Fred Cantor spent much of his life in Westport. The Staples High School Class of 1971 graduate writes:
For music fans, the summer of 1969 is etched in history thanks to Woodstock.
But roughly 5 weeks before that legendary event, local music buffs were treated to the 2-day Westport Pop Festival.
Festival proceeds, per The (Norwalk) Hour, went to the “Westport-Weston Youth Project which, at the moment, is a youth center and coffee house … headed by Brian Keane, Guy Rabut, Mike Joseph and Bubba Barton.” The quartet had just finished their sophomore year at Staples.
The event was sponsored by the Westport Youth Adult Council (forerunner of the current Westport Youth Commission). It was just one of a variety of their entertainment offerings, starting in the late 1960s
The YAC staged a series of summer concerts at Staples featuring prominent acts like the Byrds, Delaney & Bonnie, Tim Hardin, Sha Na Na and Peter Frampton.
Screenshot
It scheduled other events in town too for the benefit of Westport teens, such as a 1971 summer screening of classic comedies from W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton.
Hanging out outside the Youth Adult Council office on Post Road East. Seated (from left): Walt Amey, Brian Keane. Standing: YAC staff member John Clarendon, Mike Joseph, Guy Rabut. Other building tenants included the Alcoholism Guidance Center and Westport Draft Counseling.
But it was a series of hyperlocal music happenings featuring area performers in more intimate settings — spearheaded by 4 friends from Staples’ class of 1971 — that really helped elevate awareness of what the YAC could bring to Westport.
Brian, Guy, Mike and Bubba (whose real name is David, and who played drums in local bands with Brian) organized, with the help of several other classmates, the “Coffee House” music series.
It operated out of the Saugatuck Congregational Church basement, then relocated to the lower level at Bedford Elementary School (now Town Hall).
It ran 2 nights a week during the summer, and Friday nights during part of the school year.
The cover fee started at 50 cents (roughly $4.25 today). It was later raised to 75 cents (still a bargain for live music).
Mike, who had honed his tech skills working on lighting and sound at Staples entertainment events, was in charge of the same type of setup for the Coffee House gigs.
Guy, whose father Paul Rabut was a well-known illustrator and art collector (and who designed several US postage stamps), followed in his dad’s footsteps by creating a number of the posters for the YAC events.
A Guy Rabut Coffee House poster. (All visuals courtesy of Brian Keane)
Brian, long before his Grammy- and Emmy-winning work as a professional musician/composer/producer, took the lead in curating the Coffee House music lineup.
As Mike said a while back, “It was great for us Class of ‘71 kids to be involved in something so creative as juniors and seniors in HS …. Westport was well ahead of everyone else in engaging its youth.”
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Guy went on to become a successful luthier in NYC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Rabut
Fred – Can’t thank you enough for this piece, including the posters. Our Town’s incedible history of support for youth, coupled with the dedication of those who were themselves young at the time (weren’t we all) and the amazing results of those efforts (casually mentioning the Byrds, Frampton, etc.) always astounds me.
Cool write-up. Thanks Dan! Great seeing you at the Class of ’71 mini-reunion at Brian’s. Love that you keep us ex-pats informed (I’m here in KC). Cheers!
I personally don’t know those guys in the picture, but what’s interesting is their hairstyles. Turn the clock back 10 years to 1961 and the look was short and tidy: crew cuts, flattops, and the neat side-parted ivy league cut. Then came the Beatles and by 1971 shoulder-length hair, sideburns, and beards were common.