Richie Havens Biography
Richard Pierce Havens, 21 January 1941, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. Havens' professional singing career began at the age of 14 as a member of the McCrea Gospel Singers. By 1962 he was a popular figure on the Greenwich Village folk circuit with regular appearances at the Cafe Wha?, Gerdes, and The Fat Black Pussycat. Havens quickly developed a distinctive playing style, tuning his guitar to the open E chord which in turn inspired an insistent percussive technique and a stunningly deft right hand technique. A black singer in a predominantly white idiom, Havens' early work combined folk material with New York-pop inspired compositions. His soft, yet gritty, voice adapted well to seemingly contrary material and two early releases, Mixed Bag and Something Else Again, revealed a blossoming talent. However, the artist established his reputation interpreting songs by other acts, including the Beatles and Bob Dylan, which he personalized through his individual technique. Havens opened the celebrated Woodstock Festival and his memorable appearance was a highlight of the film. A contemporaneous release, Richard P. Havens 1983, was probably his artistic apogee, offering several empathic cover versions and some of the singer's finest compositions. He later established an independent label, Stormy Forest, and enjoyed a US Top 20 hit with "Here Comes The Sun". A respected painter, writer and sculptor, Havens also enjoys a lucrative career doing voice-overs for US television advertisements. Wishing Well in 2002 showed that the artist had lost none of his artistic verve and was applauded as one of the finest recordings of his career.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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