• Bob Dylan's Biggest Non-Newport Folk Festival Performances: Concert for Bangladesh, More

    Fans and promoters at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island will spend the entire weekend celebrating the 50th anniversary of the occasion when Bob Dylan first took the stage with an electric guitar, thrilling some of the audience and alienating just as many, who felt betrayed by the folk icon taking a more rock 'n' roll approach to his genre. Given 50 years to think about it, and excellent albums such as Highway 61 Revisited as a result, the folks at Newport are feeling a bit more generous about what is now considered one of the most iconic live appearances of all time. It certainly goes down as the most momentous concert in Dylan's career, but don't think that he hasn't played a few other "big" shows in a career that stretches nearly 60 years. Here are a few other big live moments for The Bard.

  • Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream Speech" and The Opening Acts: Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and More

    Go to any concert, any music festival, and there will be scores of opening acts. They serve to get the crowd warmed up, get the crowd ready to rock with the headliners at the end of the night. This same thing used to happen at political events: Sometimes other political figures aside from the "headliner" would give speeches of their own for the cause and often musicians with sympathizing views would perform as well. This same thing happened at the conclusion of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which culminated in Martin Luther King's famous "I Have A Dream" Speech. There was no doubt that King was the "headliner," but he had a heck of an opening set from a series of iconic musicians. Here's a list of the esteemed performers who played at the same podium as Dr. King that did.
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