Richie Havens

May 15, 1971

“WHEN I SING,” SAYS RICHIE HAVENS, “MY MIND IS BUSY LOOKING AT THE pictures the writer created. My body has something to do, which is play the guitar. And my spirit is feeling the song’s sensations all over again. I sing from what I see. It goes out and then it comes back to me.”

Richie’s singing has been going out since 1962, when at the height of the folk music revival he turned to music.

Richie was born Jan. 21, 1941, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His father was a pianist who earned his living as an electroplater and his mother worked in a bookbinding factory.

The oldest of nine children, Richie organized a group called the McCrea Gospel Singers when he was fourteen. The group was formed just for fun. “I really thought I’d be a surgeon,” he says.

Although he was a better than average student, Richie dropped out of high school shortly before graduation. “I loved school,” Richie says. “I mean, here was this one big building with a lot of people in it. But we used to laugh a lot and they’d never let us laugh.

“I liked learning, but I couldn’t see any reason why I had to go over something I already knew. You know, we’d go over a lesson a week and then on Friday, the teacher would say, ‘It’s time for review.’ I said, ‘Why?’ I already knew it.

“So, I quit. It was just time to go, I guess. I’ve always known when it was time.”

Richie left home at seventeen and moved to Greenwich Village, supporting himself by doing portraits of tourists.

In 1962, after hanging around Village clubs, Richie began his musical career. “It was at the Gaslight and Café Wha,” he says. “I began hearing people like Len Chandler and Dino Valenti. They inspired me to try singing.”

Richie began singing in the Village, living off contributions from a passed basket. His first album, Mixed Bag, on the Verve-Folkways label, really launched his career.

Since that time, Richie has released a number of albums and has formed his own record company, Stormy Forest. He has appeared at every important rock and folk club in the country and is a frequent television guest.

Richie’s latest single, “Here Comes the Sun,” is currently number seventeen in the nation and his most recent LP, Alarm Clock, is number forty on the charts.

“I found out,” says Richie, “there are just two places to be. Happy and unhappy. Everything I do is looking at that one big question—what are we doing here, why and how?

“That’s part of what I have to say in my music. I want everybody to discover it because this is the time for finding out.”

Richie Havens Preparing to Play at WHMC in Gaithersburg, Maryland

PHOTO BY MIKE KLAVANS