It’s fitting that one of the iconic artists of the 1960s – who endeared himself to a generation through an off-the-cuff and spirited opening slot performance at Woodstock – would have a background as varied as Richie Havens.

The crowd at Richie Havens’ Woodstock-opening set on Aug. 15, 1969.

Havens was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brookly, New York. His father was a non-professional piano player and his mother was a devout church-goer. Music and the church were a central part of a young Richie’s life. One of his earliest musical projects was a doo-wop group formed in his teenage years, and they were good enough to win the talent contests at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. In order to secure permission from their parents to perform rock ‘n’ roll, the members of the group agreed to spend part of their time performing in church. While the doo-wop band did not last, the spirit of the gospel instilled in Richie Havens would not be squandered.

While in high school Havens had ambitions to be a surgeon, but the repetitive nature of school work bored him. At 17 he left home and didn’t have to roam far to find a less-restrictive environment in Greenwich Village that suited his nature. It was there that Havens first started to immerse himself in the coffeehouse culture that included Len Chandler and Paul Stookey, and which had recently produced the phenomena that is Bob Dylan. Havens was working as a painter, sketching portraits for the gawking tourists who frequented the neighborhood, but within short time he was inspired to try his hand at performing and began experimenting with a style of open-tuning guitar playing that soon became his signature. He also began writing his own material and linked up with manager Albert Grossman (the business mind behind Peter, Paul, and Mary and the aforementioned Dylan phenomena).

Havens’ first album, Mixed Bag, released on a small label in 1996, had all of the hallmarks of Richie Havens as we know today: insightful lyrics, social commentary (“Handsome Johnny” – a comment on US wars waged since the country’s inception – was co-written with actor Louis Gossett, Jr.), great songwriting and interpretation, and that PERCUSSIVE guitar playing.

All of it came to a culmination one August afternoon in 1969 in upstate New York, while the festival known as Woodstock was struggling to get started on time, its scheduled line-up of performers bogged down by the traffic snarls caused by the influx of pilgrims to the festival grounds. Richie Havens was asked to open the show, in front of tens of thousands, though he was not originally scheduled to do so. With his acoustic guitar, powerful positive energy, and his willingness to improvise Havens set the tone for the rest of the historic weekend and cemented his reputation for the rest of his life’s work. In fact, when he passed of a heart attack in April 2013, at the age of 72, Richie Havens’ cremated remains were scattered over the fields of Yasgur’s Farm on the 44th anniversary of the conclusion of the festival.

Richie Havens‘ 82nd birthday anniversary will occur on Saturday, January 21st. WUMB will celebrate his life and legacy by sharing his music through the day on Monday, January 16. Hear the Artist of the Day sets in the 9 AM, noon, 3 PM, and 7 PM hours.