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Woodstock icon Havens dies at 72

Photo by Jefferson Siegel
Photo by Jefferson Siegel

 

Folk singer Richie Havens died Mon., April 22, of a heart attack at his home in Jersey City. He was 72. A fixture on the Greenwich Village folk circuit in the 1960s, he is best known for his legendary opening performance at the Woodstock festival in August 1969. The photo above is of Havens performing at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 15, 1968, for a crowd of supporters of Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam-war presidential candidate, two weeks before the infamous Democratic National Convention. Havens, who grew up in Brooklyn, used to have an apartment on Jane St. in the Village.