Jimmie Closes Woodstock

Vietnam at 50 – Stripes.

Patriotism or protest? Army vet Jimi Hendrix had the 'most electrifying moment' at Woodstock

https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/vietnam-stories/1969/patriotism-or-protest-army-vet-jimi-hendrix-had-the-most-electrifying-moment-at-woodstock-1.594315

Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar during his set at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Playing with Jimi Hendrix is Billy Cox (wearing a turban).

By SEAN MOORES | Stars and Stripes | Published: August 15, 2019

On Aug. 18, 1969, former soldier Jimi Hendrix, resplendent in bright red headband, white fringed shirt and bell-bottom blue jeans, unfurled what has been called the cultural moment of the 1960s when he played an incendiary instrumental version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” for remnants of the crowd at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in Bethel, N.Y.

Hendrix died 13 months later, shortly after his amplified anthem received widespread exposure in the Academy Award-winning “Woodstock” documentary. He was 27. His legacy as a guitar god is unassailable, but 50 years after Woodstock a question remains: Was Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” patriotism, or was it protest?

The interpretation lies with the listener. At first, Hendrix adhered to the melody of the song, which had only been the official U.S. national anthem for 38 years. By the time he got to “the rockets’ red glare,” though, Hendrix unleashed the full force of his white Fender Stratocaster. The squeals of amplifier feedback and dive-bombing on his electric guitar’s vibrato bar have been said to evoke combat, fighter jets, artillery, ambulance sirens and, perhaps, riots in the streets. It also included a segue into taps, the traditional bugle call played at military funerals.

Popular interpretation, rooted in the mythology of the ’60s, favors protest. It was a complicated time in American history. National pride swelled a month earlier when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, but there was widespread conflict. Civil rights struggles and changing sexual politics made frequent headlines, as did the Vietnam War. As Hendrix performed that 3-minute, 46-second version of the national anthem, the war raged half a world away. More than 35,000 American troops had been killed.

“It was the most electrifying moment of Woodstock, and it was probably the single greatest moment of the ’60s,” New York Post pop critic Al Aronowitz wrote. “You finally heard what that song was about, that you can love your country, but hate the government.” (Francis Scott Key, whose patriotic poem written in 1814 later became “The Star-Spangled Banner,” might have disagreed.)

Noted cultural critic Greil Marcus, who got his start reviewing music for Rolling Stone magazine in the ‘60s, allowed for a more open-ended interpretation in Clara Bingham’s 2016 book “Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul.”

“I always think of it as the greatest protest song ever, but it’s not just a protest song, it’s an incredibly layered, ambiguous piece of music,” Marcus said. “To take the national anthem and distort it … it was taken as an attack on the United States for its crimes in Vietnam, which is not an unreasonable way to hear it, but it’s also a great piece of music. No art that has its own integrity is ever going to be about one thing or be one thing.”

Addressing the anthem

Ten months before Woodstock, Jose Feliciano proved that changing the national anthem could bring a backlash. The blind singer-guitarist created a stir when he turned in a soulful rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” more akin to a folk song than a formal performance before Game 5 of the 1968 World Series in Detroit. Many fans were outraged, and even the Tigers and Cardinals players were divided. Feliciano insisted his intent was patriotic.

“I just do my thing, what I feel,” Feliciano told The Associated Press. “I was afraid people would misconstrue it and say I’m making fun of it. But I’m not. It’s the way I feel.”

The heat blew over. RCA Records released Feliciano’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a single that reached the Top 50. The controversy reignited with Hendrix.

Even in the pre-Twitter era, Hendrix was hounded to explain his motivations. At a news conference a few weeks after Woodstock, Hendrix said, “We’re all Americans … it was like ‘Go, America!’ … We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, see.”

He certainly harbored no ill will toward U.S. troops. Earlier in his Woodstock set, Hendrix dedicated “Izabella” to “maybe a soldier in the Army, singing’ about his old lady that he dreams about and humpin’ a machine gun instead.”

If Hendrix was protesting the national anthem or U.S. involvement in Vietnam, he never said so. On Sept. 9, Hendrix again addressed “The Star-Spangled Banner” on “The Dick Cavett Show.”

“What was the controversy about the national anthem and the way you played it?” Cavett asked Hendrix.

“I don’t know, man,” he replied. “All I did was play it. I’m American, so I played it. I used to have to sing it in school, they made me sing it in school, so … it was a flashback.”

Cavett, addressing the audience, said, “This man was in the 101st Airborne, so when you write your nasty letters in …”

“Nasty letters?” Hendrix asked.

“Well, when you mention the national anthem and talk about playing it in any unorthodox way,” Cavett said. “you immediately get a guaranteed percentage of hate mail from people who say, ‘How dare …’.”

“That’s not unorthodox,” Hendrix said, cutting off his host. “That’s not unorthodox.”

“It isn’t unorthodox?” Cavett asked.

“No, no. I thought it was beautiful. But there you go, you know?” Hendrix said, to applause from the audience.

J. Kimo Williams, 69, also thought it was beautiful. Williams, who founded the Lt. Dan Band with actor Gary Sinise, saw Hendrix perform at the Waikiki Bowl in May 1969, just before shipping off to the Army at 19. He was stationed at Fort Ord in California during Woodstock and did not become aware of “The Star-Spangled Banner” performance until checking out the “Woodstock” soundtrack album at the service club in Vietnam.

Williams was so inspired by that Hendrix concert that he immediately decided to dedicate himself to the guitar and a career in music. While serving as a combat engineer in Vietnam, Williams included Hendrix songs in the repertoire of his band, The Soul Coordinators. After returning to the States, he used his GI Bill benefits to attend Berklee College of Music and became an award-winning composer. As a student of music, he sees a simpler interpretation of that Woodstock performance.

“If it had been someone else, on piano, who was a famous classical piano player, and that person decides to improvise over ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ I don’t think there would have been as much of a controversy as [with] Hendrix doing it in his way,” said Williams, who resides in Shepherdstown, W.Va., with his wife, artistic partner and fellow Army veteran, Carol.

“Because he did nothing to the melody to make it sound wrong. He did nothing with the melody or with the … he didn’t say, ‘here’s my protest, and we gotta get out of this war and if we don’t then here you go.’ He played it. He wanted to, you know, the words … it says, ‘the bombs are bursting.’ He wasn’t talking about Vietnam, he was talking about Francis Scott Key indicating in the song that the bombs were going off, so he wanted the bombs to go off. He was actually trying to sonically represent the words of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and I thought he did a great job of it.”

Whatever Hendrix’s intent, the moment apparently wasn’t planned.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” “wasn’t on the set list!” bassist Billy Cox told Atlanta Magazine in 2012. “We had rehearsed a repertoire and we played that repertoire … And then, Jimi just starts playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner!’ At first I thought, ‘OK, I know it, let’s do it.’ And then all of a sudden something told me, ‘You better lay out of this one, Billy!’ And what an incredible decision that was. Jimi was one of a kind. That was his moment there.”

Cox continues to honor his friend on the all-star Experience Hendrix tours and with his Billy Cox Band of Gypsys Experience. Long before any of that, Cox and Hendrix were Army buddies at Fort Campbell, Ky.

Army years

Jimi Hendrix performs at Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt, West Germany, on January 17, 1969. Before he became one of the greatest guitarists of all time, Hendrix was briefly a supply clerk with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky.

STARS AND STRIPES

Before he was renowned for screaming feedback, Hendrix was, briefly, a member of the Screaming Eagles. The 101st Airborne Division, that is.

Military service was unlikely his preferred career path, although a common one for poor, black teenagers in Hendrix’s hometown of Seattle. The choice became more appealing after he ran afoul of the Seattle Police Department as a high school dropout.

After enlisting in May 1961, Hendrix initially embraced the structure of the Army and expressed a desire to be elite. In his 2005 Hendrix biography “Room Full of Mirrors,” author Charles R. Cross cites a letter Hendrix sent to his father, Al, after getting his assignment as a supply clerk for the 101st at Fort Campbell. Hendrix pledges to “try my very best to make this Airborne for the sake of our name … I’ll fix it so the whole family of Hendrixes will have the right to wear the ‘Screaming Eagle’ patch.”

Despite that early earnestness, military life soon lost its appeal for Hendrix. A chance meeting with Cox led to an impromptu jam. Soon after, they formed The Kasuals and began playing around nearby Clarksville and Nashville, Tenn. As his guitar skills rapidly improved and the number of gigs increased, Hendrix’s interest in soldiering waned. He wanted to pursue a career in music and could focus on little else. He did not want to wait until his three-year commitment was up.

It did not take the Army long to grant his wish. Hendrix was written up for missing bed check, sleeping while on duty and unsatisfactory performance, among other infractions. He was even caught masturbating in the barracks, an act that was likely an intentional ploy to get kicked out of the service. Hendrix often said that a broken ankle suffered during a parachute jump led to his dismissal from the Army, but there is no mention of such an injury in his service records. He was discharged from the Army in June 1962.

Regardless of the reasons, Hendrix was once again a civilian and free to play music professionally. When Cox’s hitch ended a short time later, he and Hendrix formed a new band, The King Kasuals. They toured the collection of black-owned clubs mostly in the South known as the Chitlin’ Circuit, where Hendrix learned showman moves such as playing the guitar behind his back and with his teeth. Eventually a promoter offered him a chance at greater success in New York.

The Experience takes off

That opportunity didn’t quite work out as promised, and Hendrix found himself flat-broke in the Big Apple. At one point, he didn’t even own a guitar. He found session work and spent time playing with the Isley Brothers, Little Richard and King Curtis as well has fronting his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, around Greenwich Village in 1966.

Chas Chandler, the bassist for The Animals, was so blown away upon seeing Hendrix that he offered on the spot to manage him. Hendrix flew to England to seek his fortune. Along with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, he formed The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

For all of his struggles in America, Hendrix took this power trio on a meteoric rise up the UK charts in 1967. They scored Top 10 hits in England with “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary” in the first half of the year, and their acclaimed debut album, “Are You Experienced,” followed later in the year. The band’s success quickly spread to the United States.

Hendrix returned to America as a conquering hero. One of the enduring images from the Summer of Love is Hendrix setting his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival in California, kneeling before the burning instrument and coaxing flames from it like a voodoo priest. That performance exemplified Hendrix’s penchant for guitar pyrotechnics and presaged the figurative fireworks of his Woodstock performance by nearly two years.

The Experience recorded two more successful albums, “Axis: Bold as Love” and “Electric Ladyland,” before tensions with Redding led Hendrix to break up the band after a performance June 29, 1969, at the Denver Pop Festival. Eight weeks later, in his debut with his new band, Hendrix encapsulated the spirit of the ’60s.

A time of transition

Jimi Hendrix performs at Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt, West Germany, on January 17, 1969. Although he became famous fronting the Jimi Hendrix Experience, he performed at Woodstock in August 1969 with a larger band called Gypsy Sun and Rainbows. 

RED GRANDY/STARS AND STRIPES

Woodstock MC Chip Monck introduced the band as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, but Hendrix quickly corrected the record.

“Dig, we’d like to get something straight,” he said. “We got tired of the Experience … it was blowin’ our minds. So we decided to change the whole thing around, and call it Gypsy Sun and Rainbows. Or short, it’s nothin’ but a Band of Gypsys.”

The new band had only been rehearsing for a matter of weeks. Hendrix’s old Army buddy Billy Cox was on bass. Fellow Army and Chitlin’ Circuit veteran Larry Lee, who had returned from Vietnam two weeks earlier, played rhythm guitar. Rounding out the rhythm section were percussionists Jerry Velez and Juma Sultan. They were joined by Experience holdover Mitch Mitchell on drums.

The band’s set that morning was among Hendrix’s longest at 140 minutes, and it highlighted his new focus as a songwriter, bandleader and sonic chemist. It also showcased a performance that for many represents Woodstock itself.

If Cox’s recollection is correct, Hendrix hadn’t planned to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock, an assertion backed up by Mitchell in his book “Inside the Experience.” It was included in a medley that included “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” “Purple Haze” and a free-form jam that became known as “Woodstock Improvisation.”

If Hendrix was planning on making a generational statement, he didn’t let on. “You can leave if you want to,” Hendrix told the crowd near the end of the epic “Voodoo Child.” “We’re just jammin’, that’s all.”

Creating the legend

“The Star-Spangled Banner” quickly became more than “just jammin’.” The performance was Hendrix’s vision, but he had some help in making the moment iconic.

By the time Hendrix took the stage, the crowd at Woodstock was far from the “half a million strong” immortalized in the Joni Mitchell song. He had been offered a Sunday-night slot during the rain-plagued festival, but Hendrix insisted on keeping his position as the closer. As a result, he didn’t play until Monday morning.

Estimates vary, but conservatively the crowd occupying the disaster area that 72 hours earlier had been farmer Max Yasgur’s alfalfa field was half the size it had been at its peak. It’s possible that only a 10th of the attendees remained. Exponentially more people saw it in the theatrical release of the “Woodstock” film or in its countless airings during PBS pledge weeks over the years. One clip of the performance on YouTube has more than 3 million views.

Thelma Schoonmaker, a three-time Academy Award winner for film editing on “Raging Bull,” “The Aviator” and “The Departed,” received the first of her eight Oscar nominations for her work on “Woodstock.” (Incidentally, all three films were directed by her fellow “Woodstock” editor Martin Scorsese.) Whatever Hendrix’s intent, the editors definitely drew a parallel between what was happening on stage and what was happening in Southeast Asia.

“We had decided to go out in the field and film the remnant of the field like it was Vietnam,” Schoonmaker said in Clara Bingham’s “Witness to the Revolution.” “We got beautiful footage, and we used that against Jimi Hendrix playing, massacring ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ with Vietnam sounds.”

The moment, a highlight of the film, might never have happened if not for a bit of good luck.

“Woodstock” director Michael Wadleigh, who was filming Hendrix’s set, was relieved to capture the moment for posterity. In a 2012 interview with NBC’s “Today,” he recalled that he was dealing with an overheating camera and that the volume of Hendrix’s Marshall amplifier kept him from determining if the camera’s motor was running.

“If it weren’t as powerfully photographed, it may not be as famous as it is today,” Wadleigh told NBC. “I remember people literally tearing their hair out. I looked out [from the camera] with one eye and I saw people grabbing their heads, so ecstatic, so stunned and moved, a lot of people holding their breath, including me.

“No one had ever heard that. It caught all of us by surprise.”

“The Star-Spangled Banner” had been heard by Hendrix’s concert audiences. He played the song live nearly 50 times, with more than two dozen of those versions coming before Woodstock. Wisconsin National Guard Sgt. Maj. Brian Bieniek, a Gulf War and Iraq War veteran who is researching a book he hopes to write about Hendrix, believes the Woodstock version is a cut above.

“The Woodstock version had more impact, I think, based on the event it was played at,” said Bieniek, 46, of Madison. “Some of those other [versions] don’t sound as good, and I don’t know if it’s because he was getting the feedback better at Woodstock or depending on what venue he’s at, but … I honestly think that one stands up there at the top.”

Lasting legacy

PHOTO: Jimi Hendrix performs at Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt, West Germany, on January 17, 1969. Rolling Stone ranked Hendrix No. 1 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists. 

STARS AND STRIPES

Hendrix has long been synonymous with the electric guitar, and his legacy has been burnished since his death from drug-induced asphyxiation in September 1970. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Rolling Stone ranked Hendrix No. 1 in its most recent list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists. The writeup in that issue, by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, referenced the “riots in the streets and napalm bombs” in Hendrix’s “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In 2011, Guitar World magazine ranked the Woodstock version of the national anthem No. 1 among Hendrix’s 100 greatest performances.

It’s a performance that remains subject to speculation. Because so much of the music played at Woodstock was politically charged (Richie Havens’ “Freedom,” Country Joe McDonald’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” and the Jefferson Airplane’s “Uncle Sam Blues“), it’s easy to read a statement of protest into Hendrix’s “The Star-Spangled Banner.” From there, it’s not a stretch to draw a straight line to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s silent anthem protests.

“I think, in retrospect, it divided,” said Williams, who is black. “You had the hippies and you had the non-hippies and then you had the right and you had the left. And so everybody on the left looked at it as a protest, [and] everybody on the right looked at it as almost like kneeling at the national anthem during a football game, as unpatriotic. There was no middle ground. No one just said it was a performance of music, and let’s leave it alone. So as we’ve gone through societal changes ... it’s usually up to somebody far right or somebody far left to decide for the rest of us what is patriotic, what is not, what is an insult and what is not, and the rest of us kind of have to deal with it.”

Hendrix’s performance started an enduring debate, and it has stood the test of time. It came to represent the apex of the hippie ideal, which for many died as a result of the violence at the Rolling Stones’ ill-fated show at Altamont Speedway in December 1969. Whatever Hendrix might have meant on that Monday morning has, as Greil Marcus said, its own integrity.

“I’m pretty sure [the] Woodstock [version of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’] was a protest song, but there’s so many different versions of that, and they range from protest to comradeship to fear to fury, and many, many things besides that,” music journalist, author and SiriusXM radio host Dave Marsh told Stars and Stripes in a 2016 interview. “Of everything in the psychedelic era that was really just out there, musically, and sonically, that is the greatest achievement because he managed to put into it, at various points, so many different perspectives.

“It WAS a generational statement, but it was a generational statement not of protest but of compassion -- for everybody, including the Vietnamese. I think it was the most spiritual moment of his entire career, when he would do that song. It wasn’t a gimmick. Not to my ear.”

moores.sean@stripes.com

Bay Shores Recollections - June 1969 with Candy

Bay Shores as I remember it when I graduated from high school.

Many thanks to Mitch Goodwin who wrote:

Subject: Bayshores ect. Summer of 69

 

Bill Kelly;  Following  up on your request about my recollections  of the summer of 69 at AC Pop Festival, playing with my group Candy at Bayshores ,Tony Mart and The Dunes plus some pics. I have a Youtube video some pics and a bio.https://youtu.be/V9IzqKDceXA If you are interested in more music or stories from this group let me know.  Bill.  Regards, Mitch Godwin

When you walked in the front door of Bayshores there was a storage room on the left and then a wall that ran behind the grill - this wall contained dozens if not hundreds of black and white glossy promo photos of the bands that played there. This was one of them.

AC Pop Fest and Woodstock Recollections #1

BK Notes: My old - and now we are old - high school mate Jerry Montgomery wrote down theses recollections of Woodstock. There were four of us - besides myself there was Jerry, Marc Jordan and Bob Katchnick (spelling may be wrong), all Camden Catholic High School grads in the Class of '69. We lost track of Bob - and can't find him over the internet because we can't spell his last name. Marc went to NYU, joined the USMC ROTC, became a USMC officer and a DC area attorney. I think he is now retired in Florida and we are trying to find him for a reunion this weekend. I will write my recollections over the next few days. 

Summer 1969'

I spent the summer of 1969 in Ocean City NJ, (a summer resort used by many in the Philadelphia area), along with a few friends. The parents of one, Bill Kelly, owned a large house there and rented rooms to vacationers. They allowed us all to crash for free that summer. Whenever the house was fully rented we stayed in a small shed, with bunk beds in the backyard, and with no facilities other than an outdoor shower. Consequently, as August 15, 1969, also my 19th birthday, was approaching, we were well positioned geographically to attend a rock concert.

Atlantic City Pop Festival

Outdoor concerts with multiple acts had a lot of appeal for enthusiastic adolescents who could handle the heat, humidity, and generally uncomfortable summer conditions in the North East. We proved our mettle living out in the shed. In early August we attended the nearby Atlantic City NJ Pop Festival. 

I still remember Joni Mitchel walking off stage complaining that no one was listening. I was. I remember her saying that. I also remember, later in the day, making my way and crawling under the stage and sitting there while Procol Harum and others played. 

That was a fun concert but the acts couldn’t compare with those advertised in New York State scheduled a couple of weeks later.

Woodstock Festival

Posters advertising the Woodstock Festival were hung everywhere along the board walk in Ocean City. We weren’t sure exactly how we’d get to the concert since none of us bothered to get a job that summer and hadn't a car or much cash between us. Bill's mother, Mary Kelly, generously lent four of us the family car and with me at the wheel we headed out, early Friday morning on August 15th, for Bethel New York. (Mrs. Kelly later regretted that decision while watching TV coverage of the event. It focused on all the hallucinogenic drugs and orgies taking place. I can say for myself that I didn’t see even one orgy). 

The ride for most of the 200+ miles was uneventful until traffic began to slow greatly as we got closer to the concert area just a few hours before it was set to begin. Fortunately, we picked up a hitchhiker who had been to the concert site the night before. That turned out to be especially fortuitous.

On The Road

Traffic on the four lane highway into Bethal was at a virtual standstill, at least for the two lanes heading in the direction towards the concert. There was absolutely no one coming the other way. I don’t remember much about our co-rider but the young long-haired hitch hiker we had picked up assured us that all four lanes were going the same way the night before. At the rate we were going, well we weren’t moving much at all and were concerned we'd never get there. So with as much safety as I could manage, considering that I was heading into an oncoming traffic lane, I casually steered into that unoccupied section of the, very long and straight, highway and we began to make very good time indeed! Yes we were a happy crew and weren't deterred by such an insignificant detail as a solid white line in the middle of the road. Besides it was a clear day and we could see a great distance ahead. We passed many cars and were making great time. Though eventually, as might be expected, we could see a car approaching us from the other direction. From a safety standpoint this was not a problem it was far away. I just stopped the car to move back into a more 'correct' highway lane. Then I noticed something and began to feel a bit troubled. I remember thinking, "Shit, is that a cop car?"

Arrested Development?

And yes it was a officer of the law and he had no trouble spotting us on the wrong side of the highway. He pulled directly in front of the car and stopped. He sat and patiently waited while I very slowly maneuvered back in line as traffic inched forward. Now, realigned with thousands of fine upstanding fellow citizens, I’m imagining the worse. So, we were fairly dumbstruck when the officer restarts his patrol car and continued driving on down the highway to, I suppose, head off the next idiot! But we're still stuck, albeit well ahead of our previous position, in a long slow moving line. Once again our hitchhiker has some valuable information.

Parking

We were approaching a small country dirt road that everyone was ignoring. And we would have done the same since there was no way to know how close we were to the concert entrance or what relationship that side road had to anything! But our hitchhiker was more informed and was certain, from his previous day’s experience, that it was a back door, so to speak, that eventually leads to the concert area. Of course considering his previous brilliant advice, we turned off the highway and make our way down the dirt road. It felt good to be moving again and before long we were passing parked cars on both sides of the road continuing to search for a better parking spot for a few miles. Vehicles quickly became so tightly squeezed together that there seemed to be virtually no parking anywhere. Though I did spot a very small patch of real estate, not big enough to park in, unless perhaps you had a small car and were willing to extend out just a touch into the road and are squinting. So I wedged us in. We get out and find ourselves with an elevated view of the stage, still a work in progress, about a half mile away. I believe we found the last first-rate parking space at Woodstock just hours before the concert was set to begin. Now, if only we had tickets.

Tickets Anyone?

If I remember correctly, concert tickets were just $18.00. However, that was not an insignificant amount of money at the time and only one of us actually had cash with him. Possibly he also had a credit card, I don’t remember. Although construction was still underway, an enclosing fence around the entire viewing area was about complete and an entrance gate provided the only reasonable means of access. Bill, cash in hand, was actively looking for ticket sales. A fair amount of people were milling about entering and exiting and we couldn’t see anyone either selling tickets or collecting them. So we casually entered through the gate and found a nice place to sit in the middle of a gigantic field near a metal tower with huge speakers. Sometime later an announcement came over those speakers. Everyone would need to exit and re-enter but with tickets in hand this time. I thought, oh hell, do we even have money? At that time the grounds were not very full with just a few thousand people sitting in place. Everyone just sat and stared. No one moved an inch. Later that day it was announced that it was a free concert. But we already knew that.

Really Good View

Although we had a fine close centered view on the field, Bob - a fellow traveller, wanted me to go with him and try to get closer. So we made our way towards the high fence separating the stage from the crowd. You couldn’t sit or stand close to it and see anything, so that space was being used as a pathway from one side of the field to the other. We found a small spot and sidled in. I’m not completely certain but I believe every single one of the people making their way along the stage wall were completely spaced out on something. 

We passed the time looking for anyone who didn't look high and gave up. But we were in the front row for all the acts Friday afternoon and evening. Later when I heard there was going to be a movie I wondered if we would be viewable. At one point Bob even walked over to the fence and pulled himself up and peered over to get a closer view of Ritchie Havens. But if you’ve seen the movie you know that there are just crowd shots from the stage. Though, we must be in the last part of the scene at the very end of Richie Haven’s set when the camera pans out and shows a wide shot of the huge crowd. We’re in there somewhere in the very front row seated, a bit to Ritchie's right.

Zombies

Some of the acts that I actually remember on the 'Friday Folk' day were Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Melanie, Ravi Shankar and of course Richie Havens. But it was a relatively early night compared with Saturday and Sunday which continued to dawn the next day. So when the music came to an end I found myself walking along the perimeter of the enclosing fence towards the entrance gate with a hundred thousand or so who were also thinking that a night in a vehicle was preferable to a night outside on wet grass. It was very dark and slow going. But I noticed a small section of fence had fallen over. From a straight line standpoint here was a clear opportunity for a significant short cut. 

Well, it was as clear as it could be when viewed from the crest of a hill in complete darkness. No one seemed interested in taking advantage of this opportunity so I started alone and moved down a grassy, very slippery hill, praising myself for such a prudent decision, and I was in high spirits right up to the moment I plopped a foot into the marsh. Oh yeah. There was nothing separating me from the road except a large significantly boggy area. I decided it would be best to turn around and go back with the sensible people. When I turned around though I saw I couldn’t. What looked in the moonlight like a zombie army had followed the lead of one intrepid trail blazer, myself, and they were blocking reasonable egress back to the hill top. So, I lead many through the bog and added very muddy feet to my rain soaked attire. I did get to my destination earlier than I would have otherwise. I spent the night sleeping in an upright position in a small hot, humid, smelly vehicle with three others. 

Turns out that bunkbeds in a shed were a lot more comfortable in August and we were not remotely perpared for any of it. In retrospect, we should have stayed in the field.

All in all, it was a pretty good Friday - and 19th birthday. Saturday was interesting too. But I forget most of it. Maybe Bill will write something to fill it out.

Note to Bill. I remember this:

Don't forget to mention how you left the three of us and walked off by yourself Saturday night. Later I told the others I was going to 'find Bill'. Pretty laughable in a crowd of a few 100 thousand but nevertheless in my extremely tired state I began walking to the rear of the field and at one point actually shouted "Bill"! No answer of course. A few minutes later I shouted it again. After a second I heard, "What?". You were standing near by next to a small tree. I found you.

Dick Richards Boccelli - An Original Comet RIP

DICK RICHARDS BOCCELLI

Comets drummer, Ocean City resident Dick Boccelli dies at 95

VINCENT JACKSON Staff Writer

Press of Atlantic City

Jul 13, 2019

Dick Boccelli was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Bill Haley’s Comets.

[Dick Boccelli, known as Dick Richards when he was the drummer for Bill Haley and the Comets, is pictured in a photo at his Ocean City home, Tuesday, May 21, 2019.]

[ Dick Boccelli, known as Dick Richards when he was the drummer for Bill Haley and the Comets, in this undated photo, Tuesday, May 21, 2019. ]

Dick Boccelli was the drummer for Bill Haley and His Comets but sometimes stepped out from the drum kit to sing. ‘That picture could have been taken in Wildwood,’ he said of the undated photo. Boccelli, 95, of Ocean City, is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dick Boccelli, who performed under the name Dick Richards as a member of one of the world’s first rock ‘n’ roll bands, died at 95 Friday morning in Ocean City, according to his oldest daughter, Beverly Walker.

Boccelli, who had lived in Ocean City since the 1960s, was the drummer for Bill Haley and His Comets when they recorded Haley’s most famous singles, “Rock Around the Clock” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

“He just enjoyed everything he did with gutso,” Walker said. “Dad was lot of fun. He was really a great guy. ... Dad had the most amazing spirit.”

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Boccelli helped make musical history during Memorial Day weekend in 1954 when “Rock Around the Clock” was played for the first time live at the now defunct Hotel Hofbrau in Wildwood.

Ocean City-based Rock and Rock Hall of Famer looks back on historic Wildwood gig.

For Dick Boccelli, the drummer for Bill Haley and His Comets, the group’s Memorial Day weekend….

“We knew what to do, just lay the beat down. That’s all. We didn’t do anything else but give the people what they want,” said Boccelli during an interview with The Press two months ago. “They (the girls) really got into it.”

Besides playing the song live during gigs, Boccelli sang background vocals during the recording session. The tune’s success was fueled by its inclusion in the Glenn Ford movie “The Blackboard Jungle,” which opened in March 1955.

Boccelli joined the Comets in 1953 and left the group at the end of 1955 with bassist Marshall Lytle and saxophonist Joey Ambrose to start their own band, the Jodimars, which lasted from 1955 to 1958.

During Boccelli’s time in the Comets, he appeared in the Universal Pictures 1954 short black-and-white film “Round Up of Rhythm,” which marked the first appearance by a rock band on film.

With the group, Boccelli appeared on “The Sammy Kaye Show,” “The Milton Berle Show” and, most importantly, “The Ed Sullivan Show.” The Comets did the first live rock ‘n’ roll performance on a major TV show when they appeared on Sullivan’s program live from Connecticut.

The Comets were also known for being the first American rock ‘n’ roll band to play in Europe and for having the first million-selling rock ‘n’ roll single with their cover of “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” according to bassist Walter “Wally” Bucks, who played with Boccelli in his last band, the Ready Rockers.

Boccelli wasn’t just a rock drummer. He also acted. He did local theater, including with the Ocean City Players during the 1960s. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was on Broadway, appearing in “The Ritz” with Rita Moreno and F. Murray Abraham.

Boccelli appeared on the now-defunct soap opera “The Edge of Night” in 1980, the movie “Shakedown” with Peter Weller and Sam Elliott in 1988, “My Blue Heaven” with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis in 1990 and the now-defunct HBO TV series “Oz” during the 1998-99 season.

The original members of the Comets who played with Haley reunited in 1989 and played until 2014. They entertained at the Ocean City Music Pier, the Wildwoods Convention Center, (the Flander’s Hotel in Ocean City), and the now-defunct Bubba Mac Shack in Somers Point and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.

Besides the Comets, Boccelli formed his own rock ‘n’ roll trio known as the Ready Rockers with Bucks, 56, of Linwood, and guitarist Tom Gargan, 61, of Ocean City. The trio played at the Ocean City Free Public Library and other places in Cape May and Atlantic counties from 2013 until September.

Besides the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2012, Boccelli also was honored with a mural of Haley and the Comets in 2014 on a building at Oak and Pacific avenues in Wildwood. There is also a plaque commemorating “Rock Around the Clock” where the Hofbrau once stood.

Bucks said Boccelli told him one day playing drums and music kept him alive.

“He was a classy person with a great outlook and a positive attitude. He was always laughing. He was a true gentleman,” Bucks said. “Music was truly his life. It was his inspiration.”

Comets drummer, Ocean City resident Dick Boccelli dies at 95

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dick Boccelli, who performed under the name Dick Richards as a m…

https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/greate-bay-country-club-to-host-service-for-former-comets/article_2da2fb76-83a8-531b-a77d-1654d00580a7.html?fbclid=IwAR2N_F7HeokdXQrHup53Wkr4Vi2C3Y0-7YVeC7vXctM2n1TwKVVl7ic3ClQ

A memorial service for Richard Marley “Dick” Boccelli, former drummer for Bill Haley and His Comets, will be held from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. Aug. 7 at Greate Bay Country Club in Somers Point.

Boccelli, who used the name Dick Richards professionally, died at age 95 on July 12 at the Shores at Wesley Manor in Ocean City. He was a successful musician and actor for 60 years and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of the Comets.

Boccelli was on the drums when the Comets played “Rock Around the Clock” live for the first time Memorial Day weekend 1954 at the now defunct Hotel Hofbrau in Wildwood.

In 1963, Boccelli’s family moved to Ocean City, where he acted in local theater.

Besides playing with the revived Original Bill Haley’s Comets in 1987, Boccelli also founded his own group, the Ready Rockers, who performed in Atlantic and Cape May counties until he succumbed to illness in March.

On Aug. 7, friends, family and the general public will have the opportunity to reminisce and talk about Boccelli from 3:30 to 6 p.m. The main service will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the country club at 901 Mays Landing Road.

Bobby Campanell RIP 1951-2019

Bobby Campanell – RIP

The Boss and Our Loss - Bobby Campanell - the Pete Rose of Rock and Roll 

Bob Campanell was the first real rock and roller who turned me on to what rock and roll is really about.

I’ll never forget the night I first met him, on a Memorial Day weekend at Mothers – an all night joint just on the other side of the creek from the Somers Point on the Longport Boulevard that put it in Egg Harbor Township. So Mothers flourished all night when the Somers Point bars were required to close at 2 a.m, just as the Dunes did a few miles up the road and the Attic and Brownies did on the backroads.

It was early in the season when I ventured into Mothers early that morning. I didn't have to pay a cover since the place was owned by a friend of mine – Andrew – who also owned the historic Anchorage in Somers Point and a popular first class Italian restaurant in the Ducktown section of Atlantic City, where his family had roots.

So I sat in and listened to the Shakes for the first time and was astonished. 

I had not heard this style of music before – where the lead singer, before breaking in to a song, would give a little story behind it – keeping up a steady drummer backbeat, a slow bass rhythm, and a little guitar melody while the lead singer Bob Campanell explained how he recently came down to Somers Point and got off exit 30 on the Parkway, and tried to get a gig on the then famous Bay Avenue Strip.

As the rhythm and the percussion stayed steady, Bobby recalled how they went first to the club that had the neon arrow on the roof – and entered the doors above which read a sign that said: Through These Doors Enter The Most Beautiful Women in the World. With the college pennants on the ceiling, it was quite clear he was refereeing to Tony Marts – The Showplace of the World!

The Shakes got an audition with the Boss – Anthony Marotta, who sat by the door at the little side bar, smoking cigars and sipping a drink. But after a few original songs the boss cut them off – cut off the electricity – and said, “Get Out-a-here! You boys are playing for yourselves – you have to play the hits!”

And at that point in relating the story, Bobby and the Shakes kicked in – the percussion picked up a notch, the bass increased the rhythm, and Bobby began to sing, what Anthony Marotta, Sr. told them, “Hit the Road, Jack, and never come back, no more, nor more…..” I was blown away.

So at the end of that set I asked Bob, whose name I didn’t even know at the time, if I could interview him about his music, as at the time I wrote a music column for the Ocean City Broadsider Magazine. And since the owner of Mothers had taken out a nice advertisement with us, I felt obligated to write about the entertainment he presented.

No problem, Bob said, motioning me to follow him from the bar to the little storage closet they used as a dressing room.

With the other members of the band sitting around us, drinking beers, I asked Bob about how he got started in music, and noticed the old tin Beatles lunch bin he said he had from his grammar school days, that he now used to keep his guitar picks and strings.

When I said that baseball star Pete Rose bore a remarkable resemblance to him, he reached over and put on a Philadelphia Philly baseball cap and grinned, that brought out the likeness even more. From then on I called Bobby the Pete Rose of Rock and Roll, as he played just as hard.

I didn’t get much out of Bob that night, but knew that we were born in the same year – 1951, and graduated from high school at the same time 1969 – him from Triton and me from Camden Catholic, both in South Jersey. So I felt we had something in common.

Later that year, on Labor Day, I requested and Bobby gave me permission to tape record their final show of the summer, that I did on two 90 minute cassette tapes. Sitting at the bar in front of the band, I set the microphone hanging from the glass racks with the tape recorder on the bar. With the tingling of the glasses, and conversations as a backdrop, you can almost smell the cigarette smoke like you can see in the original LA private detective TV series Peter Gunn, whose favorite bar was Mothers, from which the local joint took its name.

I still have the two 90 cassette tapes and occasionally play them, going back into like a time machine, to that place at that time when the Shakes ruled my music world.

Around the same time – give or take a year or so – late 1970s, the top rock radio station in the country – WMMR – put out what they called a Breakout album, a 33-1/3 rpm that included a song by the Shakes that Bobby wrote – “Pour it Out,” undeniably the best song on the LP.

And with the radio airtime they got a special gig – opening for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes at a suburban Philadelphia college auditorium – just like Eddie and the Cruisers. It was their chance to breakout from being a local Jersey Shore bar band to a full blown national act with records, hits on radio and the charts.

That never happened, and I didn’t find out until years later when I got off a train from D.C. in Philly and caught a bus to Ocean City. Pulling in to the Camden bus station at the old Parkade building, across from City Hall, I reminisced about picking up my father there every Friday to drive to Ocean City for the weekend. I wondered if there was anyone around town who I knew, and Bubba (real name Ansen Cooper) – the drummer for the Shakes got on the bus and gave me a big toothy smile and joined me in the back of the bus.

That’s when he told me the story about opening for Southside at the college auditorium. They had a regular bar gig the night before, and he picked up some chick and got drunk and woke up late, and by the time he got to the gig, Southside was playing and the Shakes had canceled, they couldn’t go on without a drummer. And he was crying just telling me the story of how he blew their best chance to make the big time. But Bobby forgave him.

The Shakes continued to play Mothers and the Attic after hour joints, then moved on to Margate, where they were the house band at Merrals for a number of seasons. Merrals was open until the wee hours of the morning, and the Shakes didn’t take the stage until midnight but played until closing – long and tiresome sets, but no one was ever disappointed. The Shakes were tremendous, and filled the joint to the rafters, the dance floor was packed, and a line to get in ran across the street to Lenny’s Hot Dogs.

Afterwards I occasionally joined Bobby and the Shakes in an extended tour of some of Atlantic City’s all night establishments.

Then one day Bobby pulled up on the alley outside the River Rat Club – the three car garage behind my parent’s Ocean City home that had a 9 foot regulation pool table with leather net pockets that came from our friend’s home in Camden. As me and Bobby played a game of  8 ball, he began to get emotional and said that he just learned that his girl of a few years had betrayed him had another lover. Bobby said that he felt that he had wasted years with this girl, years he had invested in her that was now down the drain. I tried to consul him, as he would counsel so many others over the next years. I said that he should consider it a learning experience, and move on from here.

And then, thank God, he met Linda, who I think was a waitress at Egos, the disco that was built on the old Tony Marts site. And she didn’t let him down. No more ventures into Atlantic City after gigs, he went straight home, and loved it.

When Southside Johnny and the Asbury Juke were billed to play a cancer benefit at the front ballroom of Convention Hall – now Boardwalk Hall, I hired Bo Higbee to video tape part of the show and allow me to do on camera interviews with some of  the band. Afterwards we went to Merrals and filmed the scene there – including a walk around the dance floor and stage as Bobby and the Shakes performed “Hollywood Boulevard.” It was a memorable experience, except Boo later informed me that at Merrals, he had failed to turn on the audio tape and we had no sound.

In any case, I stayed friends with Bob and the Shakes were my favorite band of all time.

One day, sitting on my front porch in Ocean City, Bob gave me advertisements – photos and reviews of their Asbury Park days and I prepared a good story on the Shakes Asbury Park days for the Atlantic City Sun weekly. I wrote it and submitted it, but the newspapers offices had a fire and all was destroyed. I felt really bad telling Bob the memorabilia was lost, but he just shrugged, and was very forgiving, as he always was.

It wasn’t long after that when I drove up Highway Nine to Tuckerton to a small sleazy bar where Bob was playing a solo gig. As I walked in he smiled and winked but didn’t miss a beat.

I had seen Bruce Springsteen play the Spectrum the night before, and when Bobby was on a break, hot and sweaty he said that he was at the show too. Springsteen’s secretary, who he knew by her first name, called him and said there were front row tickets for the show waiting for him, and when he picked them up there was an invitation for him to go backstage where they renewed old ties.

Bob said that Bruce invited him to attend that night’s show as well and when I asked incredulously - Why didn’t you go?, Bob said, “Because I had to work too.”

I thought, but didn’t say, how ironical it was that both Bruce and Bob were playing so hard, for the same length of time, and just as entertaining, but Bruce was playing before tens of thousands of fans for hundreds of thousands of dollars, while Bob was playing just has hard for a hundred people and a hundred bucks.

The last time I saw Bobby play was a solo gig at Tyson Merriman’s Tuckahoe Inn. As Billy Walton said in his tribute to Bobby, it didn’t matter if he was playing for a packed house or just a few people, he always played just as hard, and with a meaningful passion. I requested his original “Pour it Out,” and while he said he hadn’t played that in a long time, he really poured it out.

And then Patty Blee, who also plays in a band with a red head named Patty Scialfa, announced on Facebook that they were doing a benefit show for Ernie T. – presenting him with an award indicting – err inducting him into the New Jersey Blues Hall of Fame, I knew Bobby would be there.

And he was, playing two songs at the end of the night, Canned Heat's "Lets Work Together," and Curtis Mayfield's “People Get Ready,” – “ People get ready, a train is commin’ – you don’t need no ticket – just get on.”

Then he died in the arms of his wife. What a way to go.

Bobby finally made the Big Time – he poured it out and broke out and is now on that train with all of his Hollywood Heroes. Hold on Bobby, I’m commin’ to catch that train too……

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The 1969 Parkway Murders - 50 Years Later - Did Ted Bundy Do It?

A COLD CASE HEATS UP

Ted Bundy & the 1969 Parkway Co-Ed Murders

By William Kelly

billkelly3@gmail.com 

(609) 346-0229

As this is the 50th Anniversary of the 1960 Parkway Murders - I will be reposting some of the articles I have written about it over the years. 

Whenever the bodies of young women are discovered and there's a suspected serial killer on the loose, it's easy for anyone who was at the Jersey Shore in the summer of '69 to remember the Memorial Day weekend Parkway Coed murders.

None of the original investigators on that case are still active. Those who have been assigned the Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry cold case file have had to start from the beginning.

For most people, it was a typical Memorial Day weekend, the beginning of another summer season at the South Jersey shore. Then on Monday-Memorial Day-a parkway maintenance worker named Elwood "Woody" Faunce discovered the bodies of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry in secluded underbrush off the Garden State Parkway.

The two 19-year-old college coeds had been missing since the previous Friday when they failed to return to Pennsylvania after a few days at the Jersey Shore. They had stayed at an Ocean City rooming house on Ninth Street. They'd toured the Boardwalk, they'd gone to the beach, and after dark they hit the Somers Point nightclubs. 

Returning to their rooming house about two o'clock in the morning, when the bands went off, they packed their bags and said goodbye to the rooming house owners. Stopping at the Circle Diner in Somers Point, they sat with two young men who bought them breakfast. 

As they were leaving the diner, an off duty policeman was leaving the Jolly Roger bar across the street. The policeman later said that he saw the two girls leaving the diner in the blue convertable. They stopped for a young man with his arm in a sling, who got in the car. 

Perry and Davis and their passenger then drove onto the Parkway never to be seen alive again.

When the girls failed to make it home on Friday night, their parents notified the authorities. Police searched for their car, a powder blue 1966 Chevrolet convertible. After a few days, the fathers of the missing girls rented a plane and flew over the route they knew they would have taken, looking for the car in the weeds off the road in case they'd had an accident.

Then Howard Blazer of Blazer's Garage on Tilton Road returned from an out-of-state fishing trip and learned about the missing girls from news reports. He had towed the convertible off the Parkway on Friday. It was found with the top down on the side of the road around mile marker 31.9.

A New Jersey State Trooper, Louis Sturr, had found the car abandoned early Friday morning when he first went on patrol. He'd called the tags in but there was no report of the car being stolen, so Blazer was called to have it towed to his Northfield garage. Blazer then went fishing and Trooper Sturr left the area for the weekend.

Everyone forgot about the towed car until the following Monday when the bodies were finally found. The delay gave the killer a three day lead before the investigation officially began. Despite a massive effort that lasted the entire summer, the case remains unsolved.

As the years stretched into decades, there were periodic peaks of media and public interest when a new suspect emerged or a mass murderer confessed to the crime. Both Gerald Eugene Stano and Ted Bundy, two of the most prolific mass murderers in history, claimed credit for the Parkway murders. The police took the Stano confession seriously enough to send two detectives down to Florida State Prison to interview him, but he didn't know any of the specifics of the crime. He had the murder taking place on the wrong side of the road.

As for Bundy, after being caught in Colorado for the murder of a number of young women and escaping twice, he moved on to Florida where capital punishment laws remained in effect. Captured again after going on a rampage of murder there, Bundy settled into Florida's death row. Before being executed on January 24, 1989, Bundy went through a series of taped counseling sessions with a court-approved forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Art Norman.

Because of patient-doctor confidentiality issues, Norman couldn't reveal what Bundy said until after Bundy was dead. Norman reported that Bundy had told him what it would have been like to have been the Parkway killer. Talking in the third person, Bundy spoke about leaving Philadelphia for California when he "decided to go back home to the west coast, sort of like a defeated state of mind. But before he does, he decides to take a little bit of a jaunt to what they call the Jersey Shore."

Bundy told Norman, “This is early summer. So after being more or less detached from people for a long period of months, he didn't have many friends, didn't go anywhere, just more or less had school and walks on the beach. And he just gets a (mumble) sees young women lined up like a vision. Like, you know...eventually he found himself tearing around the place for a couple of days. So without really planning anything, he picked up a couple of young girls and ended up with...the first time he had ever done it. Sort of a spontaneous kind of something he hadn't planned, but something that had been building. That was the edge...SO when he left for the coast, it was not just getting away; it was more.ke an escape."

"Is this just an amazing coincidence?" Norman asked at the time of Bundy's execution. "That he just happened to be there on Memorial Day before he went back to the west coast and two girls disappeared in that area at the time? I believe this is where he really started! ‘

Robert N. McAllister, Jr., the Atlantic County Prosecutor at the time of the murders, kept the case open while he was in office. The next prosecutor, Jeffrey Blitz, took over in 1972 and he periodically reviewed the case over the course of two decades. He was in office when Bundy was executed.

Blitz said, "I spoke to Dr. Norman. He had come to the conclusion that Bundy was responsible for the (Parkway) coed murders. 1 asked him if Bundy said he did it and Norman said no. But based on what Bundy said, Norman believed he could draw the conclusion that Bundy was responsible. That's not satisfying."

What is convincing to a psychiatrist is not as satisfying to a lawyer. But according to Norman, more specific details did come out of his interviews with Bundy.

Bundy was a Temple University student in 1969 who said that instead of taking a professor's car to California right away as he had promised, he drove to New York City, visited the sex shops off Broadway, then drove down to Ocean City and looked at the girls on the Boardwalk and the beach. Most of the other girls Bundy murdered fit the same profile as Perry and Davis, and they were also found in the woods just off major highways.

 While Bundy's fingerprints on the car or his DNA evidence at the crime scene could prove conclusive, the New Jersey State Police and the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office are both reluctant to pin him to the crime. If it was Bundy, then their failure to Drawing on details of the crime, Barth has developed a plausible catch him led to the deaths of 50 more beautiful young women.

No investigators from New Jersey even attended the Bundy Conference, a meeting of federal, state and local law enforcement officers who met at Quantico, Virginia to review unsolved crimes that could possibly be attributed to Bundy. Yet after local police were publicly criticized for the "tragedy of errors" that occurred during the initial phase of the investigation, Elizabeth Perry's father wrote a letter to the editor of local newspapers saying, “I comprehend their abilities quite more clearly than other residents who presume to criticize them. This is not to suggest that every last man on the force is a Sherlock Holmes, but it was apparent to me, and I’m sure I can speak for Mr. Davis, that they are dedicated and competent people trying to do a job against great odds.”

While few officials today actually recall the details of the 1969 Parkway murders, the still unresolved nature of the case stands out as a reminder to local police detectives and state and federal investigators as they continue to pour over the evidence in other, similar crimes. The Parkway coed murders, if solved, could eventually lead to the resolution of other, similar cold cases.

The case has already served as a basis for more than one book. Christian Barth, a Cherry Hill attorney, wrote a novel based on the 1969 Parkway coed murders. The plot presumes that Bundy was the perpetrator and tries to get inside his mind. The synopsis states that the book is “based on a true story.” Barth’s book, The Origins of Infamy, tells of Ted Bundy’s alleged involvement in the murder of two coeds at the Jersey Shore on Memorial Day, 1969.

Ocean City historian Fred Miller has said, "Barth's novel is a spellbinding re-imagination of one of the more disturbing cold cases in local history."

"Though I considered writing a non-fiction book," Barth said, "I felt that the story would be more realistically portrayed through Bundy’s viewpoint, utilizing now-extinct Jersey Shore nightclubs such as Tony Marts and Bay Shores Café for a backdrop so as to maintain an accurate degree of historical authenticity.”

“Drawing on details of the crime, Barth has developed a plausible scenario as to what really happened. But did Bundy do it? 

Pat Lawall thinks so, and she may have some photos to prove it.

The fortieth anniversary of the crime in 2009 sparked the publication of a number of news and feature articles, and as so often happens, the media publicity generated some new witnesses.

Pat Lawall came out of the woodwork and said, “I read an article on Bundy and the Parkway murders and I absolutely believe that Ted Bundy killed those girls. I’m from the Philadelphia suburbs and I stayed in Ocean City with my best friend and her family who owned a summer home there. We spent a couple weeks each summer beginning in 1968."

"One summer we spent our time at the Ninth Street beach by the jetty because that was the most popular spot. There was a guy who hung out at the beach each day who constantly tried to get us to go with him. The three of us were all scared of him because he looked strange with his bushy hair and beard and he was the only one who wore long jeans to the beach. He never wore a bathing suit or shorts and he looked very out of place. He had his arm in a sling. We would occasionally see him getting into his car which he parked on Ninth Street. It appeared as though he was living in his car. He seemed to have a ton of things in there. He drove a Volkswagen Bug. He told us he was from California and his name was Ted Bluchell and that he used to be in the band The Association.”

“While we certainly knew The Association, we had no idea who the band members were. We all found him extremely creepy. His eyes were shifty. He did seem to favor talking to me and I found many excuses to get away from him. At that time, I had long brown hair parted in the middle, which was the style.”

“It wasn’t until 20-plus years later when I was watching a show on Ted Bundy and they showed a picture of him with bushy hair and a beard that I knew it was him. You don’t forget someone who really scared you. In this same show, they mentioned the New Jersey coed murders. They said Bundy may have been involved and I was convinced at that moment he was.”

“It finally made sense, the way he was at the beach in jeans looking so out of place, and so determined to get someone to go with him. Everyone else was just hanging out enjoying the sun with friends. He was all alone. It also explains why he would tell us that his name was Ted Bluechel and that he was in the band The Association. I think he was making that up to impress us to go with him. But he used his real first name.”

There is, in fact, a real Ted Bluechel who actually was with The Association. If Bundy was impersonating Ted Bluechel of The Association, a photo would certainly nail it.

Wayne Miller, who now works at Pleasantville Schools and sells insurance, also read the fortieth anniversary news coverage. He wonders if an accident report filed by the murdered girls a few days earlier was properly investigated.

Miller's office used to be on Tilton Road in Northfield, just down the street from Blazer's garage. He recalls that on Thursday, the day before that Memorial Day weekend, he handled a car insurance claim for a fender bender between the two girls in the convertible and two young men in a blue and cream-colored Volkswagen van with New Mexico tags.

Miller said that he notified the New Jersey State Police at the time and sent the accident report to their Absecon barracks. He told them that he saw the girls talking to the men across from his office, then they drive south on the Parkway, back toward Ocean City and Somers Point. Miller later saw the VW Van in Ocean City.

The New Jersey State Police said that while the Absecon barracks no longer exist, they have an investigator assigned to the case, the files are being reviewed, and any new leads will be pursued.

When Jeffrey Blitz retired and Theodore F. L. Housel took over the Atlantic City Prosecutor's Office in 2008, Housel assigned a new investigator to review the Parkway coed murders. Because of a heavy case load, they've had to give more recent crimes priority. Forensic science has developed new investigative techniques and types of evidence, such as DNA, that didn't exist in 1969. So who knows if new evidence, a new witness or additional clues could lead to the perpetrator?

I

Ocean City Music Pier Concerts Summer of 2019

Ocean City Music Pier Concerts – Summer of 2019

https://www.boxoffice-tickets.com/

JUNE 24 BUDDY GUY

JUNE 25 RICHARD THOMPSON and JOAN OSBORNE

JUNE 29 BRUCE IN THE USA

JUNE 30 HAPPY TOGETHER 10TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR FEATURING THE TURTLES, 

CHUCK NEGRO OF 3 DOG NIGHT, GARY PUCKET & THE UNION GAP, THE ASSOCIATION, 

CLASSICS IV. AND THE COWSILLS, 

JULY 1- BOZ SCAGGS

JULY 8 - ALLMAN BETTS BAND W/ SPECIAL GUEST JACK BROADBENT 

JULY 15 - KILLER QUEEN

JULY 22- TBA

JULY 29 - JON ANDERSON OF YES

AUGUST 5 - LOU GRAMM THE VOICE OF FOREIGNER AND ASIA FEATURING JOHN PAYNE

AUGUST 12 and 13 - GET THE LED OUT

AUGUST 19  - THE ZOMBIES

AUGUST 20 - WALTER TROUT and VANESSA COLLIER