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The Other Miami Pop Festival of 1968
The first Miami Pop Festival is remembered for Jimi Hendrix and the rain that canceled its second day in May 1968. Gulfstream Park hosted another festival under the Miami Pop name that December. This one deserves its own place in the story.
Held Dec. 28–30 at the Hallandale racetrack, the winter event brought a remarkable range of music to South Florida. HistoryMiami Museum identifies Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell and Marvin Gaye among its performers. Contemporary and later accounts also place Chuck Berry, Richie Havens and others on the bill. This was a separate festival with a separate lineup, rather than the postponed conclusion of the May event.
One small moment survives particularly clearly. Joni Mitchell’s official concert chronology records her Dec. 29 appearance and notes that Graham Nash and Richie Havens joined her during the encore. A lineup tells us who was invited; that entry captures something that happened once the musicians were there.
The festival also left a recorded trace. A Grateful Dead performance from Dec. 29 circulates in an archival recording linked by a festival history project. Alongside the photographs, posters and contemporary coverage, such recordings help restore sound to an event that could otherwise become only a list of celebrated names.
The geographic distinction is worth keeping: Gulfstream Park is in Hallandale, north of Miami. The festival used Miami’s name to identify a South Florida event with ambitions well beyond one city. For listeners who attended, the winter dates offered another chance to experience a large gathering of artists before Woodstock made the rock festival a more familiar national image.
The two 1968 Miami Pop Festivals are often mentioned together, and understandably so. Both happened at Gulfstream Park in the same extraordinary year. Remembering them separately makes the history richer. May had Hendrix and a Sunday lost to weather. December brought three more days and a bill that could place Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye and the Grateful Dead within the same festival.
South Florida’s contribution to that era was not a single afternoon before Woodstock. Music returned to Gulfstream Park before the year was out.