Ozark Music Festival changed Sedalia 50 years ago. This filmmaker looks back

Columbia Daily Tribune ^ | July 20, 2024 | Aarik Danielsen

[Dartoid]

Fifty years ago this weekend (July 19 - 21) in Sedalia, every amplifier dial went all the way up.

The volume was literal, with once and future guitar heroes such as Joe Perry, Glenn Frey and Jeff Beck plugging in to split the Midwest sky with sound. The event these rock stars played also "amped up the drama" in the modest-sized Missouri city, as one documentary filmmaker put it, with hints of the squalling feedback still discernible today.

The Ozark Music Festival, mounted July 19-21, 1974, featured sets from the Eagles, Aerosmith, Blue Öyster Cult, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Seger and many other heavy hitters. The event exists as a singular entry in the long, storied, often chaotic annals of music festivals — and not simply on the strength of its lineup.

[Dartoid]

Everybody has heard of Woodstock and the Altamont Concert. But The Ozark Music Festival with an estimated 350,000 in attendance in tiny Sedalia Missouri?

[nwrep]

Strange that no photos exist of the event.

[texas booster]

Image search brings up quite a few pictures, but nothing like Woodstock. It happens when one holds a music concert in fly-over country. NYC just can't be bothered.

This day in 1974: The Ozark Music Festival was held over three days on the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia, Missouri. One of the largest music festivals ever held, some estimates have put the crowd count at 350,000 people. Acts who appeared included, Bachman–Turner Overdrive, Blue Öyster Cult, the Eagles, America, Marshall Tucker Band, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Boz Scaggs, Ted Nugent, Lynyrd Skynyrd,Electric Flag, Joe Walsh, Aerosmith and Spirit.

Much like Woodstock, the festival was marked by mismanagement as the facilities were not equipped for the number of attendees.

After the concert, nearby farmer stated that two of his cattle and several hogs were killed and cooked for food. The portable toilets were turned over and emptied after they were quickly filled up.

By Monday, July 22, the festival crowd had left, leaving a field of garbage behind. Damage estimates of $100,000 were reported, as well as one death and over 1,000 drug overdoses.

After the festival the city of Sedalia only had a few weeks to clean up for the Missouri State fair, so helicopters were used for spraying lime over the fairgrounds as a precaution against the possible outbreak of disease.

On the ground, bulldozers scraped up the topsoil, which was (reportedly) littered with discarded drug paraphernalia and gnawed cobs of corn from a neighboring field along with mountains of contaminated dirt and garbage which were hauled to the county landfills.

Meanwhile, festival-goers crowded the Interstate 70 rest stops to catch up on sleep lost during the weekend. Tents, cots and sleeping bags were spread throughout rest stops all along the highway.

In early September of that year, the city council banned future rock concerts in the city.

[texas booster]

Actually I suspect that turning the ground for the Missouri State Fair pretty much wiped out it’s memory, since Missourians were embarrassed by the extreme drug use.

[Carl Vehse]

Sedalia has a population of around 21,000 (about the same for the past 100+ years). It is the home of the Missouri State Fair with an average daily attendance of around 30,000 over the 11-day Fair.

At the end of the 19th century Sedalia was also the home to the Maple Leaf Club and the “King of Ragtime” Scott Joplin, and has an annual Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival.

[KC Burke]

Anyone wants to know anything about it — I was there.

Went with my wife and another couple. We went to shower that first night and found out the showers were “co-ed” and said, Oh - one of Those weekends. We were lucky to have brought my buddy’s VW camp mobile so we were very comfortable.

Acid and grass sold in the open by guys walking the crowd. But if you really wanted to make some money, you showed up with a truck loaded with ice because it was hot and the whole city had run out of ice. They hauled it in from Versailles and Columbia.

To balance out the one death, they could mention there was one birth. Sanitation was bad by the last night as the toilets and porta-potties were full or stopped up due to water pressure etc.

Music was good and went on throughout the whole festival. The crowd was huge.

[bwest]

“Its”, not “it’s.”

[libertylover]

English has several of those tricky close words.
It’s - its
there - their - they’re
one - won
two - too
Democrat - idiot

I’m sure there are more.

[texas booster]

You’re correct.

Happens sometimes when I am in a hurry and don’t double check my work.

[xoxox]

well, that’s that, then. seems pretty unremarkable.

[nwrep]

English has several of those tricky close words.

No, they are tricky only if one is an illegal alien or a ghetto-dweller or from a non-English country. Otherwise the rules of usage are well understood and followed consistently by English speakers all over the world.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Sedalia MO used to be the end of the trail for the first cattle herds driven in from Texas in the late 1860s. Then it was moved farther West to Wichita, then Dodge city.

[libertylover]

Somehow, I doubt that Texas Booster is an illegal alien or a ghetto-dweller.

[minnesota_bound]

I never heard of any of these acts.
Not a Taylor Swift type among them...