Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-3-1972, Part 2: Jonathan Edwards, Long John Baldry & More

Here is the second part of the third (and last) day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. This is the last album from this festival. Like the other album I put together from this third day, this is a grab-bag, consisting of relatively short sets of four music acts: Jonathan Edwards, Long John Baldry, Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010, and Osibisa.

Jonathan Edwards is a singer-songwriter who had a hit with the song "Sunshine." It went all the way to Number Four in the U.S. singles chart in 1971. That makes him a one-hit wonder. But he was (and still is) a lot more than that. I especially like his first few albums, and I've posted a concert from him. We have six songs from him here, but they only make up about 18 minutes of this album. "Sometimes in the Morning" and "Train of Glory" are from the official live album from the festival. His other songs are from the same audience bootleg as most of the other songs I've posted from this festival.

The next three songs are from British blues singer Long John Baldry. I've posted a BBC sessions album from him, as well as music from a band he was in, Steampacket. He had his biggest success in 1967, when he put out a single, "Let the Heartaches Begin," that went all the way to Number One in Britain (though it barely made the U.S. singles chart). His career was still going fairly well at the time of this concert. He had a minor hit in 1971 with the song "Don't Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll." Interesting fact: half of his 1971 album "It Ain't Easy" was produced by Elton John, and the other half was produced by Rod Stewart. "Bring My Baby Back" made it to the official live album from this festival, while the other song here is from the same audience boot mentioned elsewhere.

Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010 was a salsa band from Puerto Rico. Apparently, some of their lyrics were political, but the meaning was generally missed by the mostly English speaking audience. There were other lesser known bands like this one that performed at the festival, such as Banda del K-rajo, Bang, Elephant's Memory, Michael Overly, Rubber Band, Stonehenge, and Malo. But we don't happen to have any recordings from them, and we happen to have two songs from this band. Both are from the same audience boot mentioned above.

The last song was by the band Osibisa, who were the last musical act to perform at the festival. This song made it to the official live album. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them: Osibisa is a Ghanaian-Caribbean Afro rock band founded in London in the late 1960s by four expatriate West African and three London-based Caribbean musicians. Osibisa was the most successful and longest lived of the African-heritage bands in London... and was largely responsible for the establishment of world music and Afro-rock as a marketable genre." They would have a couple of hits in Britain later in the 1970s.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Osibisa - Wikipedia 

So that's the last of the music I have from this festival. But before I finish my write-up of this last album, I want to explain a bit about some interesting events that happened as the festival finished. As I mentioned in a previous write-up, the main promoter of the festival was Alex Cooley, who had promoted some other major rock festivals. But he ran into a lot of trouble with this one, including the fact that he failed to get the proper permits. The festival only happened because it would have caused more trouble for the government to have tens of thousands of angry fans who had paid to fly to Puerto Rico just to attend the festival.

Cooley later explained how the festival ended for him: "[A] guy who was working in the festival, came over to me, the last night of the festival, and said [the government] issued a warrant in San Juan and they were coming to arrest me. So they smuggled me out of there with a Volkswagen bus. I got in the bus and they put things on top of me and they took me to the airport and there were people at the airport that were very sympathetic towards this and they let them.... Of course, you'd never be able to do this now - they let them drive the Volkswagen out on to the runway. So I got out of the Volkswagen and got directly on the plane. So that's how I got out of San Juan, out of Puerto Rico."

He left in all sorts of trouble, including owing at least $40,000 in taxes that apparently never got paid.

Cooley wasn't the only one who had trouble leaving the festival. Creem Magazine reported, "People had begun making the long trek back to San Juan and points beyond after the first day of the festival, but even this steady exodus didn't avert the Tuesday tie-up at the airport. Many of the people who had purchased the $149 festival package found that their return plane tickets were good only for stand-by, thus effectively leaving the stranded until auxiliary flights could be arranged."

Luckily, the government helped take care of the people stranded at the airport. Tents were set up near the main terminal. The Red Cross, the government, and even some airline companies provided food, water and medical attention. Some bands performed for the stranded passengers. Pan American Airlines provided the flights for about 3,000 people who attended the festival from outside Puerto Rico who otherwise couldn't leave. It took several days before everyone was able to leave the country. 

No wonder the government was mad at Cooley and the other festival organizers. It's also no wonder why Puerto Rico didn't have another rock festival like this until decades later.

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
02 Athens County (Jonathan Edwards)
03 Dues Day Bar (Jonathan Edwards)
04 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
05 Give Us a Song (Jonathan Edwards)
06 Shanty (Jonathan Edwards)
07 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
08 Sometimes in the Morning (Jonathan Edwards)
09 Train of Glory (Jonathan Edwards)
10 It Ain't Easy (Long John Baldry)
11 talk (Long John Baldry)
12 Bring My Baby Back (Long John Baldry)
13 Hemos Dicho Basta [Incomplete] (Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010)
14 Ya Se Van (Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010)
15 Y Sharp [Instrumental] (Osibisa)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZSLiFptp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iaLTJsYB36ObzqH/file

The cover image of Jonathan Edwards is from this exact concert. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-3-1972, Part 1: Cactus, Faces & More

Here is the first part of the third, and last, day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. Unfortunately, for this last day of the festival, I wasn't able to find as much music as I found for the first two days. So I just have portions of sets. This has music from Cactus, the Faces, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Potliquor.

The four Cactus songs all come from official sources. The first three are from a live album called "'Ot 'n' Sweaty," released in 1972. The fourth song, "Bedroom Marurka," is from the official live album of the festival, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival."

Cactus broke up a couple of months after this festival. Two band members, bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, joined with Jeff Beck to form the band Beck, Bogert and Appice, releasing an album later in 1972. Here's the Wikipedia entry about Cactus:

Cactus (American band) - Wikipedia 

The Faces, starring Rod Stewart, were one of the main headliners of the festival. However, they didn't perform last on the last day, as one might expect of a headliner. Apparently, the organizers realized that the audience size steadily declined towards the ends of festivals like this, so it was better to have the headliners on earlier. (Interesting fact: when Jimi Hendrix performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, most of the audience had left already. Only about 30,000 to 100,000 of the peak 600,000 people remained.) Unfortunately, we only have three songs from the Faces. All three of those are unreleased.

There's just one song here from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the jazz fusion band led by guitarist John McLaughlin, "Noonward Race." But it's an impressive 13-minute-long instrumental. It comes from the official live album of the festival. Here the Wikipedia entry about this band:

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Wikipedia

Finally, that leaves the final song, from a band called Potliquor. This band played Southern rock with a Louisiana influence, since they were from Louisiana. They were together from 1969 to 1973 (plus a reunion in the late 1970s), and put out three albums in those years. Unfortunately, they were signed to a small record label and didn't get much promotion or distribution help. They were building some momentum, but that ended when the band broke up after only a few years. Their one song here is unreleased.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Potliquor - Wikipedia

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 Swim (Cactus)
02 Bad Mother Boogie (Cactus)
03 Our Lil Rock 'n' Roll Thing (Cactus)
04 talk (Cactus)
05 Bedroom Mazurka (Cactus)
06 It's All Over Now (Faces)
07 Maggie May (Faces)
08 Miss Judy's Farm (Faces)
09 Noonward Race [Instrumental] (Mahavishnu Orchestra)
10 The Train (Potliquor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DHMVDrgp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/izVfQzS9XcCFAi3/file

The cover image of Rod Stewart is from this exact concert. The original picture was in black and white, but I converted it to color with the Kolorize program.

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 4: Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Here is the fourth and last part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. There is still one more day of the festival to go after this. This set features the prog rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

At this point in the band's career, they had only released two albums: "Emerson, Lake and Palmer" in 1970, and "Tarkus" in 1971. They had a new album coming ("Trilogy"), but it wouldn't be released until June 1972, and they didn't perform any songs from it. 

The band's bassist and lead vocalist Greg Lake later shared some memories about the band's experience at the festival: 

"The first thing I remember about the Mar Y Sol festival was stepping down onto the runway to discover the sun was so intense it had begun to melt the tarmac. After quite a long drive, we arrived at a luxury tropical hotel. At first, it all felt like a holiday atmosphere until we began to learn there were serious problems at the site and the government was trying to get the festival stopped. I remember jumping down out of a helicopter and being greeted by the backstage manager, who told me that they had just killed a rattlesnake under the stage. The whole thing did not feel good. It was not until later that we discovered a body being ferried out on the helicopter we had just arrived in was, in fact, the dead body of someone who’d been murdered, apparently over some drug deal that went wrong."

Lake also recalls having problems during the band's set. "I remember performing and feeling my left arm becoming unbearably hot. I quickly snatched a look between playing and singing and could see that my left arm was actually beginning to give off smoke. Apparently they had set up a huge and powerful search light on the side of the stage and were planning to use it during the filming. After a few desperate and agonizing screams from me, they finally switched it off."

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
02 Hoedown [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
03 Tarkus (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
04 Take a Pebble (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
05 Lucky Man (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
06 Piano Improvisation [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
07 Pictures at an Exhibition (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
08 Rondo [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uC48SVJP 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/SBcMMFJtjOTdVgH/file 

I couldn't find many photos from this festival. For this album, I was only able to find one decent one. It only shows keyboardist Keith Emerson. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 3: Alice Cooper

Here is the third part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. (I'm guessing the order based on the relative popularity of the musical acts at the time.) This one features the band Alice Cooper.

At the time of this concert, the band was on their way to the big time. The album "Killer" was released in late 1971, and it was their first big album success. It would eventually go Platinum in the U.S., which means sales of a million or more. The band also had a lot of success with the song "I'm Eighteen," which made the Top Twenty in the U.S. singles chart in early 1971. However, greater popularity was coming. The band's next album, "School's Out" would be an even bigger success in 1972, propelled by a single with the same name. That single would be released only a few weeks after this concert.

The band was making a big impression with audiences due to their theatrical stage performances. One fan who attended this concert later commented, "I was not a fan of Alice Cooper until I saw him in concert at Mar y Sol. I think I was more amazed at the crowd reaction then the actual show, but they could rock. I remember this chill going over me when Alice hung himself. He also did the throwing money bit into the crowd, and watching people scramble for it was pretty funny." 

For this set, it happens that the entire performance has been officially released. It came out on a deluxe edition of the "Killer" album. Most of that album was performed in the concert, as well as "Public Animal  the show previews "Public Animal #9" from the upcoming album. The band played most of "Killer" during the concert, plus three songs from their previous album "Love It to Death," including their sole hit at the time, "I'm Eighteen."

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

01 Be My Lover (Alice Cooper)
02 You Drive Me Nervous (Alice Cooper)
03 Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (Alice Cooper)
04 talk (Alice Cooper)
05 I'm Eighteen (Alice Cooper)
06 Halo of Flies (Alice Cooper)
07 Is It My Body (Alice Cooper)
08 Dead Babies (Alice Cooper)
09 Killer (Alice Cooper)
10 Long Way to Go (Alice Cooper)
11 Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cfbk6aJd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/g4Qks4DitkRsWpD/file

I could be wrong, since it's been a long time since I make the cover art for this festival, but I'm pretty sure the cover image is from this exact concert. I found just two photos of him from it, this one, and one of him holding a skull in his hands.  

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 2: Billy Joel

Here is the second part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. (Although note that the set order is mostly guesswork.) This album stars Billy Joel. This is a real treat for Joel fans, because this was one of the most important concerts of his entire career, arguably THE most important. 

It's important to remember that while Billy Joel is a superstar today, and has been one for decades, in 1972, he was basically a nobody. He released his debut album, "Cold Spring Harbor," in 1971. But it came out on a small label and got little notice. Furthermore, the recording was released at the wrong speed, and Joel soon got in conflict with the label, leaving him without promotional support. Joel wasn't even supposed to perform at the festival. But after some other acts dropped out at the last minute (due to reasons I've mentioned in the write-up to the first album from this festival), he was brought in to fill up time. 

This turned out to be the biggest break for his career. His career was basically dead in the water. But some important people from Columbia Records were at the festival, and were impressed by his performance. In fact, they were so impressed that eventually they bought out the rest of his original contract. Going with a major label restarted his career and gave him the support eventually become a star.

Since this concert was so pivotal for Joel's career, I was able to find some interesting quotes about it. Here's one from "Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man," a book by Hank Bordowitz: "Before Mar Y Sol, nobody had ever heard of Billy Joel, outside of the New York area, and even there, nobody cared about Billy Joel. But as the sun broke through the clouds at Mar y Sol, Billy Joel had the place reeling and rolling."

And here's Irwin Mazur, Billy's first manager, quoted in that same book: "It was a moment I'll never forget. He had the crowd in the palm of his hands. He had never had that kind of command of an audience before. That was the first moment that he took command of the stage."

Here's a lengthier explanation from Larry Russell, who was the bassist in Joel's band at the time: 

"Well, we were slightly unsure what [the crowd would] think, really. Up until that point, we were a very folky, intimate, cerebrally provoking act. Nothing too fancy, very simple four piece band, Thinking back on it now, I think we should have had one more band member to fill things out and make the sound match the 'Cold Spring Harbor' record, but that would have complicated the expenses for the record/management companies. We knew when we saw that crowd we had to toughen our set, but we were not prepared to do that with songs like 'Travelin’ Prayer,' etc. But, somehow, whatever we played that day, they loved. Everything worked. And even though we sounded nothing like the bands that were scheduled to perform. somehow that in itself, set us apart from the others. Song after song, our momentum built, and by the time we were at our last song, the crowd was ready for more.

"The last song that day and everyday was ‘Tomorrow Is Today’, which on that day was really outstanding. But when we finished that song, they didn’t want us to leave, and so we had to resort to a harder styled cover song with Billy doing a fine impersonation of Joe Cocker, singing ‘The Letter’ with piano chops and Cockers' gyrations as well! After that, I ran off the stage to smoke a joint and our manager told me we had another encore... and then [he went] into the best version I have ever heard of 'Jumpin' Jack Flash.' His vocal range was unbelievable, truly amazing. But then again, he was only 22 at the time."

Here's a link to the whole interview with Russell, if you want even more details:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201204084216/http://marysol-festival.com/interviews/interview-with-larry-russell-billy-joel

As Russell, explains, the band had only been in existence for three or four months prior to this concert, mostly performing in small venues on the East Coast. So to go from that to performing before an audience of tens of thousands must have been a really big deal for Joel. 

In 1999, Joel returned to perform a concert in Puerto Rico for the first time since this 1972 festival. Between songs, he shared some memories with his banter. One person who attended that 1999 concert summarized his comments like this:

"He explained he had been here in the island previously for a festival called 'Mar y Sol,' asking if anybody remembered that. A few screams and claps came from the crowd, to which he replied, 'Oh, so you were there too?!' He said he was glad some people remembered... He admitted that in those days he and his band were just simple amateurs, guys looking for an opening to go forward and get noticed. He was happy that he'd developed his career to get to where he could now thank Puerto Rico for being a kind of 'starting point,' maybe not recognized that much, which helped with the record company’s support from that time forward."

Listening to this recording, I have to admit that it's good, but it didn't really knock my socks off. But I think that's because I'm looking at it from the perspective of Joel being a big star for decades already, with all the crowd-pleasing skills of a big star. In hindsight, this concert was the moment Joel showed he could be charismatic and take control of a crowd, a talent he hadn't shown in public before. I'm sure a lot of that was visual, such as the Joe Cocker-styled gyrations mentioned above. 

This recording is entirely unreleased. (Joel wanted to one of his songs to appear on the official album from the festival, which no doubt would have helped his career a lot, but it wasn't possible due to conflicts between two record companies.) Supposedly, this is from a soundboard source. I don't know if that's true, or if it's from the same audience bootleg as most of the rest of the festival. But it doesn't matter since the sound quality of the audience boot is basically at a soundboard level anyway. Also, we know this is the full performance.  

This album is 35 minutes long. 

01 Travelin' Prayer (Billy Joel)
02 talk (Billy Joel)
03 Josephine (Billy Joel)
04 The Ballad of Billy the Kid (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Captain Jack (Billy Joel)
07 talk (Billy Joel)
08 Tomorrow Is Today (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 The Letter (Billy Joel)
11 talk (Billy Joel)
12 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LYxyV5Uk

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2RF9fUzhcYJXQx9/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 1: David Peel, Herbie Mann, J. Geils Band & More

Here is the first part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. I'm doing this day by day, so this goes back to "Part 1" instead of "Part 4" of the entire festival. This is kind of a grab-bag for musical acts from the second day where I only have small portions of their sets.

Unfortunately, so much time has passed since this festival that a lot has been lost. I only was able to learn some basics about which acts performed on which day (though even that is sometimes questionable, especially since some of the acts performed more than once), and which ones were the headliners. Also, only bits and pieces of the music have survived. I've previously mentioned the official double album, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival," long out of print. Some of the songs on this album come from that. (Specifically, tracks 1, 11, and 13.) But most of the songs come from an audience bootleg I mentioned in my previous write-ups. The good news is that the sound quality is surprisingly good for an audience bootleg. I didn't try any of my usual audio editing tricks on those songs, because they sounded like a soundboard already. But the bad news is how we often have only portions of many sets. For instance, I'm sure Dr. John played a lot more than just one song! I assume all the acts here performed more songs. But something is better than nothing.

The J. Geils Band set is the longest here, at 22 minutes. A New York Times review that was down on the festival in general liked that performance, at least, writing, "The J. Gells band finally played a set that deserved the accolades it has received in the past." Too bad there isn't more of it. 

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long.

01 Wang Dang Doodle (Dr. John)
02 All the Things You Are [Instrumental] (Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan)
03 Take Five [Instrumental] (Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan)
04 The Pope Smokes Dope (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
05 talk (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
06 Up Against the Wall (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
07 talk (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
08 New York City Hippie (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
09 Mother Where Is My Father (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
10 Memphis Underground [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
11 Respect Yourself [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
12 Never Can Say Goodbye [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
13 talk (J. Geils Band)
14 Looking for a Love (J. Geils Band)
15 talk (J. Geils Band)
16 Homework (J. Geils Band)
17 Crusin' for a Love (J. Geils Band)
18 Sno-Cone [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
19 Wait (J. Geils Band)
20 talk (J. Geils Band)
21 Whammer Jammer (J. Geils Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/77vXqgBR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0qsJyXsMdlKWoD1/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Herbie Mann playing flute in front, with other band members. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-1-1972, Part 3: The Allman Brothers Band

Here's the third out of three albums I made from the first day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. This one features of the headliners from the festival, the Allman Brothers Band.

On October 29, 1971, Duane Allman, one of the key members of this band, died in a motorcycle accident. But the band carried on. In February 1972, they released the double album "Eat a Peach," which was their biggest success so far at that point in their music career. While Duane Allman isn't on this recording, bassist Berry Oakley is. He also would die in a motorcycle accident later in 1972.

Only one song from this set has been officially released. "Ain't Wastin' Time No More" appeared on the album "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival." The rest comes from bootlegs. Luckily, they sound very good, so much so that you probably won't notice the difference between the officially released track and the rest.

It seems that while most of the set is presented here, it may not be all of it. Two of the songs were incomplete, "Statesboro Blues" and "You Don't Love Me." I used a bootleg of a concert from Jackson, Alabama, on March 23, 1972, to fill in the rest of those two songs. For "Statesboro Blues," I didn't have to fill in much. But for "You Don't Love Me," most of it actually comes from the other concert.

One interesting fact is that Gregg Allman always played a Hammond organ in concert. But for this show, the organ promised by promoters didn't show up in time. It is rumored that he asked to borrow Keith Emerson's organ, but was denied. Thus, he played most of the set with an electric piano instead. Only near the end of the set was that replaced by a Hammond organ, due it finally showing up. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Done Somebody Wrong (Allman Brothers Band)
02 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
03 Ain't Wastin' Time No More (Allman Brothers Band)
04 One Way Out (Allman Brothers Band)
05 Stormy Monday (Allman Brothers Band)
06 Statesboro Blues [Edit] (Allman Brothers Band)
07 You Don't Love Me [Edit] (Allman Brothers Band)
08 Whipping Post (Allman Brothers Band) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5ivtZ4ia

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Oe8WE71z2sYTAOg/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It would have been nice to find a photo of the entire band. But I've only seen a small number of good photos from the festival, and I was lucky to find anything that fits here at all. The photo shows Dickey Betts, of the band's two main singers and lead guitarists. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-1-1972, Part 2: B. B. King

Here's the second album from the first day of the Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. There are three albums from this day in total. This one consists only of a set by blues legend B. B. King.

As I explained in the first album from this festival, the festival was a bit of a fiasco overall. But there still was a lot of good music, and most accounts said that King's set was one of the highlights. Unfortunately, we only have some of the set. Just one song, "Why I Sing the Blues," made it onto the official album from the festival, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival." So I used that version for that song. For the rest, I relied on a surprisingly good sounding audience bootleg that I mentioned in the write-up for the first album. 

But as I mentioned, that bootleg only has portions of the festival (or at least that's all that's been made public. This definitely wasn't King's full set. In fact, one of the songs, "Hummingbird," wasn't even complete. I found a different live recording of that from this era and used it to finish it off. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Now, I want to say a little more about the festival that has nothing to do with B. B. King per se, but I didn't want to write too much in the write-up for the first album. I want to mention the musical acts that were supposed to attend the festival but didn't perform for some reason.

The biggest miss, by far, was John Lennon. He was very interested in performing at the festival, and that would have been a massively big deal, since he only performed a couple of full concerts after leaving the Beatles. Around 1972, he got to be friends with musician John Peel, who did perform at the festival, and he knew some other people who were going. So he wanted to be a part of it as well. Unfortunately, he was having legal problems with the U.S. government over his visa, and leaving the U.S. to go to Puerto Rico apparently would have added to those problems, despite the fact that Puerto Rico was and still is a U.S. territory. So instead, he and Yoko Ono sent a message of support. You can hear that here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSGbEVUbZoY

There were other big misses. Black Sabbath made it to Puerto Rico, and were supposed to perform on the third and last night. But while other bands were flown by helicopter from a hotel in the main city of San Juan to the festival site, no helicopters were available for the band. It was also determined that the roads were clogged, due to the festival, so they couldn't make it that way either. In the end, they simply stayed in their hotel. They didn't mind that much, since they'd already been paid.

Bloodrock, Flash Cadillac, Fleetwood Mac, and Malo also didn't perform for various reasons. Probably a lot of it had to do with the uncertainty surrounding the festival, since it almost didn't happen due to legal issues. A bunch of other musical acts were scheduled to perform, but it's unknown if they did or not: Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, Savoy Brown, Roberta Flack, Al Kooper, Loggins & Messina, Poco,
Billy Preston, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. If anyone reading this attended the festival and can shed some light on this, that would be great.

This album is 25 minutes long.

01 Everyday I Have the Blues (B.B. King)
02 Hummingbird [Edit] (B.B. King)
03 How Blue Can You Get (B.B. King)
04 Guess Who (B.B. King)
05 Why I Sing the Blues (B.B. King)
06 The Thrill Is Gone (B.B. King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HWrLrgKc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Oeez4DxyNBChLXg/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It's one of the few color photos I could find. The top of his head was missing, but I used AI features in Photoshop to fill out the missing part.
 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-1-1972, Part 1: Nitzinger - Brownsville Station

It's time for me to post another big rock festival. This is an interesting one, but not very well known: the Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, in Manati, Puerto Rico, in 1972. Unfortunately, only bits and pieces of recordings of this three-day-long festival survive and have made it into the public domain, most of them unreleased. But it's all very good to excellent sound quality, and there were a lot of musical acts performing, so it adds up. In total, I have enough material to post nine albums, containing over eight hours of music.

Before I get to describing the musical acts and songs on this particular album, let me discuss the festival in general. It has a rather strange history, probably mostly due to its unusual location, in Puerto Rico. It was the only big rock festival in that country in that time period. There are some reasons for that, as we shall see.

After the massive success of the Woodstock Festival in 1969, many promoters decided to try to organize their own big rock festivals and possibly make a lot of money. There wasn't enough of a local audience to justify a rock festival with famous names, so the idea was to hold a festival during a time people from the U.S. could come during a vacation. The appeal of beach, tropical jungle, and sunny weather could be combined with rock music to hopefully have a successful, well-attended festival. 

The original plan was for the festival to take place during Thanksgiving break in 1971. Artists like Santana, Jose Feliciano, Ray Charles, the Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Ten Years After, Richie Havens, and the Chamber Brothers were booked to perform. But the planners ran into financial troubles, and the festival was postponed, or possibly cancelled altogether. Then Alex Cooley agreed to take over the management. He had already successfully organized two Atlanta International Pop Festivals and the Texas International Pop Festival. So his involvement added credibility, allowing the festival to be rescheduled for April 1st to 3rd, 1972.

Unfortunately, Cooley and others managing the festival didn't understand local culture. Those dates meant the festival would take place during Holy Week, and Easter. That was a good vacation time to get Americans to fly there. But Puerto Rico was heavily Catholic, and many people there didn't like how this created a conflict with religious activities. Cooley also relied on a friend of a friend who was a high ranking official in the military there, and promised to take care of all the necessary permits and such. Unfortunately, that friend failed to follow through. The festival took place anyway, because so many people arrived from out of the country that it would have been a bigger debacle for the local authorities to not allow it. But Cooley found himself in hot water. Ultimately, he had to get smuggled out of country to avoid possibly serving prison time.

The festival was held on a beach near the main city of San Juan. Somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 people attended, most of them from the U.S. But there were many problems. The weather caused a lot of problems. At times, it was very rainy. At other times, it was too hot, over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A review in Creem Magazine reported, "Quite ironically, the festival's major drawing card, old sun, readily proved to be one of its most formidable villains. Even the most fanatical sun-worshipers soon found themselves crawling for cover after only minimal exposure; the medical tent reported that a vast majority of cases handled related directly to this torturous sun blaze."

There was a crazy amount of drug use. That lead to four deaths. One person was hacked to death while sleeping, possibly due to a bad drug deal or a romantic dispute. A couple other people drowned in the ocean. Creem Magazine also reported, "The dark eyes of violence were always staring over your shoulder. Gangs of Puerto Ricans roamed the grounds in varying shades of belligerence, many carrying knives and apparently itchy fingers. It was like an ugly New York City against a postcard backdrop."

A local newspaper, the San Juan Star, reported, "Mar y Sol was Puerto Rico's Woodstock Nation, except that by 1972 people were beginning to lose faith in the peace and love schtick." 

The title of a review in the New York Times was "Mar y Sol: Unhappy and Unsuccessful." You can read the entire review here:

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/05/archives/mar-y-sol-unhappy-and-unsuccessful.html

So while the festival had many serious problems, there also was a lot of good music. And experiences varied. I was looking up some YouTube videos of performances from the festival, and many commenters said they had a great time, with some saying it had been life-changing. So it was a mixed bag. But there were enough problems that there never was another festival like that allowed in Puerto Rico in that era.

There had been a really nice website dedicated to the festival. Unfortunately, it appears to have died a few months ago (as I write this in April 2026). However, one can still find links to pages from it using archive.org. Here's the main page describing what happened, with links to other pages:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201202130637/https://marysol-festival.com/history-menu/festival-history

Now, let me address the music. There were plans to make a movie out of the festival, but the filming never happened due to all the legal troubles related to the festival. I did find a few minutes of footage from a home movie, however, which you can see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhS5t_zx53k

While the movie didn't happen, a double album of highlights from this festival was released. But it didn't do very well, and it eventually went out of print. It's never even been released on CD. Here's a Wikipedia entry about the album, with a list of the songs from it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_y_Sol:_The_First_International_Puerto_Rico_Pop_Festival_(album)

I wouldn't be posting this festival if that's all the recordings that survived. Luckily, there's more. A couple of the sets were later officially released in full, such as the sets by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Alice Cooper. I'll explain the sourcing for each album. But a majority of what I found comes from a bootleg recorded by two locals, Pedro Collazo and Oscar Mandry. They only made an audience recording. But the sound quality is really damn good. One would easily think it's a soundboard instead. However, only parts of their recordings have made it to the Internet, and it seems they only recorded parts of the performances. Most sets are incomplete, and sometimes some songs are incomplete. I put together everything I could, combining all the official and bootleg sources I could find.

Before putting these albums together, I had never heard of Nitzinger. Turns out that was a band led by lead guitarist John Nitzinger. You can find his Wikipedia entry here:

John Nitzinger - Wikipedia

Some time in 1972, his debut album was released, also called "Nitzinger." He went on to have a long, though relatively low profile, music career. Just two of his songs here made it onto the official album from the festival: "Texas Blues - Jelly Roll." 

Brownsville Station is best known for a single hit. That hit, "Smokin' in the Boys Room," went all the way to Number Three on the U.S. singles chart in 1973. However, that was still a year away at the time of this festival, so you won't find that song here. In 1972, the band released its second album, which just barely made it into the Top 200 U.S. albums chart.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Brownsville Station (band) - Wikipedia

So, I would guess not a lot of people are going to be that keen about either of the musical acts here. But don't worry, there's a lot more to come from this festival. And I was to gather up all the music I can find from it, not just the most famous acts.  

This album is 44 minutes long. 

01 I'm a Steamroller, Mama (Nitzinger)
02 Ticklelick (Nitzinger)
03 Jam [Instrumental] (Nitzinger)
04 Louisiana Cock Fight (Nitzinger)
05 talk (Nitzinger)
06 Texas Blues - Jelly Roll - Dr. Feelgood (Nitzinger)
07 Mister Robert (Brownsville Station)
08 talk (Brownsville Station)
09 Wanted Dead or Alive (Brownsville Station)
10 talk (Brownsville Station)
11 Blue Suede Shoes (Brownsville Station)
12 Johnny B. Goode (Brownsville Station)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iF1P2hz9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uBGhj7A7zu1j6FK/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows the band Nitzinger, with the crowd in the background.