Photo: Barry Olivier | From Wikipedia: Barry Olivier grew up living in the San Francisco Bay Area cities of Belvedere, Brentwood and Berkeley, moving several times as his father was a school principal. He moved to Berkeley in 1947 as a teenager. Olivier lived in Berkeley until the early 1980s, and then lived his remaining years in Oakland, California.
Olivier was part of the Berkeley folk music scene from the 1950s onward. He was influenced by folk revivalists such as Burl Ives, Carl Sandburg, and John Jacob Niles, who he saw perform on campus at Cal. Beginning in 1956 he hosted “The Midnight Special” on KPFA radio. He started a music instrument shop in Berkeley, The Barrel Folk Music Center, to serve the growing folk music community during the mid-1950s.
In 1958, Olivier, as a former student of UC Berkeley envisioned and created The Berkeley Folk Festival which became an annual event, directed and produced by Olivier, until 1970. Performers and workshop participants included Alan Lomax, Doc Watson and his son Merle, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Mississippi John Hurt, Almeda Riddle, Mance Lipscomb, Alice Stuart, and folklorists Charles Seeger and Archie Green. Associate festival producer John Chambless described Olivier as having produced the festivals almost single-handedly and with “enormous good taste.” He produced all of Joan Baez’s Northern California concerts from 1962 to 1973.
In 1974, Olivier’s archive of folk festival materials was acquired by Northwestern University (ibid). This festival was the subject of history and American studies professor Michael J. Kramer’s research seminar “Digitizing Folk Music History: The Berkeley Folk Festival.” In May 2011, he spoke at Northwestern about his experience during the 1960s.
In 2021, Northwestern University (ibid) published its digital archive of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival.
Olivier was a Bay Area guitar teacher. He gave a young boy from El Cerrito, California named John Fogerty his first guitar lessons, and helped Kate Wolf perfect her guitar playing technique. He was the father of five children.
In June 2020, his students formed a public Facebook group, Friends of Barry Olivier.
Barry Olivier retired from teaching in 2019, after being diagnosed with dementia. He died on the morning of September 23, 2023, at the age of 87.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Olivier
https://www.facebook.com/groups/267120484404803/
Photo: Barry Olivier | From Facebook groups
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Terry Robert Kirkman (December 12, 1939 – September 23, 2023) was an American musician and songwriter best known as a vocalist for the pop group the Association and the writer of several of the band’s hit songs such as “Cherish”, “Everything That Touches You”, and “Six Man Band”. As a member of the Association, he was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003.
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As a salesman visiting Hawaii in 1962, Kirkman met Jules Alexander, who was in the United States Navy at the time, and the two resolved to meet when Alexander would be discharged from his military duties.
Kirkman moved to Los Angeles with Alexander in 1963. Kirkman and Alexander founded the folk group the Inner Tubes, which at one time included both Cass Elliot and David Crosby. The Inner Tubes slowly grew from a small group into a 13-piece band called the Men.
The Men disbanded in February 1965 and Kirkman and five other members formed their own band. To find a new name, they perused a dictionary and chose “the Association” after it was suggested by Kirkman’s fiancée. The Association quickly gained fame with their songs “Cherish” and “Along Comes Mary” from their 1966 debut album And Then… Along Comes the Association.
Kirkman contributed vocals to many songs, including “Never My Love”, “Cherish”, and “Everything That Touches You”. He performed with the group at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. His “Requiem for the Masses”, a song written about the war in Vietnam, featured requiem-style vocals.
The Association were nominated for a Grammy Award six times, three times each in the 9th (1967) and 10th Annual Grammy Awards (1968).
In August 1969, a collection of poems penned by the seven members of the Association was released as the book Crank Your Spreaders.
Kirkman left the Association at the end of 1972, and returned when the band was reformed in 1979, after previously splitting up the year before. After growing tired of touring, Kirkman left the band in 1984. Subsequently, on rare occasions he performed in guest appearances with the band. He was present when he and the Association’s other surviving members were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003 and when the band were recipients of the Rock Justice Awards on January 18, 2019, at Village Studios in Los Angeles.
A series of interviews that he and Jules Alexander took part in, in early 2023, were released in separate parts, starting on September 1, 2023. The fourth part of these interviews was released a day before his death.
Personal life and death
In the years following his departure from the Association, Kirkman retired from the music industry and worked in California as an addictions counselor.
Kirkman lived in Montclair, California, with his wife Heidi. He died from congestive heart failure on September 23, 2023, at the age of 83, following a long illness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Kirkman
https://www.facebook.com/groups/267120484404803/
Photo: Barry Olivier | From Facebook groups
September 28, 2023| In Memoriam| Barb Dye