Woodstock Performer Melanie Safka Dead At 76

HuffPost ^ | January 24, 2024 | David Moye

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The singer turned her experience at the 1969 concert into "Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)," a top-10 hit in 1970

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Singer Melanie Safka, who turned a 1969 performance at Woodstock into a hit song and a five-decade career, died Tuesday at the age of 76. Safka’s death was announced on her Facebook page with a letter from her three children, Leilah, Jeordie, and Beau Jarred:

Dear Ones,
This is the hardest post for us to write, and there are so many things we want to say, first, and there’s no easy way except to say it… Mom passed, peacefully, out of this world and into the next on January, 23rd, 2024.

We are heartbroken, but want to thank each and every one of you for the affection you have for our Mother, and to tell you that she loved all of you so much! She was one of the most talented, strong and passionate women of the era and every word she wrote, every note she sang reflected that.

Our world is much dimmer, the colors of a dreary, rainy Tennessee pale with her absence today, but we know that she is still here, smiling down on all of us, on all of you, from the stars.

No cause of death was announced.

Earlier this month, Safka was in a recording studio working on “Second Hand Smoke,” an album of cover songs, for the Cleopatra label, Variety reported. Born Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk in Astoria, New York, Safka studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before deciding to pursue a career as a folk singer. Her big break came at the 1969 Woodstock concert, which she described to Rolling Stone in 2019 as her first “out-of-body experience.”

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[fatboy]

“Her mother owned a craft store called Paint-in-Place.”
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It was located in The Monmouth Mall in Eatontown NJ. Small store well organized. Used to shop in that mall when I was a kid.

[clive bitterman]

Yes, in the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, NJ. when it was still an outdoor mall. They had pictures of Melanie all over the store (she was at her height of popularity then) and her sister, who looked a lot like her, worked there. The last I’d heard of Melanie was that she had purchased a large tract of land in Middletown, NJ. near the Swimming River Reservoir that was supposedly a farm but after that, nothing. R.I.P.

[MoochPooch]

The Troubadour was THE place and the start of so many singer-songwriters of that era

My father, a physician, had Doug Weston as a patient. Dad became a regular visitor to The Troubadour. I saw Melanie perform there.

Later The Troubadour got eclipsed by The Roxy.

[Captain Compassion]

She was the hippy queen after Woodstock. I first listened to her music in ‘68 while in the Navy. Loved her ever since. RIP Melanie.