In 1969 which unscheduled musician played at Woodstock for almost 3 hours while organizers set up?

His Woodstock appearance in 1969 catapulted him into stardom and was a major turning point in his career. As the festival’s first performer, he held the crowd for nearly three hours. In part, Havens was told to continue playing, because many artists scheduled to perform after him were delayed in reaching the festival location with highways at a virtual standstill. He was called back for several encores. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual Motherless Child that became Freedom. The subsequent Woodstock movie release helped Havens reach a worldwide audience.

The Woodstock festival had been scheduled to begin on Friday afternoon. Sweetwater was the planned first act. The audience had been streaming onto the festival site for days, in numbers far exceeding expectations, and traffic had already clogged all roads leading to the festival for dozens of miles. Sweetwater and their equipment were stuck in Liberty, normally a 20-minute drive away, but now accessible only by helicopter. Richie and his bandmates, Deano Williams and Daniel Ben Zebulon, had been flown to the festival site in a small helicopter that landed behind the stage. Tim Hardin was also on-site, along with a few other performers. As the start time came and went, Michael Lang pleaded with Hardin to take the stage and open the festival. Hardin adamantly refused, reminding Lang that he was supposed to go on fifth. Lang then appealed to Richie, who finally, reluctantly agreed, telling the festival promoter that he would owe him big-time if anyone threw any bottles at him. Richie's bass player, Eric Oxendine, was still stuck in traffic, but Richie agreed to perform without him.