. I wasn’t there but I saw the movie and have heard that song umpteen times. Freedom, freedom, freedom. Was that the opening of "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child."

I’ve always loved Richie Havens. And according to Park Slope’s Ben Greenman in the New Yorker, he has a great new album just out called Nobody Left to Crown.

“Nobody Left to Crown” (Verve Forecast), Havens’s first
recording in four years, opens with a pair of originals, “The Key” and
“Say It Isn’t So,” which manage to address spiritual themes without
sounding overly earnest, a trick that sometimes eluded the artist in
his younger years. The centerpiece of the album is a majestic cover of
“Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Over his trademark open-tuned strumming,
Havens delivers a commanding vocal performance that fully restores the
revolutionary impulse of The Who’s original; he somehow gets blood from
a song that has been ossified for years. Nothing else quite rises to
that level, though there’s an urgent version of Jackson Browne’s “Lives
in the Balance” and several strong tracks in which Haven applies
Eastern-style enlightenment to Realpolitik—including the quietly
furious title song, which slyly quotes “Home on the Range.”

And he’s a Brooklyn boy to boot. Born in Bed-Stuy. Here’s the blurbage about BAM’s R&B Festival at Metrotech, where Havens will be performing on August 7 at noon. Marcus Carl Franklin, the incredible kid who played one of the Bob Dylan’s in "Im Not There" WILL BE THERE. Note to self: Don’t miss this.

Born in Bed-Stuy, Richie Havens is gifted with one of the most recognizable voices in popular music—a fiery, poignant singing style that has remained ageless since he first emerged from the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. His blistering performance at Woodstock helped Havens reach a worldwide audience of millions, and for decades he has used music to convey messages of brotherhood and personal freedom. Joining him is teenage blues guitarist Marcus Carl Franklin, who portrayed a young Bob Dylan in the 2007 fictionalized biopic of Bob Dylan I’m Not There appearing in a telling scene with Havens.