Introduction

As the producers of the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972, The Rainbow Multi-Media Corporation is proud to welcome you to Otis Spann Memorial Field, Ann Arbor, and three days of the most exciting blues and jazz music we were able to arrange for this weekend. We have taken great care in putting this Festival together to make it as unique and as satisfying as we know how — musically, socially, politically, economically, and every other way — and we’d like to take a few minutes before you get into the music to speak briefly of our intents and purposes .in producing the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972.

The Blues & Jazz Festival was conceived last winter by Rainbow Multi-Media president Peter Andrews as a revival of "the original Ann Arbor Blues Festival, which after two incredible years (1969 and 1970) of artistic (but not financial) success was laid to rest by the University of Michigan before a 1971 Festival could struggle into life. The void left by the absence of the Festival last summer was so great that people in the Ann Arbor music community were bemoaning its disappearance far into the winter; folks in the bars, on the 'Streets, and at various community meetings fantasized its re-emergence endlessly, but there seemed tp be no way to put on another Blues Festival without the support and sponsorship of official University student organizations and their sizable entertainment budgets.