Wolf­gang Gra­jon­ca had a hard child­hood. Young and orphaned dur­ing World War II, Gra­jon­ca moved from Ger­many to Paris, Mar­seille and Lis­bon, and even­tu­al­ly the Unit­ed States by sea, each time stay­ing one step ahead of the west­ward-mov­ing Nazis. The 10 year old set­tled in New York, changed his name to Bill Gra­ham, lat­er fought in Korea, and head­ed to San Fran­cis­co, where he became a leg­endary con­cert pro­mot­er. Jef­fer­son Air­plane, The Grate­ful Dead, Coun­try Joe and The Fish, The Rolling Stones — Gra­ham put them all on the West coast stage.

The pro­mot­er of the Coun­ter­cul­ture was killed in a heli­copter crash in Octo­ber 1991 and left behind a huge trove of record­ings and mem­o­ra­bil­ia. Out of the ash­es arose Wolf­gang’s Vault, a web­site that ped­dles many Bill Gra­ham goods, but also fea­tures a good num­ber of free con­certs from the hey­day: The Who and Miles Davis (Tan­gle­wood, 1970), The All­man Broth­ers Band (New York, 1970), Mud­dy Waters (Los Ange­les, 1971), Bob Mar­ley and the Wail­ers and Tom Pet­ty & the Heart­break­ers (1978).  They’re all avail­able online, along with oth­er acts includ­ing Van Mor­ri­son, AC/DC, San­tana, The Band, and Cros­by, Stills & Nash. Jump into the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Archive

Fred­die Mer­cury, Live Aid (1985)

David Bowie and Bing Cros­by Sing Christ­mas Duet

Tal­ent­ed but trou­bled singer-song­writer Amy Wine­house was found dead in her Lon­don apart­ment on Sat­ur­day, July 23. The 27 year-old, whose deep voice had always expressed a lev­el of matu­ri­ty and soul­ful­ness that belied her age, was known to be strug­gling with drug addic­tion. In recent months, both her appear­ance and abil­i­ty to per­form live had dete­ri­o­rat­ed marked­ly.

Here she is in bet­ter days, mak­ing her Amer­i­can debut on The David Let­ter­man Show in 2007. For more back­ground on Wine­house­’s life and work, you can also check out The Girl Done Good, a free doc­u­men­tary avail­able at Snag Films. (Note: it is only avail­able in the US and Cana­da.)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Israeli mashup artist known as Kuti­man gave us Thru Jer­susalem last month, a con­tem­pla­tive jour­ney through Jerusalem’s eclec­tic, local music scene. Now he returns to his Moth­er of All Funk Chords roots and goes uptem­po again, stitch­ing togeth­er 80 cov­ers of Led Zep­pelin’s 1974 clas­sic, “Black Dog” (orig­i­nal here). Per­haps more than any oth­er I’ve seen, this video gives mean­ing to the expres­sion “the total is greater than the sum of the parts.” The indi­vid­ual cov­ers hard­ly stand out, but the mashup deliv­ers the goods.

via Wired

Before the week­end slips away, we want to remem­ber Bil­lie Hol­i­day who was born 98 years ago today. To this day, Hol­i­day is wide­ly con­sid­ered the great­est jazz vocal­ist of all time, known for her dis­tinc­tive phras­ing and melan­choly voice. Above, we bring you her per­for­mance of “Strange Fruit,” a song record­ed in 1939 that protest­ed the lynch­ing of African Amer­i­cans in the South. The com­po­si­tion intro­duced Hol­i­day to a main­stream audi­ence, giv­ing her career a big break. Down the line, Hol­i­day closed every con­cert with the song, which con­tin­u­al­ly grew in cul­tur­al impor­tance. By 1999, TIME called “Strange Fruit” the song of the cen­tu­ry, solid­i­fy­ing its place in the Amer­i­can song­book.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!