Chicago - Chicago Transit Authority - Texas International Pop Festival Vol.1 1969 [FLAC]

From The Handbook of Texas Online

The Texas International Pop Festival was the first major rock festival in Texas. Held August 30 through September 1, 1969, at the Dallas International Motor Speedway in Lewisville, the event was produced in part by Angus Wynne III of Wynne Entertainment. The Texas festival was held only two weeks after the legendary Woodstock festival in Woodstock, New York. It was unusual in the wide variety of musical acts it attracted and in its atmosphere.

With a budget of only $120,000, the promoters booked twenty-six of the biggest names in blues, rock-and-roll, and psychedelic rock. Janis Joplin, Sam and Dave, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana, Canned Heat, the Grass Roots, B. B. King, Chicago Transit Authority, Tony Joe White, Spirit, Johnny Winter, Sweetwater, Ten Years After, Freddie King, and a virtually unknown British band, Led Zeppelin, all performed during the three-day festival. The musical acts were not paid much to perform; Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin were paid the most—$10,000 each. Some major groups that wanted to perform could not get in to play. A band from Michigan, Grand Funk Railroad, was allowed to perform only after the members agreed to play free and pay their own expenses. [Grand Funk Railroad opened all three days and played through the afternoon heat till the 4:00 PM opening band. They had just gotten a record contract with Capitol Records a month earlier after a wildly successful performance at the Atlanta Pop Festival on July 4, 1969.]

The festival was extensively advertised through radio and newspaper and was promoted at Woodstock. Consequently, music enthusiasts from all over the United States, and from numerous foreign countries, poured into Lewisville to pay the admission fee of $6.50 a day. Although the promoters anticipated a crowd of over 200,000, actual attendance for the three days was more like 120,000.