![]() Chris Fritz has experienced a storied career in the music industry ranging from promoting national bands and creating his own record label to helping build an amphitheater in Bonner Springs, Kansas. But perhaps the most notable piece of his music repertoire was a raucous music festival in Sedalia resulting in legal entanglements and his banishment from the Missouri State Fairgrounds for many years. Yet as he recently detailed during a phone interview, his lengthy journey into concert promotion and his active role in the music industry has roots that date back to when he was only a sophomore in high school. “Both of my parents were in the military—my dad was in the U.S. Navy and my mother was a WAVE,” Fritz explained. They were stationed at Pearl Harbor after the bombing. After my dad left the Navy, he decided to join the Coast Guard,” he added. Fritz was born in 1947 while his parents were living in Trevor City, Michigan. His parents later moved to Raleigh, North Carolina; however, his father then left the Coast Guard and went to work at an airport in Almara, New York. “During the second grade, my parents moved to Ohio, and we lived there until moving to Chicago in my freshman year … and that’s where I got the music bug,” Fritz said. “In 1964, the Beatles made their mark here in the states and there was a local band called the Roadrunners that dressed and acted like the Beatles.” He continued, “I got the school to let me use the gym to put on a sock hop and had the Roadrunners perform. We charged fifty cents a person for admission and made a total of $400. There were four guys in the band and me, so we each got eighty bucks, which was great money for us back then.” Motivated by his initial promotional success, Fritz continued to book the band nearly every weekend at local dances and selling out all the shows. “I was working at a clothing store, too, making about $1.75 an hour and when you made more than fifty dollars a show, that was like an entire week’s paycheck!” he exclaimed. Soon, because of fights that broke out at some of the dances, he had to find a new venue and was able to rent a small shop that they quickly outgrew. He then began renting a building with a 1,500-person capacity, booking bands to perform throughout his senior year. After graduating high school in 1965, he enrolled at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Smiling, he remarked, “SIU—Carbondale was voted the number one party school for two years that I was there.” Still interested in promoting musical acts, Fritz began booking bands to perform shows in Champagne, Illinois, and various locations off campus. He then rented a trailer park near campus with several homes and a courtyard, living in one and renting out the others, which left him with no expenses. “I threw a party in the courtyard of the park, sold beer and booked bands to play,” Fritz explained. “There would be times we would have between 300 and 500 people there and although I might spend $1,000, I might make a profit of $1,200.” With underage drinking becoming an issue, Fritz was placed on probation by the university, and he left school at the end of his second year. He worked briefly as a fireman with the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad and later rented a storefront where he sold records and other memorabilia. An interesting moment in his music experiences came in the late 1960s, when he and his girlfriend moved to New York for a couple of months, often hanging out with Lou Reed and the band Velvet Underground. Fritz then pulled up his stakes and moved to San Francisco, but later settled in Los Angeles, seeking to make a career of being a concert promoter on the West Coast. “I got taken advantage of several times and by that time my parents had moved to Kansas City; I visited them and thought the area had a lot of potential,” he recalled. “I moved to KC on July 4, 1970, and put an ad in the paper looking for investors to do some rock shows.” For a couple of years, he and a partner booked acts such as REO Speedwagon, Quicksilver, Spirit, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, and the James Gang, to perform at local venues including Memorial Hall. Despite certain challenges in scheduling talent, Fritz continued to make money promoting shows. “A rock and roll artist who said he was delayed by airline complications last night caused some anxious moments at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, but in the end most of the 4,500 persons who came stayed to hear the two performances,” reported the and March 5, 1973. Fritz explained in the article that Chuck Berry, who appeared “smug” over the incident, fulfilled his commitment to perform—albeit a little late—and the audience appeared to be understanding, with only 300 of the more than 4,000 fans requesting refunds. Fritz continued to seek avenues to take concert promotion to the next level and had the idea of a music festival that might rival Woodstock. It was 1974, and Fritz became one of the primary individuals who planned an event that would be the topic of discussions and subject of documentaries decades later. “I was only 26 years old at the time and the idea of the Ozark Musical Festival in the relatively small town of Sedalia was a pretty crazy idea,” he said. “My partner, Bob Shaw, and I had a budget of about $192,000 to book all the talent for a three-day event. In the end,” he continued, “Bob had a heart attack and there were a bunch of people looking to hang me, so I had to get out of town—and fast!” Part 2 By the summer of 1974, and despite his youth, Fritz had already acquired nearly a decade of experience as a concert promoter accompanied by increasing levels of monetary backing. Now, with his partner, Bob Shaw, they relied upon a rather meager investment to book the talent for a Woodstock-like festival at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia. “With the venue booked in Sedalia, we had to start scheduling talent for the festival,” said Fritz. “Wolfman Jack was a popular radio disc jockey and I called and talked to him. I explained what we were planning to do with the festival, and he said, ‘I’ll be there!’ If I remember correctly, we paid him $5,000 to be the emcee.” The dates for the festival were set for July 19-21, 1974, and Fritz noted that one of the first items they coordinated was the purchase of good insurance coverage for the event. The concert tickets were sold for $15 a piece in advance and $20 at the gate. Using his promotional experiences from previous shows, he found creative means to advertise the event, including purchasing television spots at an affordable rate in major markets at early morning hours a full-page ad in Rolling Stone. “Booking the talent to play at the festival was one of the most important aspects of its success, we believed,” Fritz said. “A lot of the bands were just coming into their popularity, so we were able to get them pretty affordably, like Aerosmith, which I think cost us about $7,500.” Fritz continued, “Then we had bands like the Eagles, which were already quite popular, and I think we had to pay them around $15,000.” The concert became an epic roster of performers and included Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels Band, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Bob Seger, the Marshall Tucker Band, among many others. It was expected to draw around 50,000 attendees, but soon devolved into nearly uncontrollable mayhem as scores of music fans arrived in Sedalia. In the end, some reports claim that as many as 350,000 people may have descended upon the small town to witness the now historic music festival. “The town ran out of water and there was nothing in the stores,” Fritz said. “So many people arrived at the festival that they just tore down the gates and wouldn’t leave. My partner, Bob Shaw, had a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital in Kansas City.” Roger Althoff was 19 years old and working for the California Feed and Supply Store in Moniteau County when the festival occurred. For a week prior to the event, he recalls hitchhikers walking west on U.S. Highway 50, heading to the festival. “I would haul fescue to Sedalia and pick up some of the hitchhikers, most who had come out of the St. Louis area, and give them a ride,” he said. “I decided to go to the festival on Friday and Saturday and there were so many people there that you couldn’t even see the stage.” He continued, “It was over 100 degrees and I remember they opened the fire hydrants so people could cool off and take showers. It was so hot that there were vendors with tanks iced down full of drinks and beverages, and people would just jump in them to cool off.” John McEuen, a founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, recalls playing at the Ozark Music Festival. Fritz had him and the other band members flown into the event because of traffic congestion in the area. “The stage was 105 degrees and when I went onstage to play my lap steel guitar, I realized why Leo Kotke, who played before us, had a wet towel draped over his guitar. I poured water over the bar and my guitar to cool it off.” McEuen added, “The Dirt Band was very excited to be there, and I think we turned in a good set when we played for all those people.” News soon spread about drug usage, damage to property of area residents and sexual encounters taking place on the fairgrounds, resulting in the event being likened to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. On Sunday evening, Fritz learned that there was an angry mob searching for him because they were not pleased with the circumstances of the festival. “I got on the helicopter that I had rented to transport talent to and from the festival and we flew to the pilot’s hangar along I-70,” he recalled. “The helicopter experienced some mechanical problems and ended up making a hard landing, injuring my back.” Pausing, he added, “There were a lot of fines for cleanup and property damage, but we still ended up making money. Even after the legal fees and the restitution we made, I think my profit for the event was around $40,000.” In the years after the festival, Fritz started the Panama Records label, on which the bands Granmax and Missouri recorded. He continued a successful career in concert promotion throughout the Midwest and helped establish Sandstone Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, Kansas. Despite these career achievements, it is the Ozark Musical Festival with which he is most often associated. The Ozark Music Festival has become legendary in the annals of regional music history. It has inspired efforts to attempt to recreate the event, to a lesser extent, on its 50th anniversary in 2024 and is the topic of a documentary highlighting some of the reasons for its entry into pop culture. “It was the biggest festival—the Woodstock—of the Midwest … the largest in that part of America,” said John McEuen. “It was much better than the Altamont Festival on the West Coast and it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.” Roger Althoff noted of his attendance at the festival nearly five decades earlier, “It was truly something to see. It is part of our area history, and I am glad I went.” Jeremy P. Ämick is the author of the upcoming biography of the rock band Shooting Star.
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AuthorJeremy P. Ämick is an award-winning author and historian and dedicated to preserving music, military and local histories. Archives
July 2024
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