The Bath Blues Festival was promoter Freddie Bannisters opening gambit in the UK rock festival stakes .In 1969 he dipped his toe into the murky festival waters ,with a solid line up featuring the cream of British Blues Bands plus a few progressive groups such as The Nice- and emerged ( unlike many of his co-promoters ) , financially unscathed and ready to have another go with a more ambitious line-up in the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music .

   The festival took place right in the heart of Bath , whereas the 1970 show was held at Shepton Mallet . The small size of the recreation ground was fine for 1969 and the twin stage set up meant there were fairly smooth transitions between bands. The single stage in 1970 led to lengthy waits for the poor audience as equipment took ages to set up and sound check.

    The 1969 bash only attracted 12,000 punters, and has in general been overshadowed by its far bigger sibling festival of 1970. This site is an attempt to draw in more information from festival goers and ( hopefully ) tapers. Thanks to Lawrence Impey, Mike Ware, Malcolm Strachan ,Mike Wheeler and Tom Tom , who took photos of the bands onstage, as well as the crowd, we now have good pictorial memories to remind us what the event looked like.

   At long last some recordings of the festival have come to light, both audio and visual ! A guy armed with a 8 mm camera filmed about 18 minutes of various bands onstage and there are also audio portions of the sets by the Nice, Fleetwood Mac,Ten Years After ,Blodwyn Pig and Colosseum, that are generally fairly listenable - which we have been kindly given by the promoters Freddie and Wendy Bannister. More details here at the Recordings page .

Photo© Tom Tom 1969

    All Bath festival fans will want to read the new book by Bath promoter Freddie Bannister about the 69 and 70 festivals. Its called " JUST BROKEN EVEN " -click on the photo to view more details and to learn how to purchase the limited edition before it sells out .